How to build and scale development teams for success?

Oleg

Hi Oscar! Welcome to the Devico Breakfast Bar! Thanks for finding the time to join me today. I know scheduling wasn't easy, and I had to postpone it a few times. But I'm glad we're finally here. Could you please start by telling us a bit about yourself and your professional journey?

Oscar

Yeah, happy to be here. Indeed, after all the scheduling. A short introduction, maybe: I'm Oskar van Tol. I am at this moment the CTO at Virtual Vault. I started my career, I think early 2000s, after my studies. And before that, of course, I was freelancing as any dev student would do. But early 2000s, when, basically, the dot-com bubble just burst, every company went bankrupt, including the one I just started at. But I learned a lot, and in that time we were still working towards a master CD, right? You remember that like shipping software on CDs, printing out the master, and shipping it to some factory somewhere, and you get like 100, 000 copies. So, if you made a mistake back then, it was sticky. Let's call it that. So, after the bankruptcy of that company, we had a lot of fun in those days. I started my own company, a small project company, together with one of the colleagues from there, and did internet projects for years, basically, from small website to basic applications, grew into that.

And, at some point, found a partnership. And at some point, I really connected with those people. I went into their company and worked as a consultant for nearly 14 years. So was doing projects at different customers, mostly long projects, so not the hit-and-run three weeks code something and have no responsibility. So, I was always also on call. Let's call it that. I think 10 years of that consultancy was focused mainly on cloud and on Azure cloud. So, from there, one of the projects I came across was the company I work now. For years, I built a team around it, like a local team, after we had some initial application running. Yeah, I came in to build a team around it and to make it sustainable, and off and on to some other projects at some point. Then finally last year, with some multiple years of asking, this company was in a state. So, Virtual Vaults was now really scaling up, and it was already serious for a few years. But they want to go to the next level, and I got an offer there. We agreed upon me moving there. So, here I am – CTO. Awesome role, of course.

Oleg

A long journey. Thanks.

Oscar

Yeah, I'm old, so journeys get long then.

Oleg

Can you provide an overview of the current project you're actually involved in and elaborate on the specific challenges, issues, and risks?

Oscar

Yeah, for me, the year just started, I'm half year in now here, and of course, we always have a continuous roadmap of features, basically, features that are asked for, things that we see. I think for us, era always emphasizes on security and growing business, so scaling is important. We're in the cloud, so we should have the tools to do that. We're definitely moving towards some new technologies there. But of course, I think in everyone's mind now is also AI and how to add that in. And I think we are really concerned about how to put it in, and we should know our tools there. And, what you see we did last year, we did a few hackathons internally to get a grip on some of the services out there, what it can do, but mostly what it cannot do, and what it costs to implement it, because we really don't want to just sprinkle some AI on anything.

You see, some companies really adding it, like, yeah, you can do this now. Basically, everyone is just adding GPT on some input box. And of course, we want to label because it's good marketing. We want to label AI, and it is hype. But it needs to be valuable, I think, and we definitely see some options there. What we do on privacy, and we are using PII, so identifiable information for persons to detect that and autoredact that into documents coming into the system and stuff like that. So, those are awesome examples where you can now reach out to a surface that's prebuilt for you somewhere in the cloud, customize it into your own application, and use that. All the other examples are a bit like we found a solution – now we are looking for a problem. And we really are a bit allergic to that. Also, in our business, it's like tenant separation, making sure one client doesn't see anything from another client. So, leaking in those models would be end of our business, basically. So, we're careful, but definitely invested.

Oleg

Great. Could you share some memorable experience from your career where you successfully solved a complicated technical challenge?

