Free Form AI

Michael Berk (00:01.11)
Welcome to another episode of Freeform AI. My name is Michael Burke and I do data engineering and machine learning at Databricks. And today I'm not joined by my co-host. He is unfortunately on vacation, but it's well-deserved. Coming up to Summit, we've been working a lot and he's chilling, which is what he should be doing today. But today I'm speaking with Gino. Gino studied business and finance at the University of San Diego and most recently got his master's from the University of London in business innovation.

He's held several positions in the gaming industry, first at Webio, a mobile game company as head of products, and then founded Capitanos in a sort of cross-platform indie gaming studio. Currently, he works as CEO of Tecla, a remote software development firm in the Latin America region. And, you know, so jumping right in, I'm really curious why LATAM has been sort of underutilized in the IT space.

from a US perspective relative to a region like India or even Eastern Europe.

Gino Ferrand (01:06.926)
Yeah, I I think that maybe when I started Tecla, which is now about 10 years ago, definitely Argentina, Brazil were pretty known hubs, but the rest of Latin America was just sort of getting its name out there. And definitely compared to India and Eastern Europe, it was really, really lagging. Since the pandemic, when everyone went remote and

I think more companies were looking to work in as much of a real time capacity remotely. Definitely Latin America grew quite a bit in popularity. I think it's one of the fastest growing regions in terms of US companies offshoring. But it's still of course nowhere near as big of a flow of projects and capital.

compared to India, for example. But I mean, I don't think that South America is ever going to sort of try to compete with the size, but definitely we're, you know, our business is mostly focused on building teams that are working real time with product development teams in the U.S. So there's, think there's like a space for both, you know, I think India is like good for the big development centers and obviously it's much more cost effective. It's cheaper than it is to hire in Latin America.

But I think that Latin America is growing quite fast when it comes to especially like senior engineering roles and hiring for people that are going to be working side by side with people in the U.S.

Michael Berk (02:48.684)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I work with contractors daily and the Databricks presence has actually expanded a bit into Latin America recently, which has been great to see. And I also work closely with Procter and Gamble and they have really expanded into Costa Rica specifically. So it's interesting to see these shifts. So taking a step back, why are you in this space? Why do you care?

Gino Ferrand (03:14.896)
I mean, I got into this space pretty organically, I feel like. I actually moved back to Lima, which is where I'm from after school. So this was around 2023. And I was working on more of the gaming sector. Like you mentioned earlier, I sort of got started there and just started hiring engineers and had fellow enter.

and other people that I knew in the US that were really looking to hire senior engineering talent back then. So it just got pulled into it organically, eventually got out of gaming and just focused entirely on building these engineering teams for companies in the US. And so definitely it's, mean, it's personal for me because I'm originally from Peru. So for us and everyone at our company is even the people that are in the US like me.

We have those, you know, latam roots. So it's very personal for us in terms of trying to get companies to see the level of talent that they can hire in Latin America and you know, how many smart and intelligent engineers there are. And yeah, it's really more than just a good business of, hey, this is a good business, but rather like also trying to, you know, represent South America as best as we can.

Michael Berk (04:36.27)
Yeah, what was it like assembling those teams? And you said, I think you said 2023, but it wasn't 2023, 2013, 2013. Okay, cool. So yeah, what was it like back then assembling engineering teams?

Gino Ferrand (04:43.724)
2013. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, 2013.

Gino Ferrand (04:50.672)
Yeah, mean, back then it was the very beginning, so we didn't have a network or a community like we do today. Today we have over 50,000 software development professionals on our platform, so users that have their profiles and are basically actively being matched with companies that we're helping hire or building teams for. But when we started, it was...

You know, back in the, and this is the thing too that has moved really fast is the infrastructure, right? Like the internet has moved actually, like the speeds that you can get in Latin America now are somewhat comparable to the U.S. I mean, not as maybe easily to get like, you know, gigabit at home, but it's still, it's still very fast and you know, definitely enough speed to do zoom calls and to be working and everything like that. So yeah, the infrastructure moved really fast and that really helped, but

Yeah, when I started, didn't know. I had really just asking around for people networking, trying to meet engineers and developers. So really it started with just one, two, three people. And now it's just in Peru. And now obviously 50 % of our network is in Brazil and then Argentina and Colombia and then even Costa Rica and the smaller countries that are still super well represented for their size and the network.

Yeah, it was really just starting from scratch. So sending emails and trying to meet just one, two, three developers. So yeah.

Michael Berk (06:23.032)
Man, yeah, I can imagine. And now you said 50,000, that's a pretty large network. How much do you think COVID impacted this? Did you see sort of an inflection point in the receptiveness to remote work?

Gino Ferrand (06:29.166)
Yeah.

