Hiring, Managing, And Connecting A Fully Remote Company with Marcelo Lebre, CTO & Co-Founder of Remote

Greg Toroosian  5:55

Yeah, who’s your work? Yeah. How long have you been there?

Marcelo Lebre  6:00

Yeah, exactly how stable is it? I mean, I’ve had a situation in the past where a bank asked me directly in my face. So you were first started? Yeah. Is it gonna close? sometime soon? As I said, Go on this thought,

Greg Toroosian  6:14

Oh, yeah, they know how especially with it.

Marcelo Lebre  6:18

It’s sort of a weird risk management decision, which isn’t nothing. But this is the way society is built throughout the world. And at the end of the day, if I have a contractor in these sort of situations, they’re spending more time worrying about their personal life than all about doing the things they love. It’s very easy not only for people to get distracted, but also to just follow along the trails, other trails and eventually leave the company and start working for another company interested on the road. So what we do is we fix all this, through our company. We have worked in most countries, as an employee of record. So meaning that we do the bridge between the employer and the employee and we make sure we connect these two ends and an employer be in the US or whatever else can hire someone across the world, that person will get together a typical legal locally valid, working contract. And the employer will have a connection through Remote to this person directly, so that both needs are met. And we just simplify it all right, we own the entire stack, meaning that we have our own entities, and we have our processes on people. There are no second, third fourth parties involved, as most companies that do something similar, do it this means that you won’t have to deal with two Different one company at sending you this it basically another company has sending you the contract, the other company that will invoice the employer and all that shenanigans. We just simplify the whole process. We make it simple, make it fast. At the end of the day, we make it beautiful. So we go through all the hustle so that people don’t have to. So

Greg Toroosian  8:21

can I understand a little bit more? Does the employee end up being? Or are they treated the same way as an employee of the company? Like, same sorts of obviously same sort of benefits founded?

Marcelo Lebre  8:34

Yeah. So we make sure that the process using your platform is fairly stressful. It is straightforward. Yeah, you as a company, you onboard, you sign up. You’re asked a few details about the company. Then you can invite someone that you want to employ. This person gets a similar but different onboarding process and you just tell us Where the benefits were that thing, the benefits to the country and also the offering available. Because, I mean, in certain countries you don’t really have, you can match the same benefits, but you can do something similar. And so at the end of the day, what we make sure is that this person gets the approximate type of perks that you get. But at the end of the day, to be honest, this is up to the employer, we will provide the service if the employer wants. Cool, yeah.

That’s how it would be at the end of the day, it should be an experience if you just walk into the office.

Greg Toroosian  9:40

That’s great. You know, I’ve got a lot of questions and I think I can just stick on your product for quite a while because it is really, really cool. I love it. I love this idea. And from my own experience, I really wish I was aware of this when I was at Hyperloop one and we were building and starting to locate international teams that we’re looking at people in London, in the UK, and in Dubai and stuff. And it was such a headache exactly what you said like setting up an international entity because it’s expensive as well and trying to do stuff in Dubai and London, or the UK or anywhere in the UK, really or Europe. When you’re on the west coast of the US, you have a very short window every day unless you’re getting up crazy early. Like so expensive. And then it takes so long sometimes trying to hire him when you identify the person to hire. If you’re trying to race to make that happen. It’s not fun, especially when you’re really internal recruiting people. It’s not easy.

Marcelo Lebre  10:40

I mean, and this is the To be honest, it is the least interesting bit of the hiring process. But it’s at the same time the most bureaucratic and heavy. Yes, you may spend like one month, two months, even more dating someone trying to hire that person. And then you have to just get them with the details. Right. And that should be the easiest part. And that’s what we’re solving. Amazing.

Greg Toroosian  11:14

Amazing. All right, cool. Thank you for that. Yeah. Sorry. I like said fan. No even more, so I can definitely go on about it. So I’m assuming obviously Remote as the name says, I’m assuming you guys were a remote first company, when you started out as well. Yep. And obviously, a lot of companies are making that shift now. And after they’ve had a set HQ or their teams in national offices, so how did you guys go about doing that from the start? Like how what, what was it like for you to actually hire people and manage people and plan that out?

