Maksymilian Majer: Remote Workers Over-Deliver, but It’s Difficult to Nurture Remote Relationships
I talked to Maksymilian Majer, an experienced Tech Lead, a current CEO and Lead Recruiter of ITCraftship.
Maksymillian Majer has been in the software development business for over 14 long years: he worked on customer software projects of various sizes, run startup companies, and found a startup of his own, ITCraftship. In this interview, Maks shares his passion for web development and design, talks about the current state of technical recruitment, opines on the future of remote work, and gives plenty of advice to aspiring professionals on developing leadership skills, maintaining a work-life balance, and more.
Disclosure: Soshace, a hiring platform for web developers, is a media partner of Running Remote.
Hello Maks, and welcome to the interview with Running Remote! Please, share your story. How did you get passionate about web development?
I actually became a developer by mistake. I have already coded in Pascal or C/C++ during my time as a high school student, but I was really passionate about 3D modeling and animation. I would spend my free time after school going through 3Ds Max tutorials and browsing through inspiring pieces by the artists at the https://cgsociety.org/.
What did you try to achieve by enrolling, studying, and finishing your degree in Polish-Japanese Institute?
Polish-Japanese Academy of IT was one of the few colleges in Poland (I believe there were only two in the whole country) where they offered a major in 3D graphics and animation. That’s why I signed up. During my studies, I learned that I’m a much better programmer than a designer — drawing, and painting wasn’t amongst my top talents.
The Polish-Japanese part of the name only underlines the collaboration between the two countries. Except for a year of learning the Japanese culture (out of which I only remember that you should stay in the door-frame during an earthquake) I didn’t have much to do with the language.
Please take me through your professional career. From the earliest days of being a software engineer to being the CEO and Lead Recruiter of ITCraftship.
I started my software development career after my first year in college. I was invited by a fellow student to go on a summer internship to Italy where we worked on a track and trace solution for the NATO 🙀
The employer liked us so much, that when my summer holidays had ended, he decided to offer us a remote position to help finish the project. It was about 15 years ago, so trust me when I say this — remote work SUCKED back then. The internet connectivity was poor and video call quality on Skype wasn’t very productive. It required twice as much discipline or stubbornness than now to keep delivering great value while telecommuting.
After working with the Italian company, I’d continued my career by developing software craftsman skills and getting higher and higher profile jobs which led me to establish my own POS SaaS startup in 2010. For a software engineer that was an interesting step and not an easy one. We’d taken on funding, risk, and responsibility. Ultimately we failed because we didn’t put enough focus on making our clients happy. As software engineers, we kept piling up the features we thought people wanted instead of asking them. That was out of my comfort zone back then. I had to learn it the hard way, that product development was all about talking to your customers.
After that failed attempt at a business, I got back to working with enterprise software and later moved on to a Norwegian startup where I was hired as a Tech Lead of 3 people and I helped grow the team to 9 people during the course of 3 years.
In 2017, I decided to launch ITCraftship with a few co-founders. This startup still remains one of our most valued customers; but since the business life is hard, only the two original founders remained at ITCraftship. It started out a lot as a side project and both me and my co-founder Maciej still do development work for companies. However, now the team is 9 people strong and works in a hybrid remote/on-site model. We work partly from our office in Warsaw with generous work from home policy and we have 2 fully remote team members. I only work one day from our Warsaw office and other than that I like to work from home or WeWork.
Our focus on tech recruitment comes from frustration, that the hiring & screening process in IT is very flawed. Recruiters know little about the preferences of programmers and the recruitment challenges are inadequate to assess the hard skills. When growing the team at eVici I realized we are getting far better results and that’s where we wanted to head.
You’ve been working as a Tech Lead for quite a while already. What does it take to be a Tech Lead? What advice can you give to aspiring developers who’d like to become Tech Leads?
It’s quite hard to pin down the exact skills you need to be a good leader. For me, the most important part was to set an example. The way I organize my work, the way I communicate and what I deliver needs to set the right standard for the team to follow. There’s much more to being a tech lead, though. One of the best sources of my experience as a leader was the work I did at Clevertech where I also had a chance to go through leadership training with the amazing Nazar Aziz. The course was based on http://conversationsforaction.com/ and I do recommend all leaders to read this book. It made me a better leader and helped me improve my personal life too.
What are your daily responsibilities at ITCraftship? What’s your area of expertise? What are you most passionate about? Why do you think your company is different from its competitors?