Oscar

Oh, wow! We had an awesome time. If you mentioned it, I don't know if it was partially technical, but I remember a bit more than a decade ago, no more, there was a prediction system for stock replenishment in fresh goods. And it was a bit, we had the 80% correct, but it didn't cut it. And these days we would just throw some neural net to it to solve this problem, but back then it wasn't really a convenience then. I remember going off and on through the data and trying to get this system and performance and doing the right prediction. But our biggest problem is we didn't know how complete we were in the data we were getting. And it was for stocking up supermarkets – like hundreds or a thousand, actually. And it was the 80 percent perfect, and the rest was just horrible all over the place. So, I needed all my background, my statistics, some business, and some logistics to understand the problem and understand the solution, but we couldn't figure it out, the whole team, also the business team.

And at some point, and that's a fun part of this, in the morning, standing under the shower, I had some ideas. Like, is this it? Like, in my head, it made sense. I went back to the office very early, like before everyone else, typed like 10 lines of code to that thing, ran it on historical data, and it's like this fits exactly. So, let it run for a few days. And then I had the weekly meeting for the update. Like, are we there yet? And then, basically, I came in to look at it. And they were all like this is 99%. This is almost perfect. So, from that moment on, every project we did, everything we came across that was a bit of a hurdle is like ‘Isn't it time for a shower?’ So, we got that back time and time again that I got my good ideas under the shower. But I think the learning here – and then I see this a lot – is sometimes you need to get distance, you need to unplug, you need to take a walk, you need to wait for tomorrow, and you solve things early and quickly. While staring at the problem from up close, you might get entangled into it. And I think that helped me out with a lot of problems, but also helping other people, coaching them to struggle, asking the right questions, and just get the high perspective on it.

Oleg

I totally agree with you. It worked the same with me. Brilliant ideas come to me in shower. I have a friend – he's having them while he's biking. For everyone, it's different. Someone, the best time for them is when they go to bed. But definitely, you need to stand a little bit far away from the problem and then the resolution comes to your head. Otherwise, you're blind, you're just blind, you're just looking at it, and you don't see obvious things.

Oscar

I know a guy who always carries a notebook just in case he has an idea who go walking or whatever. But he's also a musician. So, he has his piano next to his workstation, and he just sometimes turns around, starts playing, 15 minutes later continue, and then he just clicks again. And you see people, for them biking or doing some activity, but you need the distance.

Oleg

Definitely. Totally agree. Balancing a career as a CTO and being a father of four must be challenging. I really have no idea how you do this. But how do you manage your little time left, or I don't know how to call it, to excel in both roles?

Oscar

Yeah, well, that's also balance, right? One thing, it's lots of help. My wife is the best. She's also developer. So, she understands also the business, how you can get distracted, and what is important, and what isn't. Yeah, I can still rely on my mom sometimes for help. But the kids are getting bigger. The youngest is 10 now. They are like self-sustaining individuals for a long. The oldest is 19, so I don't have to worry about him.

But there were definitely times when I needed to choose family over anything else because they are most important. And in the end, it's about them. Yeah, the last couple of years I could focus a bit more on career. And also encouragement of my wife in that to do a bit more to actually cut some time out. But I think it's important to be deliberate with your time because most of us are also wasting time on doom-scrolling on some social media somewhere. It's fine, it's how you get your relaxation. But for me, technology and developing some stuff was also a hobby, so I didn't need extra hobbies to fill my time. And I think with that and some choosing on what to do and what not to do, I think you have a lot of time. Because people are always surprised, right? They see the things you do, you publish, and create. And you're there and you're doing that. And you only see the combination of all the things other people are doing and comparing yourself to that. But basically, you're always comparing like ten other people to you, and that's ridiculous because they're also having the top two, three things to focus on, and that's it. I'm just human. And I'm out of time sometimes. And I sometimes also just unplug and be on the sofa watching a movie. But important things need to come first. This year I started to work out a bit more and doing some sports because health, right?

Oleg

What do you do?

Oscar

I pick then some running, and I'm doing some weights and stuff to get in shape because Christmas really added something to me. I think it's healthy. And, yeah, I combine it with stuff like listening to podcasts and while I'm on the thing running. So, it's choosing it.

And for now, this is more important on keeping up with the latest series for me.

