Non-stop to Brazil
São Paulo / Atibaia
published on 04.26.2025
I spent the last week in São Paulo for my third team offsite with Clutch.
Our focus was using AI to accelerate our work. We did a full company hackathon and awarded five or so winning teams with 20k total. It was pretty cool to see Chris and Nicky making sure the entire company was aligned on the new expectations of the LLM era. My hackathon group was meant to be 9 people and ended up only being 4 due to absences and defectors. We tried an ambitious idea to automate our prequalification and rate offer configurations but were met with a technical limitation outside of our control (bad APIs and no import features into the key tool). Then we tried another ambition idea to turn our client’s core mapping rules into JSON without a human needing to do it. We hit another wall, this time mainly due to our lack of time and documentation meaning the LLMs couldn’t get it right no matter how hard they tried. Finally I initiated Plan C, in which I made a straight forward but useful automation for turning our client’s “Digital Account Opening Email” requirements into JSON without having to do any work ourselves. It works and will probably save my team 20-40 minutes per implementation.
Aside from the work portion of the trip, things were nice but a tad uninspiring. We drove from the São Paulo airport about an hour or so to a small area called Atibaia. Where we ended up was basically just a resort, so we didn’t really get to see anything particularly cool this time. The resort itself was situated amongst beautiful verdant vegetation and had switchbacking driveways leading down to the recreation area, which featured a full sized soccer field, beach volleyball and tennis courts. There was even a bowling alley. I pretty much ate pasta and pizza all week.
What stands out?
John Wass (fake name, real person), who joined the company at the start of this year, brought his Switch and we raced Mario Kart on the massive projector in the conference room we’d rented. That was fun!
What else?
I was recognized for my interviewing efforts at a previously unannounced “Talent Awards” night. I was nominated for both Best Interviewer and Culture Champion. I won the latter for articulating our values well and hiring strong cultural fits for the company. That was meaningful to me! Got a cool coffee mug as my prize.
And finally…
On the last night we had our usual Clutch Awards and party. Myself and several others, mostly from the Support team (Renato, Matheus, Caio) and Pedro from my team huddled around outside to escape the booming music and stuffy room where the party was taking place. It was pouring rain and smelled lovely. We chatted about Portuguese, English, and Spanish and the process of learning a new language. Of course everyone in the group aside from me is multi-lingual, so I found the conversation fascinating. And just like my previous trips to Brazil and indeed Mexico City (on mine and Tessa’s 1st anniversary last year) I found myself re-inspired to take learning Spanish and Portuguese more seriously. Will I? Things get busy, but I hope so.
On the final morning, we all packed and meandered around the resort, our numbers thinning each hour as the various scheduled shuttles began returning us to the airport. I was on one of the last shuttles, for a 9:50 pm flight. To occupy my time, I ordered a coffee from the hotel bar (I employed my elementary Portuguese and ended up with two lattes while expecting one with two shots). I read a bit and then began working on the “Weber Archives”, an idea I had in late 2024 or early this year. I am not sure if that will mean anything 10 years from now, but in certain cool futures, it might.
After the long 9 hour flight to Houston and the 1 hour skip to Austin, I caught an Uber to Figure 8 and ordered a cup of drip to stay. And then I wrote this down.
Tessa and Abby are on their way to meet me. As always, travel makes me exceedingly grateful for the life I get to live and the people I get to know.
Non-Stop To Brazil, Astrud Gilberto