The Pragmatic Engineer
01:09:24 · Gergely Orosz
[01:09:24] S0: So I'm hearing, you know, a lot of things are just quite different to how most companies operate. And usually I find that a big difference that, you know, we can we can we could we could talk a lot more about the differences, but what I often find is these differences often come down to the people, because you can do certain things with a certain group of people. And I'm wondering what are the... What are traits that you're hiring for, and what does an engineer or software engineer who is thriving at the company look like? How would you describe them? Because I think this could help understand a little bit of what makes your culture possible.
01:09:59 · Luca Ferrari
[01:09:59] S1: That's a good point. Think, by the way, hiring primarily inexperienced individuals helps because they don't come with a baggage of how it's done. They will look at it from a blank slate. And I think it's also been helpful for us to not having had... And there are pros and cons, but we haven't had a whole lot of advisors early on, because we were a bit on the fringes of the technological empire as we were building Bending Spoons. And so we made a ton of mistakes we could have avoided, but also I think we did some things that in hindsight have been so powerful, simply because they seemed to make sense and we didn't know any better. As usual, pros and cons. Yeah, what we look for in people, I would say it's really simple on the face of it. We look for people who are very strong problem solvers, who can learn very quickly. People who have a strong sense of ownership, so they really want to own their objectives, their work. You don't have to check on them, they'll do their very best every single day. In fact, we have essentially zero process, no micromanaging. It's a really high autonomy environment with the good and the bad, depending on what you like. And third, I would say a trait we're really big on is team spirit. We have refrained from hiring or retaining brilliant people who had too high an opinion of themselves when that disrupted collaboration. Are a company where we trumps eye all the time, again, for better or worse. I think if those things are true of someone and they really want to... They see their role in an expansive horizontal way, they're not in this for just becoming the most expert Python programmer in the world, but they want to be a great three sixty degree engineer who understands business impact of what they do, who has an interest in that. Think that such a person will probably do really well at Bending Spoons and love it.
01:12:03 · Gergely Orosz, Luca Ferrari
[01:12:03] S0: Do I do I understand correctly that like, if I paraphrase it, you're hiring for things like drive motivation and like getting things on our like talent of being able to to get things and learn quickly. Does that kind of [01:12:16] S1: Yeah, I think drive, let's say reasoning, problem solving, learning ability for lack of a better term and collab... Collaborativeness too. I think that's very important. [01:12:25] S0: And collaborativeness. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. So I'll I'll I'll close with this question. Why do you think no one else has attempted this really unconventional bold strategy of acquiring companies, improving their efficiency, turning into turning it into a better version and and looking at at the long term. Do you have an idea? Did someone try it that you're aware of or not really?
01:12:25 · Gergely Orosz, Luca Ferrari
[01:12:25] S0: And collaborativeness. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. So I'll I'll I'll close with this question. Why do you think no one else has attempted this really unconventional bold strategy of acquiring companies, improving their efficiency, turning into turning it into a better version and and looking at at the long term. Do you have an idea? Did someone try it that you're aware of or not really? [01:12:52] S1: We're not aware of any company doing what we do. Well, I think it's... First of all, it's pretty difficult. We've been working at this for eleven years, so pretty hard. The platform we've built, company culture, the technologies, the know how, it's taken just a ridiculous amount of investment. So it's not like something someone would just set out to do and oh, I did it nice, you know. Even today sometimes I wonder if I had to redo it from scratch. I think even with infinite capital it would take me maybe not eleven years, but maybe six years. Like it's really hard to build a culture, an employer brand, and 50 plus technologies. Like it takes forever and it's not at all just about the money. So that part is just a big barrier to entry. I think it's probably the main reason Other than that, I don't know. But really the barrier to do it, it's hard. It's a lot of work. It takes a long time.
01:14:02 · Gergely Orosz, Luca Ferrari, Federico Simionato
[01:14:02] S0: And it's interesting because what I'm putting together is, you know, you had a bit of an unconventional start as far as the startup is going because you are a tech company, you're a tech startup, you you hire the type of people who want to work at tech startups. But most of these companies, just contrasting it, they raise a lot of venture capital early on. They got the momentum. They didn't have to worry about being profitable on day one. In fact, they probably were were not even profitable much later on. So I wonder if... You mentioned how difficult it was to raise in Italy. I I wonder if this might have contributed to putting you in this unique position of struggling for a long time and building up this culture where where you you focus on, you know, these things that most companies don't need to focus on. You just had this need. And then now that the world is actually turning into a lot more efficient place and everyone's looking for efficiency, you've been... Sounds like you've doing this for quite a while now. [01:14:56] S1: Yeah, I guess there's always a lot of process and path dependency, you you can go even back even earlier than that. But yeah, I think our the particular conditions are failed startup before what we learned there, or we built Bending Spoons certainly have helped shape this view for sure. [01:15:20] S2: You could say probably that seven years ago, we were the company everybody's trying to build now, in a sense. [01:15:27] S0: Interesting. So now you've evolved since then. [01:15:31] S2: Exactly.
01:15:31 · Federico Simionato, Gergely Orosz, Luca Ferrari, Francesco Mancone
[01:15:31] S2: Exactly. [01:15:32] S0: So thank you very much for sharing all these details with me and with all the listeners. Where can folks find you and reach out and learn more? [01:15:40] S1: They can send us an email. There's an email address they can find on the website. If they want to apply, there's a jobs page. We are available on most social media platforms too. Always happy to have a conversation. So do reach out. [01:15:58] S2: And if you want to witness the great Evernote reboot, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel. [01:16:05] S0: Awesome. It's also linked in the show notes below, so be sure to check it out. Well, thank you very much. [01:16:10] S2: Thank you very much, Gergely. Thank you. Pleasure. [01:16:12] S3: Thank you.