Oleg

Great. Besides participating in podcasts to talk about the latest features, developments, how else do you stay on top of industry trends and events? Are there any particular valuable resources of information you rely on?

Oscar

Yeah. Well, I think I do have a daily five to ten minutes check out all the news and all on the socials, like what's it called X these days and stuff like that, to see if anything is moving by. You have the news sites. I'm also into security a lot. So, yeah, things like bleeping computer and stuff has a lot of content. But mostly I listen to six or seven podcasts, I think. They're all like weekly shipping. That's a couple of hours content, excellent in transit, of course, or you need while working out. I have a lot of friends, and ex-colleagues, and colleagues that are in the Microsoft MVP scene, and they're publishing a lot. So, it's really close by, and I see them writing articles, making videos. I'm pretty on top of those. And I try to speak at conferences sometimes but definitely also visit other people there. And I'm taking also my development teams to technical conferences to just be on top. And what we try to do is also divide there and report back. So, sometimes at the office, we also do a small recap of what you saw there. I think, knowledge there's so much out there. You also need to focus a bit.

Oleg

Makes sense. I know, as we already mentioned, you're passionate about building architecture and teams. Could you please share more information about it?

Oscar

Yeah, I worked as an architect on teams in the past and currently, of course, also shaping the software. What I learned is that architecture is not so much about drawing boxes and lines and having an opinion; but it's about communication. And I think if you have a certain vision of a system, how it should scale, what components are there, I think your best tools are the developers who are going to create that, to organize them in a certain manner. So, if you know it, like you have Conway's Law, which says, basically, the code is a reflection of the organization that's building. So, if you have two teams, you split it up there, there are your boundaries. So, I think if you do what they call the reverse Conway is, actually, shape your department and your teams, and how you pick up things, how you communicate, I think that will translate directly into the software you build. So, you will have that dynamic architecture that will evolve with your demands. And, I think it's also much more fun to work with people like that and give them some ownership in there. I read a couple of books on it – Accelerate is like the Bible almost in getting software out the door – and saw all the science behind it. And I dove into team topologies, which really describes this. I think a decade ago, we saw also the Spotify white paper with all the teams and how that works, but basically doing like a bigger platform with multiple services. Then starting at the organization helps. Otherwise, you're fighting it. Basically, you want something done, but every line of communication will block it if it's not in the right place. So, I'm working out, still working out the magic how to control that and how to harness that to create better systems and things like that.

Oleg

Thanks. Thanks for your response. Are there any professionals or leaders in your network who inspire you in your professional journey?

Oscar

Oof, I need to name a lot of names. Otherwise, I'll disappoint all the leaders in my surroundings now.

Oleg

A little bit tricky question, I think.

Oscar

No, I think I got it. Mostly inspired by, like, I'm a developer and technologist, so everyone who's technical around me and excited about technology. If they're just straight out of school or whatever, they definitely inspire me. I have some awesome team members also working on the bleeding edge of technology. And, of course, my co-host in my podcast that I also have, Rick van den Bosch, always challenged me to do the next level, and I think that also was the other way around. So, yeah, big mates there. If I look at leadership, of course, I'm a bit more in with my technology stack where we're working with Microsoft a lot. And if you see, for instance, Scott Hanselman, he is such an awesome guy. It's his leadership, being humble, being helpful, being down to earth, and not like on some kind of thrown, but a really big leader there. Yeah, I use the line sometimes like what would Scott do in this decision, especially if it's a bit more difficult or whatever. It feels like no one is as honest as he is. And he's a nice guy. And I had him on the guest. At our podcast was basically our bucket list, but we already had him on like in the second season. And in the end, it was awesome conversation, really nice guy, down to earth. And if you want to be like anyone, I think that's the guy for me.

Oleg

Nice. Given the ambitious nature of AI, how do you see it's evolving in the software development industry, and what opportunities and challenges do you envision for the future?

