Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:01 You were committed
Speaker 1 00:00:03 To investing. And then we were fortunate to, to bring in some really, really, really strong talent in the beginning, then eventually sort of accelerated our growth, a lot of different profiles. I know we were very focused on hiring them to a certain set them profiles early on we'd create culture. I was talking about it before in some presentations, some sort of social glue between people. Those hires are super critical in the beginning,
Speaker 0 00:00:47 Really positive for us. Hi
Speaker 1 00:00:52 CEO, and co-founder at sea back with another episode of scaling so far on today's episode, I'll be chatting with a close partner of seats. Marcus grand, strong senior director of engineering at Klarna. Now value does staggering $10.6 billion. Colona is the highest valued private FinTech company in Europe today. And even more recently hit the headlines with that super bowl ad, which I have to say. I love. Um, so going pretty well for Kleiner, I'd say Marcus, so, so grateful that you're able to join us for our chat today. Um, massive. Welcome to the scaling. So far podcast. How's everything going? Yeah. I think everything is going great. Like you're saying, we asked, did the super bowl commercial. We had a positive reception to it. So a lot of views, a lot of media and stuff. That's always good. So, Marcus, can you tell us a little bit about your story, um, how you came to join Klarna, um, as an engineering to me back in 2015, wasn't it? Yeah, exactly. It's almost six years ago now. So yeah, I, um, I, uh, basically before, before joining Klein, I had a small startup, which I sold the company that acquired us. And then at that point, after three years to sort of lock up was over. And then I had some discussions with different companies, but in the end they show I was the one that was mostly, mostly gearing up for a big growth phase. I would say what really led me to come in the first place.
Speaker 1 00:02:50 I'm sure people are aware of. Um, but for those who aren't for the acquaintance acquaintances, um, could you tell us a little bit about the mission or vision? Yes, of course. So we're obviously a, uh, from based out of Stockholm, Sweden, but now we're sort of globally presence and we're on a mission to become the world's most favorite way to shop basically. So that comes from either through, directly to our app in the app stores or directly through our emotions integrates with us. So, like I said, a large part of the Europe, us Asia, Pacific Australia, and constantly growing into new markets has been super excited, certainly for us to be part of the journey or follow the journey with certainly I know, um, clubs have launched initially in the Nordics and then now we thought open a e-commerce website without a really fantastic, we love it.
Speaker 1 00:04:01 Um, so in your, in your role and your team's capacity, um, how has it new health planner, you know, achieve that mission and vision? Yeah, so I work primarily, but basically primary. I have two, two roles I would say, but primarily our work with them, um, with our merchants. So I run the merchant side of our business. So that is then enabling our merchants to sound with time to offer their payment methods on their e-commerce sites and everything from, from their onboarding to the support we give them. So that is variable than I think we, we enable our emotions to grow quite a lot with us. So I think that is exciting. And then I'm also down on the engineering side and how we bring talent in once they're here, that is also a big, big part of my day to day workspace. Awesome. And you mentioned that even with kind of for, for nearly six years, um, it would be great to understand a bit about your journey, um, with Klarna over those years and kind of how your, your role and responsibilities have evolved.
Speaker 1 00:05:18 So I think that it's, uh, I worked, uh, like you said, previous, and I started the, which is a role we don't have anymore because we changed the change around a bit. But I started at that then worked with them as a leader, their core payments platform and did that for a year or something like that, something similar. And then after a year I moved into to the merchant space, I've worked with motions for the last five years or something like that. And then I grow from there to engineering role, to senior director and then a senior director. So have the quite, quite the progress. And I think that is what you get that accompany that grows. There's always an abundance of opportunity to be there and do your best and perform and grab it for sure. And I think part of your journey, um, certainly, uh, we first met, you were in, um, in Stockholm and if I'm not mistaken, you're, you're living and working in Berlin now. Um, and you were a part of the, I guess the setup of the brand new engineering office in Berlin, um, which I guess is no, no easy task. Um, I guess for our listeners will be really interesting to understand how, how do you even go about something like that? What does the process look like for a new engineering location? Yes, it's a great question. I think it's, I moved to Berlin a little over three years.
