The Broken Outsourcing Model Costing You Millions | Chris Krzoska, COO Euvic US | Euvic Talks

Hi, it's Bartek Ślima here and welcome to the next episode of Euvic Podcasts, Euvic Talks. Today our guest is Chris Krzoska, the CEO of Euvic US. Hi Chris. Hey, good to be here. Good to host you. At the beginning of each episode I'd like to ask our guest about his or her business story. So, can you share your business story? Tak, okej, to jest... Tak, więc ja zacząłem pracę w bardzo młodym wieku. Byłem zdecydowanie wpływany przez mojego tatę, który był jakby polskim imigrantem. Moje rodzice są imigrantami z Polski. Przyjechali w latach 80., podczas wysokości praw marszałkowych i komunizmu, i wszystkich rzeczy,

People that were oftentimes really educated and had really great qualifications from being successful in Poland. So you had doctors that would make barely more than completely unskilled people and everything was sort of controlled by government and market forces weren't really a thing. And I grew up listening to all of those Euvic Talks. Tak, mój ojciec i moja mama przyjechali tutaj.

He said, hey, call this guy Roman on, I think it was Skype at the time. He said, he'll explain to you what the software is and I want you to help us train people. And so I used Camtasia Studio and I started, I learned what the software was all about and I started producing videos, marketing videos and training videos for our early pilots. I built a workshop in the basement. I got some of my friends and we built this workshop and we were driving to Chinatown because this was right outside of New York City, buying equipment because this was sort of a hardware and software integration play with installations and restaurants. And we were installing pilots at some of the early restaurants in the New York, Connecticut area for a brand called Subway Restaurants, which at the time, and I think it still is, was the biggest restaurant chain in the world.

Euvic.com At that point we had grown the engineering team here in Poland to over a hundred people. We had a headquarters here. I'd been working with engineering teams and support teams and product teams and we were working with customers and we were adjusting product and the company that ended up buying ours, still they doubled the size of the team in Poland. It became their strategic software engineering group and all of this shaped

The way that I look at the market today, which is, you know, we believe that companies in the US, especially those that are medium sized companies, we believe that we can help them build better software faster and for less money. And there is a calculation in how this works. And, you know, we could probably talk about that later, but I'll let you kind of get into that. Śmieję się, bo pewnie nie jesteś świadomy, że 12 lat temu budowałem aplikację mobilną, nazywana Subway Surveillance App. Wtedy byłem częścią Twojej firmy. Yeah, it was amazing. I mean, you know, what's our story, what's our connection, right?

I mean, I remember coming over to Poland early days and we had our office on, it was on Poszewska Street, yeah. And Euvic had an office like a couple floors above us and, you know, there was always this story, whenever we have an increase in capacity needs, we have to build something, a customer comes to us, Euvic.com Euvic.com

Tak. Why do you think that the outsourcing model is broken and what replaces it? It is a bold claim and it's a real claim and we've lived it through experience. I'll start by saying that most of the leadership team at Euvic US and the team members that we bring on board, we don't have the stereotypical services background. A lot of us actually come from building software products for the US market platforms, for business, for real business use cases.

And so that's sort of our perspective and our background. And what I would say is it's a bold claim and there's no sexy solution. The solution is Define medium size. Wiem, że jest wiele sposobów, w których możesz to zrobić na głowę, ale ja bym powiedział, że około 100 milionów dolarów i 2 milionów dolarów wynagrodzenia w Stanach Zjednoczonych, to byśmy to uznawali jako półsześć.

Możemy to też nazwać zrównoważoną start-upem, jak instytucjonalne fundowanie, produkt, marka, potencjał, to może się w tym zająć, prawda? Ale jeśli próbujesz robić coś z głębokością, Euvic.com When those companies have business or technical problems and they turn to the market to help them solve it, the landscape is completely convoluted. How you choose a partner is unclear and how you engage with that partner is unclear.

The incentive structure is broken also. Everything is broken. Yeah. Well, the incentive structure is broken, right? In terms of, well, why are we electing the leaders that we're electing, right? Because solving the problem often is not sexy and it's hard to do it, right? It's easier, clickbait is easier than... To jest proste, bo to są rzeczy, które są proste do zrozumienia. Są proste do zrozumienia sexy packaging i thought leadership, i rzeczy, które są zaprojektowane, aby pomóc Ci wygrać z ceny. Jest też proste do zrozumienia, co to jest za mały koszt.

Wydaje mi się, że natura ludzka jest w tym związku, a także struktura incentywności tych firm. Więc to byłby mój odpowiednik. Chciałbym zapytać o time zones, ponieważ zwykle te główne sprzęty Ja myślę, że I think time zone is important depending on the model that you want to engage with with your partner, right?

So, you know, one of the things that we do really well here at Euvic is managed delivery. And managed delivery is essentially, you know, and this is another thing, right? Look. I'll take one step back. I'll just say, as a company, we know our business really well. We know things that work for customers, we know things that don't work for customers. We do this every day, we build these proposals, we work with clients. But our clients oftentimes outsourcing and building software is not really their core... Euvic.com

And so in that model, it's not an issue. If you're looking for engineers that just seamlessly integrate into your team and they work on your engineering hours, then like probably it's a little bit harder because, well, but even still, I would say, even from just a straight staff augmentation model, where all you want is engineers that have a certain skill set and you want to integrate them into your team, you know, you have a stand up, a team stand up, or you have planning meetings and review meetings. Euvic Talks.

