From $500M in Funding to Revolutionizing Remote Pay: Insights from Remote.com’s CEO Job van der Voort - ep. 072

In our latest episode, Rick and Kaleem speak with Job van der Voort, the CEO of Remote.com takes our audience on an extraordinary journey. Formerly a neuroscientist, Job transitioned from studying rat brains to becoming a tech entrepreneur that raised over 500 million for remote-first startup.

Job's neuroscience background, which involved playing sounds to rats and studying brain activity through electrode insertion, adds a unique twist to the unconventional nature of his past work.

Diving into the compelling narrative of GitLab's growth from an open-source project to a billion-dollar company, where our guest served as the third employee, Job reflects on the unexpected success of remote work within GitLab, attributing it to the team's diverse backgrounds and a shared commitment to common goals. The challenges GitLab faced in managing a globally distributed workforce inspired Job to launch Remote.com!

As the CEO of Remote, Job is at the helm of a platform simplifying the complexities of hiring, managing, and paying global teams, providing access to career opportunities worldwide.

Job’s steps underscore the significance of clear communication standards and embracing diversity in remote teams. He emphasizes the value of assuming good intentions, countering concerns about cultural differences and communication barriers through positive interpretations.

Some controversial topics such as location-based pay versus location-independent pay are explored, with our guest offering a nuanced perspective on market dynamics and supply-demand factors.

Addressing negative feedback regarding Remote.com's pro-remote stance, Job highlights the growing acceptance of remote work and its benefits for both employers and employees.

This conversation advocates for fully remote or fully in-office setups over hybrid models, emphasizing the clarity of benefits in these approaches. Job imparts a valuable New Year's resolution about prioritizing important tasks, offering a thought-provoking insight into optimizing productivity.

This comprehensive view of Job van der Voort's unique journey showcasing Remote.com's evolution offers insightful perspectives on remote work, business dynamics, and the challenges of managing global teams! Job's experiences, coupled with his humor and valuable insights, make this podcast a must-listen for those navigating the evolving landscape of remote work.

As the CEO of Remote.com Job continues to make waves in simplifying global team management, making Remote.com an indispensable solution for hiring, managing, and paying anyone, anywhere!

Learn more about Job:

• Job’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jobvo/
• Remote.com: https://remote.com/jobs

Episode Sponsor

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• Visit magicmind.com/remotelyone 
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Transcript

Job: 0:35

I often tell this, but I used to be a neuroscientist. that work, what I would do is I would. open the brains of rats and stick electrodes in them.

Kaleem: 0:42

Okay, can we talk a little bit more about that? Like you can't just throw that out there. So

Rick: 0:46

I think he should, that's, that's the, that's good shock value.

Kaleem: 0:49

I mean it does have shock value, but I need to know a little bit more about these rats. Okay, so were they cute little rats, with a dirty rats like so you didn't feel bad about what you're doing to them.

Rick: 1:00

Did they know karate? Did they live in the sewers of New York City?

Job: 1:04

I could talk to you for hours about this. So lot of the knowledge that we have about the brain is based on experimental research that we do, and we do that with mice and rats and sometimes even monkeys, for example, and to some degree, humans and the research that I did, we were looked into how does the brain process information? And the way we did that was That we played sounds to rats. So I would fix a rat in a setup that I made with speakers around it. And we played sounds to it. And we would want to record the brain activity. But if you want to record what your neurons are actually doing, you actually have to stick an electrode in there. You can't measure it from the outside. And so what I would do is I made a little hole inside of their skull. And then I would stick an, like an electrode, like a fork in it. And that allowed us to triangulate individual neurons. and see their activity based on the sounds that I was playing to those rats. So that's the research that I did for a few years before I left to start working in startups.

Kaleem: 2:00

it's

Rick: 2:01

That's incredible. You don't run into somebody that's drilled into the skulls of mice and rats every day. I'm

Job: 2:05

Yeah, we used the drills that dentists used for that. that's the sound. Yeah.

Kaleem: 2:12

You actually did that you actually

Job: 2:13

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kaleem: 2:14

Holy shit

Rick: 2:23

Welcome back to Remotely one. I'm your co-host, Rick Haney. Joined by my esteemed colleague, Kaleem Clarkson. How you doing today, buddy?

Kaleem: 2:30

Oh, man, I'm feeling good, man. I'm nervous about today's guests. Oh, man, I'm feeling good. You're looking great as usual, bro. You're looking good as usual. Wait, you're a little, you're a little jacked up. Are you on your third cup of coffee already? You're ready to go today.

Rick: 2:45

Well, I am jacked up, but it ain't because of the coffee, I'll tell you that much.

Kaleem: 2:48

Oh,

Rick: 2:49

went to the doctor last week to get my shit in order. And he's like, you gotta get rid of the coffee, bro. And I'm like, ha, excuse me? Who the hell do you think you're talking to? I don't get rid of coffee! You know? And, uh, he's like, okay, but your heart's gonna explode. And I'm like, okay, I'll get rid of coffee. So, I did my due diligence and I discovered this new product, okay? It's called Magic Mind. And it's just one shot that I take in the morning. I just took a sip of it right now, as you can see. And, it's amazing. It's organic, gluten free, dairy free. And it gives me the boost, straight into the flow zone without that caffeine. So it's pretty incredible.

