Last week we had a tech talk 🎧 with Øyvind Nordhagen from Hjemmelegene 🇳🇴 and Bartosz Lenart - Develocraft team 🇵🇱 Thanks again for a great conversation!
During this tech talk you can explore the main challenges of the CTO when scaling your platform and how important it is for a CTO to explain the vision of a product to the developers.
Maybe we can start from the beginning. Can tell us a bit about your background and your previous roles. Yeah,
Sure. I can do that. My background is actually initially from graphic design and later on web design and then web development and still further on in application development. I've been in the design and advertising space for most of my career. It's actually 20 years of that actually before I jumped ship and joined the products space. So yeah, actually the two previous employers you have listed in the talking points would actually be quite representative of my previous experience because Schjærven is an advertising agency - a pretty classic traditional advertising agency focusing on print and TV. Yeah, you can imagine the rest of my work there was being head of the tech team and they basically developed a whole lot of landing pages, platforms, and games and different kinds of advertisement based online experiences for the clients of Schjærven. As for design, it is a strategic design firm focusing on service and product design, process design, but also UX and visual and graphic / brand design and things like that. My role there was actually quite similar to the one that's at Try/Apt, so, leading a tech team but a whole lot more focused on prototyping and basically duct taping together, every kind of technology that you can think of just to get the job done. I did everything from building simple websites to actually producing a prototype of a low cost egg pasteurizer design. It actually worked!
Did you use any software, like some kind of solid works or something like that because this sounds like 3D design like you have to have this in mind. But you have to produce it in 3D. It's not like flat structure.
Yeah. I had to design it and build it and, yeah, if you're wondering, I built it out of basically whatever parts and material I had readily available. So I was using like combining drainage pipes and whatever other kinds of materials I could find and cooling and heating elements, which were quite accessible through eBay, some ordinary stuff. And then ultimately it ended up actually working.
Yeah. I like it. I see that this conversation is like a very nice direction. You have broad experience.
Yeah. That's also, I think, partly why I wanted me to join, as well. Exactly, because of that broad experience. Yes. So we perform doctor, house calls, bringing patient care into people's homes. So that's what we do. And yeah, to be able to do that obviously we have a tailor-made platform though. That's designed and built to work in the context of how our doctors work. So you could think about it as basically a logistics and optimization platform, similar to how Uber distributes orders and, connects passengers and drivers, we connect to the doctors and patients in much the same way. But it doesn't do that. It's also about trying to think of what could be the next step for a service like that? Like what other types of devices could we be integrating? How do we do that? Like how do we increase the amount of productive time that the doctors are able to spend versus nonproductive time, for instance? Driving, parking, you know, dropping off tests, or whatever else.
Writing documents or something like that.
Yeah. So it's like a wide range of problem solving that goes into this job. And you know, when you have a background that's as diverse as mine you're not necessarily the one size fits all approach where, you know the the old expression about when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Right. So, in my case, I have experienced so many different things in technology that it's not really about what I know; it's about what I use, why not, what I know is out there.
And how does your team look? Can you say something about that?
Yeah. At the moment, we're actually a very small team. It was increased from one being me to two in October. Prior to that, we also used a hired consultant for three years and he's still on the team. So at the moment we're actually three people in the tech team. The whole of the team is 10 people. So that's across operations, customer support, full-time doctors, and things like that. And, the total amount of service providers we have in our platform is about a hundred.
Thanks. And Bartek, maybe you can say something about your background and some current projects.
Yeah, sure. I think I will reply to what you said. Because I think we can share some kind of same history of being not like in technical stuff, basically close to programming or something like this. Not technical or creative or part of doing some kinds of different things. So we can look at it out of the box.
Yeah. That's the term I would apply. Yeah.
Yeah. So I've been building mathematical models for jet engines and gas turbines, and this was 3D models. I've been doing their scripting and stuff like this but we've got a lot of different tools like modeling. And that's why I've asked you. This software is like writing algorithms or writing a math equation or something that is very simple compared to how many different things you have to account for when you design something and how many things you have to take off to make this work. Because good design has less, or at least that the most important parts. And this is the most challenging part of the design to make it work with less parts than you have when you started. Because some some things are not so important. They are just breaking things, or wherever.