Gino Ferrand (06:36.51)
yeah, no, was that was that was huge. That's that's obvious. That obviously was, you know, I think in our so being being in this for 10 years, there's been several points where, you know, the business is always evolving and you're always changing and improving things and stuff like that. Business model changes and stuff like that. But one of the biggest the biggest, I think, spike or thing that you can see in the overall chart of the company was definitely covid and

especially six to 12 months after COVID started with everyone going remote. yeah, I think that really, there were some big companies that came up like Deal that started with the whole, being an employer of record for hiring globally. yeah, just like companies just got really, really interested in learning more about building offices or teams abroad.

So that was huge, and not just for Latin America, but obviously for the whole world, I feel like.

Michael Berk (07:38.444)
Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So typically the growth of an organization is highly nonlinear. There are spikes. Sometimes it even goes down. What were, do you think the key inflection points or key sort of moments of growth throughout the 13 year history of the organization? Any ones that stand out?

Gino Ferrand (07:47.834)
Yeah.

Gino Ferrand (07:57.486)
Yeah, mean, definitely. mean, when we started, we were doing a lot of product development as well. so, you know, once we noticed that we were really good at the recruiting and staffing and more of like the talent side of things, that was one big change we made was focus completely on build on like a staffing and staff augmentation model. And then another big thing for us was

actually getting a physical presence locally in the U.S. Like I moved back to Peru and I was building this two years doing just remote digital marketing, right? And then 2015 moved back to the U.S. and it's just like, it doesn't matter how much we do digitally and obviously digital marketing is gigantic. It's still really good to be somewhere where you can meet people and be in like the local community. And it sounds like

not very scalable and it sounds like, you're gonna be a small business because you're just doing like local marketing, right? Instead of like marketing to the masses online. But I mean, that really is the best way to grow a business like this because obviously it takes a lot of trust for companies to work with you and you have to really establish like a personal connection with who you're working with in terms of like the CTOs we work with.

Then the pandemic, like we just spoke about, was a huge one, of course, because that just made a lot more people search for a type of service, right? So it's just a lot more demand and just people becoming more aware of this type of service. And then I think that we've also gone through some business model adaptations, just realizing what type of company we want to work with instead of trying to work with every company, like a startup that is a 10-person startup or, you know,

We work with Major League Soccer, which is a much bigger company than a 10 person startup. And we've worked with many mid-market companies as well that most people don't even know exist, but are like 1,000 employees and hundreds of million in revenue. And just focusing on who do we want our client to be, that was a big growth moment for us as well.

Michael Berk (10:10.518)
Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. And you said so early on you started as more development focused and then shifted to assembling teams because you guys were good at it. How the hell are you good at that? That I think is the hardest thing in the world, like vetting, hiring, and then assembling the right team to work together.

Gino Ferrand (10:30.296)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, it definitely takes a different kind of, I mean, I know a lot of people and friends that started more like product development agencies and, you know, quote a project and have that internal technical know-how and just build and deliver. And maybe it's just the way that I saw the company, like the vision I had for it. And also like my internal like capabilities. feel like I'm.

I'm more of like a manager. You know, I'm very into leadership, very into management and understanding people and working with people. so, yeah, I think that it was just also a passion. It's a passion of mine. So I think that that maybe also allowed us to be good at it. But you're right. it is, you know, every, every business and every, every business has its own challenges. So I think like product development is super hard to, and it's like very.

engineer focused and know bugs and you have to go back to fix them and you have to do a lot of client management and client expectations and resolutions and sort of like you know so yeah no I feel like that that I have a lot of respect for people that that do that on the agency side and well anyone you know like engineering teams working with business teams it's a constant struggle to like right you know trying to deliver projects and

Michael Berk (11:33.933)
Yeah.

Gino Ferrand (11:50.832)
having to go faster and faster or deadlines and stuff like that. But yeah, that's just what I think I hired people to that were very good at it. So then it's like more people that are good at the HR and more of like the recruitment and the talent scouting and that, yeah, made a difference.

Michael Berk (12:11.158)
Yeah. Do you mind sort of elaborating though? so for, mentioned product development and client management. I sort of feel like there's a formula for that. Knowing what to build is hard, but like sort of how to build it. That's typically for, I don't know, a bunch of implementations. If you have senior engineers, they typically make good decisions. Obviously there are a bunch of mistakes that you have to roll back, but if you develop in a, a like a...

In an efficient manner, that's not that big of an issue. then client management, you get a crazy client, you're screwed. Like there's not much that you can do, but there's often like, there's like a checklist of things to do a few phrases that you can reuse. But I think with hiring, I like, at least I personally have found it so challenging to assess within a 45 minute interview, whether someone is a cultural fit, a technical fit. Um, and I've been hiring for years now and it's, it's like,

Gino Ferrand (12:44.142)
Right. Yeah.

Michael Berk (13:08.086)
It's tough. you said you're good at it. Do you mind sharing some knowledge?

