Today we continue the interview with Alex Zub, founder of Handsome. Today's episode is sponsored by Fuse! Build native iOS and Android apps with less code and better collaboration. Head over to spec.fm/fuse to learn more today!
Today we continue the interview with Alex Zub, founder of Handsome.
Today's episode is sponsored by Fuse! Build native iOS and Android apps with less code and better collaboration. Head over to spec.fm/fuse to learn more today!
Building a company is more than just writing code, and it's more than just getting clients. A lot of what you do when you build a development company is you create connections between the people on that company. This shouldn't come as a surprise. Most likely, most of you are working on development teams that have these kinds of connections. In today's episode, we're continuing our interview with Alex Zhu, and we talk about these kinds of topics. In today's episode, how Alex is doing this at Handsome. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. You're listening to Developer Tea. My goal on this show is to challenge you, to give you the insights and information, the interviews, and the coaching that you need to become the great developer that you want to be. That's my goal here. If I'm not succeeding at this, let me know. You can reach out to me. Let me know what you want. What you would like to hear about and what things are working and what things are not working. You can reach me at developertea at gmail.com. The goal of this show is not to make things easy on you, but instead to help you when you encounter difficult things. Becoming better at what you do takes some sacrifice. It takes some pain. It may take a lot of really intense thinking, maybe some really intense practicing, a lot of iteration. But in the end, you will become better. As a result of it. So thank you so much for sticking with us. And if you are not dedicated to becoming a great developer, there are other podcasts that you can probably listen to or other things that you can do because this is not going to be an easy road. It certainly is something that you have to dedicate yourself to. Thank you again for listening. And thank you again to Alex for stopping by and talking with me. This is such a fantastic interview. I hope you enjoy the second part of the interview. And by the way, if you missed it, you can find it on my website, which is www.dj.com. If you missed the first part, make sure you go back and listen to it. A lot of what we talk about in this interview won't make sense unless you've already heard that first part. I hope you enjoy the second part of my interview with Alex Zub. The first freelance work I've got, and well, getting back to your question about where I realized that web development, software development is something I like. I think it was in high school. At 10th grade, I have actually started to do some little projects just for myself and I enjoy that. And then I met somebody, his name is Alex A, who kind of was a mentor to me for a couple of years. And he was and he is more of a backend engineer and I was always inclined to front-end engineering. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had a good team. He brought in a couple of local clients from our city and they've built something. And I had to build something without really having any knowledge about it. You kind of fake it until you make a thing. And I spent 16 hours a day trying to build something again. So the first two projects were really intense but really valuable. And then I was using my English to find clients from overseas to us. So I was finding clients based in the US using my English. So that really helps. Now looking back at it, all those points connect so well. And I'm like, what if this didn't happen? One thing didn't happen. Would it be different? I had a dream of moving to Czech Republic and... And getting into university there. Yeah. So I wanted to learn the Czech language first for a year and then in Czech, the educational is free. It's not free in English, but it's free in their language. So I wanted to learn the language first and then get five years of education, really good school for free. So now thinking about that, like, what would happen if... If you did that. If I did that, yeah, I wanted to move to Moscow to get the university but I stayed in Omsk. I entered the university, I had really high score on my SAT, kind of, Russian SAT. Sure, yeah. And, but because I started working at the end of high school, the more, you know, the more, you know, The more, you know, going forward, I was getting more and more work to the point where I pretty much made a decision that the university doesn't give me enough value to spend so much time on it. Yeah, yeah. So I've switched to another type of education where you don't have to come into the university. Like a remote kind of. Yeah, kind of remote, but you don't get assignments throughout the year. You only get assignment in the beginning of the year or the beginning of semester. And then by the end of semester, you have to prepare for the exams. Okay, yeah. So that's what I've started to do. And I would take, you know, I would get the assignments in the beginning. Then I would have two very intense weeks before the exams to prepare for them. It worked out. Yeah. I didn't have great grades, but it allowed me to have so much time to dedicate to something I