So I have been doing that. And then I went to big data working in England and then came back and I started doing programming. And most of the time right now I do programming. But going back to what your experience, I feel that programmers - I don't want to say they are bad at it, but they are lacking this too much. They are too much the guy with the hammer, which is how you said it. They are like, 'Okay, I did it like this, so I am going to do it like that in future.' It's a bigger service for everything. Mobile it's like this, so we have this CMS. They do not focus on the solution first. Like think! Think of the problem. What can you can do there? So I, I think I like it. I'm not working too much with ideas, but I see some kind of gap that should be filled. Fully fulfilled with people that can be technical, though they don't have to be very technical; they don't have to write code, but if they understand and if they're creative and they've been doing a lot of creative things and working with the client they can be between those technical people that only want to write code. And between those people that are very sales focused, and so on. And then you're like the adopter connecting those people together. It's a real job. It's very hard job too, because if you're writing a program, you can sit somewhere and just write a code with headphones on listening to music and so on. But you have to be thinking of the client, with the technical thing, the problem, and creativity. So I feel that you have to train yourself to be creative. If you do this more and more, you know how it works and how to find out solutions.
Yeah. But at the same time, I find that given the right circumstances, most people will have an inkling of how to be creative. To be able to facilitate that. I am a firm believer in offering people a chance for both ownership and empathy with the end-user or whatever you're trying to do or whatever you're trying to solve. Particularly talking about the problem space here, not necessarily the solution space, because as you might've noticed, we are a pretty small team at the moment and have an even smaller tech team. That basically means that all three of us working on the tech team, we're pretty much involved with every aspect of running the business. We know how every feature design and develop is supposed to work and what problem it solves for whom.
And even though we're a three people team, we all actually have three different groups of users for our solutions. It's obviously the service providers, the doctors, and the nurses. There's always obviously the patient, in addition to that, it's also the admin team and the support staff, which is basically in one group. And they're also using the solutions that we create. And so we have a very 'eat your own dog food' kind of attitude towards these these things. So we try to be in their shoes every time, understanding how they're doing it, watching over their shoulders, trying to understand what problems they have and why they don't use what the developer made. Like you expected them to, right? Everyone who's onboarded has to go out with a doctor for one day and be part of everything they do; visiting patients and things like that because they actually need to understand the context of where they're working on and what types of problems they're trying to solve.
And that translates into ownership of the problem. It also translates into empathy for the people who are having those problems, the ones that, if you're successful in creating these aspects, I find that people are naturally quite creative about solutions. So that's been working well for me. Both at TM and Aetna and in previous teams that I've worked in. It's actually something that I've carried with me from the time at Design X, which has a very high focus on user driven design and an empathy and understanding of the user journey and so forth.
When I was preparing for this talk, I found a question; 'What do you think about the vision?' And you just explained it. So how important is for you to understand the vision of the product? What is it trying to achieve? So, yeah, I think you said it that, too. Let me just add some things, because I think it's very important. The context is extremely important.
It's not, 'I want to do this'. It's like, I know how to do it, why to do it with who, for whom. And what's the context of it? Like, go there and see it, because if you're going to touch it, you will be more involved with building this social. And when we don't know when we want to go no one can take us there. Like, if someone is standing in front of me and saying, 'I want this and okay', I can bring you this. But first of all, I need to understand you. I need to feel what you really need. Ask questions, put your shoes on and walk with you. And okay, this is like, okay, this is your point of view. It's sometimes very rare in technical teams. It should be more commonly taught and explained why we do this, because if people understand what they have to do or what we want to try to achieve they will be more involved in process. They can bring their own solutions.
Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. And there's also another dimension to this, I think. And it's something that, you know, ultimately the quality of work produced by anyone ultimately just depends on personal motivation, right? Like, we all know that if you have to do something that you're not really motivated to do, then you're going to perform poorly. And in relation to how you would perform, if you were excited about what you're doing you would perform better. Right?
I'm smiling because I just wrote something very similar. People like to do perfection, what they like to do. If they do what they like, they do it the best they can.
Yeah. They enjoy it. They pull out the extras, extra stops, they Polish it. They make sure it's, it's error free. And, um, yeah, they, they take ownership, right? When you, when you, you, when you properly immerse in what they're trying to do, you can't achieve that. Unless people actually understand fully the, what they're trying to do, how they're going, going to do it, who they're solving problems for how they will be using it and why. Right. So, and also it's important to note that any, no matter how good you are at writing specifications, all technical staff will always be making a whole lot of decisions along the way, because you can go back and ask every single question you might have. You, you must, you must make assumptions while you're working. That means that ultimately you'll end up with a lot of actually proposed solutions, uh, that are sort of just innate in the product you've created.
