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Honest conversations with the engineering leaders, CTOs, founders, and engineers building real software with real teams. No fluff, no hype — just the messy, human side of getting great products out the door.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (00:06)
Hello and thank you for joining this episode of Build by Humans. Today we have Max who is joining us and we'll talk as always about teams, what it takes to build a great one, what it takes to work across different time zones, different regions. Building great products has always been a lot more than just technology. It's about getting people to talk to each other and getting people to communicate. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Max.
Please introduce yourself, tell us about your background and what you do.
Max (00:33)
Yeah, how you doing? I'm Max Grigionowski with MOS Creative. We are software development and digital agency. We've in business for right around 20 years at this point. We work with clients from the idea stage and all the way through a life cycle from planning, UX, UI design, development, deployment, and then upkeep and driving traffic to it as well. So we have clients that come to us just out of idea, not really sure where to go.
as the next step from there and then we have clients that come in different stages of the life cycle and we try to support them to make sure that the product development makes sense, make sure we communicate, you know, what is the goal of the product, why it's needed and how to make sure that it's actually understood by the users that they're going after.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (01:14)
Cool. So it sounds like you're providing more than just development service, right? People can come in, they'll ask for help and you do the business side of it and then implementation.
Max (01:19)
All right.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (01:25)
So you are what people refer to in outsourcing, right? In outsourcing shop and outsourcing company. Obviously you do a lot more than just software development, but it's about outsourcing. You have the expertise, you have the knowledge and you have the team, right? I'm assuming it's your team that works on a product, right? And helps clients build.
Max (01:43)
Alright, yes.
Yeah.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (01:44)
So let's talk a bit about, are you guys remote? Where are you located? Where are your people located? How does it typically?
Max (01:51)
so majority of the so we do have an office Majority of the team is remote even the people that live not too far away from the office. I allow them to work remotely as well I think the time that they spend, know, they would be driving to the office in the car and back It's just time that's that's spent without any any type of use. Nobody's really benefiting from it So this allows for them to be a little more flexible They can start earlier if they need to they can finish a little earlier if need to or they can work a little later if needed
to finish their work. If something's going on around the house, they can do it. So just think people feel a little more flexibility and ease, less anxiety, right? So you don't have to be like, my God, I gotta drive home, I got my kids, you know. So I think it's just easier.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (02:25)
right.
Absolutely. I've been remote, my entire company, so our entire company, Mirages, been remote since day one. Since the moment we started, this is way before COVID, we started in 2014 as a business, as a company, and we've been remote. We don't have an office. We used to have an office for developers because that's what clients wanted. Then COVID helped us solve that problem. But we as a writing, as a team, never like...
I live in Los Angeles and I'm the only person who is physically in the United States. I've got people in Spain, in Ukraine, in Azerbaijan, in Poland. So they're all over the place and obviously our developers are all over the place as well. yeah, and I think the flexibility, people value that more than anything else.
Max (03:10)
Yeah.
Right, agree. I agree 100%.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (03:18)
So let's talk a little bit about outsourcing, right? We are in similar businesses. I run a company that in fact, our tagline is we fixed what's broken in outsourcing, right? So we sort of frame ourselves. We're not an outsourcing company, but we're in the same business because we have the same type of clients, people that are trying to build software and do that.
Max (03:38)
Right.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (03:38)
What
happens in your case in outsourcing world? So let's say I'm a startup, right? I come over and I say, Hey Max, help me out. You know, I'm building this product and you'll take it over and you build it. What happens as I grow? What happens with the tribal knowledge? What happens with, am I ever able to really transfer the data, not data, not physical data, but the knowledge data to my team as the team keeps growing.
Max (04:04)
That's a good question. So we have several flexible models where once we build the product, we had an opportunity a while back from this point on, this is what we started doing. A client was like, listen, you build a great application. Could you help us? Could we actually take one of your people to be able to work on it? So it was more like staff augmentation to work specifically on their product and they would manage them. And then at a certain point, they got even bigger and they said, hey, can you help us actually find
more talent to build around it. So that was a really good opportunity for us to say, how do we bridge the gap of, we build a product, maybe they're raising money or they already have money, but they're scaling up. How do we find more talent for them? So we start offering not all the team members, but some team members to be able to be augmented, right? On their staff, they would manage them. And then we also start offering to specific client that would make sense to actually find the talent for them. So.
We were finding time for them full time. And then the goal, I'll tell you the goal behind it is not like we weren't trying to really become a staffing agency. The goal behind it was to get them inside to work with the company. We have a hopefully relationship, a good relationship, and then they will be able to say, hey, we need additional help. Who do we go to? So was more like we have people that would be able to help them all the way through.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (04:59)
What do you find?
Mm-hmm.