Kaleem: 3:23

I can't even imagine it, bro. You, Rick, no more caffeine.

Rick: 3:27

I know, right? But you know what? It turns out I don't even miss the caffeine. I don't even need it. This stuff has me laser focused, no more crashing into that wall of brain fog later in the day. I mean, I'll be honest, I love it so much that I want to be able to offer it to our audience. What do you think about that?

Kaleem: 3:43

no shit, man. That sounds good to me, bro. How do we do it?

Rick: 3:46

Well, gotta go to magicmind. com forward slash remotely won. And once you do that, you get up to 56 percent off on your subscription for the next 10 days or 20 percent off your one time purchase with our code REMOTELY120. All

Kaleem: 4:04

That's it. Just put it in.

Rick: 4:06

so R E M O T E L Y O N E 2 0.

Kaleem: 4:12

Bam.

Rick: 4:12

Actually, Kaleem, I think you should be one of the first people to do it, cause it's amazing. You're gonna love this stuff.

Kaleem: 4:17

I'm going to get to it. I'm going to get to it. All right. I'm going to try it.

Rick: 4:20

and With that out of the way Kaleem Give us a tease or two about today's guest.

Kaleem: 4:24

Oh, sir. Oh, sir. So today's guest. Okay. They're across the pond. Should we say our guests? They grew up. Oh, don't do it. Don't get me giggling already. Guy. Don't get me giggling already. Our guests, they grew up and they're currently a resident. Of Amsterdam, so, you know

Rick: 4:42

Oh.

Kaleem: 4:43

You know, is that the red light district? Is that the

Rick: 4:45

I don't know anything about it.

Kaleem: 4:47

I Don't know anything about that Guest am I thinking of the right country and districts?

Job: 4:52

district is in Amsterdam, yeah. That's not where I live though.

Kaleem: 4:55

Okay, okay, okay, okay, but our guest has never been there I guess has never been there but it does exist or it does exist Let's see. Listen education wise Again, Rick, sometimes you have people who are just educated, right? Like highly educated. Then you have people who, you know, do experiments and shit. So our guest today, they have their bachelor's, you ready for this in psychonomics. Cool.

Rick: 5:19

Oh. We're gonna get learnt today.

Kaleem: 5:21

Yeah. We're going to have to talk about that. Then they have their master's degree in cognitive neuroscience, and they're both from the university Amsterdam, sir.

Rick: 5:29

Wow. Okay. I'm excited for that.

Kaleem: 5:32

in fact, Rick, our guest, they used to drill holes in rats brains in the name of science. Yeah, yeah, guess, guessed. How many rats have you actually drilled holes in their brains roughly? How many rats have you done this to?

Job: 5:49

Tense.

Kaleem: 5:50

Just ten? Okay. Okay. I thought he was going to say tens of thousands. I was like, Oh shit.

Job: 5:56

no, it's tense. It's tense.

Kaleem: 5:58

Okay. Okay. Okay. So our guest has done some great stuff in the name of science. Let's see our guests. They used to be the VP of product. You ready for this Rick?

Rick: 6:09

Yes.

Kaleem: 6:09

a little company that everyone's heard of today, the company's name is GitLab.

Rick: 6:16

No

Kaleem: 6:16

Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, Darren used to work there. We're coming at you, Darren. He's no longer there, but he used to be there with him. Yep, he used to be the VP of product at GitLab, okay? When the company grew from five to over 400 people, I guess What number employee were you?

Job: 6:32

Three, I think.

Kaleem: 6:33

Holy sugars! We have the number three employee at GitLab on our show right now! Yeah, that company is now worth over a billion dollars, Rick. That company that he used to work for is now worth over a billion dollars. It's a lot. Um, seriously, seriously, shout out to get lab for hosting drupal. org repository.

Rick: 6:53

Indeed.

Kaleem: 6:55

Um, for the past six years, our guests, you know, he's been a host on a couple of different podcasts. He used to be the host of remote work podcasts. Is that correct? You still doing that?

Job: 7:04

No, I stopped.

Kaleem: 7:06

Okay. Okay. He stopped. He stopped. Okay. He's the leading online entrepreneur of the year in 2022, which was issued by the Lowy foundation. Our guest today is currently the CEO of remote. com, which is a global HR platform that helps you manage your employees all around the world. Get this remote. com. They have raised over 500 million, Rick. So you can. Absolutely build a remote company and get it funded. Listeners and viewers, please give a warm welcome to Yop Vandervoort!

Rick: 7:46

Woohoo! Oh yeah!

Kaleem: 7:51

Let's go, baby! Let's go! Ow!

Rick: 7:54

settle down people.

Job: 7:56

This is the best introduction I've ever gotten.

Kaleem: 7:58

Be quiet, studio

Rick: 8:00

All right, down in front, relax.

Kaleem: 8:01

They get excited. Sorry about that. Love to have you. Yo, love to

Rick: 8:06

Welcome to the show, yo.