You can specify anything. And if you want someone technical, who's building a solution to freestyle like that, you better know that they actually have a fairly good understanding of what they're doing. Because that will ultimately guide their decisions along the way. And you get a lot more speed from that ownership just because people inherently understand how they need to do something. They don't need to spend too much processing power trying to work out or getting back to people to find out why or how. They just innately know it. Right?
Yeah. Day-to-day, they feel more responsible for what they're doing. They know that there is their job. And even when I was working as a structural engineer with jet engines and, and so on, had we, we got something like a product owner and the product owner or hardware owner was someone that was, the engine was separated in many, many pieces. And there was a few people knowing, you know, few, because if someone would die or something, they, that we have another person that understands the process of this part very well. But you have to know a lot of about the whole product, but this part was yours. You made the most important decisions about this, this part. So, and you knew everything, you knew all the history of the, of the, of this part. And if someone was like trying to change something, you eat something, you could explain that.
No, no, no, this is not a good idea because of this and that and that, and this, and then we have this and something like, yeah, this, this is like extremely the speed of that process. Uh, V very, very well, but for, for the beginning is hard because at the beginning, people need to, uh, load much more knowledge and I put more effort, but this like one half maybe, and then they are, they are like, they don't have to use so much brain power, as you said, they are letting all the knowledge. So they don't have to go somewhere and read about it and understand this guy, uh, part of the code or the process or product or any anything yet. Yeah, totally agree. Yeah.
But, uh, I'm, I'm curious about your journey as well. Uh, I mean, you, uh, you know, work at, uh, I understand there's a consultancy for web and app development.
Yes. Yeah. So ...
How's the journey from being a jet engine engineer, uh, to that, like, how does that,
Uh, this is very nice job to be, to do jet engines, but, uh, we don't have any company in Poland that do, does, there is a sub in Sweden, uh, GE general electric in, uh, in USA and, uh, Royce in, uh, uh, in England. Uh, they have companies, uh, and there is a, that do does lot in Germany, of course, some Chinese companies and Japanese, so that the market for, for working for the, for these companies, it's like, you have to go abroad and stay there. It's not always good for few reasons. You're always, you know, your patients, not your country. So you have to adapt. And, uh, some people that, well, some people not. So it's not so well in Europe, we are almost same, but in USA, the people are different for me when I went there. I mean, they're working there and, uh, uh, they, uh, they, they build, uh, uh, like, uh, uh, project, uh, or engineering team in Poland, a very huge, like 3000 engineers because we are cheap or have been cheap.
And they decided, okay, they are getting more expensive. So the best one we're going to take with us. And then we going to move to India, uh, and China, and, and I've seen that, okay, uh, I should move somewhere or I have to look around for some new job. Something that is more, uh, stable and coding is, uh, is very stable because you don't have to go on the place, see the jet engine, or see the gas turbine and work there. You can spend your time at your home, do your job good enough to, to, to, to offer a good service. So then I went to do that, uh, and, uh, yeah, building some data, uh, big data projects, uh, working with, uh, building some kind of platform for a billing platform for us export European export to Australia and, uh, and New Zealand, uh, uh, that people could find the product need really fast and they can connect with people that can offer it. And then I went and I went deeper and deeper to coding. So, yeah, right now I'm, I feel that this is the, the, the, the way I would like to go
And work on, you know, complex engineering problems when you were, uh, when you were just starting out and, and when you were educated.
Yeah.
Right. So how do you find it like to do, do you, um, do you find the problems that you're working on now to be too simplistic?
No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't know anything about, because it's like, like rocket, rocket science, you know, like beat the rockets. I am sure I should be very, you know, uh, let's say, uh, very well educated for something like this. Of course, for some reason, it's about right now, we have this, uh, that people are working, let's say on one small part. And if they, it's not like you are, you load a lot of, you know, more or less like jet engine works. But right now there is few people reading the company that really understands that the whole process. And there is a lot of small engineers that are doing small parts very well. So it's not like, uh, it's very different. Sometimes the problem here are more challenging because you're facing clients all the time and it's been more agile. You are not like we have product pro project, uh, drawings that you build the model, then we calculate it. And then we go back, like, we build this, we show this and we just got to see what happens. We don't know. Really. Yeah.
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah. So, uh, I don't know, how do you wanna move on here? Do you wanna sort of go back to the, uh, the talking points or,
Yeah, I'm just checking, uh, we got some couple of minutes, more Hmm. Mary D uh, event, you can tell us, uh, that last point, how that communication was developers differ when they are internal and when they are outsourced, maybe this one.