And do you find a large percentage, small percentage of clients that moves to that model or most keep it as an outsourcing model for a long period?
Max (05:30)
I would say majority of the people outsource Some of the people that really scale up they really understand how to grow their business at a certain point Do you want to hire their own talent their own staff, right? Sometimes they go through us sometimes the majority of times they usually do it on their own, you know So we try to ask those questions before hands or really figure out. Hey, do you need our help? but
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (05:42)
Mm-hmm.
Max (05:53)
most of the time, especially if you're raising money, you wanna have your own team in-house. We might be, as additional partner, but usually they want a team in-house.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (06:00)
Mm-hmm.
So let's talk a bit about communication. And in your case, it's even more, I'd say complicated, but definitely more.
intrigued because you are, so you have a team, the team is remote. There is a communication within the team, right? So let's talk about a pod, right? Pod that works in product acts. But then there's also a client, right? And now they have to communicate with the team and they may be able to communicate. I don't know in your model, do they only work with project managers, leaders, or do they work with everybody, a team member? But how do you address that? How do you address that communication alignment and also
There's a bit cultural alignment, right? Because you have, they're your employees, so they work for your company. They know how you guys do things, but then there's a client and they do things their certain way, their own way. there's this, how do you bridge it together?
Max (06:55)
So we do usually, there's usually a project manager that's working on a project. Clients sometimes, depending on what type of project it is, if there's a need, clients sometimes does communicate with a project manager and a developer or designer. But usually, main point of context, project manager, product manager. Your question is how do they communicate amongst each other or how do they communicate with the client if there's a project management?
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (07:17)
So if they only communicate with the project manager, then I guess they only communicate within the team, right? They don't have, so the basically, I don't know if I'm hearing this right, but the individual contributors, individual developers are not necessarily exposed to the client directly. Is that correct?
Max (07:30)
Yeah,
unless for specific projects, unless it's needed and the client is like, listen, I do want to talk to developers. Well, usually it's not just like, just email everyone, right? Or contact. It's just going to be very messy. So there's got to be one point of contact from the client side. It should be one point of contact from our side. When we have spring calls or when we have specific discussions, then more of the team can join.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (07:43)
Mm-hmm.
Max (07:53)
But if you're just like, listen, like they might be in our project management environment. We use a platform for it. If they're in an environment, if they have a specific question to a certain person, they can ask that question, obviously. But we don't want them just to be like, hey, let me message this person and this person. And like all of a sudden messaging five people when you can just message one, they get the answer just a lot cleaner.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (08:15)
Sure. And I think it boils down to different mindset and different ideas. In my world, and I spent most of my life writing continuing teams, startups, I've always wanted to have direct contact with the developer. If I have a developer on this side or a project manager on this side or whatever it is, and somebody is working on that feature, have them talk directly, not go through this route of a single point of failure or single contact.
Max (08:38)
All right.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (08:40)
I'll never forget. actually, this was funny. I was my first job in AT back in 1992 and I worked for a larger company and they had a process, right? So I worked in one group and we had a manager and then there was a product manager and the other team, development team had their manager and they had developers and we were not allowed. And we weren't, this is, I'm talking about sitting in the same office, right? Sitting 10 feet from each other, but we were not allowed to talk directly. We were, you know,
Max (09:03)
yeah.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (09:07)
I had to talk to my manager who gets escalated and goes down, et cetera. If one of them was out sick, the whole thing dies. It just sits there, it just dies. And this is more than 30 years ago, but I still remember that as pretty funny as in like, okay, that just doesn't work.
Max (09:16)
Yeah.
Yeah,
so I agree with you in terms of I think it's better and quicker sometimes to get answers from a developer specifically that's working on it. I totally agree with you. only I mean even if a client so first of all, think it depends on the experience of the client. The client has no idea what to ask or how to to phrase the proper question. The questions will keep on going and what's happening is they're slowing down the developer.
There's got to be some kind of a barrier, right? So that's why we're trying to make sure there's some kind of a process. If we're on a call obviously, or if a client is like, listen, I understand the process, understand what needs to be done. I do want to ask the developer the direct question. That's not a problem, you know? But we also try to keep it, instead of just messages on a regular basis, hey, we have our spring calls, you know, on a weekly basis. Let's go over them. So we have a clear understanding of who's doing what.
and what is the expectations, right? So the client's not assuming, the developer or the project manager's not assuming, but if there is a question that's gonna go, let's say, to the developer from the client, the project manager should be involved to actually know also what's going on with that project.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (10:28)
All right, so let's talk a bit about just pure communication within the team, right? Culture, you guys are remote. I presume people in different countries, people in definitely different locations, but possibly different countries. What do you do as a team? What do you do as a company to make sure it's one joined team and people are aligned, especially given that you have project-based. So I'm assuming...
people move from project to project every once in a while. So the team members might be different tomorrow than they were today.