Oscar

Yeah, AI is broad, right? We call everything AI. We're at this moment in part of the hype cycle and maybe falling into what it's called the trough of dissolution or something, what it cannot do. I am amazed about the technology, first of all. Once we get something working in the realm of AI, I think it also always gets another name. So, you see like the large language models is a thing now, and you can call it AI, but so is machine learning. And so at some point, this is just an algorithm. Like, yes, basically everything is. But the nice thing about the moment in time at this moment, like what I see, is that some practical things that are really useful also become a service right now. So, I think all the major clouds you see like a service that you can just consume. That helps a lot. That means that you put something in, and you take something out. It's not any different than any other abstraction, except for there's magic data that you wouldn't understand or be able to replicate. But for dev, it's like we're calling an API. So, I think we're now closer to adding things that were impossible.

Like in the beginning of cloud, we were able to suddenly scale out to a hundred instances, while we used to have to carry some hardware around before doing that. And I think this is the same kind of change in technology. And I do like at this moment see a lot of change in the dev tooling, for instance. So, things like Copilot just completing your sentences, saving you a lot of time going back and forth. It is awesome how that works. It's also nice to see what it doesn't do. So, if you build anything in your own system that you're not like fooling your users with bringing them to the wrong path. And I think monitoring, like security systems, there's so much data coming in. I think these models will help pointing out the important stuff. Anything that wouldn't scale before is now suddenly a thing. Like an employer or customer satisfaction survey, we used to ask the five-star review or whatever. Because it's possible now, we can ask a question and get open text, and we throw a model at it. And we can, basically, categorize those answers and look at them where it's necessary. You see, those tools are practical, while a couple of years ago doing some AI modeling or whatever, you ended up with some laboratory experiment, dedicated team, and it was not for everyone. And now it's a commodity.

Oleg

Totally agree. Microsoft Azure seems to hold a special place in your tech journey. What initially drew you to it, and how have you seen it evolve over the years?

Oscar

Yeah, originally, when I was doing projects for myself that was still in the time that you were hosting data center.

Oleg

When you were a consultant?

Oscar

No, before that even. You were still hosting in your own data centers, and basically, I was carrying around disks, and installing stuff, and getting. You needed to do the whole stack. And you had some state somewhere, and of course, VMs came. Okay. There was an idea, but still, you needed to patch, you needed to do everything. And yeah, getting confronted with Azure, and of course, AWS already had something going. They were really the infrastructure as a service, so it was building blocks. And Azure was different there. They started with platform as a service. So, bring your code here, and the rest is arranged, and do another deploy. It's a brand-new machine with that code. And I think from there and also in the evolution, of course, they added all the other stuff. But what I really liked that you could focus on your business problem and had so many options. And at some point the palette became so big, you weren't constrained anymore. Like, here's a web server and a relational database – do your thing. We could actually start thinking about architecture. And because like, 'Oh, we need a caching solution for this,' it's like two clicks away. You pay by the second, or by the per data unit, or whatever. Things like serverless compute to do background tasks and going, scaling back to zero, not breaking the bank. We can basically create systems now that were a decade ago only for really big companies, and we can do that now basically on pocket money. And of course, if it scales, it will cost something, but if it doesn't do anything, it doesn't cost anything.

Oleg

The cost of creating something reduced significantly.

Oscar

Yeah, there's no investment, no upfront. I remember having the data center and having multiple generations of hardware, but also of licenses. It's like when to replace this or when to switch technologies – never! Because you needed either a new hardware stack, and in two years after that your licenses needed to be renewed. So, you always glued to something. I can just ship a new version to a new technology or new stack, you just disable the other ones, and you're not paying for it. I think the commitment, the upfront investment completely changed with public cloud.

Oleg

Given your expertise in Microsoft Azure, what are some common misconceptions or myths about cloud computing that you often encounter, and how do you address them?