Gino Ferrand (13:13.912)
I mean, I think that, I mean, we've, you know, being in this space for so long, we've really refined like the, vetting process. And obviously that's one of the most important things. And one of the reasons I think why.

Companies come to us, obviously they're looking at cost savings, right? And like being able to augment their US teams and just giving it that extra. All of our clients are hiring both like actively in the US and also with us in Latam. So it definitely has never been a replacement strategy for any company. And it's always been an augmentation strategy. And they come to us because first they don't want to have to deal with the compliance, the, you know, being the employer of record, insurance, all of that stuff.

also what you were just saying, like hiring takes a very long time. Obviously they don't have the networks in Latin America to meet people and the vetting and they want to be able to talk to people that are great right off the bat and not spend time on interviews that aren't worth it and just filtering through hundreds of applicants. So definitely like the communication piece is important for us. One of the things I realized like early on was that

Obviously we're working with CTOs and engineering leaders and so they have a long list of requirements that they need. They need the person to know this and that and have so much experience technically. I actually found out very early that if you have the right testing mechanisms and can, you know, talk to the person about their experience, you can assess how much experience they have technically, but that a lot of the times things fail because of the soft skills.

And like the maybe lack of communication. Some people just aren't very good at being able to explain what they're working on, why they're working on something and being like a higher level developer, you know, instead of just a coder. so, that's especially like, feel in our region, that was a huge thing to focus on because obviously the English is already a challenge for a lot of people, but

Gino Ferrand (15:17.712)
also just having those soft skills to be able to work with us companies, just culturally be able to be at the speed that us companies work, which is different than companies locally and Lantana and stuff like that. And so, yeah, I was, it's, it's definitely been like a, think being good at hiring too, is like, could be terrible at hiring. If you moved me to a different industry with a different type of candidate with a different, but in what we do, just a lot of time has given us the ability to polish that.

vetting process and then onboarding. Like we just invest so much in helping clients onboard people because when you you might have noticed even if you hire someone that you think is totally great in the interview sometimes the onboarding is like the make or break. I think it's always the make or break that's when you you kind of can set up someone for success or set up someone for failure and it might have been a right candidate that you didn't onboard correctly but and then sometimes it's just the wrong candidate of course but

Michael Berk (16:16.246)
Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of wrong candidates, what do you think is the distribution between great average and problematically bad candidates?

Gino Ferrand (16:26.672)
like that we, like in our cases with clients, sort of like, I think that about we are like over 90 % success rate, which means that when we're helping companies hire, if they, you know, if we help companies hire 10 people, like nine are going to stay on for, of course, different lengths of 10, 10 years, depending on the company's needs and stuff. But every once in a while, we, do have a case where we just need to replace the person like it.

Michael Berk (16:30.606)
Mm-hmm.

Gino Ferrand (16:56.132)
You know, we, we, it's like you said, I mean, you are going through a process where once the person starts working too, you can be like, okay, this person interviewed. Great. Everything was good, but it's just not working out. And, I think that's when companies also appreciate having, having us involved because that is going to happen. And when you have a company that has the pipe, like ready to interview, like other people that have worked through the pipeline that we can.

replace the person and have someone on a week or two later after we identify it's not the right fit. It's definitely different than when you're doing in-house recruitment, because sometimes in in-house recruitment, that really sets you back all the way to the beginning. Some companies, I think, give up at that point too. So yeah, I think that there's definitely still cases where I would never...

tell you that every person we're bringing on, it's like a perfect fit. And sometimes it's not a perfect fit in the start. And the thing is we're like super involved in getting feedback from both sides, like getting feedback from the employer, how are things going? How was the onboarding? How was the first week getting feedback from the candidate and trying to resolve that. that like, we're just like getting stones out of the way. That's kind of like the vision that we have is like, you know, especially in the beginning, it's going to be rocky. You gotta be cleaning that road as you, as you walk through.

because you don't want to get to like a month later and the road is just totally blocked, right? And then it's like, this is not going to work at all. So yeah, it's, a lot of times hiring is a process, right? You hire someone, you need to make sure that they understand the expectations and yeah, there's, it's always, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I feel like it's always like that.

Michael Berk (18:39.992)
That makes sense. Do you guys ever look for rock stars? Is that like a sort of an area of interviewing that you explore? Or is it mostly filling a job description?

Gino Ferrand (18:50.704)
I mean, we're looking to definitely present the best people possible at all times, but I don't really like the whole term of like, it was like more popular a few years, like five years ago, or during the pandemic, the 10X engineer or like ninjas and rock stars and these, these guys that are just incredible. yeah, of course we, I, I feel like, I just feel like those kinds of, people are sometimes the most humble.

like the people that you don't think is like a rockstar, but you hire someone that's extremely hardworking, that is very smart, that picks it up easily, takes feedback in really well so they can grow. And I think that I never liked that idea of like, you hire someone that is just like, like they, it's just like, it's a, it's perfect from the start and stuff. mean, you know, it's, I just don't think that you can hire with that mentality. I mean, obviously if you, if you, if you do hire that person then.