Speaker 1 00:07:00 We were, I believe we were nine people on the first day that we have hired at Stockton in a basement in Berlin we're now I actually don't know how many we are. I think we are 600 or something, but I don't have a fully, fully up to date number on that. But I think we, uh, we, uh, we, we were committed to investing and when we, when we started and then we were fortunate to, to bring in some really, really, really strong talent in the beginning, then eventually sort of accelerated our growth. We looked at a lot of different profiles and we, I believe, I know we were very focused on hiring them to a certain set them profiles early on would create culture.
Speaker 1 00:07:57 I've spoken about it before in some presentations, some sort of social glue between people, those hires were super critical in the beginning and then really, really positive for us. And I believe all the nine people that we were in the basement and the first thing I think, yeah, it's a really big undertaking, isn't it for? I guess, less so for an organization at the state of Klarna, for many looking to launch in new locations can be quite a daunting task. And I really like your quotes about it being a very deliberate and invested opportunity for Cloudera. You can't do it half heartedly, really. You have to go and you have to, depending on of course, how your organization sciences, but you also have to force force people to hear, because it is easier for everyone to sit in the same office, but especially for, for a company like ours, when we really, really need them to, to grow quicker.
Speaker 1 00:09:06 And then you have to, then you have to push people to, to, to take that step as well. From a hiring perspective, all hire a management company, hire everyone in the same location, for sure. Lot of the white farmer approach as well with some folks like yourself and other members from, from the headquarter location now as a cultural pillars and ambassadors to help kind of build the app, um, enormous growth in Berlin over the last, um, last three years, as you mentioned from, from nine to several hundred, um, a big focus for you as obviously being hiring exceptional talent into that hub. Um, it'd be really interesting to understand what some of your biggest learnings have been through that, um, that scale journey. And if there's any advice that you'd be open to sharing with other engineering leaders that are going through a seminar undertaking.
Speaker 1 00:10:00 Yeah. So I think, like I mentioned before, I think, um, the, the, the glue that I called them on the social social aspect of it all the highest we did early was super critical. They obviously have to pass the technical bar we have had as well, but then we opted to hiring more sort of cultural ambassadors, more than super extreme specialists because we could hire those later. And it was more important to get momentum and we'll be able to leverage leverage they didn't to be hired, to do interviews, basically race raised the bar to wherever it comes to the bees. I think that was key to what we did. I think one of the other other things was to do the scaling and growth we had was actually the office space. So we were initially with a, what do you call them hotel offices where you can actually grow, grow over time.
Speaker 1 00:11:09 So I think that was a very good, we, we looked at different office spaces and stuff like that, but it was always been in the chasing you office space for anyone. So that was, it came up as a coincidence, but I think in retrospect it was a really good, really good fit for us doubling in the first months we doubled doubled every three, four months, first months we doubled every month. So they're quite important to the flexible in that sense. It's a really interesting for the listeners. Um, and I see this time and time again, whether an over index of technical skill and very specific technical ability and early hires, I really like you sharing your approach to the social group, the cultural elements. I think that is super, super important. I mean, we always need them in more or less every team sort of as well.
Speaker 1 00:12:12 But then in the beginning we do, we overload it with that kind of expertise instead of having technical expertise also need, but in the initial phase, quite often, when we speak to the leaders on this, on this series, we talk about the different ways in which you could organize hiring in your organization and kind of prioritize or, or, or streamline what you do. Um, in terms of identifying new positions, how you work them from within groups or pipelines and all of that kind of stuff and something I'd like to ask you a bit more about this at the fact that Klarna has quite distinct hiring pipelines. And you have had certainly for the time that I've known the organization, and I'd love to be able to share with us a bit more about the thinking behind that and how they function. Absolutely. So I think one of the things we realized probably four years ago now, is that the way we were doing hiring less, like, I guess most companies do or did not that basic the, the team that was hiring was doing the interviewing and the decisions.
Speaker 1 00:13:26 Then it became a very uneven basically. So some teams could go after old year without hiring anyone because they're borrowers. So on the unreasonable high, while someone hired whoever more or less, which meant that we were in this situation where we felt that we needed to have a consistent bar that was more suited to the known we needed to have. We obviously we want them to focus on specific, specific places and specific specific technologies when doing the hiring. So that is when we came up with this concept of hiring pipelines, which is basically based on a location and the technical aspects. So I run a Java script for Berlin office done. So everyone that want to work with JavaScript, if it's full stack, react, react native, they, whatever it is, it goes through my pipeline. And then I have a dedicated interview that are senior engineers, but they also do technical interviews.
