hello everybody thank you for joining us today I'm excited here to talk with Charles Palmer Charles and I met at an event a tech event a few gosh maybe even months ago now where I learned about him and his business get Deb's we got coffee shortly afterwards so I'm excited to have a longer discussion here with him because he's got a lot to share and there's a lot that you guys can glean from him and what he's learned in his business that'll help you so I just wanted to say up front that this can be interactive so if you guys have questions throughout the interview enter them into the chat on the right hand of the screen or the ask a question button down below our video I will do the job of liaison those questions and posing them to Charles here either where it makes sense in the interview or towards the end to make sure that that gets answered but like I said feel free to do that throughout the conversation we're happy to address the questions that you guys have directly appreciate you taking the time to join us live this could be a lot of fun so to introduce Charles Charles is the founder and CEO of get Deb's he has more than 15 years of professional experience working overseas in an array of organizations and capacities his teams have supported and delivered projects for leading technology organizations and four continents his mission is to build multidisciplinary software teams and provide prestige customer service while doing so his passion is to help organizations scale and retain top talent and a little bit about get devs gibe Deb's is a staff augmentation firm that builds and operates dedicated distributed software teams on behalf of us-based clients so I'll let Charles talk a little bit more about what get Deb's is and anything I missed some his background but Charles thanks for being here thanks for having me appreciate it yeah so tell us a little bit more I gave a little bit of an intro but it sounds better coming from you tell us a little bit more about get Deb's okay you know I think you in broad strokes you got it just right so we're a staff augmentation company and we focus solely on anything software so we hire web developers mobile developers DevOps QA project managers designers ba za raise any any of the accoutrements that you need to fill out a multidisciplinary software team we put them in Class A office space and give them a good internet and HR benefits healthcare and we make sure that we're creating an environment where our clients can focus solely on their product and day to day deliverables so our our mission is really to ensure that clients have a production staff so that they can focus on the type of innovation that they do this so if I am a software company I engage get devs to bring in some of the employees that you have some of the talented engineers that you have to work basically full-time and integrated with my company is that right that's correct with with one small one small distinguishment which is we don't really keep anybody on the bench you know if I kept too many hammers around everybody would need a screwdriver and the same is true for developers so we we custom recruit and we we build these teams individually ala carte and in terms of helping the you you brought up something that in terms of helping people lis a is we were there to try to make sure that we're measuring the cultures so obviously we're putting two different cultures together as well as corporate cultures so we're there to make sure that all that give-and-take goes right and that the relationship works got it got it I have a lot of luck what pertaining how you didn't mention it all tourism why that's important secret but first off I wanted to ask why did you get started with get devs or how did you get started how did you identify this as a need that you wanted to fill sure so I'll try to give you the 90 second version since it's not as fine if I got an hour so I did my own startup I was living in Asia I went to school in Asia I got an MBA in Asia and I didn't want to leave Asia so I I did a startup that was focused on matching candidates with jobs and doing skills assessments and probably like a lot of first-time startup site spent probably too much money on the platform and not enough money on marketing so we got to a point where the platform was working really well but it was clear that we didn't have the staying power than it was going to take to be successful so we we quickly switched to using our developers to do projects for others and that was all well and Grande and worked out pretty well until the projects got bigger and bigger and as it as it turns out we were I'm trying to figure out what the appropriate jokes are here but is it as it turns out we were better at managing smaller projects than we were managing very large projects so that the next natural evolution was to become staffing and staffing only so since about March of 2013 we have done nothing but staffing we've not done our own passion projects we have not done one off projects for for anybody else we we've solely focus on building teams and hiring the individual team members and the company is based is it based in Manila or you just have a large number of employees in Manila so get those is a US company it's it's a Delaware Court and it's based in Ohio it wholly owns a subsidiary get that was Asian Inc and that's our legal entity to hire and have health care and run office space and and all those things so I think I think a question a lot of people will have we're listening to this is essentially your value prop to companies is we provide very very good talent almost as if they're totally ingrained in your company already so you're kind of betting on the fact that you were more able to hire those engineers then the company is or that you can at least bring that same solution to them so why why do you find that you're so successful in hiring people under get devs versus that same person looking around and trying to get a full-time gig somewhere else absolutely so that's that's kind of a two-part answer I think that most of my clients if if they had their choice and developers were abundant here regardless of cost they