Max (10:56)
Mm-hmm.
⁓ So most of the time team members are the same for the project. it's not, not. When the project changes, yeah, I mean, my team, I've been, my team has been with me for years. thankfully that's worked out very well. What do we do? I mean, we've done like a virtual happy hours when the team members that are actually here, we would actually, you know, get together for lunches. We would get together at the office if anybody wanted to come in.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (11:04)
Right, but I mean when the project changes, right? I'm talking about when the project changes.
Mm-hmm.
Max (11:26)
We do a funny thing at the end of the year where this is actually an idea from one of my project managers to kind of like Send out information about the funniest things that has happened within projects internal, know, I mean just it's not obviously I love the face-to-face type of energy, you know Or office energy like it's amazing. But at the same time and still I started working more remote You really don't understand how much time you waste
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (11:54)
Absolutely.
Max (11:55)
You know, like I went to the office the other day and our office space is in a co-working space. You know, so I know a lot of people there, there are clients of ours as well. Several other people are clients there as well. And it's just conversation after conversation, which is good for me because, you know, I'm the face of the company. I got to talk to people, you know, some clients, there's some, some just colleagues and then good contacts who become friends as well. But it's a big waste of time, big waste of time. So.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (12:22)
Absolutely,
for sure.
Max (12:23)
If you really
think about it, okay, let's say average eight hour day, let's say out of those eight hours, I mean, you're probably only working five, you know, I would say, if that, yeah. So yeah, I think definitely a lot more productivity happens. in inner area, you know, I'm located around Washington DC, in Baltimore area, inner area, there's a lot of
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (12:33)
If that, if that, right.
Max (12:47)
So if you're driving, I mean you're spending about an hour, hour and a half, majority of the people live close to the office, but still if you're spending an hour in traffic each way, that sucks.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (12:56)
Mm-hmm.
Years ago, I had a job interview. This is probably 20 years ago. I mean, a long time ago. I had a job interview for a company for a position of VP of engineering. It was a smaller company, maybe 30, 40 people, like really smaller company. And it was one of those cases where the existing VP was still there, but he was leaving and he was hiring his own replacement. it's actually, a good thing. And so they made me an offer. And then, you know, I haven't.
I haven't said yes or no at that point, or they made me an offer. And then the guy who was a VP, and I was there, I've talked to a few people a few times, right? Team members, other management, obviously the CEO, the founder. And after they make me an offer, this VP guy calls me and says, hey, before you say yeah or nay, let's get together for lunch. Okay, that's a little odd, but sure, let's do that. So we got together for lunch and he's like, yeah.
Max (13:44)
huh.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (13:47)
You seem like a nice guy, I like you. So, I'll give you some information and then do whatever you want with it. Long story short, he gave me information. I've asked to meet with the team, with a few team members to verify the information turned out to be true. And that helped me decline the offer. But the deal was, and this is what was so hilarious, the CEO...
measured success by how much time you spend in the office in front of a computer. And to do this, he would obtain weekly data from the parking garage to see when people pulled in and pulled out of the recovery. Right, because there's no time card, so you can't figure out when somebody came in, but you can figure out when they drove into the building. And I looked at it and I asked him, I talked to him and I said, this is I'm hearing, is that true? He says, yeah, absolutely, that's true. It's not a secret. told him everybody knows that.
Max (14:25)
Wow. Yeah.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (14:38)
said, so why are doing this? says, well, how else can I measure somebody's performance? said, so what you're measuring is how much time they're spending here, right? What they do is they come in, they sit in front of a computer and they read a book or they do their own thing. Just because they're here doesn't mean they're being productive. And so long story short, that's where that ended. But scary thought of how people try to measure one's success.
Max (14:43)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Well, interesting.
Wow, very interesting. Well, everybody got their own methods, I guess. I mean, today, thankfully, there's new technologies to do that.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (15:02)
Yeah
Yeah, but I don't you know my employees I explicitly tell them I don't care how long you work I really don't care how much you work if you work an hour a day great like I'm happy for you as long as the work is done and I feel like you're doing enough I Don't I just don't care how much you
Max (15:09)
Wow.
Right.
Right, I hear you.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (15:25)
Cool. Anyway, any thoughts? So, you our target audience are technology leaders mostly, right? There are people that are running engineering teams. Some of them have a lot of experience running remote teams. Some of them don't. Some of them are running outsourcing teams. Some of them it's local hires, either direct local hires or somebody like you, like local, mean, direct hires that are remote or they work for us or companies like us. What's your word of advice?
Max (15:44)
but ⁓
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (15:51)
So what do you think this managers, this leaders can do to make teams more efficient, more productive, and ultimately have people stay longer?