Speaker 1 00:14:40 And then we keep that group rather small to be able to, to keep a consistent, consistent bar so that if you interview one person, you have the same, same outcome. If you went through with the economic, of course, they're still human. So there is of course biases and all that, but we try as much as possible to keep a consistent bar on the people we hire at least have passed that minimal bar, because there's a lot of opportunities to move between teams and stuff like that. I think that is, yeah. I think that it was the big, big reason. I mean, I feel that we have, we are a lot more consistent than in the hierarchy. That makes perfect sense. And I kind of understand the approach and it's kind of like a specific bar consistently across the engineering organization. And like you say, the technical aspects are different based on team, which is why your, your segment.
Speaker 1 00:15:43 Yeah. Because it's like if you're going to do some on them once a year, and it's unlikely that you would be able to get the outcome that you want out of that, I think it's, at that point, it's more like flipping a coin from either it's a good hire or a bad hire, but if you consistently do this and consistently train these things, it's something I'd like to ask or for you to elaborate on. As you guys scaling your, your interview teams within those pipeline groups, is that there's also an initiative that you obsess about making sure that you're able to bring people to the interview pool cleanability perspective, but also to, as you mentioned, that all of that work goes around consistency across that panel. Um, could you share a little bit more about how you do that? Because I know lots of people ask me questions, um, or it comes up in conversations about, Hey, we need to hire a place.
Speaker 1 00:16:51 And how do I scale my interview, my interview pool in the organization? Yeah, I think it's a good question. Uh, so I think we, we do, we do scale them, but we also keep them rather small, but we make it very clear that hiring is a priority for us. So these are all part of the hiring hiring pipeline day. They take the time to do the interviews. And that is what I think is critical. That we are actually clear that this is time that they're going to spend on, on improving the company. And then if their team leader or director, or whoever comes to assess as well this much time on it, super clear, this is a priority for the company to bring in. Excellent. I think that is important. Then when it comes to the, when it comes to the scaling, we do a lot of, we tried to bring them off.
Speaker 1 00:17:57 We obviously have internal training for four sort of trying to, trying to bring them from a theoretical point of view out to interviews. But of course we also do shadowing until they are comfortable in leaving. And we do that consistently over time as well. Like if someone has been in the pipeline for, for a while, they also shadow other shifts to not divert from the, from the parts, because it's easy when you're one-on-one with someone and then you adopt them, you create your own biases and stuff like that. So I think that is also something we do that's really helpful. And something that stands out for me there, um, is the prioritization of hiring a new organization and giving your teams permission and time to do recruitment. Um, quite often we have conversations with folks and can speak to people and hiring is like an extra thing that seems to have to be, to fit in around the day job, but giving your teams that permission and support and training to, to focus on hiring as a priority is fabulous.
Speaker 1 00:19:13 Thank you very much for sharing that. So you're hiring people who are essentially exploring uncharted waters, um, engineers, you have a propensity to action specialists in different tech areas, but are also confident enough to continually create and try new things. As you mentioned earlier, um, people who have been part of this kind of social glue that the cultural ambassadors, um, and a fascinating topic is, you know, being able to test for culture, um, you know, behaviors, culture, and also being able to assess for skills. So what does an interview and assessment process look like, um, to be able to, to evaluate both of those things and how do you reflect true climate life through that candidate experience into new journey? Yeah. So it's a great question. We obviously have a separate thing at the moment. We have five interviews to two different steps, three different steps, one it's like a pre pre-screen or like a screening phase where we do some tests than I am a screening call.
Speaker 1 00:20:33 And then we have a phase one and phase two. So both of them are technically what we call a cultural entity. And then you progressed from Facebook and you're going to face the same. One of the things that'd be consistently cheap as part of those interviews is it's time for questions because in the market we operate in today as much as us sort of interviewing the candidate. So it's super important that we, that we leave room for the candidate to talk to us and ask us questions and stuff like that. I think that is really what we want to focus around, especially in the phase two, when the candidate, when we are almost certain that we will hire the candidate to 80%, then it's really about the candidates asking this question, making sure that they, they know what it means to join from a culture perspective.