would hire here in the US but but we live in an environment where that's that's just not possible they they don't exist in those in the quantities that that are required right now so what what makes us better at doing it in Asia then anybody else that's not there is the fact that we are there there's a certain barrier to entry to setting up anywhere I think that you know having lived there for good ten years before we did this having the local knowledge you know those things having having you know mature HR staff and that your recruiting team having a mature team that does benefit some payroll and takes care of all the social obligations is not something that can be replicated overnight and I'd be lying to you if I told you that we built it overnight so there's there's all those things that that make us efficient at operating it but those are the same things that attract candidates you know they walk into our offices and they they see that we're real and and we're legit we've been there for a while and that that more than anything that we're providing really good solid opportunities to employees those solid opportunities being that usually the clients that we bring to the table have quite interesting things to work on mm-hmm so I think that the often what's misunderstood and honor estimated in this industry is what the barrier is to setting up in a new locale whether it's in another state or another country and it sounds like you're you're solving a problem for both sides it sounds like the same you know obviously you have these companies domestically or wherever who are looking for a really good talent but it sounds like you're also saying there's the problem of talent in other locales who are trying to find really interesting opportunities and you're helping them to is that true certainly so for a long time the way the industry grew up overseas was they were working on very large teams doing low-value things probably maintenance probably not new feature probably not new projects and to a certain extent that still exists that all 90% of the development that's done is not quite interesting so when we can bring really interesting things or prestige brands or give developers opportunities to solve problems that they wouldn't otherwise get to see I think that we've we have provided something on that side of the equation as well hmm and do you find that just like the volume of work that needs to be done or projects or opportunities do you find that that's much higher in like the Western Hemisphere or in the United States whereas some of these engineers that are based in Asia are just not finding that same volume of projects in their home countries no I I think that universally the world over there's there's just a shortage everywhere those developers compared to the workload that's out there so when we when we're hiring in the Philippines which is where almost all of our operations are we're competing against people hiring for Australia because they that they're close geographically we're competing against Europe we're competing against the rest of Asia so I I think that I think that it's true that we definitely have an acute shortage of developers in the United States but I don't really think that's terribly unique right now mmm-hmm and so what is help me understand the perspective of some of these engineers that you employ or you talk to maybe for one-off projects what is it that they're looking for that they come to get Deb's or even when they're going out and looking at their own for projects what type of things do you find that people are most interested in and working on or looking for in an opportunity so there's there's the things that that really any of us look for a job I think most people are looking for stability they want to work for somebody that's gonna treat them well and has a track record of doing so obviously but I think anytime I get into an employment ago she ation or try to get somebody to sign the job offer that's in front of them we're always selling the client to them and the clients very involved in that the clients taken part and the screening process the interviews evaluating technical Batteries anything like that and so what we're really that that is the value right that they get to work on something that they wouldn't otherwise get that chance to I so so you have an employer treating them right the uniqueness of the work and I think something that most of our borders will relate to is the ability to solve new problems and the ability to make users happy is something that we hear very often and of course the ability to create something that ends up in a lot of hands or on a lot of desks mmm-hmm well you know this but I'll show this for the listeners I spent some time doing software I didn't do the development I was a product manager but at a software organization and the more I worked alongside with people who are in engineering and UX design everybody I mean it's really important to people that what they're working on is being seen and used you know they won't they want to see it having an impact and a lot of people touching it getting on a lot of people's desks as you said absolutely can you can you walk me through what it looks like when a company comes to you with a project and what the process looks like for for you and forget devs finding the right person or for that opportunity sure I'm gonna miss a lot of steps here because this is so intuitive to me at this point so like just stop me usually when people approach us it's because they have a long-term indefinite need for software developers one way or the other they're in the business of developing software whether they're a digital agency that's doing it for somebody else whether there's software as a service company more than whether they're a large corporate that needs their own IT cheese usually they start with a rough idea of what the job description is and generally it is very rough so usually after a little bit of coaxing we end up with some bullet points of what we're looking for we iterate a few times and create a more mature job description and then we go out in the marketplace we have a recruiting