Marcelo Lebre  11:53

So it is easier than people think? People tend to think well, I’m just happy To go, I mean to do that I’d have to go the extra mile and do all those kinds of things. And that’s not simply not true. It’s actually way more simple than doing all that in an office. And there’s a simple answer to that. Instead of just saying it out loud how to do something, you write it down. It’s very simple. Usually in an office, you get in and like, whoa, wait, how do I print something? Then eventually that person that is usually next to the printer, so always bothers like, come on. Alright, so you press here, you go to that folder, send your documents and then so this person probably does this like at least once a week. What do you do when a remote first company you just write it down once? And that’s it. Alright, so like I said, it’s very important. You have we’ve used notion as a document base app tool, the company, we Use it for documents and literally everything. And it saves. This saves us so much time and processes. Honestly, the perfect. To be honest, the perfect process is having no process. So even though it’s virtually probably impossible to have no process without reaching chaos, you will probably be able to get very lean in terms of what you need to do and all the overhead of processes. And if you just write it down, and that’s how you build a remote first company is your turn, you go full transparent. We have our internal rules and things you do in the handbook that remain calm, so it’s open, everyone can look at it, even comment if they want. And, for instance, if the only thing that I do onboarding people is called Say hi, check up on them. There’s a document that we wrote together. And that person just goes through it all. It’s like, role play role playing game,

Greg Toroosian  14:09

you and you and the new employee or just a new day you wrote you write it together or the company.

Marcelo Lebre  14:15

I mean, we have this written together and it evolves through time. Okay, but when the person joins Remote, he just goes through that, it. There’s all sorts of things there, like how teams work, how work works, the events that the company has throughout the week, on the calls, how to engage someone, how to present something, every single thing that you think should be there. So what we try to do is to make sure that people have sort of a virtual guide to all the first questions that may arise we’re very engaging so this person will not feel alone. Not in the slightest I was gonna be my next Yeah. No not at all. We do a few calls throughout the week most of them just to hang out. We do not have 24 seven almost now hangout channels that people just join in on. They can be working or just water cooling conversation. And that’s it I mean all the rest just happens we share quite a lot more in a remote company because in an office you before entering the office you put on your mask and you get your clothes to get into the office and your game. And when you’re calling someone you’re literally seeing into my house, this is my life. There’s nothing more to me than what’s behind me. Of course sometimes you’ll see my dog, my kid I wife, I don’t know might have But anything yeah. And that leaves a line a lot into sharing and and, and you start appreciating more people because when you share you do share meaningful things rather than, oh, we’re going to do today for lunch. Or meaning the word way. We’re going to spend an hour going out for inexpensive lunch and waste time. Right time.

Greg Toroosian  16:26

Yeah, money.

Marcelo Lebre  16:28

Sometimes I just grab a 15 minute lunch with my family. Then we play around a bit. With a kid, we go off for a walk altogether, my dog and then I come back to work, and 30 minutes fast, right? And instead of just staying working late, I just optimize my day for a schedule that feels more productive. We don’t have a working schedule as well. So people just work when they feel productive. And same for personnel time off. We have unlimited time off. Policy and remote. So if you need to take two months of vacation because you need to, then you need to. It’s a trust. There we go. Yeah.

Greg Toroosian  17:18

Yeah. I mean, I’ve got a lot of questions. First and foremost, I’d say, you know, you touched on a very current topic for me personally anyway about being your authentic self at work and being genuine and all of that good stuff. And I did a post a video first, I’ve done a video on LinkedIn recently about being your true self, your authentic self at work, what that means to people what they think companies mean when they say that or managers mean when they say that and can you truly be yourself, you know, and how being remote we’ll make that shift when you start seeing people as you Said being more transparent, open and authentic because you’re literally sitting in their front room and they’ve got pictures of their family around or like so the kids are in the background, which everyone has been thrust into right now with the pandemic. And, you know, schools closed and daycares closed and stuff like that. So I think it’s a very good point that you brought up that people do just feel probably more God down as well to be themself right. And maybe share more.