Job: 8:07

Thanks for having me. This is great. I'm done for

Rick: 8:13

How was that for an intro, huh?

Job: 8:15

It was good. Hey, this, you know, this is the last thing I'm doing today before my weekend starts. So it's pretty good way to go. But,

Rick: 8:22

Oh my gosh.

Kaleem: 8:23

I am just so happy you really said yes to join us. You know, I know you're a busy person. You've been on every Remote Work podcast. I mean, hell, you must have paid 20 million for remote. com, the domain name.

Job: 8:38

uh, I think it's going to be more over time. Yeah. Something like that.

Rick: 8:42

I'm sure it will be.

Kaleem: 8:44

Holy shit. So thank you very much. It's honestly a pleasure.

Rick: 8:49

Yeah, no, I'm really looking forward to learning a lot from you. I've got so many questions. Diving right in. The first thing I'm most intrigued about is, relationship between psychology of human behavior and brain science is a major element in your background. Obviously, that's what you do. But as a scientist, what was it like for you to witness the world's reaction to the pandemic and the sudden shift toward remote work that followed it, and now, of course, with remote work becoming so widely sought?

Job: 9:24

Yeah. That's an interesting question. When I was working at GitLab, I had this realization that I didn't really understand. Why we were working from an office as working as a software engineer right before I joined GitLab and I worked in an office and I would work in the train on the way to the office and do the exact same thing in the office and on the way back. And I was wondering, why do I have to be in an office at all? It doesn't make any real sense. I guess if there's anything I got from science to be hyper skeptical, which my wife doesn't necessarily love, but I'm hyper. hyper skeptical about anything that's a given right without having a clear reason why right and I think the reaction of the world of like realizing oh we don't have to be in the office was very interesting to see because for me it was already a thing that was very very clear like yes if your work is entirely on the internet obviously you don't have to be in the office there's https: otter. ai And they, they can be done pretty well online as well. It was certainly interesting. was definitely not a bad time to be the CEO of a company called Remotes. With the domain remotes. com

Rick: 10:39

Couldn't have said it better

Kaleem: 10:41

Yeah, for real, for real. So let's go back to employee number three. I can't believe that. I should have known this, sir. I should have known. I'm disappointed in myself. So what was it like? In those early, early, early days, you know, before 50 employees, even at GitLab. So you're building this product that's trying to rival GitHub, I think, you know, like you're trying to conceptualize something where it appeared like the market was dominated, at what point did you kind of look at each? Okay. So I'm going to go back to this other and say, Hey, I think we're onto something with this product of GitLab. Could you just talk about like what those really early days were like, and why did you all decide from day one or, you know, the founders, how did you all decide to be remote in that company?

Job: 11:26

So github was an open source project that started in 2011 by Dimitri and he was living in Ukraine at the time. And then in 2013, I was working at this job as a software engineer, having just left science and I was working next to Sid, the CEO and founder of GitLab. He was also just working there, a job, the same as I was, we were just programming. And so he left that to focus solely on GitLab. And he was like, Job, do you want to join me? And at the time I told him no, but a few months, like two months later, we were chatting. I think it was one of the Google chat versions of Hangouts or something at the time. And I was about to go for a job interview the next day and he called me and he was like, let's chat. He says, I will offer you whatever your current salary is and you come work for me. I was like, okay, that's, that sounds good. And so GitLab at the time was, Dimitri was living in Ukraine. We had Marin who was living in Serbia and coming over to the Netherlands once in a while. Sid and I were living in the Netherlands both. And everyone would go, yeah, a company was in the Netherlands. And so there was no office that we could go to, right? And technically GitLab already existed for several years as an open source project. And so we figured, well, we operate the company as an open source project, essentially. Very transparent, but also there's no office. Everybody is on equal footing because everything we do is out in the open and online. And so the first thing we had to address was like, well, how are you going to monetize this? And is there a path to monetization, but because it was an open source project that was somewhat successful already, we quickly realized that there were probably many companies already using GitLab internally. And it was very hard to track this. We didn't have any ways to track this, but what we started to see is that there were some extremely large companies, you know, like the largest companies in the planet, they were using GitLab in some form or another, right? Often what they had is they had some other solutions, some outdated pre Git kind of source control, and then. Teams would individually bring in GitLab because it was open source. So they would just set it up. That would start to grow very massively And you know before we started the company there was no company to support them There was nobody to reach out to and so when we said well, we're going to sell support We're going to make the enterprise version some of those companies started to reach out to us. And so we quickly realized that The little open source project and then a company we were building, there was massive potential behind it because there were probably we estimated more than 100, 000 companies or more than 100, 000 instances of GitLab worldwide, of which at least a percentage, you know, would probably want to buy something from us. And so we realized this quite early on but it was intimidating because we were up against github Which everybody knew and by the time that we started they had already 100 million in funding which looking back is kind of funny because I remember thinking 100 million nobody ever needs 100 million That's more money than any company ever raised at least is what I thought at the time but You know, it was at the same time. We felt like a really small company I remember when we had nine employees. I said so sad. I said wow, we're a real company now and you know, we went through Y Combinator and it still felt really surreal I always thought like we were unimportant compared to all those other companies, but I think looking back, you know GitLab is one of the success Companies coming out of Y Combinator as well

Rick: 14:32

Wow.