team that's that's none of them have been developers before but they are IT people and they're they've become very adept at sussing out what are genuinely good answers to their questions and what or not so we we do that first level of screening and usually clients will give us either technical questions or tests that they want completed so we will either ask those and record the answers or we will Proctor tests and give the results after a fairly exhaustive process on our end which is mostly hidden from the client not because we're hiding it because they don't want to know that we've talked to a hundred people this week now each one of those conferences but usually after a fairly exhaustive process you know a week or two later we'll come back with a stack of five resumes and ask them who's that they want an interview they'll usually pick two or three they'll interview them yep get real nerdy with them ask a whole bunch of questions and probably use some more technical exercises and they may choose the higher one may choose the higher two may start the whole process over again because a big part of this is calibrating expectations with a client that may not have really known what they needed at the outset once the client finds something that they like all of our overhead numbers are pretty transparent we tell people what it takes us to operate the business and everything else that they pay goes into salary so we sort of invite them to join in that negotiation because it allows them to see the value of people relative to one another so then we get job offers out the sign and then there's the whole onboarding process of bringing people onto the team and all the support that it takes to do that which which is a whole other thing and then that is certainly different for every client so some clients we just basically they just want us to turn over the developers with and with whatever communications tools they've prescribed and in a lot of other relationships there's an awful lot more hand-holding to make sure that we get up and productive as quickly as possible mm-hmm I have a lot of questions about sort of your company culture but thinking through the lens of a lot of the people who who may be listening to this they're gonna do whether they're first trying to hire in-house or they're trying to build their own staff they're going to be solving a lot of the problems that you have to do sort of in that process which is getting in front of people with the opportunity and kind of creating this queue of resumes that you can serve to the clients so I don't want you to share any like proprietary secrets or anything but what general advice would you have for people who are trying to get their opportunity in front of engineers whether here or abroad oh boy um that's a big one we can talk about that for a while we probably should yeah sure that's a question I think it goes back to kind of know what the opportunity is you've you've got a you're not selling somebody on a paycheck to get a good developer you've got to know what that opportunity's but there's also this aside from recruiting you have a whole other set of concerns that you need to worry about right how do you keep these people employed there's whether you're going through oDesk whether you've flown someone where to set up your own office whether you use an intermediary or a staff augmentation company like us one thing that is not unique to any location in this world or retention problems you know one of the things that we address for our clients is the fact that they can't retain people locally so there's there there's that whole other sort of thing that you have to worry about after the hire that it goes into the position that you're selling these people you need to really have a plan for what they're working on today what they're working on tomorrow and what their career path looks like and in instances where you're providing physical facilities for them location location location and a good office space really solid office space near transportation hubs near so there's there's all those infrastructure items as well and then you'll find in a lot of other cultures more so than ours summer outings to the beach for the old company or super Gordan big Christmas parties getting together once a month all those intangibles that keep people together so you're really selling the whole package right whether you use us go it alone you somebody else that's the the thing that you sell today youth you've got to live up to those promises and keep making it richer and do you find that people people are really upfront about asking questions about those different benefits and more intangible things or do you find that you're more successful bringing that up and sharing that with them even before asking because you know that's actually going to play a larger part in their decision making than they may realize our recruiting team is appreciated it's selling those benefits but I think that we're definitely selling to a very educated very in-demand community they know what's out there that they know what they'll get somewhere else they know all the benefits and they're asking anything from you know how many different dependents they can put on to the HMO to how often that we go out what what the other intangibles are it's it's it's an incredibly educated workforce in terms of them knowing really really what they deserve yeah yeah you mentioned oDesk and I think it's important to explain what oDesk and what some of the similar platforms are for people who may not be familiar sure so generally speaking there's a lot of different platforms that link people that need work done with freelancers that do work and there are a lot of different sort of service levels of that you know you can go on freelancer and find a guy to spend ten hours doing something for you there there are some sites that will do a heck of a lot of pre-screening and make sure that the freelancers that you're hiring or legit I mean one that comes to mind is a company called towels top town and they do a tremendous job of linking up people with really qualified freelancers and that is the way that I mean