That's amazing, right? You can get lucky every once in a while. But most of the times, when you're hiring, it's a process, right? You have to do good onboarding. You have to make sure you work with them in the beginning. You're a little bit more in touch with, I'm sure, the people you've hired and you've managed. You've got to give them little more attention, a little more help, explain how you want expectations and stuff like that. It's a process. It's not just the hiring, and then once the hiring is done, it's the perfect person comes in. It's hiring.

I think goes through the first few months. You're still in like the hiring mode, you know.

Michael Berk (20:21.304)
Yeah, got it. That makes a lot of sense. In all the companies I've worked for, the onboarding process has differed greatly. Sometimes they're just like, you're ready now? First day? Go take this ticket. And then most recently at Databricks, have three full months of onboarding before you actually are leading or delivering, not even leading projects. So do you guys have, I'm sure you don't have a one size fits all type of solution, but

Gino Ferrand (20:35.599)
Alright.

Gino Ferrand (20:40.216)
Nice.

Michael Berk (20:50.466)
For organizations out there that are doing this hiring process, they've hired someone. How do you recommend approaching onboarding as it differs between industries?

Gino Ferrand (21:00.176)
Um, well, I mean, I really liked the, the, you said about, you know, doing like a three month type thing versus just letting someone come in and just a lot of companies, think small companies will say, like, I need someone who is totally like a self starter and totally independent. Like we're a small team, so they have to just do stuff completely independently. And, you know, I think that a lot of people are self starters and half initiative, but.

when you're expecting to someone for someone to come onto the team and it's like a sports team, right? You have like a system, like a system that you use to play a certain play style of play and everything like that. And if you just bring, even if you bring Christiano Ronaldo onto the team and you're just like, oh, just play, it's like, well, that's not how it works. Like you have to onboard, you have to teach them to plays. You have to teach them how the team plays, what the mentality is. And I think that, I don't know if there's

Michael Berk (21:34.702)
Exactly.

Gino Ferrand (21:55.266)
There's a length of time, like if it needs to be three months, one month, one week, but that depends on each company, of course, and the complexity of the projects they're working on, and size of the team, and whatever. I think that there needs to be an understanding that once they start is not the end of the hiring process. Once they start, you are just starting to get them.

engaged and like actually be able to learn how the team plays, you know, and if you're not ready for, if you don't take that into consideration, then you're going to be bad at hiring because you're going to be missing the integration piece and you know, you're like buying tools for your software. If you're not integrating it correctly, then you're probably just going to get rid of them before you get any value from them.

Michael Berk (22:45.336)
That's well said. now, now your point about being managerially focused while hiring makes a lot of sense. Like it isn't just getting them in the door, it's getting them to the right place once they're in the door and nurturing them along the way. And I mean, if you take that approach, then it never ends. Hiring never ends.

They leave, basically.

Gino Ferrand (23:05.488)
Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. And that's why I feel like technical hiring is hard sometimes is because a lot of technical people, not everyone is good at management or leadership and stuff, but you can get ahead by being good, very good technically. then when you bring...

someone on the team, I feel like you don't have the right tools to get them up to speed and working in your same style. so I think that, and in the interview process, typically those managers will be like very quick to say, you know, Michael only has one year of experience with this tool instead of two. And it's like.

I, you know, it, it, it, it, that is just how the world works. And that's why we're, we exist too, right? Because technical people are picky at hiring, but, you have to be able to like, look at the whole person and see the strengths and see how this person can fit in, how you can mold them. If you, if you're hiring with like the expectation of having someone just.

you know, drop right in perfectly, then hiring is gonna be very, very, it's gonna be a big challenge for sure. If you can actually, you know, make sure that if you're dropping a piece that you can mold it on the way to fit through perfectly, then you're gonna be able to be much better at building a team, I think, more than, more than like being good or bad at hiring, like building a team. mean, you need to grow your team and you have to get the right, I think,

mentality in place of like this. I'm not looking for like a person that fits perfectly.

Michael Berk (24:50.328)
Yeah. How much do you get out of a resume versus a face to face call?