Kaleem: 14:33

Yeah,

Rick: 14:33

Wow. So. Uh, as GitLab began to grow and progress as a company, you had to start hiring people from all over the world. Can you talk about maybe what were some of the challenges that you guys are dealing with that motivated you over time to start Remote. com?

Job: 14:49

Yeah, it's very interesting because the challenges that we anticipated basically didn't exist as in like finding people, making sure they matched well, that they had the skills that we needed or cultural barriers. I get a lot of questions about building teams and then people talk about cultural barriers. We never faced any of those and I still haven't, right? Like we've never experienced that as a real challenge. The main challenge that

Kaleem: 15:11

Yo, can we, can I stop you right there before you get into your major challenge? Cause like you just went over that very quickly. Can you re, can you just reemphasize specifically what you all assumed? Because right now, a lot of companies are making assumptions about what's wrong with remote work and forcing them to return to the office. What were those things that you just said that you assumed that were going to be challenges? And then yeah. are there no cultural, challenges? I mean, that's amazing.

Job: 15:40

Well, I mean, we assumed that we will come across problems in the abstract, right? We didn't know how many companies existed before GitLab that were like fully distributed and build a company like that from scratch and like high growth and well funded. It's, it was very rare. There were companies that were very working remotely a lot, but there wasn't anybody to copy. There was not a blueprint for the kind of company we were building.

Kaleem: 16:00

Right. Right.

Job: 16:01

It's very different. I think. And so we didn't necessarily know what we anticipate, but we did anticipate problems to exist. So I still remember us saying like, if we need to open an office at some time, we will write, like, if we feel like that is necessary. And that moment just never came because the problems that we had anticipated with related to remote work or time zones, they didn't exist. And then, yeah, the cultural one is one that I get asked about and it never really became a thing. I never experienced that to be an issue, right? And so we had at GitLab, we had our handbook. We have the same now at remote. And, we clearly outlined, like, these are our communication standards. This is how we treat each other. Given that, I assume given that, in reality, we never really faced problems with like, there's a cultural difference between different people. I think when you hire people from everywhere, and especially as we did a GitLab, when I left, we had people in 67 different countries, you know, the population in your company, the employees, it's so varied. That there's not like a, an U. S. centric culture necessarily or there's not a Dutch centric culture necessarily that then makes others stick out from that, but rather it's just heterogeneous in itself. And it makes that there is no cultural barrier other than the fact that, well, you need to be able to speak the language, right? And you need to make, you need to be willing to assume good intentions and do a favorable interpretation. Right? Because not everybody can write really effectively.

Rick: 17:30

Hmm.

Job: 17:31

And not everybody takes the time to write very effectively. But if you are able to, like, make a little leap of assuming good intentions of whatever somebody says to you, then there really aren't any true cultural hurdles to cross when you're talking about, oh, we're writing software together, right? Like, together, we work together, we are all experts in our field, we have to write software. One of my favorite things and one of the things that I took away from at GitLab was, well, it's such a pleasure to work with people from all over the world because you cannot make any assumptions about what is normal, right? What is your, the immediate environment and probably your friends and your family, you know, that's mostly have standards. That you think are very clear, right? I do the simplest one is like christmas not everybody celebrates christmas, right? But the other one is also like there's a northern and a southern hemisphere and the seasons are inverted So when it's warm for you, it's cold for somebody else, you know I think those are the simplest ones, but there's so many things like that that seem very normal or like Pillars in your own life that aren't in those of other people And that is easy to read about on wikipedia when you read about a different culture But it's much more fun when you speak to somebody who lives such a different life in so many ways, but then in the end of the day, you're both working together to, I don't know, in our case, make software, you know, and like we have the same opinions about how we make software. And to me that was just, you know, I, that was a great pleasure. Now, what didn't work at GitLab or never worked well was, the bureaucracy that we had to deal with. Because if you want to hire somebody in another country, you have to abide by that country's laws, labor laws, tax laws, everything. You have to offer local benefits. And every country has started from scratch writing these rules and writing these laws. Even in the European Union, They are all different country by country, completely different, like not even remotely similar. There's not one, and I know this now for a fact, there's not one country where they are the same. And so it's really hard to hire people in different countries. But in all countries, if you want to hire somebody locally, you need the local entity. Because they, all the laws are designed around the fact that businesses exist in the real world. Right, so virtual businesses, right, software now exists only in the internet. They were not a thing until like 15 years ago. And so Given that all these laws and all these labor laws and protections are designed for physical companies in the real world, assuming that people go to a place to do their job there, you as a company are expected to act as such. And that's really hard. There's no good solution for that. And that's what we found at GitLab. made me start remote because any solution that were out there were really, really poor. And I figured if we solve this, we solve the problem of actually, as an individual born anywhere on the planet, getting access to great opportunities.

Kaleem: 20:20

Wow.

Rick: 20:20

That is fascinating.