Oscar

Yeah, I think at the moment it's fine. It's the normal, it's the norm. In the beginning, it was all like, 'Where is it? How's the security?' Lots of time people that were asking that had it in the basement, their stuff and data centers, you cannot compete with them security wise. And of course, there are concerns, especially like state level, governments. That was logical that they were a bit behind on it. But at this moment, banks and stuff like they are using cloud all over, and they're using public cloud. I think the misconceptions became because we were also making separations between public and private cloud, because some data centers transformed to call their stuff the private cloud to have that, you know, at least opinion. And I think sometimes it's slower than a lean stack that you built yourself. And of course, if you have a solution, which you know exactly what it needs to do, and you can fine-tune to do only that, and you build it on bare hardware without any obstructions, you can probably host it faster and cheaper than in a cloud. But I've never seen anyone building a system out from scratch, knowing exactly where they are ending up. So, if you really need a specific skill or something really specific, like starting cloud, or starting monolith, or whatever, ending up in some solution that works, then it's okay. Now, if we would rebuild this, and we need to squeeze every penny out of it, how can we do this really cheap? Of course, then you have a statement. I think we never had anything that would give us a low investment, hit the ground running. A bunch of tools. It's such a lot of things to choose from. And that makes it complicated, but also gives us, not anymore, but consultants also, stuff to talk about and to help out with.

Oleg

In your role, you deal with both technical and organizational aspects of software development. How do you approach bridging the gap between those two realms and the benefit of the project you work on?

Oscar

Yeah, I think you have a lot of skills you can work on, or you can learn, or you can pick up. And some things come more natural to you. I never had a problem explaining anything to business, or senior leadership, or whatever like that. I'm blessed with that. You can also sharpen it, of course, if that's your tool. I love to make simple analogies and bring them really to the business case or whatever. I think to have a technological problem is like this is what happening in your terms. And then, if you're in logistics, compare that with a logistics problem because that's their daily. That means that you also need to understand their business.

Oleg

Okay, you understand the logistic. But if you're in healthcare tech, for example, or finance?

Oscar

I think as a consultant, you get those skills more because you're switching around. You will need to understand those businesses. But I was always working also with the developers and full team. So, not only me make them understand the business process, make them understand the why behind the why. Because it's much easier to get the technical people to understand the actual problem and then solve it, instead of running into something and trying to explain why you ran into some problem to management. And I think bridging the gap is talking from both perspectives, making them see the other part. And I think it's just all communication and understanding that everyone wants to do the right thing. Because that's the baseline, right? If you're expecting that someone doesn't want to do the right thing, it's lost. But I think most of the time, everyone is showing the good side.

Oleg

Being based in the Netherlands, do you notice any challenges or opportunities for the tech industry in your region compared to the other parts of the world?

Oscar

I think we're pretty okay here. I won't say we have any challenges. Like, everyone in the Netherlands basically speaks English. It's so default here. We had from the beginning, like the Europe Internet just landed here, so all the data centers were here, the public clouds settled here straight away. We were front of line. So, cannot complain. Think about the government or big companies – they're agile. It's normal to embrace something new and not just hold back on some old behaviors or working a long time on legislation. Yeah, I think we have an easy ride comparing to some other regions, definitely.

Oleg

Could you comment on the challenges associated with the shortage of qualified specialists in the IT sector, particularly in relation to your business?

Oscar

Yeah. It comes and goes. Good people are scarce. I worked as a consultant for years, that was most of the time a specific role. But even this company just started out with the first prototype of what the company was going to do, it was completely built by a company just outside. Of course, you need your own people. You need ownership at some point because it will go away. But I think the hybrid model, if you want to grow, it's an investment that you can oversee. Like cloud, you pay by the hour, and you can expect qualified personnel. I was on both sides of the table, but I think it can be a win-win situation if you have a qualified or a good partner really investing in partnership. Because also people that are not your own will show a real ownership of the problem and follow up. And I think creating gaps like splitting a team. Like, we need to grow as a team, but I don't want to hire five new people straight away, getting some outside help to fill that in and just slowly move them out if you actually can hire people. If you cannot, and you need to make the yards, this is a predictable spend. So, of course, fully leaning on an external company to do something can be tricky if your core business is building software. So, I think both experimenting, temporary fill ins, but also you get people with experience outside your business.