Gino Ferrand (24:57.41)
Yeah, mean, resumes, don't get that much, I think, right? mean, obviously you're like, it's like the first step, of course, you need to be able to identify that the person is presenting certain skills and experience that are gonna fit the role, but then you really have to get into conversations, right? We do one hour calls just to go over the position, the company, the way the company works, like.

as much details as possible so that we can see if the person is a good fit, not just technically, but also, like I said, with the soft skills, right? They're like, oh, I've only worked in very small teams. I like to work alone. I don't really like doing this or that. And then you can really detect if it's going to be because you got to get the right like fit to be able to get to the like onboarding stage, right? To be like, OK, I hired the right person. Now I'm going to start.

sharing with them sort of how we like to do things here and hearing from them, what they respond. then you, yep, but you have to like get to that place, right? It's like you get someone to play tennis or pickleball or whatever. And it's like, yeah, you've got to get someone like of the right level so that you can play back and forth, right? But once you're playing back and forth, you do have to start learning how the other person plays. And if you want to get like a long rally, you know, like you have to, you have to, you have to.

Michael Berk (26:14.071)
Hmm.

Gino Ferrand (26:16.462)
You definitely can't get someone that can't hit the ball back or something. But I think that that's pretty much key.

Michael Berk (26:25.378)
Yeah, that's really interesting. it sounds like resumes are just sort of sanity checks that they could be good. And then during the call, you actually assess whether they are good.

Gino Ferrand (26:36.718)
Yeah, yeah. And then we also try to do a lot of like, you know, actual, like sometimes, you know, the assessments or we prefer assignments. We work with our clients on like, hey, what, what, what, what little project can we do here? That's not obviously yet. No one likes to do like a, you know, 12 hour, 16 hour project, but like a small thing where we can get to see, like, let's actually, let's actually see what we can do together. And,

Michael Berk (26:44.534)
Yeah.

Gino Ferrand (27:04.302)
I think that that's super key because you learn a lot. You learn a lot of the person's on time, how they respond to the emails, if they understand the instructions, if they ask questions, if they don't, if they just assumed wrong and turned in something that was completely off. And maybe it's a good deliverable, but it's just like not what you were expecting at all. And so I think that that is like the best way to see like, okay, like this person understands, like understands what we're talking about here.

And but still, of course, like you said, it's still just a little snapshot of what working with someone for a year two or three is going to be. But definitely it's much more than just the resume.

Michael Berk (27:48.898)
Yeah. So currently for my team, I'm a resident solutions architect. And that means that we are typically the more technical of the field engineering departments. And then we also work for longer engagement. So it's almost like StaffOgg, but typically we come into lead a project. And for our interview process, we have resume screen followed by, think, hiring manager, followed by take home, followed by onsite, like a virtual onsite. And I've been sort of.

As we go through candidates, I've been thinking about the value of that take home test because historically I'm like, yeah, if you can show me that you can do work, great. That's pretty much all I care about. and screw your resume, screw your behavior. Like as long as you can communicate and like get stuff done on time, that's really what I care about. But with chat GPT, like 99 % of our interview can be aced by chat GPT. They're not like, we're not trying to ask people to invent stuff. A lot of it is checking boxes and then.

the fight like there's a couple pieces where creativity is possible, but it's mostly like assessing basics. So how have you navigated the world of Gen AI as it comes to take home tests?

Gino Ferrand (29:01.24)
Yeah, no, that's true. mean, I think that, like I said, that's when the initial piece really matters too, is like when you communicate sort of what the take home is and the other person responds with smart, thoughtful questions and you can see that the person like understands the problem or how they're approaching the problem. Because like you said, I think like now with Chachi Petit, you can get the answer right. So it's

Sort of like when you were in school and the teacher tells you if you show me how you arrived at certain answer, like I'll still give you half credit and stuff, because it's important to see how you were thinking about this. And I think that maybe in some of these tests, it's also important to not just get a project back and run it and see if it works, but get the developer to explain exactly what they did, why they did it. Because at the end of the day, if they did do it with ChadGBT, but they can explain exactly what they had ChadGBT do.

Michael Berk (29:56.002)
Yeah.

Gino Ferrand (29:56.652)
or at Claude or, know, Cursor, any of these tools. I don't know. I've been talking to a lot of engineering managers lately here in Austin and also friends that, you know, just live in the Bay Area and stuff like that. And so these are some really great companies and they're using these AI tools every day for work. And so the thing is they really know how to use them and they really know when it's crap and when they don't want to use that or this. so

I think that it also depends, right? mean, if the company is like, we do not use AI tools, do not use AI tools on this, then probably the process has to be a little different. It has to be more real time and more than have tools that check for there's tools like testing tools that, but for take homes, yeah, I mean, then it would have to be something a little bit more real time. But if you're a company that is embracing AI to some point, then you just kind of have to.

make sure that it's like, okay, deliver something, but then you're gonna like walk me through exactly how and why you did this, this, this. Like, you know, even if it's like you means chat GPT, but you still prompt in whatever tool you use. So it sort of depends, you know, really.