Kaleem: 20:22

It is fascinating. So basically, you know, listeners, viewers, whenever you have a challenge, all the great inventions start or all the great products start by scratching an itch that you have. And it sounds like. This is the same type of thing. And you're like, listen, we're having a real big problem. GitLab's growing. We have to hire people all over the world. Damn, this is frustrating. How are we gonna do this? Oh. He was like, I got an idea. I'm gonna build this product to solve that problem. Peace out, GitLab. Now, let me ask you this. How supportive was GitLab in your endeavor in the beginning? Because good amount of articles out there or a new trend. Of companies funding their employees, entrepreneurial, ideas and activities. And there's actually kind of motivation in return from the companies that do that. Like, Hey, look, go ahead. That's a great idea. Go ahead and do your thing. So how was that relationship in the beginning?

Job: 21:19

so When Sid asked me to join GitLab, I told him, I'm going to just stick around for one year because I want to start my own startup. He was like, that's great. That's fine. You do that. I ended up sticking around for five years. But by the time that I decided to leave, he asked me to stay on longer. I said, no, I really want to do my own thing. And I explained to him what I was going to do and they were supportive. I GitLab didn't fund me. In any particular way, but I earned enough money to have savings so that I could start by myself. And it was not GitLab that I needed to help from. Later on, Sid actually did invest, in remote and, they are a customer, of course. So, I would say, as helpful as could be, I think funding we never struggled to find, but customers you always want more of. And of course the support from Sid was, was great.

Kaleem: 22:01

That's awesome.

Rick: 22:02

That's really great. I gotta tell you, shifting gears real quick, those New York City ad placements are absolutely brilliant.

Job: 22:09

Yeah, I'm glad you liked

Rick: 22:10

I, you know, I've seen the posts, um,

Kaleem: 22:13

What were some of them? I don't think I've seen them. What did they say?

Job: 22:16

They are like, I wish I'd spend more time in the office and we posted them all over, um, where a lot of commuters are going and things like that. Yeah.

Rick: 22:26

Yeah. Yeah. I wish I spent more time in the car.

Job: 22:29

Yeah.

Rick: 22:30

Yeah.

Kaleem: 22:31

great. Genius.

Rick: 22:32

they were brilliant. They were brilliant. Um, but you know, I'm in speaking of those, I'm wondering, were they partly responsible for you guys being recognized as G2's number one global employment platform? And congratulations on that by the way. That was, that's a heck of a feat.

Kaleem: 22:49

Shout out. Shout out.

Job: 22:50

I have no idea why they do those things. Uh, as certainly are not default. I think it's mostly driven by like customer reviews and a few other factors. So, but I, I don't know the wizardry that involves in it, but when we get to number one, I will happily celebrate it. Yeah.

Rick: 23:04

Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, absolutely. Now you have a reason to. So as a result of these ads, have you had any negative feedback from business leaders who are really pushing for a return to the office?

Job: 23:15

not at all. That's one. I mean, they stay clear. They know there, and I'm not the right person to argue with,

Kaleem: 23:20

Right, right.

Job: 23:23

in the abstract, we don't. We don't really see the return to the office as like slowing of the acceleration of remote work, for example, right? What drives our business, right? What the kind of world I want to create, it's not about remote work in of itself. It's about I want that businesses start out being international from day one. And I want that people have access to opportunities independent of where they are. Right. Those are the kind of changes that I want to see in the world now, and those are driven partially by our work, but in large part, they are driven by the need to hire great people. And that doesn't change, right? If you are a business, you start a new business or you are a growing business, you're incredibly constrained on talent. And if you have offices and you require everybody to be in the offices, that means that the pool of talent that you're fishing from is. Extremely local and extremely limited. The moment you say, well, you can work remotely. You suddenly have a massive talent pool so much so that it's almost a problem, right? Because you're going to get so many applicants and the demands for remote work is so high. And so that keeps going up over time. And of course, yeah, you see a big split between employers to say, well, you have to come back to the office and then you see a large part of their employees leaving those employers. And I think only like the Metas and Apples of the world can do that. And even there, you see attrition of workforce, right? People leaving them, no matter how well they pay, no matter how amazing their job is, they see them leaving because people realize that, well, I get so many more hours in a day if I don't have to commute, right? It's not even about the office itself. If I don't have to commute, I get so many more hours that I can do whatever I want, play the guitar, spend time with my kids, right? And I, there is ultimately, what people value above everything else, you know, if you have your

Rick: 25:07

we're after.

Job: 25:08

it's

Rick: 25:09

Freedom.

Kaleem: 25:11

Yeah, y'all said it at the exact same time, bro. Freedom!

Rick: 25:17

THEY'LL

Kaleem: 25:17

gotta get the

Rick: 25:18

OUR FREEDOM!