Yeah. I, I, I'm not sure if I'm the best to answer that because I don't actually have a ton of experience working without source the developers. Um, a little, I do have, uh, but yeah, I guess my response would be that my, my experience so far has been pretty much along what people tend to expect, uh, that, you know, working without source developers, you to be a much more specific and better in precise in how you specify things. Uh, and, uh, it also requires, uh, clarity and consistency in communication in a way that you might not need always with, uh, with internal developers, like obviously going back to, to what I, what I said earlier about, you know, when you have a team where you can then depend on the team members, actually having, uh, an ownership and understanding of the problem space, you're working with them, then a lot goes on set and can go on set because it's sort of just innate knowledge, right?
You don't necessarily have that benefit when you're working with, uh, outsource, um, outsource teams. Uh, that being said, I'm, I find that there are multiple ways of working with outsource teams and, and, uh, and the, the general, uh, the general recommendations that I've gotten from other side talk to who have worked a lot more with outsourced teams than I have, is that it's generally always a good idea to consider the outsource team members as being part of your internal team, which means, you know, bring them along for the staff meetings and, and, uh, and let them, let them have the insight they need to, to know who they're actually working for, because that, that that's both socially a better position for them to be in. But also obviously it, it, it gives you a lot more of that innate knowledge that you, that you shouldn't be able to, and then can depend on with these people, um, if you're successful at it, but obviously, uh, you know, uh, having people readily available like locally, physically present with you in the same room is obviously something else than, than being remotely. But at the moment, I think we're learning a lot because I mean, we are we're our, in, in, in, in practice, like we were all remote at the moment. Like we have been mostly remote for the past year. I'm basically remotes to all the people on my team. We're doing, we're talking in the same sense in the same manner as we're talking right now every day. So, um, that it's, it's changing. Um, and it has changed my perception on, you know, where to look for new hires, for instance. Um, yeah.
Uh, what, what's the biggest mistake that outsourcing team can, can make from your point of, uh, experiencing,
Well, the biggest team, the biggest mistake that the team?
Yeah. If I, if I would, let's say I would have some kind of, uh, outsource, uh, project that I in. What do you think that the biggest mistake you've seen or you think that people are doing on the beginning from the Ferber perspective of the people that are joining the team or starting a job, or being like brought in us as, uh, as, uh, uh, outsourcing support?
Well, I, I, I I'm, I'm, um, I'm a little unsure on how to answer that. I'm still a little unsure about, like, do you, do you, I mean, the biggest mistake from the people, uh, from the, the, the person managing the outsourcing team's perspective or from the team working for, working
For, for the team working on, because why I'm asking this question, because I think, uh, this, this, this, uh, but you can, you can make a lot of effort, you can bring people in. And, uh, but they did a lot of depends on them, of course. And they sometimes can make a huge mistake on the beginning that will really, uh, uh, be the biggest problem on the biggest issue stopper for you to, to cooperate with them. Well, besides, uh, problems with speaking very well in language or something that that's like more, I think this partic or more like soft skills that they have to have, or what they have to avoid to, uh, to, to not be seen us, like, uh, like we just, uh, you know, outsourcing there, but sure enough, we going to bring this back.
Yeah. Okay. I think I get it now. Um, I mean, um, I mean, given that, you know, um, that you've been successful in finding a match, both, uh, you know, skill-wise and seniority wise and, uh, good team composition and, uh, good specifications and, you know, all, everything that's structurally supposed to, you know, keep this working is set up properly. I would say that the, the, like the one outlier thing that I can imagine being a problem would be a cultural one. I mean, we, uh, I've been, I've been interviewing candidates, uh, from, from India, from Poland, from Ukraine, from Germany, from Columbia and from the USA. And I mean, the, the, both the, like the meeting room culture, the managerial style, uh, like basically everything about business is different between all these, uh, these countries. Right. And I'm not recognizing that that difference is there, I think is a major pitfall, um, and not actively working on trying to, trying to bridge that gap. I mean, it might seem a little uncomfortable, I think, to sort of start a collaboration like that without, as like with, you know, actually hosting a nice meet and greet and, and making sure that you actually get to know people a little bit outside of, of, you know, their resumes. I mean, um, for instance, in, in, uh, in Asia, there's a big culture about, you know, not wanting to admit, to not understanding or making presence. Yeah. I mean that, that's, that's not a myth that's real, I've got same experience.
I mean, when I've had candidates, for instance, from India who clearly haven't understood.