not all of us start with a product and customers almost all of us start with an idea and a few dollars and scraping a few things together here and there and and for a for a lot of people really the only option to get that started is to go through those intermediaries that can you can buy ten hours here in ten hours there put something that's good enough to put in front of a market or put in front of investors and that's entirely different than what we do but that's that's not to trivialize their contributions because they're absolutely necessary for the earliest of stages ideas and so for people who may be listening to that so who aren't familiar we've mentioned freelancer Oh desk top towel also familiar with Elance are there any more that I'm missing that are kind of major like freelance or short-term sort of project Martha I'm coming up with blanks there's been consolidation in the industry right that I know that we're missing one important name there was very quickly I think there was one that got bought by Elance actually maybe up up up or that's it yeah there's whole smaller platforms I mean I I was getting emails today from and just incessantly I probably got 30 different emails today from one company it says they have a lead for somebody that needs to buy a few hours of developer work it's not what we do I mean we do large well not large we do we do medium-sized teams they're indefinite but I think that call it what companies called BARC so they're out there somehow connecting people and there's an that's just the email I got today or the email I got today but there's a numerable companies like that do you find that let's say let's say I'm and I'm a chief entrepreneur and I'm kind of just in the position of I have an idea and I want to get something running and I'm having a hard time finding anyone who can help me build it if I go on one of these marketplaces like oDesk or Elance or top Tao is it likely that I'm going to be able to turn that short term project into a long term relationship or employee or do you find that most of the people on those platforms are kind of short-term focused and want to bounce from project to project there's a little bit of both you know I've talked to people that met key players there and then found a way to work outside of the platform and hire them but they're diamonds in the rough mm-hmm there's you know there's all kinds of people that are representing that this guy is going to do the work and actually done by somebody else and I think there's there's a lot to navigate there there's like I said you got to find the diamonds in the rough but they're out there and I think that anybody that has the here comes a technical term anybody that has the stick-to-itiveness anybody that has the stick-to-itiveness to start a project and get it to some point some semblance of something that looks like a product has the ability to navigate the frustrations out there and figure out who's gonna get you to some success mm-hmm I can't tell you how often I get approached by entrepreneurs like I have this idea how do I find engineers how do I find developers how do I find someone to build it and I always start off with like you got a first off change your mindset of how you approach these people because there's so many people who are like I have this idea I am entitled to have somebody build it for me right now and you're not I always my first advice of people is think about what type of technology makes sense start going to some of the meetups in your town or community that are technology-based whether it's like strictly Python meetup whether it's like a web group meetup go meet people as friends and learn and understand who these people are what they care about and then once you've made a couple friends say hey I've got this idea can you give me feedback on it and see if they have any interest because otherwise you know if I build a tech startup as as you have it's hard for me to imagine trying to do that completely on just like freelance work indefinitely you know at some point it really really helps to have people on your team that are bought in and if you augment them great but if you have no one on your team that's totally bought in it becomes a sort of forever expensive proposition yeah then you don't have the continuity for success really did I don't want to knock it right because it's the place that a lot of people have to start and and I've used it I've used it for different things I'm just fortunate enough and blessed enough to be beyond the point of needing those resources but but you're right it is a tremendously long road to keep shooting in the dark looking for for those diamonds in the rough you are way better off going and getting involved in the local community and and being sincere about being in the local community and what you can contribute before you start asking for favors because I mean I I get people all the time that are downright indignant that I won't use my money to be their technical co-founder because they have you know I can't tell you how many people have used the exact terms the next face book in the next Twitter mmm they absolutely Dignan that we won't build it for them but right I think you used a I think you made a much better point than I did which is the continuity is very very important when we were doing tick sirs we had at one point we had a CTO he was full-time and then we had a guy that we brought in part-time the CTO had some life events happen and he had to leave the company and go something that's more stable than our really early-stage startup and from that period on we were working with very short-term very very short term very part-time people and it was very difficult to not have that institutional knowledge as we even went person to person and you accumulate a lot of tech debt it became really problematic for the platform so in some form or another I think it is paramount to think about consummate continuation and stability for your platform and whatever form that needs to be well our average clients probably spend four weeks really getting to know new hires and bringing them into the culture and teaching them the tools