Kaleem: 25:20

If you won't do it, you tell me! Yes, it's a bridge against the machine freedom. It's my favorite rate. One of my favorite rage songs is awesome. Love that song. So I got to ask you this question and you know, you don't have to answer it if you don't want to, because it's probably one of the most controversial questions when you talk about remote work and you guys are kind of involved in payment processing. So you decide how you want to answer. I would love to know what your thoughts are on location based pay and location independent based pay. Basically, I mean, I know, you know, but I'll explain it for my, for the listeners and viewers who may not know. Basically, location based pay is we're going to pay you based on the rates of where you live. So if you live in San Francisco, you're going to get paid more than if you were live where Rick and I are from Maine. Yeah. Location independent pay where you pay everybody the same and you're paying most likely on the highest rate. So one What is your personal view on that type of pay number one? And then number two, I'd love to know like what are you seeing the most? With your clients and what people are doing.

Job: 26:30

Yeah. I think it's very easy to fall into a trap of talking about what is fair and what does fair mean. The reality is that the talent market is a market. Right? Which means that, there is, supply and demand, supply of talent and demand from employers. And if I am an employer, I have a limited amount of money that I can spend. And so my options are extremely limited, right? My option is either I'm gonna hire 10 people for 10 each. Or I'm gonna hire, I don't know. 20 people for 5 each, right? Or balanced in between that. And so if I go as an employer, I want to have people that are happy. I want to have people that, feel like they're well rewarded for their job. Otherwise they will leave me, right? That's the dynamics of the market of talent. Right? And so if I offer to somebody in Portugal, for example, 5, 000 a month, they're going to get paid significantly above the local, I used to live there, so I know the rates pretty well, significantly above the average salary there. The average salary of a software engineer in Portugal that's employed locally is like 1, 500 equivalent. Now, maybe a little bit more, maybe 2, 000. So if I'm going to offer 5, 000, those people will be incredibly happy. They can live an incredibly full life and they will have all the money in the world to do whatever they want.

Kaleem: 27:49

Okay?

Job: 27:49

And as an employer, I can hire a lot of people there. I can hire half or less than half the people if I'm going to hire those in San Francisco. And so to whom is this unfair? If I do it is like this, that is how a market works. Now, if I'm going to say, well, I'm going to hire independent of location, then either I have an infinite money glitch that I somehow used, and I can just hire infinite people from anywhere. And I'm going to pay everybody the same rate, or I'm going to end up. underpaying depending on the region, right? I'm going to say, well, I'm going to pay everybody 5, 000 a month, but well, then just nobody from San Francisco will ever work for me. And so as an employer, you have not the choice to say, I'm going to pay independently of location. You have the choice to say, where am I going to hire from? Do I want to hire from everywhere? Because if I want to hire from everywhere, I have to be able to pay top of market, right? If I'm going to hire somebody in San Francisco, I will have to pay top of market regardless. And if I also want to hire somebody in Portugal, why would I then pay them four times more than what already be amazing salary for them. Yes, I can literally take any talent out of the company, but I have a limited amount of money as an employer because it's a business. And so what is going to happen is that I'm going to hire fewer people than I would otherwise be able to and expect them to do four times the amount of work. Right. Like it has to work out at the end of the day. And so I'm not an advocate for either model. I just think it's a market.

Kaleem: 29:13

You're a genius! That's called the block and bridge! You are going to be a politician, sir! It's a great answer and I love it! a great answer and I love it!

Rick: 29:24

perfectly put.

Job: 29:26

But also it is, so we, we have, of course, a lot of data on it. Nobody pays independent of location. There is like three companies. Yeah. Just like three companies in the world that really loudly say it. And the ones that do, it's always temporary because you're going to run into all sorts of things. You're going to run into, Oh, I pay everybody independent of location, but like once I hit scale, that's no longer doable, or I'm going to pay everybody poorly, and then I'm going to have a really high. Regrettable attrition as we call it, right? Which is like I people are leaving my company because they level up they get good and they realize well my talents I get paid double for them elsewhere Right and you have that problem. Anyway, now here comes a beautiful part of this the better Remote does his job? Alas, this becomes a problem Because the more companies that are hiring remotely the more the low salary locations will start to elevate their salaries

Kaleem: 30:18

Mmm.

Job: 30:19

You When I was living in Portugal, you know, six years ago or so, I remembered that there was a university closer where I lived. And the average salary of people coming out there was like a thousand Euro, which is like nowadays, 1, 200. Nowadays, the average salary of people there, because they're starting to work remotely all is like 4, 000 Euro. So it's like four X. Why, why is that? It's because there are many more remote organizations. And so, and those individuals also know that they can't get a remote job, right? And so, the harder companies like remote, especially remote, of course, work to elevate, you know, bring opportunities to people everywhere, the more you will see low cost locations, as they call it, right, in the boardroom. they start to rise as well. And you see more leveling. And so what companies like us have to do is like, we have to constantly revise what is like, what is the minimal pay in any given region. And like over time, this will smooth much, much, much more. So you might still have to pay really high for San Francisco because the density of like companies competing for talent also locally, but then the rest of the world, yeah, it's going to get higher and higher. And there's never like, I hope that we get to the point where there's no. cheap labor anymore, right? At least for like high demand roles. Like it doesn't make any sense. And so it resolves itself. And that's why it's a market.