really, really loved, which was, you know, software development. And, you know, we've been, again, we've been working with my mentor on some of the projects for the clients we found overseas, which is here in the US. Yeah. And it worked out well. I mean, that's, it's led to. Me finding that client who is the CEO of our company that led me to, you know, creating that relationship. Right. That eventually allowed me to, well, first found an office in Omsk. Yep. So not work just as a group of freelancers, but actually make a team, which is. I mean, I'm sure. I'm sure you had. Exact same experience. Like making, bringing, bringing people into the team and making it so they work together in a team better than they would work individually. Yeah. Yeah. It's so fulfilling. It's good. It's great. Yeah. It's great. Challenging. And then just allowing people to come to a job that they like, do some cool stuff. And. It's just really good. I mean, there's so many companies in OMSC that aren't really great. A lot of them would build, you know, a lot of them would get things kind of thrown over the fence to them. Like, here's the design, you know, just code it. Right. Whereas in Handsome, having the two offices and having them so closely connected to each other, and having our own design, very, very strong design and user experience, it allows us to make a smooth transition from design to development, whereas developers feel very engaged. They have access to the tools where they can see how and when certain decisions were made. They can see where, you know, the designs come from. They can see the wireframes before the designs are even done. So very engaging. And they can see that the things they do, they matter. Yeah, yeah. So it's really fulfilling to provide that opportunity to people. And I moved to the U.S. two years ago to be a part of our headquarters office here in Austin. Yeah. Was that a big transition for you? Yeah, I really miss the team. Yeah, yeah. And I see them not as often as I would like. Sure. But what's fulfilling is... Yeah. ...is doing things here that grow our business and allow the office there to grow. Yeah, yeah. So that, you know, we can give really smart people really cool jobs. Yeah. That's really, I mean, that's... It's very cool to be able to say, okay, I came out of this place in Russia, Omsk. Yeah, Omsk. Am I saying that right? All right. Came out of Omsk and found a way to create a business connected to, you know, halfway around the world. And then now I'm feeding value back to Omsk to people like yourself a few years prior and helping them grow. You're growing the economy there in your hometown. Yeah. But you're also growing the economy worldwide, right? Yeah. Very interesting opportunity. Yeah. But you said before we started the interview that the two offices were not always as connected as they are now. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so that's... I mean, when we started... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When we just, you know, officially started the business, we didn't have an office in either Austin or Omsk. We've had the four other partners in Austin who work out of a house. I guess you can call it an office. Yeah. But I was, you know, I was a remote developer. That's what I was always doing. Like, I've never had experience before working in an office in a team that works... Very, you know, closely and together and very engaged. So that's what... That was what I was used to. Yep. So what I did is I hired more freelancers. Sure. And I was very comfortable with that. Like, I hired... I think at one point we had 10 freelancers that were in different places. Yeah. That worked well together. I mean, we have built products. It works. Yeah. But then I started to travel. to the US and the guys here eventually founded the office. They hired people, so they had about 10-15 people here. And as I come to the office, you can feel the culture. You can feel how well, how good it is for people to be in the same place, to share the same culture, share the same knowledge, work on the same project. You eat at the same place for lunch sometimes. Multiply the value just by being close to each other. It's something, it felt really interesting and kind of almost unique to me, just because you have that experience. But then, as I come back to Omsk in the end of 2013, I decided to actually open a brick-and-mortar office, actual office. So I started to slowly replacing the freelancers with on-site developers. Again, it's it took a lot of time for it to become really a team that works very closely together. Just because for the first few months, all it was is developers sitting together in the room, but they were still individual freelancers. So there wasn't much of engagement. There wasn't much engagement going on. That's where I learned and appreciated the power of culture and of this unified culture and this consistency in how people in the same company think. That's how I started to integrate into the office. And I think that's one of the things that helped bring offices together. I used to be the bottleneck for all the projects. I used to be the technical product manager who would be kind of an umbrella, which is good. Kind of an umbrella, but all the communication would go through me. So to all of the engineers in our Omsk office, I would be the one gateway to the gateway. So they would not, even