At ITCraftship my most important role is to set the direction and strategy for our growth, but I also play two other roles: business development and technical assessment. Having over 14 years of experience, I have worked with a lot of technologies, frameworks and programming languages. That’s how I can make sure that our tech team can guarantee the best assessment process. I am also very passionate about process and continuous improvement, so at ITCraftship we strive to provide the best possible experience not only for the employers but also for developers. We know how important it is to maintain great relationships with candidates to provide the best quality for our clients. Compared to other companies in the space we pride ourselves in delivering most thoroughly tested candidates who are motivated to join the company. For that purpose, we employ a lot of tools and practices to strengthen the employer brand of our customers. We pride ourselves that our candidates rate our process as the best they’ve ever been through.
How many people in your company work remotely?
Currently, there are 2 people working fully remotely in our company and we’re looking for a 3rd remote employee right now. The rest of the team works in a flexible hybrid model with unlimited work from home policy. I usually work 3–4 days remotely, so does Maciej, the other founder. The rest of the team visits the office more often, but it’s because they like it so much, not because they have to ;)
Do you think the future of employment is remote?
I do believe that the future of employment is remote and I am not the only one. We like to track what candidates reply when we inquire them about new opportunities and 50% of them don’t want to hear about a position that isn’t remote. That’s why currently it’s the best time to go remotely as a company. There isn’t so much competition out there and you’ll get the best talent. My guess is that in a couple of years the remote job market will become as competitive as the local job markets are. Companies that wait till then will struggle to keep up.
What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced while managing remote teams?
The biggest challenge is building a company culture as a remote team. People fear that it’s productivity or control over your employees that are the biggest problems. I have seen in practice that remote workers overdeliver. However, maintaining a connection of all the people in the team and nurturing those relationships is very hard.
There are smaller challenges too, that introduce some bottlenecks. For example, I haven’t heard of a great solution to the whiteboard meeting. In software development, it’s used very often but in a remote setup it’s way harder to be productive using tools such as draw.io
If there were two things you could change in your past or present job, what would they be, and how would you change them?
The biggest thing on my list right now is to become a more transparent company. One that is not only led by the founders but a company where all the employees have a strong voice. Currently, I want to play with the idea of a Turquoise (Teal) organization and I am very excited about it. Before we introduce it, though, we need to examine all the possible benefits and implications. It is very appealing and I hope it will prove to be a good step in our future.
How do you think remote work impacts your work-life balance? What advice can you give to others to maintain a stable balance between family and work?
I think remote work can have a positive and negative effect on our personal lives. People have trouble signing out and disconnecting from their workplace. Whether that’s on Slack, Twist or Microsoft Teams if you get a message from a co-worker in a different timezone it’s very tempting to take care of it. My advice is to keep a regular schedule and communicate it properly with the team. Everyone should be aware of your working owners and should respect your free time. But you need to respect it too.
You want to go swimming in a pool. The water is a little colder than comfortable. Are you the type of person who jumps in or the type who wades in? Why?
I always jump in. I want to get rid of the unpleasant feeling as fast as I can. That’s the way I like to approach all other change in life. Getting out of the comfort zone is part of growing and becoming better. That’s why we improve more the faster and the more often we do it.
Do you have any hobbies? What are they?
I’m a fitness and nutrition freak. It started out five years ago when I decided to lose weight and now it’s become a major part of my life. I love working out and keeping to a proper diet. It works in favor of my health and my productivity too.
Why do you think it’s important to organize events such as Running Remote, among freelancers, CEOs, marketing managers, who all work remotely? What do you think is the ultimate purpose of those events?
The biggest takeaway from this kind of events is that people learn from each other and improve their remote businesses. This leads to better results and promoting remote work with other companies. The more people get into it, the better the market will become for all of us.
What’s your relationship with Running Remote? Did you have a chance to visit the conference?
I was the community partner and I haven’t been at the conference in person, but I had a chance to interact with a lot of the participants before, during and after the event. I engaged with them in discussions and calls and I was inspired by the openness and eagerness to learn and share knowledge. I’ve made a lot of meaningful connections and potential business partnerships too. I look forward to seeing the effects of the conference in a few months.
I am a copywriter at Soshace.com, a hiring platform for web developers: hire a developer or apply for a remote job. If you have an interesting story to tell, please ping me on Twitter @ MaryVorontsov I would love to hear from you and share your story.
