July 12, 2024 | Read Online

Today we have Bill Kerr, the CEO of Athyna AI*, back to give our readers advice on remote work.

He is one of the world's top experts in global hiring, leading an agency with $6M+ in ARR.

By the way, if you want to learn more about how Athyna can help your company, you can inquire here, or just book a call with them using this link (please do not share).

Bill and his dog Ziggy.

What are the best software and tools for remote work?

Athyna's tools database.

You can see the entire software stack we use at both Athyna and Open Source CEO in this tools database along with a rating and how we use it. But the most important for remote work are:

Slack
Notion
Loom
Zoom
Lattice

You absolutely don't need anything fancy to make remote work, work. The key is to have a documentation first mindset.

Athyna's golden rules.

If something happens on a regular basis inside of your organisation, it should be written down. And if something is written down, you need a system for keeping it up to date.

We have a very detailed bi-annual process where we update all of our pages documents at Athyna. The idea is everyone inside of the company should be able to find everything in matter of seconds in one of two search bars, Notion or Slack. We have meetings, documents, spreadsheets, resources, creative assets, goals and OKRs, all in Notion. All searchable within seconds.

There is nothing more culture and vibe destroying with a remote team than having countless meetings and distractions because you are unorganised and people don't know where to find what they need.

What are the most important processes that companies hiring remotely should adopt?

One under-strategized element of hiring and building remotely is compensation philosophy. It's one of the hardest things to navigate. Do you pay local salaries? Do you have the same salary globally? Who gets equity? Who doesn't?

For context, At Athyna, we pay above average, local salaries, but give equity from intern to executive—or in other words—to everyone. And we give RSUs rather than options, so our team don't need to buy the stock.

X: Naval Ravikant.

My thesis is that in order to do the best for our team, we want them to own part of the company, and if all goes well, we create huge value via exit. We could have a location agnostic compensation policy, meaning a developer in India would make $160k+ per annum but we would not be able to create the same value in the company.

I also find it difficult in the sake of fairness to pay people globally the same rate when a coffee costs $1 in some places and $6 in other. The benefit for the team is the extra money, which is great, but I don't think people should have different qualities of life in the same role. It's just not fair to me and I see it as something that would degrade your culture really quickly.

Having said that, you can make a very good argument for the other side, and a number of companies do. This is where I say philosophy comes into it. Because there is no right or wrong answer, just the answer that you believe in.

Only 19% of my LinkedIn followers pay local salaries; 30% pay all the same, and 51% somewhere in between

LinkedIn: Bill Kerr.

What advice would you give to companies that are hesitant about hiring remote workers?

I always view things through a very clear frame. If I look at a new hire, I ask myself, will this person add four times the amount of value by being in San Francisco, New York, Sydney or London? Because that's how much salary you will pay in comparison to hiring the best talent in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Bangalore or Cape Town.

Add to the fact, Latam, for example, has an incredible tech ecosystem. We will often place people from Mercado Libre, Nubank, Uala etc.. Mercado Libre and Uala have market caps of $86B and $62B, respectively. Imagine bringing someone into your company with that experience for 25% of what you would pay locally.

Mercado Libre has a market cap of $86B: Google Finance.

Some people think there is some magic to being in person. Maybe there is, some. But for most areas—especially engineering, ops, marketing, finance, creative—there isn't any reason someone would add four times the value. The one place I could see things being different is true boots-on-the-ground enterprise sales and customer success.

So for me, acting as a fiduciary to all our shareholders, I can't justify hiring in places like the United States. It would be acting recklessly and stunting the companies growth. So that would be my advice: start to building your global hiring muscles internally, or find a partner like Athyna that has the experience to do it with you. Either way you go, you'll be outcompeting those who don't.

What trends do you foresee in the future of remote work, and how is Athyna preparing to adapt to these trends?

I think the idea of remote 'hubs' is something we are seeing more and more of. Big companies have always worked in this way. We are currently working with the largest creative agency in the world through their 'Argentinian office.' Super common, super typical.

What has not historically been as common is scaling startups—Series B-Series F for example—building our their hiring hubs. More and more we are seeing or helping build engineering and product teams in Brazil, marketing and creative pods out of Colombia and ops teams out of Asia.

The benefit here does go back to the culture piece. People love remote work but it's great when you can build a hub, or a team within a team regionally.

What are some common challenges companies face when hiring remote talent, and how do you help them overcome these challenges?

The most important is to make sure to integrate your remote team properly. In a hybrid environment, it's often the 'in-office' team that are #1 and the remote team treated like the also-rans. This will ruin your culture and you will struggle to find be successful with your remote team.

Online social events can help with integrating your team.

You need to make sure that no matters who it is and where they work, they are treated the same. The same care, guidance, opportunities, and everything else goes with helping someone to succeed in their career. This goes for if you were to in-house, through a partner like Athyna, or any other working relationship. This is where I see the biggest opportunity for improvement across the landscape today.

Athyna team meeting in Florianópolis, Brazil.

Athyna meeting in Sicily, Italy.

One small win you get when you really double down on your culture is the fact that people start to coordinate co-working days, travel together, visit when in town. It's the sign of a strong company. We have European recruiters travelling the world with Argentinian sales team members just this year. Culture doesn't come easy, though. You need to be intentional with it and you need to measure it always, so you can always be improving.

Can you tell us a bit more about you and why you founded Athyna?

Well, while I was building my first startup, AdventureFit, I got introduced to a guy named Drew. He was a business consultant who was really focused on sales & marketing. He started helping me with some of AdventureFit and after too long, I was helping him with his business. Because we'd never really made any money, I had to be smart about how I built out my team, so I hired a small team in South America and a small team in Asia. Drew saw this and saw it as an incredible advantage.

AdventureFit in Mexico in 2016.

I was really good at remote and maybe even async work, and global hiring before it was cool. Once Drew saw what I'd been able to create with a scrappy global team, he asked if I could help him do the same for his business and then help train his clients, around 100 of them on the same.

So we ran some webinars and workshops. I spoke at a couple of his events, and then I was getting positioned as the 'global teams guy' within his small community. Originally, before Athyna though, the plan was for us to just find a great referral partner to send Drew's people. After doing a couple of weeks of research, I was extremely underwhelmed by what I found so I came to Drew and said; "Hey, this is the world the world is heading, and the options on the market aren't very impressive. I think we do this, and I think we should aim to be the best in the world at it." The rest is history, as they say.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

Not really. If you would like to follow more of my journey, head over and subscribe at Open Source CEO, where I share deep dives, interviews, playbooks and some of my own thoughts. And of course, if you are looking to build out your remote team and are looking for a partner head over to Athyna. We'd love to help you.

Thank you, Bill, for the great interview.

If you want to learn more about Athyna, especially how they can help your company, click here to schedule a call.

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*Sponsored by Athyna. We are shareholders in the company.

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