So, they will bring all the scars from different projects, and you will win time there. So yeah, for me, it's a normal, really default thing to fill in both from outside help and trying to fill your team with a permanent in-house people. At this moment, we're more on that side. So, we had a dedicated test automation team for years, like a remote that was in Serbia. We brought it back. Those specialists we hired ourselves at some point. So, we have them in the teams. One of the teams is a bit thin because someone left, and you know how it works. And we have a consultant there filling that up. And he's one of the team. It's awesome. And of course the job openings are out there, but we have the knowledge still secure. And we know that if this guy needs to move on to a different project or whatever, we will get his colleague up to speed, and it will be just as fast and just as good, and they will make sure there's no gap there. So, if we cannot fill that in, our outsourcing partner can do that. So, there's no discussion that you should or shouldn't do, like everything. It depends when, but it's a default, one of the solutions to fill in the gaps.

Oleg

Okay, great. Thanks for the answer. Could you share, you already explained, but still I want to stay a little bit more on this question, about your development teams? How they are typically structured at virtual worlds? And having worked for an outsourcing consultancy company for a long time, do you now utilize the staff augmentation model for your projects?

Oscar

So, I can talk through. We started out with a fully remote team with like a project.

Oleg

Not your partner's team? It was your team, right?

Oscar

No. When Virtual Vault started, I wasn't there at that moment.

Oleg

You were in the outsourcing company, you started with them working and then moved to the...

Oscar

Yes. So, it was a remote team. They fully developed the first version of that system. At some point it's like, 'Okay, this is going to be a success. So, let's start really kicking off this company.' So, we started with a few developers in the Netherlands. Also, I was there still external, but like two devs in internal, going some ownership there and started to get grips. And for years we kept fully external remote teams. We had a team in Belgrade, and team in the Netherlands grew bigger here. And at some point we split into two projects out to products basically. And those teams got split. And what we did actually is like, 'Okay, we had eight developers. Now we have two times four. We need leadership there, but it's a lot of work.' So, we added externals to both teams to grow them. At some point there are job openings, rotate them out. You have new ambition or even a feature team temporarily for a project. You hire the outsourcing again. So, that's what we did a lot. Like, really making the leap first, it is a spend, but it's not a risky investment because you get someone, you don't have to go through the hiring process, you don't have to pay anyone to find someone for you, and then pull them back into the market because the recruiters are a thing by itself.

Oleg

And also to deal with legal, HR, social events, growth plan, et cetera, et cetera. Many, many things behind the scenes. At some point you have a grip. It's okay for this. Like, our core teams and stuff like that, we definitely want to set that up, but if you're still moving with your business or want to experiment, we found that out that that works like charm. And we had the one of the teams being like fully internal last year. And at some point, someone left, went for a new job somewhere else. We had a gap. So, the first thing is you fill it with something you can trust straight away, and job opening is there. But no pain. We can just continue. And the most important part is that you have a partner who shows ownership. And there are, of course, some outsourcing companies or consulting companies that are a bit hit-and-run. There's quality difference there, like with everything, right? Also, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, they say sometimes. Yeah, I think it's important that they show ownership, and if not, then also you're just a customer there, and that's also the advantage. For me, it's super successful.

Oleg

Okay, great. If to summarize, what were the precise factors that prompted you to consider IT outsource?

Oscar

Yeah, for me, of course, it's like I was the outsourcing party at some point. So, knowing these benefits, I always felt responsibility, like the way we worked was a default way to help a customer. So, am I also expecting that from someone else. If I would work with an outsource company, and they wouldn't be at that level, I wouldn't do it. And I would see that they are not like. But that's the advantage of having this, then it's your normal, right? But I can really imagine some people like, 'Yeah, I'm not going to spend this, or it's risky.' Yeah, try it out. I think you can learn a lot from people that didn't have the same year of experience over and over and over again. But people that saw in the last 10 years at least 10 different things, I think that helps. And yeah, the partners should be up to speed with the technology. And you can ask for any resume, and they should be able to fill it in.