that they use and how to communicate on a multi-functional team who to go for this read the handbook read art read our different coding standards for different things that's a month right and then you get to know the project that you're going to be on that's more time and and that's if you can and if you're fortunate enough to be able to afford that that's that's the right way to do it but there's you talk about the technical debt when you know somebody leaves and you don't know what they wrote they didn't document the code but there's there's also this big investment that you may get money to get somebody properly onboard it to the company in the project that's a financial investment but it's also time that you don't get back so to continue to cycle through people without really a goal to put together a permanent team is something that you can't afford to do very long yeah one last question is sort of on this topic and then I move on some to some different questions what are what are some misconceptions that you think people have when it comes to hiring either full time or finding freelancers or positioning opportunities in front of people maybe the way that engineers think about opportunities what are some misconceptions that you come across either when people come in your front door or you just talk to people in the community oh man I honestly can't think of too many that the thing that I think that we're often up against the most justjust in our business circumstance are people that don't understand our industry are concerned about loss of American jobs and that's not the case because we're not there are no good at software developers but there they're also concerned that ok great you can find us really good developers and you're on a sweatshop alright so they're there their concern about us being an intermediary that's gone to the developing world and provided labor that's inexpensive relative this to this market so we've we've got to educate them on the fact that you know these these people substantially enjoy the same benefits and a similar cost love or a similar standard of living that we do and I I think that that's probably something that most people that work offshore near shore an objection that they come up against because most of the companies that were speaking to and I believe most of the companies that our competitors speaking to are genuinely concerned about the well welfare of their team members so they want to they want to be right out there and upfront and make sure that these team members are actually being treated well mm-hmm so I think that that's probably the misconception that we have to address the most that's a really good segue into what I want to talk about next which is how do you think about company culture for get devs what are the types of things that are important to you that you're providing for your employees that you want to make sure they're thinking about can you talk about that a little bit sure so we have two cultures really there's the get deaths culture in the clients culture there's also two handbooks they get that handbook in the clients handbook the get devs you know we have this tremendously burdensome handbook just because it has to cover local regulations I don't know how many pages it is like for teenagers that's not that bad I've seen worse and books they read like VHS manuals I mean the tremendous the thing that's important to us as a culture for forget devs is we must hire people that we can treat like adults we do not want to run a paternalistic company where we're constantly looking over people's shoulders and that's tough in any culture so so we've got to find the people and weed through the people and trip through the people that that aren't fit to find the people that if we treat like adults the lack like adults then there's employee and the well we call them employers but the the clients culture and that's different you know we work in different verticals we work in four different industries we we work for finance companies that have not as casual cultures we work for other companies that are going to kind of wonder what we're doing wrong if their people are wearing pants to work as opposed to shorts so so that's where most of our work is in terms of cultural assimilation is getting our employees assimilated with the clients corporate culture and and most of that is for the benefit of giving them that safe place to work and safe place to make mistakes right and I imagine some of that is from the the fact that since you guys are sort of decentralized and these the the people you're hiring are working remotely for the clients that you serve you have to trust them to be good stewards of your company and also you know get things done that they that they say they're going to get done without a ton of oversight is that is that accurate yeah that's correct I mean everybody that we employ is in the same building right so got it they're under you know they're under HR supervision some people are under slightly different security protocols because of what they're working on but in in general they're all in the same place with certain supervision but we don't manage deliverables and we don't manage product so luckily we're in an industry where if you're not doing your job there's nowhere to hide mm-hm well there's they're either delivering or they're not and there's very few secrets about that in cases where people aren't delivering we we obviously do our best to save that situation and I would imagine it becomes very apparent very quickly if someone is not a quote-unquote adult and the way they conduct themselves once they're employed but how do you throughout the interview process or recruiting process what types of things do you do to screen to try and get that information and ensure that you can trust this person or that they're going to fit your company culture it's its crapshoot right you you know there's there's certain things that we look for you know we get police clearances to make sure somebody doesn't have a criminal history we have references from former employers would make sure that their duration that they're employed is you know