Tech challenge assessment that, that they've been given. And then instead of actually writing or asking follow-up questions, they'll just flat out, don't show up for the review session. I'm not saying that's like the typical thing for anyone from India to do. I'm just saying that there's something culturally, uh, that's sort of bringing them to behave in this way or might be bring them to behave in this way. Uh, because, you know, we, we haven't been able to set up like a mutual understanding about the differences of our cultures. Not saying that one should adapt to the other, other person's culture, but just being aware that these things are different and, and setting some ground rules for these things. I mean, I, you need to, like, in some cultures, uh, being the weijden, you kind of like, we have a weird, very unformal, uh, business culture, probably among the least formal business business cultures in, in the whole world.
I think I can safely say that. So I expect people to raise their hands and ask me a question. And if I said something that they couldn't comprehend, right. That's just my expectation. I can't, I can't necessarily rely on that expectation if I'm talking to someone from a different culture, I need to be aware that, you know, I need to make sure that people actually understand, I might need to explain things in two different ways, without people asking me to I'm, I need to, uh, to ask specific follow-up questions that I wish they would like, or, you know, rhetorical ones, or I might, uh, might actually ask them specifically, you know, is this clear to you? Is there anything here that I could help you clarify, if you look over this, is there anything here that seems, you know, vague or missing or whatever, you know, being specific like that, that could be one thing. And I mean, that's just an example of where cultural differences make a difference. Um, I'm in now I take it. You're in Poland. I haven't really, uh, experienced any major differences in, in these, like in business culture, at least with, uh, with people I've talked to from, from Poland. I find that you're pretty much a lot more aligned with, uh, what's going to Navien business culture like that. Um, which is always,
Yeah, and it's a compliment because, uh, Poland is a country that is growing and it was like, yeah, for many, many years, uh, companies. And so there is some people had this kind of thinking like, uh, the old one, uh, very lazy, I would say, but it's changing a lot. And we like, uh, we, we, we, we look for the closest, uh, in April like Germany and we see them, okay. They are, they making everything very, uh, trying to, or they building very well. Like it's, it's good stuff. And we see, we respect that. So people are changing Poland. They, they, they see that they have to bring more, uh, um, uh, effort, but like more, uh, precision and, uh, make stuff better. Like, do it as good as you can as is possible, not like salt chip stuff and more, more East, is it?
I think it's this. I don't want to say that all of them, I don't want to be rude for anyone, but it's, I started strictly speaking his language and Poland is somewhere in between and it's changing. So sometimes we can find people that are very, very good at something and then do the best job. And sometimes you can just find some people that, that are, uh, that are just selling rubbish or bringing rubbish, but it's changing of course. And, and yeah, we, we are closer and I think people just see people traveling, people going to Norway, going back home to Sweden or somewhere to Germany, we are open. So we see there is not like one line of speech that the word looks like this. We can go there and go back and have our own opinion. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's that, that kind of thing is changing people here in Poland.
I think so. Yeah. It's like, uh, for us, it's always compliment if someone says, okay, you're you have working culture similar to ours for, for me, for sure. Uh, yeah. You just explained it to me, explained to me very well, and I have the same, um, um, uh, view on the, and experience with people working from India, where we got a person that was hiding, we've got like chart and on the chart was like that this was the breaking point that's level and chart went above. So he covered it with picture not to show it. And so you didn't ask what is there. And he was like embarrassed. And we sat, and we said to him, this is your calculations. If they, if, if the chart is like, this is not your fault. You, you, you did a good job. You don't have to calculate to be good. You have to calculate to be true.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, there, there are a lot of, um, there are a lot of, uh, uh, you can make a lot of generalizations about different nationalities and, and their business culture, and yeah. Obviously you don't want to be rude or stigmatizing. Right. But for the purposes of having a conversation like this, I think it's fine to, to, to generalize a little bit. There's no harm intended in it. I mean, there's, uh, there's, there are downsides to Norwegian business culture as well, right. Uh, as there is to any, any other type of business culture and, and, you know, to be precise, I mean, there's actually quite big, quite a big difference between the business cultures among this kind of naming, uh, countries as well, like sweet and sweet, a much more consensus oriented than the regions are. And, and Danes are much more hierarchical, hierarchical than the regions, uh, end suites are much more authored or, or, Oh, man, this is hard to say authoritarian, you know? Yeah. So, uh, so, uh, so yeah, there, there, there's, it's not just, it's not by, it's not by continent even. It's very different from us, right? Yeah.