Kaleem: 31:35

It's a market

Job: 31:36

function doing its

Kaleem: 31:37

Wow, I'm definitely going to steal that because I'm a firm believer of, I'm definitely a firm believer of location based pay because exactly what you were saying. And, even if I get an employee leaves, obviously they all need to know all these things ahead of time and has to be well documented. And outside of that, I do believe because think by you saying a market, it really does change the mentality of thinking about that type of pay. Because if you're in a market in a different country, you can live at a different type of level that you could live. And that's kind of what you're compensating somebody for is to live some sort of standard of living. So I really do love that, that, I was just messing with you a little bit, but I do love that, explanation of. It's a talent market. So markets aren't necessarily fair or unfair. They're based on demand, supply and demand.

Rick: 32:30

Yeah. Yeah, well, speaking of stealing things from you, Job, I'm gonna put you on the spot here with something you said recently. Okay. Um, you posted about New Year's resolutions, I believe it was, and the one you specified was spend more time on what's important and less on what is urgent. And that just, I'm going to carry that with me for the rest of my days. Because I just find it so inspirational and it kind of ties into the psychology of, you know, what we're talking about here. But do you find that a lot of people get those two things confused? And in your opinion, how does remote work help them realign themselves to what is important to them?

Job: 33:15

I don't necessarily know if those things get confused, but I do see. In my own work, that it's very easy to fall into the habit of just dealing with urgent things. Even if those urgent things just seem urgent, right? Like email.

Kaleem: 33:28

Yeah.

Job: 33:28

I think a lot of people get stuck in doing email, which is, and myself included, right? Which in of itself is not an impactful thing. Some of those emails might be impactful, but for the most part, it really isn't, right? And I see this with people working at remote as well, is that they fall a lot into doing things for the sake of doing things, right? There's a lot happening and I feel like I have to catch up with things. But really, how I orient myself and how I schedule my own time is I think about what is high impact? I will do that and everything else I don't really care about. Like, it might seem very urgent, but if it's actually important, it will come back to me, right? And so sometimes some important things are important and urgent, and then you deal with them appropriately. Now, how does remote work relate to that? Not at all, right? I think that, remote work sometimes makes these things harder to deal with, and sometimes easier, but on, on the aggregate, I think it doesn't really change things, right? I think the nature of work is still It's very much the same. It's good to not have a hovering manager, but if your company doesn't do remote work really, really well, you might be stuck in a lot of things that seem urgent anyway, or you might still be stuck in, you know, the other awful thing, which is like meetings, right. Which are arguably worse,

Rick: 34:47

Right.

Job: 34:47

remotely. Yeah.

Rick: 34:49

Yeah, well, I mean, those are prime examples of why I asked the question to begin with. You know, you said hovering manager and meetings, and most people would rather do without those things. Or at least the hovering manager part, so.

Kaleem: 35:03

That's absolutely true. That's absolutely true. One last question before Rick's question. What do you think about hybrid? And do you think hybrid is going to last?

Job: 35:12

hybrid will last for a really long time, but it's a very abstract word. What does it mean? It doesn't mean that you are. required to be in the office? When are you required in the office? Does it mean office is optional? Is it required for everybody at the same time? And so depending on like the form it's can or can't work. But my general reply is it's the worst way to work because you're not optimizing for anything. Right? You create a situation where if you require people to come to the office at all, then you immediately remove the benefit of being able to hire from anywhere. So it removes a massive benefit from it. The second one is, is that if you require people to come into the office at the same time. Then you get the benefit of being together in the same place, which is a really easy way to communicate. But what is going to happen inevitably is that you are going to segment your time on office days and non office days. In other words, you're going to do certain activities when you are in the office and certain when you are not, rather than optimizing in general. And as a business, you want your cycle times, the time that it takes from an idea to decision or an action or an outcome to be short as possible. But if you are have a cycle of a week in which two a days you are in the office, and you're gonna wait for them to have a meeting, make a decision, review something, it means that all your decisions are gonna slow down to, you know, at least a week. Because on a Wednesday, you decide you want to decide something, but on Monday is the next time you're in the office, and that's where you have meetings, then you're going to wait until Monday, so it slows your whole business down. Besides the fact that you will not spend time optimizing the remote experience, right? Because the remote experience is the default remote experience is bad. You are all apart by yourselves. You have to make it work, right? You have to spend time thinking about how do we communicate with each other? How do we work together? And if your social battery gets filled up, you know, if you can fall back to those days that you're in the office. Then you're not going to do that. And so, yeah, I think hybrid is the worst way to work. What I do think is a good way to work is if you say we are fully remote, everybody's always remote. There's no required days to be office. You don't have to live near the office, but offices exist where you can go to and hang out with your colleagues, work from host events and such. That is really great. That seems like a luxury version of remote working because we, for example, at my company called remote, we, Get together. Sometimes we also find a space, etc, etc. So like having an office available is good Is it can be really really convenient? And many people are not able to work from home, for example, so you either need co working space or an office So there's nothing wrong with offices in themselves, but required attendance to offices removes so many advantages from remote work

Kaleem: 37:57

Yeah. Great, great answer. And I want a hundred percent agree. Like you just broke it down like so perfectly. You've definitely been asked this question before because I mean you came down with the fire. It is the worst in like what you just painted as a picture. Could you imagine if offices were like? Conference spaces basically because everybody like you're hearing all of these reports of now nobody actually wants to sit in a cubicle and all the conference room space is booked straight out. So nobody even. Is able to utilize the office in the way that they want to utilize the office today and how they want to utilize it is exactly how you explained it. Let's get everybody in a room, have some breakout rooms, connect with other people. Let's do some cool stuff for connections, some strategic stuff. And then we'll see you all in another month or so and go home and do all the heads down work while you can focus. So I 100 percent love your answer. It's awesome. Oh, yeah.