it seems responsible we make sure they show up to interviews on time and treat our guards with courtesy and rank things like that but but in the end you you don't know who somebody is for awhile and that's just I suppose we could start giving people psychological batteries but but I don't have a whole lot of faith that that's going to tell us who's adult material and who's not none unfortunately almost we tend to either lose somebody in the first six months or keep them forever so most of our original employees on our original account we have five or five years later the ones we lost we lost in the first six months and I would say that probably half of we lost for technical inability and half we lost for demeanor and I want to reiterate something you said earlier the people who stick around who make it past the six-month phase or whatever that period is and stick around for a very long time you think that's because the quality of project that they have access to and they get to work on plus stability is there anything else that like really you know brings them the the the stickiness I honestly believe that substantially the clients I really do we provide I think an excellent place to work but that's not to say that there's not other excellent places but the fact is we're in a global economy and a global labor force where anybody I employ if they look long enough they even though we pay extremely well anybody that I employ if they want to look long enough they will find somebody that could pay more and they will probably eventually find somebody that as an office closer to their house or an office with better coffee or something so I think that's a testament to how our clients had assimilated these people in their culture they treat them as their own they make sure that when certain gifts or accoutrements are handed out in the Home Office that it gets distributed in Manila as well and they continue to make sure that they work on great stuff and that's not something that I mean honestly that's been luck we we do turn away clients sometimes if it seems like it's gonna be a hassle or something that's going to take away or if we feel like we're gonna get into a position where we're gonna hire developers that are gonna be unhappy and drag the whole office down but but honestly most of its been luck if we've been very fortunate that we found good work I was gonna ask that question about whether you turn clients away but I think something we're that's probably obvious but worth this stating is it I think is a good insight you know there are potential opportunities that may check a box better than what's in front of you but if you're treated well and you get to know the people that you work with and you you know you enjoy that environment whatever office your sim lighted into I think that's a good insight for anybody that's hiring to say you know there's a lot to be said about the culture and the way you treat people that can not necessarily compensate but really be an additive to the opportunity that you're bringing to the table well they've become family right it's it's you don't you don't want to leave a group of good guys and gals for for the unknown and it would be I've explained this to influence so our employees are like the biggest fan of the company and they are always disappointed if we don't have a quarter where we've grown or they're you know they want to see the next project they want to see the company get bigger and do well so we've explained to them you know how do you feel about bringing on we've had situations where we've had prospects that say look we want to save a little bit of money we understand that you don't legally have to buy these guys health care so hire us people don't give them health care right Oh our employees are wise enough to understand that that's something that drags the whole ship down and they are wise enough to understand that probably one of the things that we've done right that was intentional was create the circumstance where they they could have actual friendships and relationships at work and be with people in and clients with colleagues if they don't want to leave and I don't know anything that's stickier than that mm-hmm what do you think goes into the employees that you have that are working for clients who are here in America let's say what allows them to be successful being so far away is their video conferencing that's done is it about creating like really good like a really good set of requirements that's very clear how do they communicate effectively to be the most effective and efficient I mean we could probably name a hundred things here right and in most similar generic there's obviously fantastic tools for video conferencing but but more that goes into the personal relationships that are built it's the clients willingness can work in our office for a while its clients getting these people visas to come work on-site it's that investment in getting people assimilated in into the end of the culture and knowing all the inside jokes and things like that there's all those things pay dividends and how people communicate as well mm-hmm how well projects go I mean you think about if any software team anywhere how do people communicate when they don't feel safe to make a mistake it's it's it's it's not a good situation so anytime that you've created or curated that situation where people know that they're safe to make a mistake they know and and and they really understand the rules of all the other stake holders very well you've got a good situation for that communication yeah so I guess I guess kind of what I'm trying to tease out is do you guys do a lot like do you see that your staff is doing a lot of video calls or a lot of phone calls or is it mostly just done through chat or asynchronous communication it's it's it's both right so most of our clients are finding some some some type of agile or extreme methodology most stand-ups are done obviously through some type of video conferencing most of our clients are holding one-on-ones at least once a sprint cycle and then aside from that I think every one of our clients uses slackening for for that constant