Michael Berk (31:02.934)
Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point that I use GenAI like way more than daily. Like I don't think I could code without it now. I have forgotten all of Python syntax. And with that, I completely agree. so the sort of skill set is vibe coding. I'm pretty anti. You actually have to know the fundamentals and like how to design frameworks and the right questions to ask. And of course you have to know how to code, but

Gino Ferrand (31:11.194)
Yeah.

Michael Berk (31:31.448)
How has the skill set that you guys are leveraging changed? Because I can see how the take homes, that makes sense. But as you said, these awesome companies, SF companies, they use it daily. So do you hire differently now? Do you look for different skills? Like more critical problem solving instead of a like, brollodex of knowledge?

Gino Ferrand (31:50.638)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. mean, really depends. It depends on the client. Depends on the client. Some companies do tell us like.

You know, we're not using AI at all. I honestly, it's not that many that tell us that it's mostly companies in the middle that don't disclose either yes or no. And we actually start that conversation of like, how much are you using AI? Which tools is that important to the workflow? Is that important to the day to day? And then we do have some companies, especially lately that have said, we are using these tools. The person has to be very familiar with how to use these tools. But yeah, definitely no one's looking for just a vibe coder that just picked up the tool.

and everyone is looking for a... So it definitely has added a layer of complexity to hiring, I guess, because more people can get the right answer, but now you have to dig deeper into how they got that answer, why they're submitting that, and their train of thought, is... But I think that that's, again, when the soft skills come into play, too. Someone that...

very good at communication, understands the problem that they're solving, and like you said, mean, maybe the syntax is not all in their head, but like why do you need all the documentation of Django, like memorized? I don't know if that adds that much value, but yeah, I think that it definitely does add, and that's like the next evolution of recruiting I feel like is that. And not the like,

Michael Berk (33:09.806)
you

Gino Ferrand (33:23.608)
Recruiting bots that people are building. I feel like I'm not we haven't integrated We've we use a lot of AI for a platform for like the matching the talent matching, you know identifying candidates that could be a good fit faster and obviously that's helpful, but We're not using like the bot screening type stuff for bot interviewing type stuff I don't know what your thoughts are on that like if you guys use it or you would ever think of using something like that But I always try to ask that

Michael Berk (33:51.554)
Yeah, I don't know if we use it. I probably wouldn't be allowed to say even if I did know, but, I don't really have strong opinions. Like I, I, I'm so, I struggle so much to like, I've seen candidates that just don't look like they're going to be amazing and they turn out to be so, so good. And then the inverse where they have this fat resume, they've like so much experience, they ace all the behaviorals and they come in and

Gino Ferrand (33:56.303)
Yeah.

Michael Berk (34:21.346)
typically they don't have first principles thinking, like they miss the mark on what exactly we need to do. So I think this job is kind of hard to hire for just fundamentally, because it requires a lot of experience in theory, but it also requires a lot of first principles and soft skills and technical skills and leadership skills. So if a bot can make us hire better people, it seems a little like icky to me, but if it works, works.

Gino Ferrand (34:45.646)
Yeah. Okay. From an employer side, you'd be like, if it works, then it's great. But from a, if you were to be a candidate, if you were to interview for a company and a bot shows up to interview, how would you feel?

Michael Berk (34:52.171)
Haha.

Michael Berk (35:00.022)
I try to be humble about the interview processes and if I'm not selected for a job, then I trust their process. Like they, they know if I'll do better or if I'll do well in the job, probably better than me because they know the job. They don't know me as well, but, so everybody's just trying to do their best. I think bots scale out a lot better and allow like hopefully more diverse and less represented and like qualified people to get an interview.

Gino Ferrand (35:29.774)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. That's a great point.

Michael Berk (35:29.974)
So that's my take.

Gino Ferrand (35:33.614)
Yeah, that's actually that's a great point. I do agree with that. You could probably increase capacity to get more people that, you know, are able to talk about their experience more than just the resume, because most people get declined just based on that resume stage. And like we were just talking, it's tough because that's not a full representation of what a person could do on the actual job. And like you said, it happens all the time. I agree that you hire someone that is like, especially on like technical hires, it's like, this person

is perfect, like they have everything that we need technically, and then it turns out that it's just not as good of a hire as someone who you were maybe taking a gamble on, and all of a sudden like that person's just maybe way more focused, maybe just learns really fast or whatever. Usually it's like some sort of soft skill that makes it impressive and that makes them be able to technically catch up or actually surpass the productivity of someone that was on paper a better hire, but...

Michael Berk (36:13.293)
Yeah.

Michael Berk (36:27.404)
Mm-hmm.

Gino Ferrand (36:32.42)
But yeah, no, no, I think that that's a really cool way to think about too, incorporating AI on hiring.