Ponieważ jak dostajesz inżynierów, którzy są jak najlepsi czy lepsi niż w Stanach Zjednoczonych i też płacą mniej za nich? Nie musisz skupiać się na jakości. Jeśli popatrzymy na te filtry, Polska jest najwyższym miejscem na świecie, które jest na górze wszystkich liderów. Nawet połowa fundacji OpenAI jest z Polski. Jesteśmy najwyższym miejscem na świecie w Jawa. Ten chłopak w Japonii, który miał taką konkursę globalną o hackingu, wygrał kilka miesięcy temu i wygrał zespoły inżynierii AI. Poland is number one, I think followed closely by Hungary, Czech Republic and Ukraine. These are the top places in the world that match all of those filters.

So if a company is trying to build better, build a team that can break the laws of that iron triangle from the get-go, build better, faster and for less, Poland... Euvic.com Euvic Talks

Nieco temu, ty i twoja drużyna znaleźli dobrą solucję do tego. Może możesz wyjaśnić trochę o tym. Kiedy zapytałeś o Time Zone wcześniej, myślę, że głównym wyzwaniem, które znalazłem było... Names mentioned. Names mentioned. Names mentioned. Part of that is communication. And that's the third way that we solve the broken model today. And that's in the communication piece.

So the way that we looked at it is it doesn't matter if you're building software better, faster and for less money. Euvic Talks. Euvic Talks.

My use a communication framework called the collaborative way. And ultimately what that just means is we're all usually trying to achieve the same thing. We're just often not listening to one another. We're not speaking straight. We're not being there for each other. We're not honoring commitments. So all of those things are really important. So how do we challenge? By listening generously. To znaczy rozumienie tego, co inna strona ma do powiedzenia, a nie tylko czekając na twoją wypowiedź. Naprawdę, naprawdę próbując zrozumieć, dlaczego decyzje są zrobione, a potem mówić poważnie o tym, dlaczego coś jest albo nie działa. I sprawdzasz jego ego na drzwiach, prawda? To jest bardzo ważna sprawa. I w końcu wszystko, co robimy, musi być w służbie klientowi.

Więc wszystkie decyzje, które robimy, musimy zawsze spojrzeć na to jako wskazujące starce dla siebie. Czy to jest w służbie projektowi? Does this serve the project and the goals of the customer? And if it doesn't, you know, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, yesterday we had a workshop together and I came to the conclusion that here in Poland we may have the best managers, the best, I don't know, scrum masters, product developers, engineers. They can read Dużo książek, jak komunikować i tak dalej, słuchając podcastów, ale wydaje mi się, że to bardziej naturalne dla amerykańskich ludzi.

Czasami mam wrażenie, że nie musisz nauczyć się tych rzeczy, czy są one wymyślone od bardzo małego wieku. I that's the reason why I believe that such a person on the US side makes a huge difference cause your BSM both understands Polish culture and they have those communication skills that are crucial while collaborating with our customers. Yeah, I mean, there are cultural differences and one thing that I will say is that if you're outsourcing the cultural differences with a place like Poland,

Do you have any concrete case where PSM turned engineering team into clear business value? Yeah, we see it every day, I would say. To jest przykład, o którym wspomniałem wcześniej, jeśli chodzi o stworzenie praktyk na temat rozwoju. I think this often happens when the product owner on the client side is very technical, like if it's a CTO. And those types of product owners tend to focus on the technology. What is the technology going to do? The performance, the scalability and all those things.

Nowadays, where the AI is hidden in every single fridge that you open, how about all of those business-oriented cases, tech-oriented cases, how are they able to advise or to ask the right questions when everything changes so rapidly? I have a bunch of thoughts about this, right? I think there's a lot of hype on the market, first and foremost. And it just goes right into what's broken about the industry. And it's not just this industry, it's AI, it's everything else, right?

The hype is what gets the attention. But I think until you take... Euvic Talks. And the one thing that comes out above all of the things that we're learning is... Jeszcze nie ma znaczenia, kto skupia się na AI. Jeśli masz zły inżynier, który nie ma kontekstu biznesowego, nie ma umiejętności czy kompetencji, to oni zaimplementują AI w niebezpieczny sposób.

I if it doesn't work, you take what you've learned and you can go, you know, you can apply it to the next opportunity, right? But yeah, I mean, all the ways that companies are trying to choose and de-risk right now is not really serving their best interests. Cool. I think we'll write it down and we will put it into description of this episode just to let people download it. Yeah. All right. That's what we will do. Chris, na końcu każdego odcinka mam specjalną pytaną dla naszego gościa, którą zawsze pytałem. Nie byłem przygotowany do tego. Mogę sobie to wyobrazić. Co cię ostatnio inspirowało? To może być spotkanie, książka, wydarzenie, coś, co cię zmieniło. Co mnie inspirowało?

I najlepszym sposobem jest to, by być jednym, zjednoczonym człowiekiem. Wczoraj czytałem książkę piosenką o cztery tysiące tygodniach o Oliveru Berkmanie. Mówi o tym, jak wiele książek o oprogramowaniu czasu i produkcji czytaliśmy, próbując się lepiej. I the core concept of that book is it's not necessarily, you know, there will always be something to do. The to-do list is absolutely endless. I think people like you and me are driven to do more, to do better, you know, to prove something. And the concept of this book and the way that I've applied it to my life is about being really clear about what matters the most and just making time for it. Czy masz jakąś technikę, którą chcesz podkreślić?