know who is that sitting there in the Austin office and creating the design to them. So one of the changes we naturally had to make is create direct communication channels between all of the engineers and all of the designers. Have the actual unified communication tool. We set up, we had Slack, we've had the channels where everybody would be at. So everybody would be in the same channels and talking about things and talking about project and non-project. We had, we started to have developers talk to designers when they have a question. Yeah, yeah. Which is a really big thing. Sure. Kind of felt uncomfortable just because the, not everybody was very comfortable. With English. Sure. Yeah. And for many people, it was the first experience actually speaking English with a person who is, you know, native English speaker. Yep. Mm-hmm. So we've hired an English mentor. Oh, very cool. We've hired somebody who would be in the office. Yeah. Almost full time giving lessons. Yeah. You know, getting through some basics and that stuff. But more importantly, being involved in everything that is going on in the company. Kind of a culture person. Yeah, yeah. So being involved in all the company-wide events, being involved in, you know, quarterly town halls, being involved in, you know, some of the other, you know, project activities. Understand everything, like, have the understanding of the, you know, some of the technical things that are going on there. Being immersed in the process. Yeah. And then, you know, having a little bit of a little bit of a sense of the culture. Mm-hmm. And through that, know and define where some of the things that she could, you know, provide to the engineers so that they could communicate better. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That was really big. Yeah. And so now, now she's actually the one who defines some of the new activities. Oh, wow. As we have a new person, you know, when we hire somebody, either in Omsk or in Austin, we have the get to know meetings. So we have meetings where, you know, if you hire somebody in Austin, you know, everybody in Omsk could talk to the person. Very cool. The person would introduce themselves and everybody would ask questions. So there's, you know, replacing things that would otherwise happen in the office when people are together with some of the, you know, virtual activities. At the same time, you may have to find your own producer and producer may find your producer, and producer may find producer, producer may find producer, On a two-week cadence, we have WhatsApp Club, which is pretty much a 20-minute meeting to talk about something. Yeah, sure. So the participants sign up and they choose a theme and they just talk about it. And it's something, it helps. It helps to have some of those activities be outside of project work because people need some, you know, Engagement. Just normal human communication that is not necessarily, you know, project related. You know, app development has basically gone unchanged for perhaps decades. Some things have changed, little things here and there, but largely we're looking at code and then entirely separately, we're looking at the product that that code is contributing to. This disconnection, the disparateness between these two parts makes it very difficult and really time-consuming to make changes and to move. At the same time, you may find that evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution may evolution If you're not, go and check it out so you can kind of understand what this process is like. But it's an all-in-one system, basically a single package that doesn't really require a lot of setup at all. And it's available for Mac and for Windows. And the app that you build is a real native app, and it works on both iOS and Android. Go and check out what Fuse has to offer to developer T listeners by going to spec.fm slash Fuse. That's spec.fm slash Fuse. Thank you again to Fuse for sponsoring today's episode of Developer T. I'm going to give you a charge. I think you need to talk about something like this, some of these cultural elements. Because I feel like you've gone through a lot of the most common problems that people go through. And also a lot of uncommon problems that, especially as the world becomes more and more global, like especially in this industry, becoming more and more. People are going to face this stuff all the time. Culture is absolutely unavoidable. It exists whether you create it or not. And shaping the culture can be kind of the linchpin in creating a huge amount of growth, both at a personal and emotional level for your workers, but also at a financial level. Because now, for example, making a decision like hiring an English mentor, a lot of businesses would evaluate that and think, well, there's not. There's not any direct profit from that. It's entirely a cost center. And that's on the last list, at the end of my priority list, basically. But what you've found, I assume, is that that's basically unlocked a lot of much better communication between the team. It's created much more potential for the team. It's done a lot of things that otherwise you wouldn't have been able to do on your own without a lot more. Yeah. And that's why I think it's so important to have that kind of mentorship. Because people who don't have that mentorship, they can't just find it. They aren't going to find it