Max (16:00)
Well, first of all, think I think it's a very loaded question, but I think it really depends on what type of product or company is being built. Like, for example, somebody that exited, you know, they probably going to like a very good exit. He's probably going to have a lot more a players saying I want to join a team and they're to be more more focused on it because of his past experience.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (16:19)
Hmm?
Max (16:23)
Or somebody that has been around for a while, it's credible, know, has really good feedback from people. But if you're just starting off, so let's say if you're just a startup, you have an idea, you know, I think it's also, not I think, it's also the passion, the way you're able to understand what you're trying to solve, right, and what you're trying to build. People feel that, especially, I think maybe with some engineers, it's a little, you know, they're not.
really salespeople and not that you have to sell but when you find that inner passion, know, and you're able to properly communicate it, right? I think the people usually they hear it and if something really clicks like, my God, this could actually work. So in other words, you have to know how to present. You have to know how to pitch. If you know how to pitch, doesn't matter if you're pitching an employee, if you're pitching an investor, if you're you know, customers.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (17:04)
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Max (17:12)
have to know how to pitch. you know how to present that, know, kind of like, you know, one time a long long time ago, I'll never forget, we had a client that gave us a presentation on hat in the hat, Dr. Seuss.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (17:24)
Okay?
Max (17:24)
And the whole point behind, he gave it to our whole team, we brought him in to give it to our whole team. And the whole point behind the presentation was to show how Kat in the hat, right, was creative in how he pitched eggs and ham.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (17:35)
Alright.
Max (17:37)
Remember he said, would you like it in the car? Would you like it in the water? Would you like it? Like he went to all, again, that was very different approach, but I love the creativity, how he thought about the book that was for kids to say, well, you can use this to learn how to, you know, if they say no here, which is totally fine, you know, maybe they just don't want it in a wet spot. They want it to be in a dry spot. So I think this is the same thing. I think this is the first thing to do.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (17:40)
Right, of course.
night. ⁓
Max (18:02)
really make people believe is to know how to be able to present your idea and where it's going. And obviously none of us have a clear goal, but like if you really see it, if you really picture, know, you're like, this is what's going to happen. Things will change, it will evolve, which is totally normal. So I think that's one type of scenario for, for startups, right? For, bigger companies or more experienced people. mean, again, depends who you're going after, type of players, if you're going to have to
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (18:13)
No.
Max (18:28)
A players and they hear your experience what you have done because you already build this experience. I think that would also help to to Excite him and You know be able to say listen. I'm interested what I'm working on I mean you should have people interested what they're working on because if they're not gonna have any type of interest and you like to work or love I'm not even saying love but like to what they're working on Then they shouldn't even be on the team
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (18:37)
Bye.
Absolutely agree. Yeah, that's a great, great pointer. think I hope more people do this. We always tell, you know, when people talked about outsourcing before, it was all about cost and then it became about skills. But really it's about alignment. It's about getting the right people in and getting them aligned. And then, yeah, sure, skills and sure, yes, it does come at a cost savings, but that shouldn't be the main motivator.
Max (19:06)
Alignment,
Right, 100%. And then obviously, you're working with certain people. mean, listen, I've had people. I had a guy in one situation. He worked with us. He was a contractor. worked with us for, I wanna say maybe five, six years. And whatever happened, just, I don't know, just the alignment definitely, we were not aligned anymore. I'm not even talking about me. I never had a problem with him. I thought he was great guy, great work.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (19:29)
Hm?
Max (19:40)
very productive, you know. And actually he's brought another guy that he's worked with at a previous company on another big project that we had. And I'm like, how does he do it so quickly? He's always been very, very efficient, you know, out of all the engineers that worked in the company. But at a certain point, he just, I don't know what it was, he just did not click with some of the team members. The project manager, project coordinator.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (19:55)
Bye.
Max (20:04)
You know, and I was just like, listen, man, what's going on? He's like, I don't know. just, I just, we don't see eye to eye. said, maybe it's time just for you to move on. You know, like, yeah, we've used you on projects. He's like, yeah, you know, I want to work. You know, I like the money that's coming in, but if we don't see eye to eye with them. Yeah. I said, absolutely. Listen, I don't, I don't want you to, wake up in the morning and feel like, my God, I got to do this. And I don't want them to feel like that as well. And they come back to me be like, Hey, why is he answering us this way? You know?
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (20:11)
Mm-hmm.
That's not it. Bye.
Bye.
Max (20:33)
So it's people outgrow each other. It is what it is. It sucks, but like I said, I have people that I have worked with for years and we're still working together. So, yeah.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (20:37)
Absolutely.
Awesome. Max, thank you so much. Thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Max (20:51)
same here