Rick: 39:03

could you share with us, I always get, I get so amped up for this question. Could you share with us, a comical or inspiring moment you may have had while working remotely?

Job: 39:14

Yeah, I thought about this and I was like, what do I tell? Um, when I, uh, but then I was discussing this with my wife and I was like, Oh no, it's this story. She was like, yeah, that was definitely a story.

Kaleem: 39:27

Shout out. Can we say your wife's name before you tell your story? Give her a little love. All right. Shout out Carla. Shout out Carla for signing off. Shout out.

Rick: 39:35

Alright.

Job: 39:37

we, um, We started remote pre pandemic. 2019. I just had, uh, my daughter was born six months before I started remote. So we started working remote and I worked really hard, but I work from home, of course. And so as you can imagine, and my wife and I were both at home and I would work and take care of the kids and my wife would work and take care of the kids and it was really, really busy. And, um, I would do my calls in the basement of our house and there were, at the time there were no walls or doors or anything upstairs where my wife was, I could hear everything. And, we've been building remote for a while and we figured it's time to raise money. And so when you start raising money, what you do is you contact a lot of investors and then eventually one of them will get on a call with you. And so I had my very first investor meeting, it was like the end of the afternoon.

Kaleem: 40:26

How big's the VC just to give us a little bit of nervousness?

Job: 40:30

I mean, I don't want to give away too much, but, um, they were, they were, they were, they were a good one. they're

Kaleem: 40:38

Okay.

Job: 40:38

good fund.

Kaleem: 40:39

Okay.

Job: 40:40

And so I had my first pitch ever. Right? Like, I've never pitched to a VC. I've visited a few while I was at GitLab, but I've never pitched to a VC. My ID, remote, this was like all super, super early. This is literally the very first. And this is a not, this is a big fund in numbers, but it's a small fund in number of people. So they had their entire investment team on the call. And so I was presenting and I was, I don't know, 10 minutes into my pitch. And my wife, who is a really calm person, and really in control, she screamed from upstairs. And I could hear it very clearly because there were no doors. And she kept going, Job! Job! Job! You have to come! Job! And what do I do? I'm in the middle of my pitch. I'm like, I'm sorry, I have to come. And she kept screaming, Job! June, the name of my daughter, June is joking! So I said to, I said, my wife is screaming that my daughter is choking. I'll be right back. So I ran upstairs and luckily she was, apparently my daughter, six months at time, a little bit older maybe, she was eating a piece of apple, got stuck in her throat. She had already coughed it up by the time I was upstairs, which is recommended. It was like two seconds after I heard my wife scream.

Rick: 41:58

good for you. You did the right thing. You did the

Job: 42:01

so. Made sure everybody was okay. I saw my wife was there. My daughter was there. My wife was more shocked than my daughter was just continued to eat and whatever else made sure they were okay. I went downstairs. My heart was going, you know, faster than it's ever gone. I finished the pitch and they invested.

Rick: 42:20

Fantastic. That is a great victory story right there. I think Kaleem's a little frozen.

Kaleem: 42:27

It's okay, yeah, it was good. Unbelievable.

Rick: 42:31

That is amazing. Well, you know what? more happy that your daughter is okay. I mean, congratulations on the pitch, but,

Kaleem: 42:38

congrats. congrats. Wait, I missed it. Did you get the fund?

Job: 42:42

Yeah. I got the fund. They invested. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Kaleem: 42:47

See, That you're a human. People first, they enjoyed that. You know, they were like, look, this person came down, all, all, you know, in a miff, and, you probably still landed it, so

Job: 42:58

Yeah.

Kaleem: 42:59

Thank you for

Job: 43:00

Thanks so much.

Rick: 43:01

so where can our listeners find you?

Job: 43:03

Remote. com.

Rick: 43:04

Perfect.

Kaleem: 43:06

That's it? You're not anywhere else?

Job: 43:10

It's, it's, my name J O B and then a V and an O. So J O B V O. But like remote. com. I prefer people to just go to our website. There

Kaleem: 43:21

name.

Rick: 43:21

Yes.

Kaleem: 43:22

Thank you so much. Yo, I really appreciate it. I know you're super busy. And yes, important things will come back around just like my email to get you on the show. You know what I mean? Like

Job: 43:32

you go.

Rick: 43:33

That's right.

Kaleem: 43:35

I kept hitting it. I kept hitting it. So I appreciate you man. I appreciate you.

Rick: 43:38

we, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much. I've learned more than I bargained for today. I really appreciate you joining us. Come back again, okay?

Kaleem: 43:46

Awesome. Talk to you. Peace out.