Michael Berk (36:39.288)
Yeah, I think it's a very relevant cultural topic. I'm curious your take more generally, like let's take self-driving. Let's say the accident rate is 0.5 % lower than the average human. And let's say the severity of the accident, like that's the main argument for against self-driving cars, that severity of accidents are a lot higher, like they'll accelerate into a brick wall instead of breaking into a brick wall. If it's 0.5 % less total accidents and severity is the same.

Gino Ferrand (36:51.204)
Yeah.

Michael Berk (37:09.9)
Would you feel comfortable driving in a self-drive?

Gino Ferrand (37:13.774)
Yeah, definitely. I I think that the probability of getting an accident is what you're trying to decrease. And whether it's AI or humans or some whatever is steering the vehicle, I think that overall we're safer as a society if we're using the method that decreases the probability of those things happening. I mean, obviously it's like people are against it because human nature is to be able to control it, right? Like if it's like all these robots, like you can't control the car and it's just doing it's like.

Michael Berk (37:32.717)
Yeah.

Michael Berk (37:43.18)
And you can't understand it as well, yeah.

Gino Ferrand (37:43.48)
You feel like, right, right. It's like, you know, I'm not in control, but but, know, you know, you do give up control if if it's going to be like if, you know, I don't really particularly love flying. I've gotten a lot better, but I used to get more nervous about flying, just something about flying. I I didn't get like, you know, screaming scared, but now I'm much more comfortable with it. Yeah.

Michael Berk (38:05.408)
It's trippy. You're high in the air. If you fall, you're not going to do well.

Gino Ferrand (38:08.496)
You know, high, a lot of turbulence and stuff, but it's still like, it was like, Hey, we're getting rid of pilots because the AI is going to do absolutely everything and there's a lower chance. It's like, you know, I mean, it's like scary, but it's like, yeah, that is the smart, that is rationally the smart thing to do is to lower the probability and trend, just give the control to the thing that's going to lower the probability. I think in the recruiting, the reason why I asked is because it feels in that one, it's more of like a human interaction. So now you're like, we're interacting with.

Michael Berk (38:16.127)
Ha!

Gino Ferrand (38:38.39)
I come from the gaming world, so NPCs and AI has been around for a very long time. You can play single player games and you can play multiplayer games that have bots and you've been able to for a very long time. I don't like playing with bots because even though they're very smart and they can be... Imagine that they're just like... Yeah, it's not as fun. Yeah. So it's like with recruiting too, it's just like if you're meeting...

Michael Berk (38:55.054)
Mm.

Michael Berk (38:59.776)
It's like playing chess against a computer, it's not fun.

Gino Ferrand (39:07.536)
somebody but it's not somebody. I still think like what you were saying, I mean it's it can be very practical too. It's like I understand it's a bot that's interviewing me but I mean you know but still like that interaction is I guess loses a little bit of its humanness to it but I mean some people are against it based on principle. I haven't tried it so I mean maybe that will that will catch on and if it does

Michael Berk (39:25.73)
Yeah.

Gino Ferrand (39:34.65)
Whatever is better for the candidate. If candidates like it because of what you were saying and employers like it, that should be the way that we start having conversations with candidates, know, for sure.

Michael Berk (39:45.324)
Yeah. I don't think we're going to solve it in a podcast episode, but you've mentioned something earlier that I thought was really interesting where I've always been curious how these deals get struck. And you said personal relationships with CTOs a while back. So right now you sort of become more of a freelancing type of website, but when you're assembling these bigger contracts with a group of teams, how do those relationships get built?

Gino Ferrand (39:49.486)
Yeah.

Gino Ferrand (40:01.082)
Yeah.

Gino Ferrand (40:16.59)
Yeah, mean, it's it definitely is like our for us, like our business, if you know, you put ads out, it's not going to be like an impulse buy like right. Like you're on Instagram and you see like a really cool shirt or sunglasses that you want to buy. And it's just like, bam, you know, I like it very little consideration needed. Like the product material seems like what I want. The style is great. Price is good. I buy. You don't really need to know the brand who makes it. I mean, obviously.

there's some purchases that are very brand driven, but I'm saying based on ads, you know, and our service is definitely, I feel like totally opposite. You know, you like see an ad and it's not like you're going to be like, yeah, let's, let's do this. Let's hire engineers. It's like a big thought out strategy, lots of stakeholders, companies trust. They want to go with companies that other companies have used before that they trust or people, know, very, lot of social proof needed and referrals. And so that's what makes it.

like, you know, of course it's not like a VC, like the, it's not like Tecla, it's like the, you know, a VC's dream to invest in, right? It's not the most, but as far as like growing the company and getting clients and those deals, I think that it happens through personal connection, like personal connection, having people, you know, even like,

That's the reason why I do these podcasts too. It's like if potential clients listen to them, then they can listen to me and see if they agree with some of the things I'm saying and see if they connect on like a human level. And if they trust me, if they trust that I will be able to deliver and make the project that they have a success, right? Because typically with people, it's like those projects, if you pick the wrong company, like it can really set you back like years, you know? So,

It's not super easy to just swap out and hire. It takes time, as we just said. yeah, personal relationships are great. And I just think it makes everything more fun. Like we're doing these, we just had a dinner on Wednesday and it was just eight of us, most like engineering managers. It's not just CTOs, like if you're managing a team, even if it's small team, and we're just getting people together and talking about like the biggest challenges that people are facing in that role.