Camino it's crazy ya know I really think it is every single one aside from that you know there's I think almost all of our clients use things similar to either juror fog bugs to at least be tracking bugs and putting down requirements and tracking progress and burn down some things like that so it's face to face at least once today it's one-on-ones at least once once a sprint cycle and it's it's constantly on slack all day long with whoever whatever stakeholder they need in most of the teams are willing to do a somewhat flat structure so a mid-level QA can go directly to a project manager in New York without going through QA manager and Manila did so so that's that speeds up all that cool I want to give you a chance here to talk a little bit about more what does make a good client forget devs or if someone is looking for staff augmentation how will they know that they would be a really good fit for your company culture and the type of people that you bring in to work with sure so it's a very high level anybody that is in the business of writing code and has an indefinite ongoing need because we don't do short term engagements because we can't we can't go out and hire developers away from gainful employment for an unsure or an determinant commitment I mean that said we know that we have to do our part to make it work we have to you know other other intangibles that that make for good clients are people that generally have a very good idea of what different processes look like the development processes will hold what how to incorporate a good QA process and and what all those things look like to manage really effectively manage people if you can't manage the person in the next room you can't manage somebody halfway across the world it's not that different so you need people that are good people managers people that are good technical managers since since we're staffing only and we'll do anything ala carte that people want you'll hire a project manager will hire an architect liar but we have to work for people that have a certain level of technical competency so usually you know we we get approached all the time by companies that want us to build a staff that they don't yet have a CTO or an architect or they want us to build that for the Mets that's not the business for you and there's plenty of if anybody wants to know who to call for that they can get a hold of me and ask because there's people out there do it do it it's just not something that we can do well and so we have to work people that they're good people managers tremendous technical competency and and that they really have a vision to build something great either for themselves or for their clients I think it's that simple we're we're technology agnostic will work in any will hire in any language any stack where industry agnostic as long as it's fits certain bounds of social responsibility none of that matters to us to us we just want to want to build great teams I think something that I've noticed about you that I really respect is you have a very clear understanding of who you guys are what you do who you're not and what you don't do which I think it's probably kind of prerequisite to being successful anywhere right yeah it is and I probably I'm guilty more than anybody I know shooting from the hip too often and I've in in my younger years created circumstances where I couldn't deliver the thing that that I should have delivered and that's not a good feeling so now that we found something that really works we have no reason to deviate from this I mean that would be crazy mm-hmm where we run a low margin business but yet the checks come every month and we've we've we don't lose clients we've we've we've lost one client in five years and it was because they went through a major reorganization and simply couldn't afford staff anymore so yeah it's we do know ourselves and it's it's with the benefit of experience you know luckily it's something that our clients like our clients especially our digital agencies really like knowing that we're not competing against them we're not bidding projects we're on there's there's no conflicts of interest out there right we are just staffing works well for me because I know that we'll do it well and it works well for them because they know that we're not distracted yeah that's great is there anything that you guys are working on or working towards this particularly exciting to you right now mmm I think that the thing that's exciting for me 2017 was the year that all our accounts Group 2018 seems to be the year of the new account at least so far we've got it just a tremendous number of prospects and they're all really exciting and there are really cool people that are that are running these projects and these companies and and that's something that's exciting for me because I know that people in Manila are excited about it our internal team our HR team our recruiting team all the other developers are excited for new colleagues things like that and that's that's what kind of gets my blood flowing is is is bringing that that new life in and and and it's great because mmm these are people from different industries different verticals you know we're talking to digital agencies we're talking to large companies that that certain projects well indefinitely done and we're talking to startups and just all kinds of stuff so that's that's what's kind of getting me out of bed 30 minutes early every day right now hmm and something that you said actually before we jumped on this call that I think is worth talking about you were telling me that you're going down to Manila soon to see everybody and in the in the office and we kind of talked a little bit about how even in my experience that can be a really powerful thing if you have a distributed team or you have somebody that's away sometimes I can talk a little bit about that and what it means to you or your team for you to go down there and continue to spend good time in the office sure so I think I flew almost 200,000 miles last year oh um a lot of points it's not because I like flying there is no at least any circumstance I've been involved in there there is no