through an online channel or something like that. It's very interesting that you've figured that stuff out kind of out of necessity rather than somebody saying, yeah, culture is important. And you saying, well, yeah, okay, I'm going to create a good culture. You've created it because you had to. And very interesting lessons to learn. Yeah. And I mean, distributed teams are... They are hard. Yeah. They do require a lot of overhead. That's something to always keep in mind. People think that the overseas team is something that is very cheap. And it's always... You just hire a bunch of people and it all happens. And you save a whole bunch of money. But the reality is you don't get access to a market with a lot of talent. But it does require... A lot of time to be invested in that. To get it set up. It's not... There's a lot of pitfalls there. Yeah. And it's easy to mess up. Sure. It's really easy. So this has been really enlightening. A great talk. I feel like there's so much more to talk about. And maybe we can talk further in another interview in the future and learn a little bit more about what it means to grow from two people, to 50 people and all the steps along the way. There's so many hurdles that you face. And every time you add another team member, you're talking about exponential number of relationships. And those being overseas relationships even is that much more complicated. So I feel like a lot of the experience you have can provide a lot of value to people. So thank you so much for sharing your story. Yeah. Thank you. I have two questions that I'd like to ask all of the developers. Who come on the show. The first one is, if you could have people ask you about one thing, what do you wish you could talk about more? And this doesn't have to be related to the company or anything like that. It can be anything at all. Yeah. Something that I like to ask people, do to the other people what you would like to be done to you. Yeah. Ask the other people what you would like you to be asked. Sure. So something I like, well, again, coming back to the different cultures and experiences. I really like talking to people who are of a different culture or who have different life experience. Yeah. Who are from another country. Sure. So something I like to ask to those people is, you know, about their life in the other country. Yeah. A lot of those people moved to the U.S. Yeah. You know, talking about the reasons of moving to the U.S. and talking about some of the things that they maybe miss. Yep. Some of the things that I think more importantly, more interestingly, things that they would bring from their country here to the U.S. Yeah. Because there's, even from my experience, there are so many things that, and kind of like, even surprisingly, there is a number of things that are, you know, implemented and done in Russia on the country level, on a higher level, like higher quality that they are done in the U.S. Uh-huh. So I could imagine that, you know, every country has some of those things that are done differently than the U.S. and probably better. Sure. So it's interesting to me to learn about that. Uh-huh. So answering your question. Yeah. If somebody asked me about that, I think there would be, you know, a few things to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. The insight we can gain from the different structures in different countries and really the fact that we can take advantage of the different structures in different countries by simply working with people from those countries, you know, learning from each other is... Yeah. And, you know, there's been statistics. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. That, you know, it's different from when you are born here. Uh-huh. And that's the only way, you know, it works. It's the status quo. Yeah. For somebody who comes from another place, it's just, you get a whole new experience and your mind thinks in, you know, some other way that makes you make some decisions that other people would not make. Sure. And sometimes, maybe often, maybe not. But those decisions are, you know, there are decisions that make, that makes you a, you know, company or business or any kind of venture successful. Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. And so, the idea being that, you know, if you, not everybody is, has the same experience. Not everybody has the same background. In fact, you can experience some of the same value out of simply somebody from a different state, somebody from a different city. Yeah. So, I think a lot of people push against the idea of... Yeah. Of working with someone who is very different from them because it's uncomfortable. It's not, it's not the easiest thing, right? To work with someone who has extremely different experience from you. But what I think you'll find, as you've clearly found, is that as you work with those people, new and exciting opportunities come out of no, seemingly nowhere. Right? Because they just have a completely different perspective. Yeah. Very interesting. So, take advantage of your differences. Don't, don't view them as... As obstacles, but as opportunities. It's very good. So, the second question I like to ask everyone who comes on the show. If you could give all developers 30 seconds of advice, what would you tell them? So, the advice I would give is... The advice I would give is think outside the box. And when you are asked, like, don't take instructions for... Face value. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Always think beyond that. If you're asked to make a website, always think about what is it that it's going to accomplish. If you're asked for some kind of tool, who's going to be using it? What are they going to be doing with that? You know, make sure the experience for the user, you know, is where it needs to be. Uh-huh. And there's so many... Like, I think that's what defines a really great developer. From a good one. Yeah. A really, really great developer, he solves a problem. Yeah. He doesn't just make a thing. Uh-huh. He really solves a problem. Yeah. So, he thinks about the... Solving problems is really what we do as our job, right? I think a lot of people get this wrong, especially young developers. They think that their job is to write code. Or they think their job is to architect something, right? Yeah. And what I found is ability to create, you know, good, you know, create good code is only at 40 to 50% of success. Yeah. Great developers. There are so many soft skills that come with that. Sure. Like, the ability to communicate, ability to explain some of the, you know, technical things. Ability to, like, explain it like M5, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The ability to understand the ask. The ability to know what questions to ask. Uh-huh. The ability to manage expectations. Yep. The ability to, you know, you got to, as much as you have to do it in a drillbook experience for the users, you got to make it an enjoyable experience for your client. Yeah. So, in your communication with the client or, you know, with your communication with whoever the stakeholder is, even if it's in your own company, your goal... as a software engineer, as a developer, is to make sure this experience of working together is enjoyable for both. Yeah, yeah. And I think it applies to any job, really. Yeah, absolutely. But in software development, it's something where there are many opportunities to easily make that happen. It's such a modern field that moves forward so fast that it's not hard to introduce some different process or different way to do things in order to make it a better experience for everybody. Right. And really, it comes down to, and this is kind of a stretch, but it comes down to thinking about your job more in terms of customer service than in terms of the product, right? Yeah, exactly. Because the best way for me to serve the customer is... Not to frame their problem through my own lens, right? But instead to approach the problem as outside of myself as I can. And to look at it from the perspective of, you know, I have a tool set, but that tool set may or may not be, or my predictions may or may not be the best thing for this client. Yeah. Even to the point that sometimes you may find that you're not even the right person to solve that problem, right? And you know, sometimes, the client comes to you and they ask for something and the right answer is, well, you do not need that. Right, yeah. That's not something that you need to build. Like, there's something else that you need to do in order to accomplish the same goal and, you know, maybe way faster. Because, you know, a lot of clients, they're not technically inclined. They're not, they don't know all the details. And a lot of them are not necessarily in digital world. They're not very familiar with some of the practices. Yeah. And so that's, everyone's job is to educate people on some, you know, some of the things that, you know, share your knowledge. Yeah. Make sure, again, make sure it makes sense to your client. Yeah. And make sure you, you know, you provide this, like you said, customer service. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Alex. Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you to be on the podcast. And if people want to learn more about Handsome or they want to maybe follow you on Twitter or something, handsome.is, correct? Yes, correct. And then you're... Handsome.is. And your Twitter account is? My Twitter account is azmorf, M-O-R-F. And our Handsome Twitter account is handsommade. Handsommade. Perfect. All right. Thank you so much, Alex. All right. Thank you so much for listening to Handsome. Today's episode of Developer Team, my interview with Alex Zub. Alex is such a fantastic person, a really enjoyable person to be around, incredibly humble, such a kind person as well. Go and check out Handsome. Handsome.is. Thank you again to Alex for sharing his story with us and all of this information about how to provide the most value to customers and the ins and outs of starting a company. Such a fantastic interview. Thank you to Alex. Thank you so much to Fuse as well, today's sponsor. Thank you. If you're an app developer and you've been doing the same things the same way for years on end and you want to try something different, go to spec.fm slash Fuse and check out the incredible tool that Fuse has built for app developers. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Team. We have more great content that's coming out at a very fast rate, three episodes a week this show comes out. So we're going to be having a new episode pretty much right away. And if you don't want to miss out on this great content, go ahead and subscribe to whatever podcasting app you use. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.