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Here’s our transcript of an interview with Cao Duy Lâm, Fullstack Engineer at Staple! Lâm explains what drew him to a new AI company headquartered in Singapore, being part of a diverse multi-national team, and his experiences of the early employees from Vietnam.
Lâm’s responsibilities at Staple frontend developement, backend processing and endpoints, and deployement assaistance.
I knew it was time to find a new job when I was on the last day of a short vacation after almost 3 years of hard work to reset myself. A recruiter from Worknetics — a company from Singapore contacted me and introduced me to Josh- the CTO of Staple — who in turn introduced me to this business problem that they were trying to solve and which used a beyond-OCR (Optical Character Recognition) model. Naturally, as someone who is always up for a new challenge, both these things got me excited. There’s nothing quite like working somewhere where you feel valued, so becoming a part of something so amazing at Staple is exactly what got me so fired up!
At Staple, we’ve been changing a lot. When I started work here over 2 years ago, the company was a small startup with only some small websites piled onto the cloud, an AI document scanner server with simple API connections, and a project simply called “Reconciler” for posting to external systems. Now we’re undergoing a transformation — a lot of changes have happened since then and the software has grown massively.
Its amazing to look what we have built now! I am so proud of myself for helping us adopt the SaaS (software as a service) business model and seeing our team grow to share some quality moments. Seeing the team connect online was really what motivated me to always keep working harder. There is never a dull moment when you work for Staple, there are always things to do, people counting on you to make something happen or deliver something by tomorrow which gets me motivated working late hours (but no worries, there’s always fun games to play with the team )— it’s amazing how technology has made connecting easier for us all.
I’ve worked on quite a few projects at Staple over the last year. My favorites include building a GraphQL server, building a user interface (UI), and building a logging service called “Telescope”. The one I’m most proud of, though, is one we refer to as “matching.” Our matching project consists of an OCR system that pairs documents together after scanning each page with them. This is my favorite project because it’s the most challenging one I’ve worked on since I began working here. It contains an incredibly innovative solution that no other OCR products have ever been able to solve — matching documents after scanning has been completed.
Sometimes, I find it difficult to balance work and social life. It’s definitely not easy but what can you do? Every day, I always try my best to work for Staple putting all of my efforts into everything, and by night, I engage in recreational activities such as football, basketball, table tennis, and even watch Japanese manga and Japanese anime. Sometimes I even stream on Twitch. I never knew I was interested in watching other people do this before, but once you try it you’ll find out how much fun it is! My current lifestyle is so great! There’s so much motivation in it to keep me going and hopefully accomplish some career goals in the process too!
Because of COVID and working remotely, I feel as though I can concentrate more easily and focus on my work; that makes me work harder, better, and I like that. Also now that I work from home, I get to spend extra time with my family and pursue my favorite hobbies, which has provided me with immense joy. Although sometimes I miss the social atmosphere of Staple office, it’s definitely worth being able to spend so much more quality time at home with my family.
This is a tricky question and it’s one I take seriously because there’s no right answer, of course. From all the things I have shared so far I can say that my 3 favorite words to describe myself are ambitious, crazy, and enthusiastic.
Five years ago, I worked with someone who made me realize that focusing on the business problem at hand is the key, and not the technology to implement it. I disagreed with him initially because I thought new technology would always be a perfect fit for any business problem as long as it was applied correctly. But after working with my mentor’s solution and seeing how well things went from there, it was one of the most important take-aways for me. This experience really changed my way of thinking about technology in business.
The first things that attracted me to Staple were the problem that they are trying to solve and the solution proposed (we’re providing a way for companies to automate data extraction tasks quickly and conveniently). The problem makes sense as one to solve, and I’m always how accurately the AI scanning pulls out data!
I have the same goal every day — to be able to solve all-new problems I encounter as well as beat all of those challenges that crop up along my way, and to build software that helps people be more efficient at getting their jobs done. Working with Staple is like playing a game every single day. It’s challenging, but not in the aggravating way you find sometimes with work. I love solving new problems and beating challenges every day, and Staple gives me the chance to do just that — and more! I’m always motivated to work hard because Staple always has something new for me to try out. This aspect of my job is one I most look forward to working on at Staple!
About Staple:
Did you know that you can save up to 75% cost and 20x time by automating data extraction from documents and workflows using Staple’s powerful AI?
Staple’s AI-led solution can read, interpret and process unstructured documents without the need to build or maintain brittle rules and templates.
For more information about how you too could benefit from Staple’s cutting edge innovation visit the website at www.staple.ai or email us for details hello@staple.io