Gino Ferrand (42:34.804)
And yeah, I feel like that's like the, we're doing now is just like trying to create a little community, meeting people. And if they do have like, eventually like, Hey, my company's wants to build a team in Latin America, then they know me, then they know me. They've, know, we've, we, they, and they know me and if they don't think that I'm the right person, then that's all right. But at least like, there's that connection more than just like an ad or doing everything digitally because

In this industry, everyone is online doing ads. That's why ads cost like $200 a click, right? Because everyone's just trying to do ads. I feel like every company is doing offshoring and nearshoring to some extent, like hiring globally to some extent. And so it's really about the trust, I think, that you can deliver.

Michael Berk (43:26.08)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I do think that that's a area where AI isn't going to enter soon. It's like the deal rooms, the places like the water cooler talk, all the interactions, the dinners where humans get together and sort of build trust instinctually. Like, do I like this person? But beyond that, do I have respect for this person? Do I take them at their word? I think that's a, it makes sense why all these like

big deals have happened between humans and it's not just a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are important, but that makes a lot of sense. Okay, cool. One more question for you. I know this is a completely ridiculous question, but, I'm trying to figure out how to phrase it. So please rephrase if you want to answer a different aspect, but can you pitch Latam as a area to hire from?

Gino Ferrand (44:24.078)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. mean, I think cost savings, time zone compatibility, so real time work, cultural similarities to the US and those things are important. Like they're not just that last one, especially. I think that is important to a lot of companies because for the type of hiring that we do,

It would be like, Michael, you're looking for someone on your team. Like to get someone on your team, you might want someone that contributes ideas that is thinking critically about things. And it's not just maybe, like I was saying, the coder, someone that's, because I think that that's where the AI is attacking the most, right? Like with cursor and all these tools and Claude and everything. Like you can do some of that groundwork.

like, you know, a low level coder, like some just like, give me this back, I need this quickly done later, you're save me 20 minutes of writing this out kind of thing, and then I can go faster and keep going. And I feel like that's not the type of hiring that that happens in Latam. I think that we get people who are thinking critically who can, you know, are joining teams in the US, just like if the US team was hiring someone in New York or Austin or the Bay Area. And so I think that that's

that's super important, those things, the cost savings time zone and the cultural similarities with the US.

Michael Berk (45:51.63)
Got it. That makes a lot of sense. OK, cool. Well, really cool conversation. I'm to summarize some of the things that stood out to me. But yeah, this was awesome. So for engineers, sort of just taking a step back, as a general rule, they often struggle with soft skills, unfortunately. They're usually nerds and tend to have underdeveloped that skill but are really good at logical problem solving.

so that's something to just account for in the hiring process and the interview process, really try to dig deep to see what the skills are, not just how well they present them. and then going into Latam specifically, there's a few cultural differences, specifically pace and language. But as Gino just said, there's a lot of great benefits and culturally they can be more similar to us based organizations than others. I've worked with like every time zone of culture at least like probably five different

key geographical regions. people are different. It's noticeable. And you can, of course, work with everyone. But there are trends and stereotypes. When you're looking to build a relationship between a new employee and an employer, it's really important to get feedback from both sides so that you can iterate. Also, don't put too much emphasis on resumes.

they are a requirement because you have a limited time and you have to only interview so many people, but typically the soft skills you can suss out a lot better over a call. and then with gen AI and take home tests, just ask the employee to, review and walk through their logic. It makes it a lot more clear whether they actually understand what's going on. Because as we alluded to.

Everybody's using Gen.ai. It doesn't make sense to hamstring people into just coding without Gen.ai. So seeing if they can prompt is now sort of becoming a skill. So logical problem solving is a great thing that you can walk through over a call after the take home. So Gino, if people want to learn more about you, about Tecla or anything else, where should they go?

Gino Ferrand (48:02.832)
Well, our website is tecla.io and then LinkedIn is where I connect with pretty much everyone that I interact with on a work level, LinkedIn, and then we can stay in touch. yeah, just recently moved to Austin, so if anyone that listens is in the Austin area, then please reach out so that I can get to try some new restaurants and get to actually know the city as well as I can. But yeah.

Michael Berk (48:20.664)
Congrats.

Michael Berk (48:27.821)
You

Michael Berk (48:32.312)
Hell yeah. All right. Well, until next time, it's been Michael Burke and have a good day, everyone.