But this is a good example of what is, uh, I would just jump to the, to the, to the structural engineering. And it's like with people, same situation, when you want to calculate something and like the, the, the, the, the flow of the term picture from one point to the other, in the complex body, you are not making this, like a lot of every single point, you make it statistically statistical approach. And it's good enough to have some kind of view. And we are we speaking the same thing about the cultural, like we are statistically speaking, it's more probable to have that kind of approach here and here and here. Yeah. But of course they are great. Engineers are great people everywhere, and they're, it's, it's, it's, we are more and more global village, but yeah, statistically speaking, it's like probability of, uh, that people not admitting the, the, the, the problems are not understanding is more common in, in the, the, this, this kind of,
Hey, give me like, uh, the, the, the high level pitch about, uh, Polish business culture and, uh, yeah.
Uh, example, like example, a company at Allegro it's kind of eBay like poet. Very good, very, uh, uh, well, well, this is well designed where, uh, architectures a solution for selling, uh, in, in Poland, it's like monopolar, eBay, and no one can get and do anything for them. So they, they, they offer a very, very good service. So, uh, uh, that's why I think they, this is, uh, uh, what else, uh, uh, from, uh, it,
Yeah, this is like more you, if you are, if you're, uh, if you are ordering something, if you don't have to order to your place to your home in, in, in every single place in Poland, like maybe not more than, than half a kilometer from you, but more times than like one, 100 meters from you, there are boxes, especially mate, that you can open it with your phone. You're ordering to this place. They are bringing this and putting there, and you're going and just taking a packet. So you can take wherever you have like 48 hours to, to take a package. And then you have a lot of thought authorize information on their phone. You cannot pick it, this message. You can open this with screening a coat, a lot of things. And it's working very well. And it made like, uh, deliver a very fast because they are not going from the client to client or out there, or going to a place, putting all the packages to one place and going to the next place. So you can have like one day delivery from, from sometimes from one part of the Poland to the other. So I think it's very, very good idea to centralize into building some kind of places that everyone have, like close distance. And it's not a problem for you. So any, of course you can, you can order to your home as well, but it's very, very convenient to, to,
I was alluding to, you know, business culture or culture in general.
Okay. I understand.
So me, let's say I want to, I want to build an app. I want to build a team in Poland. What do I need to be aware of in terms of, uh, uh, communication culture, business culture, um, to, to, to work better with a Polish company,
Poland is very diversified. Like, people are much more different because we've got like three East, uh, South and, and, uh, and West people are closer to Germany are more like thinking for like Germans people, German people, really. And if you go, if you go through the Poland drive to the pontoon, you see that closer to Germany, cleaner, they are the places, everything. If you go too close to the West, people are more like that. There is a lot of influence from Russia. This is not good influence this very lazy approach. Like we have to, we don't have to work. Everything will be fine. Some kind of approach and more to the South. Uh, I think they are like both things like merge together. Uh, so the first thing is people are different. It depends on the, uh, important, very, very different. Uh, the second thing is, uh, uh, they are, they like to have a fun, like, it's, it's easy to, to, if you, if you, if you went to Poland, they would like to show you everything during with you.
Like, they are very social. They like to, they like that, but they are, if they will treat you like a guest, if the, if you are not trying to them, your best friend, if they see that you are a threat to them, that they very, they close, like closing straight away. They, they, they, they like going back. Uh, so, so, uh, so they are changing faces if, if, if they feel scared or, or something, let's say, um, let's say stressed anyhow, anyhow. So that, so when you see the Polish person very close or, uh, uh, not mean sometimes most of the time they are very, they are stressed or they don't know what what's going on. And they are just like this. They, they, they, they are bringing this face. Uh, yes, I think, uh, they are not trusting, uh, uh, they are not trusting, uh, maybe not each other, but it's the structure. Right. And this is the baptized communism, of course, where, you know, this is not because you are good at something because you have connections. Right. So they are, yeah. Most of the patients changing, but there is some kind of, uh, uh, uh, yeah, this kind of approach to not trust, uh, the structure, question, the structure, or why, why he's telling me this.
No, I mean, yeah. To give you, uh, I I'm okay to go on for the last 10 minutes up there. Uh, but, um, uh, so, so here's, here's something from, from a conversation I had with the Polish dev ops engineer, uh, that was, it was actually, while in, in London discussing a larger project that we were collaborating on back when I was working at design it. So we were out, uh, out just for like a team dinner and drinking and, and basically, uh, you know, uh, talking and, uh, and so, uh, this, uh, this Polish dev ops engineer, he was asking me like, are there many Polish people in Norway? And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, quite a lot. Actually many of them are, you know, uh, Pressman or, you know, carpenters or Columbus or, or whatever. Um, but, and he was like asking me, like, how's the, do you know anything about the Polish community?