Marcelo Lebre  18:28

Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s quite calm. I mean, to be honest, there’s a few people remote that I worked with in the past. There’s a gun to three people that actually worked two years with them in an office. And in the first three months, every month, I knew them way better than I used to nearly two years that we weren’t. That’s not That’s crazy. It’s just, it’s very natural, and you don’t push it. It just happens because all of a sudden there’s someone passing by and you I saw was that person Or someone comes to say, Hi, someone’s dad. And this is funny. That’s amazing. And that’s life. Right? That’s, I remember like, five to 10 years ago, it was very common for people to like a lot of blog posts on how to separate work life from life, life and our life. And the balance between it all and how to optimize both. There’s a lot of these and there were, I used to think that to me, they weren’t they were never different. I always put all of myself in all the jobs that I had. Sometimes that gets a bit too much and you get burnout or stress or tired, but I never felt there was another way to do it. And working remotely with this kind of company with us people. It just happens naturally. Yeah, I spend some times I mean, throughout the day, if I don’t feel like working, I’ll just take a couple hours off and or do something go for a walk or run not the gym is

Greg Toroosian 20:14

not right.

Marcelo Lebre  20:15

Yes. But I can just go with it for a walk with my dog, clear my head, just take a nap, whatever and then come back and work that late. We’re just not at all. So it’s different and it’s amazing how much you can accomplish. When you remove the concept of time boxes of just having to be there the hours. It’s amazing that you can accomplish way more than

Greg Toroosian  20:46

I would say wholeheartedly right now that I have been converted to being remote. And the same my own schedule and having that flexibility because I never was you know, I was very much The old school mentality of, you know, I need to be in the office, what if our core business hours, let’s say, our nine to six, I want to be there eight o’clock and I’m probably going to leave at seven because one, it’s perception. And two, I get stuff done before people get there when people have gone home. And I also have the presence to like, socialize and show my worth, almost to the people that matter in quotations. Um, but my wife is very different. You know, my career has always been in office. So I’ve been an agency recruiter, and that’s, you know, very hierarchical metrics driven, performance based all of that. And then I went into internal, and you’re part of the people team, right. You’re part of the recruiting function, and the HR teams. So you are taking people around for interviews or doing tours you are doing in person interviews, as well, you’re in way too many meetings that you shouldn’t be in any way. So again, it’s imperfect And that you’re a big part of the culture. As I said, my wife on the other hand, her whole career has been remote. She’s in sales. She worked in the CPG world. And she’s never had, she’s had probably had one office space role have she been with the company for six, seven years. And that was what we were together. And her stance has always been, I don’t understand how you can do anything in an office. It doesn’t make sense. I do so much more. I’m so much more productive at home without the distractions. And you mentioned the efficiency, right? You get out, you get out of your commute. You get out of your endless conversations at the coffee machine or printer and stuff like that get so much more done, or the breaks that you take to clear your head and come back refreshed. It’s amazing. Yeah, but I am also still a big believer in in person interaction as well as it needs to be a balance for me personally. But now with technology like Zoom and Skype and Hangouts and everything. It’s almost the same. It’s close enough Yeah. Cool. All right, perfect. Thank you. So how is your team structured right now? Like in terms of the roles that you actually have and where the people are located?

Marcelo Lebre  23:11

Yeah. So we have a few teams. And even though we’re pretty small, we’re 20. Something strong, especially, I mean, there’s an engineering team now nine. There’s people in a team called international international expansion. They work on it, make sure that the, all the countries where we have entities that get overseen, they open the new entities, do all all the hard work rely on stuff, and there’s Customer Success and Support product as well design, all the usual suspects. And that’s it. I mean, we’re spread out throughout the world. A few different we’re adding more countries to our list, a few states in the US, there’s Portugal, UK, Italy, sent to the Netherlands as well. And people are just spreading out. And because it helps quite a lot, every time we open a job opening, we get hundreds of applicants from all the countries in the world.

