The Exchanges

Q years. But I want to hear from Alex and Sandre, hearing this, this idea that actually you can work completely asynchronous is Not something that many people are used to. It sounds kind of crazy. Like when I, when I had a friend from GitLab share this idea that meetings could be completely optional. That was kind of like a reality shaker for me. I was like, can that work?

A I dare you. I dare you, Darren, to come work async on apparel and compliance and visas and things like that. You know, I think every industry have different things. There's work that can be done async. There's work that can be done async. There's different stage at a company when you're very early. I don't think async work is the right way to go. I think you need to build, you need to build fast, you need to get things done. But as a company scale, right? The way, the way GitLab has done, right? And also I think it's very anchored to GitLab as a product, right? Being able to write async. It's very core to your product. So there's pieces of it that you can achieve and you can't, right? And I think it's important to be realistic on that and setting the right expectations, right? Whether it's for founders or companies later on, What are the right stages for you to really be async? What parts of the business can truly be async? Because if you set the expectation for the whole company to be there, you know, my guys on the customer support side or on the corporate operational side, they're not going to live the same life that you're going to be, right? So it's important to set the right expectation and to have the right mix of things at the company and as much work that can be async, why not, right? Like there's different people living in different time zones, right? So that's super …

AI assessment note: “There's work that can be done async... but as a whole company, it's a bit more complicated.”

Q Examples where that is true. Um, and on that note, Alex, I think it'd be interesting to hear from you about your global hiring report. How are we seeing different regions of the world shift based on their ability to be hired places or to hire from other places? Are there certain regions that we're seeing grow or shrink, or how are those dynamics playing out at the larger level?

A Yeah. In general, you know, we're definitely seeing a couple, it depends on the roles, right? And generally what I look at the most is engineering, because, you know, that's where talent is the most scarce. Um, you know, and we're definitely seeing quite, quite a rise in salaries and in location, you know, I think I'm saying that too many, too much to be honest. Uh, I think people are gonna start really looking at the country, but Brazil, for example, has been an amazing place for talent from an engineering standpoint and salaries have definitely gone up there. And you've got other amazing places like India or Columbia, right? Those are, those are great places. And a lot of people are hiring there. Um, and in general, there's also different trends we're seeing around people going into more remote friendly cities, right? That's also another thing that that's quite interesting from a movement perspective. Uh, but overall, you know, the, the way you need to think, and this is the way I think about it is you're seeing definitely large hubs being created from top companies having been built in the market, right? So if you look at Brazilian, you've got new bank, right? Amazing alumni, super great talent. They've got, they've built out the infrastructure. Same thing happened in India. Same thing happened in Uruguay, right? With the local and, and those talents are starting to spin out…

AI assessment note: “Brazil, for example, has been an amazing place for talent from an engineering standpoint”

Q circle, Sandra, like, how do you actually figure some of this out? Because some of the rules are just not written yet. So Alex, how are some of these leaders, how are they getting this information? Is it just about Googling the right things? Is it about talking to people like you who have the information from many other companies? Like, what does someone do if they're in that position?

A Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of things, um, most C-levels or heads off at companies, um, usually have their own networks of people that they usually ask to write between sharing policies or, you know, some people will, um, do the work and then, um, share it with others. Right. So we've seen quite a bit of things. I think every company is adopting different types of policies. Um, um, quite close to a few people that used to be at GitLab. So I know the playbook pretty well in terms of like contractors, employees, or then, you know, opening your own entities. So I think each company kind of defines their own things and then share it. There's no real source of truth for that, which we're trying to define to some extent. Um, so it's a couple player in the industry. They're trying to define the best practice on how to do this. Right. And I think the complexity is where navigating international laws at scale. Right. And they very much differ from a country to another. Sometimes they differ from a state to another. Right. Um, and, uh, there, there is no right answer yet. It's just a matter of like building the right content and Working, you know, we're at a stage where, you know, we're starting to work with governments in terms of establishing those rules as well, which is quite interesting, right? So instead of working in a gray area of, hey, my worker is moving from a country to an…

AI assessment note: “most C-levels or heads off at companies, um, usually have their own networks”

Q years. But I want to hear from Alex and Sandre, hearing this, this idea that actually you can work completely asynchronous is Not something that many people are used to. It sounds kind of crazy. Like when I, when I had a friend from GitLab share this idea that meetings could be completely optional. That was kind of like a reality shaker for me. I was like, can that work?