And also, and I mentioned the fact that I know that, but for instance, then in the Polish community, in Norway, there is actually, uh, a closed loop taxi service only for people from Poland. So there's like an unofficial taxi, taxi business for Bolex. And also it's, it's obviously like completely under the radar. It's a no taxes and like a lot. And, and, uh, and, uh, yeah, and he was like, yeah, that's, that's pretty typical Polish. That's like something you've kind of set up your own community within the community, your own infrastructure. And they said, they're, they're probably importing their own cigarettes and liquor and stuff like that as well. And I said, yeah, I think I actually know that they do. Um, and he, he sort of brought, so, um, the reason I'm kind of comfortable telling you guys this as if it was the Polish guy who told me this so well, in, in his impression that would be like a, quite a typical Polish thing to do. You kind of keep to your own and, and, and build your own community inside whatever community you're in. Uh, maybe that's dumb to the fact that a lot of Polish people have, uh, sort of, uh, migrated out of Poland into being forming sort of X-Box communities in other countries because Polish workforce is very sought after in many countries.
Uh, I think it's, uh, it's even deeper. I am aware of this. I've been living in London for seven years and I've been, we were living in Polish committees everywhere around and to go out and to see other London, I have to move out, uh, from the Polish community and have different friends and different different colleagues all around. And I'm not proud of it, but it's the only way because they are very close. And then the problem is.
That's practice.
Is a very good question. I think I, I would like to, I, I'm not the best, uh, advertisement Polish people abroad because, uh, 80 to 90% of people go going abroad, like for working for a job, they cannot find jobs in Poland so that they will go there and they go there because, uh, they, they are lacking that kind of, uh, people, you know, uh, you have more, uh, that, uh, want to do better job, like, uh, they want to, they don't want to be plumber. So if I go there and I can do plumbing and you show me how much I can earn they, okay. I can do plumbing. No worries. So that they go there, but they cannot find that the work here, this is the problem. I'm not saying everyone, there's a lot of Polish people are very, very, very, uh, very good at that song and engineering doctors. So more like everybody, but why they do it?
Well, that's the thing I was thinking about. Like, uh, this is kind of like the only stereotype of a Polish person that I have had ever sort of described to me. So that's the only thing I kind of feel that I can safely say that, and I've had this confirmed, not from you, but other, other people from Poland as well. Uh, so that's sort of like the only sort of truth that I know about, you know, culture, right. So kind of the question I'm getting at is like, let's take that as an example, does this in any way influenced Polish business culture and, and is there something there that, that I, that might be helpful for me to be aware of and working with from Poland?
I think so. Yeah. I think the, the, the history of Poland is very important because of when the second world war ended, we haven't been free. We that there is a lot, uh, we've been in communism. So there was like, uh, influence of Russia over Poland. And you don't want to have, if you are ruling the country, you don't have to want to have very intelligent people there. So every single intellectual person from Poland were or killed or get to go back or to Siberia somewhere there. So other people seeing this, they want to stay, don't want to stand up. So you have to behave like, uh, cooperate together, closely trust, only your neighbors and your closest, because everybody can, you know, uh, threatening. You can go and say to that, to the Russians, for, to, to Russian basically. And everything was stolen from poet like Russia, where we was getting everything from Poland, from Ukraine as well.
That's why we have this kind of situation. Ukraine. We have a lot of Ukrainians working in Poland, Ukrainians working with us with our company we have on that is from Ukraine is very, like, we can understand him, like there is a war with rash other, and we can understand him. And he, he's saying a lot of things about recreating that for us, it's like, okay, now I know the Ukrainians do the same in Poland because they are, they feel threatened. They, they have this, this, this thinking in, in, in the head from the, from the past, from the parents, you know, trust yourself because, and we change. And yet we see, okay, that's how, that's why I said that we traveling around and we see, okay. Th th th the word is kind of different.
So would it be, would it be unfair or fair to at least to some extent, try and extrapolate from this, that, uh, that, uh, working with, uh, Polish people, you CA you can kind of generally, uh, expect them to at least be more distrustful to you by default, then I would think of a typical Norwegian, for instance.