Greg Toroosian  24:22

Yeah. So how do you think that’s a very good point and something to bring up but the impact? Or what is the change to being a remote company and having remote teams? How do you think that’s going to impact hiring apart from having this crazy influx of applicants? Yeah,

Marcelo Lebre  24:40

quite a lot. I mean, there’s things you need to take care of, which is one, you need to understand that different countries also means different time zones. So you need to understand how that fits into the current team structure and where you’re located. There’s also you need to take care of that. Make sure that you’re ready for the influx. We have an open position with hundreds of people applying, like literally hundreds Yeah, sometimes 10s throughout the day. And so it’s important that you treat people as people. You don’t just try to treat it as an avalanche of of CVS resumes and it’s very important I make I made a point of always replying to everyone and not just the standards, the standard messages but of course I can literally write them all but I make sure that at least you get at it we’re like, already happened to me once where I was getting so many applicants that I didn’t have time to reply to them all like in in days, sometimes week so I made sure that I sent them all like a message saying look really busy with this. Make sure that we hang tight, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. And we did. We gave the people that made sense a shot and we gave us a fair shot. We had that discussion and then you just explained to people why you can hire them. What’s the next day they’re not going forward. So, at least you make sure it’s always been my number one rule that if someone takes time to apply to a job you open, you need to take time to treat them accordingly. So this is the second rule. And then the third rule is acknowledging that cultures are different.beliefs are different.

The way jokes go or different, is different. There’s a lot of things different when you hire sometimes just to the next country, right on that stuff. hundred kilometers, also your door, but it’s just different. So you need to acknowledge that you need to take into consideration that inclusivity needs to be part of the process. And when you open a job offer to the world, you’ll get applicants from the world. And it’s not like, Oh, I’m looking for this type of person, because that’s the kind of team that we have. You’re going to get people applying from cultures in countries and time zones across the world. So you need to understand that you have an opportunity to improve the DNA pool of your team, not just hire more of the same and you should take advantage of this

Greg Toroosian  27:49

is a great, great point. I stupidly I didn’t even think about that, you know, but great opportunity for diversity, great opportunity. For obviously diversity of employees, there are no excuses.

Marcelo Lebre  28:03

I mean, throughout my hiring manager career, I’ve always heard the excuse of, Oh, yeah, you know what? company so and so was really trying to go for diversity and, but it’s really hard because you know what engineering roles, it’s not easy to find blah, blah, blah. And just to make sure, so the only open you open the gates, you know, have hundreds of applicants sometimes per day. Whereas your excuse now,

Greg Toroosian  28:34

exactly. That’s it,

Greg Toroosian  28:36

not only that opportunity, but then it just made me realize the complexity that it can possibly have, if you’re not ready for two things, one, that influx of candidates, and I’ll dig into that in a little bit. And two is that complexity of cultural differences because that could really if you’re not aware of that or prayer Seeing that it can really open up a wave of potential issues for you, you know, if you don’t have, and I’m not pointing fingers at any companies or anything, but if you don’t have a team that is aware or mature or set up or leadership that isn’t mature, aware or set up and ready for that, you know, you can start either pushing people to the side, making them feel alone and making them feel kind of alienated. And maybe have negative backlash on your company. So it’s probably a very, very good thing to be aware of, if you are going to open it because a lot of companies are going that way. Make sure you’re ready, prepared and aware of culturally, what you’re going to be bringing into your team because it’s super important to have that. Just do it. It’s

Marcelo Lebre  29:44

fundamental, and we’ve had people I’ve met asking about that topic in specific because they’ve been mistreated in other countries and other companies. There are a few cases of people that were avoided. Did voice those concerns I always make, make sure that people throughout the hiring process have and feel at ease to ask things. Sometimes I try to remove myself from this one bit of the process so that they can talk to the rest of the team without any manager in the call so that they can ask whatever they want to call. And some people did ask me directly and also to our colleagues that hauled in passivity work because they’ve been mistreated in their country’s companies. They joined, they join the team that we’re used to just being clones of themselves. And all of a sudden you have someone with different beliefs, different skin color, different kinds of interest in the world. Everything and and all of a sudden, you’re like you’re joining a team with some slightly racist jokes. or slightly inconvenient knots about sexuality or something similar and you’re all of a sudden you’re maybe that person will quit and nothing about your company will change. But you just did what you just did and really harmed someone and really hurt someone. And I have that sorry. That’s them. That’s because you have I’ve heard some companies throughout the year the years complained about the resource pool that they were able to tap into that either people were two juniors or like two seniors and laid back people and complain where the geniuses were, those guys just go all in and then and, and all of a sudden you have access to the entire world of people like that. So if you’re gonna reject these people based on whatever just you’re worth nothing