A I dare you. I dare you, Darren, to come work async on apparel and compliance and visas and things like that. You know, I think every industry have different things. There's work that can be done async. There's work that can be done async. There's different stage at a company when you're very early. I don't think async work is the right way to go. I think you need to build, you need to build fast, you need to get things done. But as a company scale, right? The way, the way GitLab has done, right? And also I think it's very anchored to GitLab as a product, right? Being able to write async. It's very core to your product. So there's pieces of it that you can achieve and you can't, right? And I think it's important to be realistic on that and setting the right expectations, right? Whether it's for founders or companies later on, What are the right stages for you to really be async? What parts of the business can truly be async? Because if you set the expectation for the whole company to be there, you know, my guys on the customer support side or on the corporate operational side, they're not going to live the same life that you're going to be, right? So it's important to set the right expectation and to have the right mix of things at the company and as much work that can be async, why not, right? Like there's different people living in different time zones, right? So that's super …

AI assessment note: “as a whole company, it's a bit more complicated.”

Q Examples where that is true. Um, and on that note, Alex, I think it'd be interesting to hear from you about your global hiring report. How are we seeing different regions of the world shift based on their ability to be hired places or to hire from other places? Are there certain regions that we're seeing grow or shrink, or how are those dynamics playing out at the larger level?

A Yeah. In general, you know, we're definitely seeing a couple, it depends on the roles, right? And generally what I look at the most is engineering, because, you know, that's where talent is the most scarce. Um, you know, and we're definitely seeing quite, quite a rise in salaries and in location, you know, I think I'm saying that too many, too much to be honest. Uh, I think people are gonna start really looking at the country, but Brazil, for example, has been an amazing place for talent from an engineering standpoint and salaries have definitely gone up there. And you've got other amazing places like India or Columbia, right? Those are, those are great places. And a lot of people are hiring there. Um, and in general, there's also different trends we're seeing around people going into more remote friendly cities, right? That's also another thing that that's quite interesting from a movement perspective. Uh, but overall, you know, the, the way you need to think, and this is the way I think about it is you're seeing definitely large hubs being created from top companies having been built in the market, right? So if you look at Brazilian, you've got new bank, right? Amazing alumni, super great talent. They've got, they've built out the infrastructure. Same thing happened in India. Same thing happened in Uruguay, right? With the local and, and those talents are starting to spin out…

AI assessment note: “Brazil, for example, has been an amazing place for talent from an engineering standpoint”

Q in terms of maybe things that they might not know, things they might not understand, maybe things that they should be thinking about, like, how many days of the year can my employees, my full-time employees from a specific country be in another country? Are there things that you're kind of Uncovering as you go through these conversations that you think maybe more of these leaders should be thinking about.

A I mean, there's, there's tons, right? Like a very basic example is my employee wants to live in five different countries over the next year. Right. Uh, that's like, there's much more complex cases than that, but that's a very basic one. We're seeing that a ton, right? A lot of people want to be digital nomads. I think safety wing started as an insurance for digital nomads as well. Right. So it's that the team was, you know, so quite a while ago and you know, that's a super complex cases, right? Tell me a fortune, 500, um, CHRO. Um, I'm going to leave three months there, four months there, three months there. You're going to give that, you know, that team a headache, right? And, and there's so many of those cases, like that one is the most obvious ones, but there's so many of those cases where those organization One, don't even have the tools to support this type of infrastructure, but a lot of the times they don't even comprehend it, right? Like, um, they expect you to come to the office from nine to five, whatever, like you're going past that is sometimes very complex to even process for them, right? So it's a culture shift that one, I believe is going to be necessary, right? Because of the workforce of tomorrow. Um, but it's also even a tool shift, right? And this is why you've got companies like ours, right? Or Sandra's company.