replacement for meeting people face to face especially you know your colleagues people that work with you are developers these these are people that I have many of them I have tremendous personal relationships with you know go to their weddings and things like that there's just a certain amount of camaraderie that you get suiting up and showing up that you cannot replicate any other way I've been told by some of our more senior people that it seems that people tend to work harder the week before I get there in the week that I'm there there's probably a little bit of truth to that but I mean we we have a tremendous internal team in terms of all our internal staff that are there on-site managing everything but but I think it does bring a certain level of energy to them and I'm in this weird position where you know I I used to know exactly what my job was and now it changes all the time you know one week I'm a cheerleader the next week I must I think I've just got the guy that just just gets stuff done right and and a lot of that stuff happens to be showing up and hanging out with my friends so that ain't a bad job isn't it that's not a bad job I can I can certainly appreciate what you're saying about just sometimes there's something lost and not having face to face regularly my first business my partner was in Cincinnati which isn't so far away it's only you know two hours from where I was but we would go weeks maybe even months without actually sitting in the same room and working we got really good at asynchronous communication but it there's definitely a loss that happens and whatever the relationship is if you're not able to kind of have some of that face time right and and that's why you know we always have work spaces available for our clients to come visit we encourage them to get temporary visas for people to come here on on work trips and we do everything in between to facilitate that absence but yeah we we find that most of our clients get that too and they show up one of my trips in March is because we have a client going there for the first time and she's like she's over the moon she can't wait to find different team building stuff sightseeing and everything work that we do in that'll I told her that will return on investment on that trip is gonna be tenfold yeah yeah do you think that you'll ever come across an idea that you want to build that maybe you guys build internally or you want to stack your own project to build something that seems to be the way that everybody's going these days especially the agencies we work for right they they spend so much time doing other people's work that they they want to do their own thing they find their own passion and and for me right now it's my head's just not there I be honest with you it's you know part of me is walking and walking the walk and talking the talk about not having distractions of other than staffing and not having those conflicts of interest part of me is that it's it's just not there and I just I'm just not coming up with stuff that I that I'm passionate about the way I did when I when I did a startup way back when I think the only thing that that I happen to be thinking about it today what does this world need that the million apps in the App Store haven't already addressed mm-hmm and I think that you know there's these people that are finding ways to innovate what's already out there and make it better they're visionaries right it's tremendous the the one place that I would love to see somebody come along and make better is is that I have four kids right so I would love to see somebody to fill up something that streamlines the communication between parents sport in school because I must delete 30 emails a day having three kids in three different schools and different sports and all those things there there has to be a way there has to be so the free idea listeners out there won't staff it but if somebody hasn't gonna my wallet yeah that's good great well is there anything that I didn't ask that you would like to share with anybody listening to this or any ask that you have of listeners no I I think that you've done a tremendously good job of covering a lot of bases I I think that I would just like to encourage people that have ideas too you know nobody became a successful entrepreneur overnight very few people if there's something that you're thinking about doing and you're passionate about doing find a way just just start doing and that the the way I got into this my my first startup I couldn't sleep at night because I was I was so absolutely convinced that I had a solution to solve real world problems that the world needed right and if you feel that way go do something go find a way you don't have to use me you don't have to use a staffing company you don't you know go get involved go get out there go to the meetups learn to code it really is an exciting world and there's so much energy out there just go get involved if somebody has questions for you or they want to talk to you about get devs what's the best way to get a hold of you sure my my email is my first initial last name at get devs comm so that is C P ay LMAO at get devs comm and I'll I'll be delighted to talk to anybody we're we're always looking for opportunities to give back in the local community and there's not often a whole lot we can do but in terms of mentoring guiding giving giving people advice on process and QA things like that we're we're very giving of our time and we seek out those opportunities and we're grateful and somebody gives us an opportunity to have those conversations and give back great Charles thank you so much for joining me for those of you who just tuned in live here this whole conversation will be recorded and as soon as it ends it'll actually be available to watch live on here so you can just hit refresh and watch it all the way back but Charles thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me it's been super helpful I think a lot of people who are looking to either hire for their startup or or get hired will find a lot of value in this so I appreciate it Thank You Jay I appreciate the opportunity all right until next time