Greg Toroosian  32:00

On these distributed teams and remote teams, when I previously prior to being a remote convert I am now I would advise hiring managers and also myself for hiring for my own teams that I need. Not necessarily senior but proven, accomplished mature employees. And, you know, like I said, they don’t, that doesn’t come with years of experience. It doesn’t come with seniority, but it’s a specific type of person, right? If I was ever going to employ them to have anything to do with being remote, and or if I was going to employ them to be a consultant or contractor, because the level of trust, in my opinion, anyway, my humble opinion was it needed to be up there, because I’m going to basically trust this person to do their job, have minimal supervision, set their own hours and basically just produce results right? Right. How do you do that now with never meeting people in person, and B, I’m assuming hiring at different levels. I don’t know if you’ve hired any grads or people with less experience, obviously more senior, but how do you assess that maturity and that trust when you’re bringing people? Yeah.

Marcelo Lebre  33:21

So I’m retiring important, you know, this sentimental hiring is an HR all together is very overlooked. In other appreciated areas. I’m hiring someone, hiring someone that is not a good fit, or not a good contributor or a good match to the team and project. It’s way more impactful than most people realize. One month that’s someone shouldn’t be there equals like one year of work just getting thrown out the window. Because there’s a lot of people involved in training someone in a hiring process. If you sum up all those hours, all those days, all those processes, all the things you should have delivered, didn’t all the goals that you should have done and you couldn’t. It’s insanely, insanely impactful. So it’s important for you to take time to meet the person, not the candidate, eat the person. A lot of companies do this. And hey, I do what I do. But it’s worth what it is. So I’m not saying I found I found that I found what works for me. I’m not sure what will work for others is I tend to meet the person and get to know them. try as much as possible to take them off that one mask or candidate mode. And so what I like to do, what I like to do is be very professional and always do my 100% or 120% to be nice to others. So study. Yes. And I also the things that I’m bad at is being too dedicated, or too much. Come on, right? The moment I hear someone starting with this, it’s the same tune, I always interrupt them, apologize and say, Look, my name is Marcelo, I’m not. I’m not buying or selling anything you want to buy or sell. So I’m just I want to I want to know you. And there’s only usually a couple questions that I asked. One is what you’re really into in life, be it professionally or personally The second is how can Remote help you achieve your dreams or whatever you want to go? Sometimes people can be I don’t know, some people would love to be woodworkers or shepherds. How can we help? This is a journey maybe you Remote was going to be your launching board or stepping some who knows. So how can we help you and that’s it right? These two questions will help me also because I have a bit of experience but mostly helps me to figure out why I’m talking to. And then of course, there’s the technical conversation that happens a bit further in the process of getting to know the team and going through a bit of technical stuff. But that’s it. Honestly, if you just take time. It’s important the selection process because you can do this and it takes a lot from you. It demands a lot of dedication and attention. Because you’re really meeting someone, so you can do like, three, four back to back meetings like this. Otherwise, it’s just you snooze and you lose interest. And it’s not, it’s not fair for those less people. So what I make sure is that I try to select from the applications, the ones that put effort in the cover letter or just the body of the email.

CV is not really important, either. Sometimes just go through a few points on your LinkedIn or whatever you wrote. Then actually, CVS most of the CVS are bullshit. Most people listed and either that and then they had the kitchen sink as well, so it’s like, it is what it is. It’s not worth anything. It’s not worth much. But I recognize the effort and I make sure that I try to select as much as possible. Go Through those, I make sure those people get paid attention. And if I don’t if I, if I don’t find anyone, I’ll make sure to take a few days break and then go through the rest of the people and make sure that everyone gets a fair shot possible. I don’t want to interview someone just for the sake of interviewing people. The last hiring process that we had was we weren’t getting enough diversity. And we just weren’t and and I made a point we went on Twitter and we said, Look, we’re hiring for these roles. We won’t close them until we get enough diversity in this process. Doesn’t matter how long it takes. It will hurt us more if we just settle for more people like us.