Oleg

Okay. What are the benefits and drawbacks of outsourcing?

Oscar

Yeah, well, the benefits I think we discussed.

Oleg

Maybe you want to add more.

Oscar

Yeah, You can start and stop anytime, right? It's like cloud spend. On the other hand, having 20 people from an outsourcing company is probably more expensive, but it's less risky. I think that's the thing. And the benefit it's getting in experience out of the box, like someone knowing what they're doing. Well, the drawback, it can be cost, and it can be giving away ownership. Because I definitely saw that where companies just moved away from their own people because the externals were doing a great job. And at some point it's like, 'Okay, but what is the company adding?' So, you need to be aware. If your company is a software business, and I think a lot of companies are a software business these days, maybe with a hobby in some specific sector, but if you give that away completely, well you need to trust that partner.

You need to treat them right. But it is a risk because, at some point, like, 'Who owns your knowledge? Where is it?' So yeah, if it's your business, you should be in control; and if not, then if you're like, 'Well, this technology is a lot, and you're adding certain value', it's also important to discuss that. Because there are plenty of how you do that, for instance. But there are plenty of outsource companies or consultancies that would happily get a long-term partnership under certain conditions. Some of them are working on cost plus or all kinds of construction. For me, especially if the core is software, you're delivering SaaS like we are, not having anyone on the inside would be tricky. I think you will get some questions on your business continuity. You need some core people in place. Definitely make sure you're not giving the keys to the kingdom away. But use the experience, use the good part, use the dial that you can just add two more next week and stop it next month. That system is for everyone who wants to make some kind of financial prediction on what stuff costs. It's awesome.

Oleg

Yeah, thanks. That was your advice for other companies considering IT sourcing. And the last question – how do you measure the success of your collaboration with an IT outsourcing partner?

Oscar

For me, it's a success if you don't see a difference, if you see culture, you see people blending in the culture, taking ownership. I know we are people in even 24 hour ops, so we rotate shifts there. Just externals also participating in that. I think that's like if you get a consultant in or an outsourcing company, that's almost a chameleon in your company. It's like, 'Oh, are they external? I didn't know.' When they bring cake to work because it was their birthday same as Eddie add-on one, for me, that's success already. People that are from the outside here, I will also send them to the same course if we do. Like, we had OWASP training last time, some security training. Of course, they're there. There's not discussion, not the discussion with their employer. They're part of the team. They should all know the same stuff, think the same stuff, have a common baseline. And I think if it's non-visible who's from the external help and who's in, I think that's the success.

Oleg

I agree.

Oscar

It's a bit soft, but yeah.

Oleg

I totally agree. I asked this question many times and in only a few cases I get a similar answer. But that's the key. For me, that's the key. For example, in my business for over 14 years, I have been noting the same – the majority of our clients consider engineers as their own employees without any difference. They give them even additional holidays, benefits, vacations on top of our agreement without us asking for it. They just do this because they are so much integrated into the team and work for years and years over and over again. And that's the success. That's the key part. Totally agree with you.

Oscar Yeah, that's it. I think you can hear it straight away, right? As a consultant sometimes back at the company, because we had our own event or whatever, but then you would talk from the customer's perspective, because you would say 'we', and at the client you'd say 'we'. And you woudn't have that in the first day, but you will definitely at some point. Like, you see the click if someone settles there. it's one of them takes responsibility. It doesn't matter who they're from. Part of the team then. How can you measure them? For me, it's I always hear if they say 'they' or 'we', that's the difference, I think.

Oleg

You have a very deep feeling of outsourcing because you have been working there for more than 10 years. Yeah.

Oscar, thank you very much. Finally, we did it. We recorded a very nice podcast. I'm sure our guests, auditory will find something valuable here. You definitely feel the industry deep. I really enjoyed. Thank you for your time being with me. It was fun.

Oscar

Thank you so much. It was fun. And, yeah, good questions. I enjoyed.