AI assessment note: “a very basic example is my employee wants to live in five different countries”

Q in terms of maybe things that they might not know, things they might not understand, maybe things that they should be thinking about, like, how many days of the year can my employees, my full-time employees from a specific country be in another country? Are there things that you're kind of Uncovering as you go through these conversations that you think maybe more of these leaders should be thinking about.

A I mean, there's, there's tons, right? Like a very basic example is my employee wants to live in five different countries over the next year. Right. Uh, that's like, there's much more complex cases than that, but that's a very basic one. We're seeing that a ton, right? A lot of people want to be digital nomads. I think safety wing started as an insurance for digital nomads as well. Right. So it's that the team was, you know, so quite a while ago and you know, that's a super complex cases, right? Tell me a fortune, 500, um, CHRO. Um, I'm going to leave three months there, four months there, three months there. You're going to give that, you know, that team a headache, right? And, and there's so many of those cases, like that one is the most obvious ones, but there's so many of those cases where those organization One, don't even have the tools to support this type of infrastructure, but a lot of the times they don't even comprehend it, right? Like, um, they expect you to come to the office from nine to five, whatever, like you're going past that is sometimes very complex to even process for them, right? So it's a culture shift that one, I believe is going to be necessary, right? Because of the workforce of tomorrow. Um, but it's also even a tool shift, right? And this is why you've got companies like ours, right? Or Sandra's company.

AI assessment note: “a very basic example is my employee wants to live in five different countries”

Q work impacts the state, but Alex, yes, we definitely want to hear from you because Deal has this unique insight or oversight into how different companies are hiring, whether they're hiring part-time roles, contract roles, or full-time. How are you seeing this landscape shifting? Are companies offering different types of benefits? Are companies rethinking their need to bring on certain types of talent? What are you seeing in that market?

A Yeah, I guess, um, for context, um, at Deal, we help companies hire around the world. Uh, we basically build the whole infrastructure for them to be able to do so without having any. So as you said, they can hire people as independent contractors. We've got over a 90 plus entities around the world. So you can hire people as FTEs and give them, you know, benefits as if they were locally hired, or now we actually even help you manage your own entities, right? So starting to build a full stack of HR for global teams. I mean, you know, there's different perspective. Uh, I think right now we're very biased simple. So we serve about 10,000 customers from small customers to, to large companies, publicly traded companies. And I think overall in the tech world, you know, like Sandra said, right, it's the same type of benefits that are trying to be given out across the board. When it comes down to contractors or employment, you know, our employment infrastructure is pretty new in this space. Contractor was kind of the default Model because, um, the EOR space, right? Employer of record space just wasn't as built out. So it was either I hire people as contractors or I open a country and entity and go really hard in that country. Um, so now that things have shifted, there's different perspective to the conversation. There's of course the benefit aspects, but there's mainly the compliance as…

AI assessment note: “More companies were interested in the employer of record model recently because it is brand new”

Q work impacts the state, but Alex, yes, we definitely want to hear from you because Deal has this unique insight or oversight into how different companies are hiring, whether they're hiring part-time roles, contract roles, or full-time. How are you seeing this landscape shifting? Are companies offering different types of benefits? Are companies rethinking their need to bring on certain types of talent? What are you seeing in that market?

A Yeah, I guess, um, for context, um, at Deal, we help companies hire around the world. Uh, we basically build the whole infrastructure for them to be able to do so without having any. So as you said, they can hire people as independent contractors. We've got over a 90 plus entities around the world. So you can hire people as FTEs and give them, you know, benefits as if they were locally hired, or now we actually even help you manage your own entities, right? So starting to build a full stack of HR for global teams. I mean, you know, there's different perspective. Uh, I think right now we're very biased simple. So we serve about 10,000 customers from small customers to, to large companies, publicly traded companies. And I think overall in the tech world, you know, like Sandra said, right, it's the same type of benefits that are trying to be given out across the board. When it comes down to contractors or employment, you know, our employment infrastructure is pretty new in this space. Contractor was kind of the default Model because, um, the EOR space, right? Employer of record space just wasn't as built out. So it was either I hire people as contractors or I open a country and entity and go really hard in that country. Um, so now that things have shifted, there's different perspective to the conversation. There's of course the benefit aspects, but there's mainly the compliance as…

AI assessment note: “More companies were interested in the employer of record model recently”

Q circle, Sandra, like, how do you actually figure some of this out? Because some of the rules are just not written yet. So Alex, how are some of these leaders, how are they getting this information? Is it just about Googling the right things? Is it about talking to people like you who have the information from many other companies? Like, what does someone do if they're in that position?

A Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of things, um, most C-levels or heads off at companies, um, usually have their own networks of people that they usually ask to write between sharing policies or, you know, some people will, um, do the work and then, um, share it with others. Right. So we've seen quite a bit of things. I think every company is adopting different types of policies. Um, um, quite close to a few people that used to be at GitLab. So I know the playbook pretty well in terms of like contractors, employees, or then, you know, opening your own entities. So I think each company kind of defines their own things and then share it. There's no real source of truth for that, which we're trying to define to some extent. Um, so it's a couple player in the industry. They're trying to define the best practice on how to do this. Right. And I think the complexity is where navigating international laws at scale. Right. And they very much differ from a country to another. Sometimes they differ from a state to another. Right. Um, and, uh, there, there is no right answer yet. It's just a matter of like building the right content and Working, you know, we're at a stage where, you know, we're starting to work with governments in terms of establishing those rules as well, which is quite interesting, right? So instead of working in a gray area of, hey, my worker is moving from a country to an…

AI assessment note: “most C-levels or heads off at companies, um, usually have their own networks of people”

Q both sides of the aisle, but I want to hear from you specifically on what you're seeing. What are companies doing currently? Not what people want people to do, but what are the actions truly being taken within these companies? Are companies Falling towards the side of, we're going to set a rate, and that's going to be the rate for our employees, or are companies adjusting based on location?

A Yeah, and that's an interesting question. Uh, it's an interesting question in general. We actually released the Sara Insights tool based on our data set. We've got hundreds of thousands of people hired, so if you go on a deal, when you create a contract, or even outside of that, you can see, based on the role, the seniority, and the location, what on average people are paying, um, for a specific person and a specific role. Um, obviously what we've seen over the last few months. Right. And I think that's also tied to, um, how much venture capital money was available as well. Right. So we've seen a lot of, uh, people around the world, uh, very talented people get hired and just generally the, the pay, right. Increased quite a bit and got some hard data. Uh, I think you mentioned that at the very beginning, right. We released a global report on the data trends that we're seeing from a pay scale perspective and from a hiring country perspective. Um, but I think, you know, that makes a lot of sense, right? Some very talented people are starting to work for larger companies and, you know, whether it's the best practice of the company or their work, you know, different people have different perspective on how to tackle it. Internally, a deal is generally we pay based on country rates. I think we pay usually top of market, but still within the market. I think one of the reasons why a l…

AI assessment note: “Internally, a deal is generally we pay based on country rates.”

Q both sides of the aisle, but I want to hear from you specifically on what you're seeing. What are companies doing currently? Not what people want people to do, but what are the actions truly being taken within these companies? Are companies Falling towards the side of, we're going to set a rate, and that's going to be the rate for our employees, or are companies adjusting based on location?

A Yeah, and that's an interesting question. Uh, it's an interesting question in general. We actually released the Sara Insights tool based on our data set. We've got hundreds of thousands of people hired, so if you go on a deal, when you create a contract, or even outside of that, you can see, based on the role, the seniority, and the location, what on average people are paying, um, for a specific person and a specific role. Um, obviously what we've seen over the last few months. Right. And I think that's also tied to, um, how much venture capital money was available as well. Right. So we've seen a lot of, uh, people around the world, uh, very talented people get hired and just generally the, the pay, right. Increased quite a bit and got some hard data. Uh, I think you mentioned that at the very beginning, right. We released a global report on the data trends that we're seeing from a pay scale perspective and from a hiring country perspective. Um, but I think, you know, that makes a lot of sense, right? Some very talented people are starting to work for larger companies and, you know, whether it's the best practice of the company or their work, you know, different people have different perspective on how to tackle it. Internally, a deal is generally we pay based on country rates. I think we pay usually top of market, but still within the market. I think one of the reasons why a l…

AI assessment note: “Internally, a deal is generally we pay based on country rates.”