Greg Toroosian  38:49

Yeah, that’s great. You put your Yeah, they made a stand you put your stake in the ground you’re like this is what we’re gonna

Marcelo Lebre  38:54

do you dumb honestly. You’re dumb if you don’t do it. Yeah, you’re dumb if you do because if you if you hide Another person like you, you’re hiring double your problems. Maybe you’re gonna add more horror first, sure, but you’re missing out on a world of opportunities on a world of different perspectives of different experiences. And it’s just enlightening and enriching. And most of the time, if you can just wait a month or two, you can you just can I mean, it’s barely been the case where I would like a photo if we don’t find anyone next month, we’re going to close the company. I’m sorry, if you’re in this role, you’re going to really close the company. So

Greg Toroosian  39:40

yeah, it I think that is a great lesson and great takeaway from all of this, that having the ability to hire remote is drastically going to impact your ability to increase your diversity and if you still choose to settle if you still choose to hire more of the same or you still Use the same excuses. If there isn’t enough diversity in x field, then you’re basically just perpetuating the same issue and you’re gonna have the same problem. You’re just basically making the situation worse and allowing it to be that way instead of doing what you can now with that opportunity to rectify it. That’s, that’s a great, great takeaway. Thank you. And also touching on the detrimental impact that hiring the wrong person can have on your company and on your team is super important. And again, something I try to coach and make people aware of because you’re right, it’s not just, Oh, we’ve had the wrong person enroll for six months or three months and now we’re going to lose them. If you have a for the companies out there that do or that don’t have a good ETS system, applicant tracking system. You’re able to pull out reports on how many hours have been spent interviewing for one role by each team member. So even as a recruiter, you can Go with that data to the team when they’re doing something wrong or spending too much time or being adamant that they want to do it a certain way and show them the amount of hours they’ve used in hiring for one role. So when you throw that into onboarding, or waiting for someone’s notice period, and then their relocation, and then a time to productivity if they ever get there, the knowledge loss, the hours of people training them, and then them actually leaving, and now you have to start all over again. That is, there’s so much one money lost, and two hours and three people if they’ve been doing this for a while or probably a little bit better now, a sour taste in their mouth.

Marcelo Lebre  41:40

And honestly, you’re forgetting the most important thing and that is the person and you’re in some cases, you’re flying in someone from across the world. This person will bring their family. One month later, it’s not working out and all of a sudden they are in the country. They don’t know. With no jobs, and it doesn’t matter if you’re an engineer or not, doesn’t matter. Yeah. That the feeling of being let go of the fear of or panic or sadness of being let go put together with the responsibility of yourself or other lives to grace overwhelming.

Greg Toroosian  42:23

Yeah, yeah. Or being that individual that has actually made that move and convinced their family to go even if they’re by themselves uprooted their life and moved. And now they’re second guessing was this right? I talk, I have talked quite a bit about like, opportunistic hiring and how, if done, right can be very useful. But most of the time it’s done wrong and you hire someone because they’re a good skill set or tight or would be a good addition to the team in some sense, but you’re not ready for the person. You don’t have the right work. That creates churn, right that person that retention is going to be an Issue, they’re not going to stay around and then you’re in the same position because you’ve hired maybe the right person at the wrong time. And God forbid, you know, you’ve made them move with their family. And now that same situation, they’re going to be disengaged or you as a company, have no reason for them. So take the time, assess exactly what you need. And then take the time to assess the candidates properly, give everyone a fair shot. Give your set the job for you and the company as well as the candidate and make the right decision at the end of the day. takes a little bit longer, but you’re going to save a lot of time, money, heartache and improve your candidate experience dramatically. And retention.

Greg Toroosian  43:39

Well, I think that’s a great point to end on.

Greg Toroosian  43:43

So we’ve been talking to Marcelo Lebre, who’s the co-founder and CTO of Remote. Marcelo, where can people learn more about you and the company?

Marcelo Lebre  43:52

remote.com. It’s easy to find it.

Greg Toroosian  43:57

Amazing Marcelo. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Outro  44:03

Thank you for listening to the Elevate Hire podcast. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. Until next time.