Yes. For sure. I think most of the time it's going to work, but I don't think so that you have to make any effort to explain too much. I think the effort is for, from, uh, from our side, like Polish people, just to open your mind and see, no one will do it. If it's not like you bring the solution, give them that we have to learn it. It's like a process. And we are in the process, like in the process, a lot of things is going on in Poland at the moment with many, many things, but most of the population of Poland is like, uh, they, they, they see that the world is changing is different and don't want to stay with the, with the view of the past. So I think this is our job. This is our effort, as opposed to people, but knowing this, we will make you like a more relaxed about, okay, this is, you know, they got to deal with it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, uh, thank you for indulging me and a conversation about this point. I hope that you, you feel that, uh, that, uh, we're able to talk about this in a non-judgemental way from, from my side, I'm, I'm curious, I'm interested very much respect for, for the, for the culture and the background, sort of leading up to whatever, whatever Kara characterized, as a certain culture, we have our own, uh, you know, facets of being the region as well. That's, that's, that's very much,
You might say, say problems with Sweden, but yeah. You've been like you haven't been independent for many, many years. Yeah. So I think you have, you can understand it very well.
I think it's just super, super interesting. That's, that's what I want to get across. It's, it's super interesting. And, uh, and, uh, it's just part of, uh, how, how, uh, certain people sort of evolve from their history and their background into something, which again, sort of going back to business culture and collaboration and outsourcing specifically. I mean, these things do tend to make, make themselves visible. It does tend to become something that you in any in some shape or form, you need to sort of work with these differences, right. For them, and not necessarily pick on people for being different. Right. Sure. Me work Norwegians. What you will expect are the two things you will probably notice is that one Norwegians are typically very reserved, a little, you know, maybe a little socially awkward. And, and, uh, we like, for instance, uh, we won't typically talk to strangers on the bus or anything like that.
That's very unwieldy. If you look at a typical Norwegian bus during rush hour, you will find that everyone, even the people setting like shoulder to shoulder on the same seats, they will try and find like, uh, a vacant, you know, uh, vector, uh, for their field of view where they can look. So they don't have to look at anyone else. Yeah. That's a very typical Norwegian thing, you know? And, uh, I, I don't know what the why this is. I don't think, but at the same time though, it's very interesting to, to, to note the fact that, uh, in Norway, we have a very like base, very high baseline of trust. You know, you don't distrust people just because you don't know them, but for some reason you don't want to talk to them. I don't know. There's, there's kind of a disconnect there, but these are, these are, I would say, like off the top of my head, these would be the two prime cultural things that you would notice about working with Norwegian people, uh, is that these things will become apparent when you try and collaborate with regions.
I've seen, I went to Bergen for, for, uh, because, uh, well, just want to say,
Well, just not representative because Bergeb considers himself a Republic inside of Norway. So, uh,
Bartosz*
Okay. Okay. Yeah. I've noticed that people like, uh, a kind of different behavior, but if you're going to tweet those things like Polish people, we talked with you more often. If you, if you it's, it's hard to speak with all these people in English, because there is a growing population of, of Polish people speaking in English, but still not so, so huge, but on the street, they're going to speak with you, but they will not trust you. So it's like making that, make those things opposite and you get like, uh, uh, statistically good representation of Polish population. It's changing all the time and it's changing in the good direction of course. But yeah. And I'm glad that you asked it because I think, uh, uh, what you said, I found that on the beginning, I, I, I'm sure that you are the person that wants to know, just to understand. And I'm happy just to give you some kind of my point of view or maybe yeah. Just to, to bring you some, some knowledge. So yeah, I see this from the point of view of, of, of interest of,
Øyvind88
Yeah. Thank you too, for indulging me in this conversation. I think you actually made the point pretty well, uh, that you put it simply, you can, you can take exactly the cultural traits in the regions and Polish and flip them around and you have polar opposites when it comes to those two aspects that we just talked about. And that's very, very interesting. And I think actually, uh, that, uh, I had a realization when you said that and, uh, I think it's an important one and it's something that I'll, uh, I'll bear in mind because I will most definitely work with Polish companies in the future. Uh, I am I, um, you know, in meetings with Polish companies, like every other day now these days, so it's, it's something for me to keep in mind. And I think that's a, that's a, that's a very clear takeaway for me from, from this conversation quite, quite nicely. Uh, I'm actually out of time, but, uh,
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. A lot of knowledge. Very good time together.
Yeah. Likewise, I enjoy talking to you guys, so, so thank you for your time.
Yeah. And maybe see you later sometimes. Maybe
Let's see. Yeah.
Bye-bye.