Speaker 1 00:21:45 So I think that is as important as us sort of asking them questions. That makes sense. I think that's really key for people to, to understand, particularly in, uh, a location, as competitive as, as Berlin for the engineering talent, that is a global audience of opportunity for these folks is absolutely the inexperienced play where, where people learn as much about you as, as you do about them. So nice to see that you guys are super mindful about that. Um, we're, we've spoken in previous episodes with, um, Nico, the founder of plats person about, you know, hiring for cultural add, if you like, um, you know, you want the right mix of people with diverse backgrounds, with different thought processes to create the right type of engineering team culture. You know, for example, if you were to have a team of engineers, 90% of them, how process and authority is the highest value that team could end up perhaps lacking in creativity or, or boundary pushing or innovation, perhaps, how is this something that you you manage or, or, or hire for, um, you know, when building teams, um, as a, as a director of engineering, to make sure that you've got the right, the right balance in the right place and finding that right.
Speaker 1 00:23:09 Cultural mix, I guess. Yeah. I think that is, uh, that is really important. I think that is also sort of what you w when you look at teams that you have today, why is mom a high performing team? And I think it is all about having the right mix of people and having the right culture in the team. So we definitely do that. Then we, of course, when, especially when 18 is set and we're back-filling or extending a team, then I think it's even, even more, even easier because then the leaders in the team know they need to either backfill or get more off. So I think that is super, I think that is one of the most important aspects to be aware of what they have and what they, what they need basically to bring it to another level. So I think that is totally, totally true, and that is mainly how we, how we do it.
Speaker 1 00:24:21 And then we also do, we encouraged people to move between teams that moving to other other teams, because we're so, so big now. So you can, you can work in one department and then you can move to another one to do something completely different, completely different tech stack, domain knowledge, like moving to another company. Or of course there are quite a lot of specific knowledge that you take with us that it's valuable for us. Perfect. And as a recruiter, I obsess about how precious engineering time is, but it's obviously relied upon in many aspects of the hiring process, right? Unavoidable, what sort of measures do you have in place to try and protect engineering time as much as possible, and also something that comes up quite consistently in hyper-growth organizations as a interviewer fatigue, um, especially in this world where, where we're mostly functioning on video calls and stuff like that, we really interested in on those topics.
Speaker 1 00:25:43 Yeah. So I think that is, um, that's an excellent question. I think, um, I think we are trying to be, like I mentioned, with the pipelines, we are being very, we're trying to keep their time focused. So instead of them having five interviews spread out over the week, they usually have a day which they are focused and know that this day is going to be a lot of interviews and stuff. But then the other, other days during the week, other four days, they can, they can focus on their normal day job. So I think that is one way of doing it. When it comes to interview fatigue, then it's definitely a concern. I find it very, very different as well. So some, some definitely feel it, or some of the, some of the viewers are as a relaxation.
Speaker 1 00:26:43 Uh, but, uh, but we do. And then we do, we do rotation in the, in the, in the interview around 10 people in my pipeline and the pipeline and most, and I rotate that over over time. I believe there's so many there's mom person that's been there through the whole interview journey, but he enjoys it. But I, I know I did a thousand interviews the first year in Berlin over a year. So that was, I definitely felt, I mean, it's mainly mainly bad for the people that I'm interviewing, because if they're not exceptional, then it's hard to get engaged.
Speaker 1 00:27:40 Always, always consider it. Um, awesome. So the closing questions now, um, when it comes to building teams, um, if you had a magic wand, what's one challenge that you'd love to fix? No, I think that would be the, if you could change personality on people, like if you're, if you're short on social glue in a team, you could just wave a wand and have it there. Or then instead of, I don't know, a mom's looking for someone that's waiting three months for them to join and whatnot. So that would be, it would be great to have a magic wand and change people's personnel.
Speaker 1 00:28:40 I don't have a magic wand and that's unfortunate unapologetically passionate about something that you're maybe even mildly obsessed with. It can be lighthearted. Oh, very good question. Now. And that's a very good question. I think one of the things that I, that I can extremely much about when it comes to engineers and engineering teams and the product teams, is that they, that they care that they understand that they're the product that they're building and the context around it deeply. And I think that is, um, there's a, there's a wording that some companies use when it comes to product that they're looking for engineers to build products and not if they're not only work with the latest and greatest technology for the sake of it, I always say we should do it because it brings better products, but if it doesn't, it's not there.
Speaker 1 00:30:04 So I think that is, and that they are so business focused, that they actually truly understand what they're doing and the impact that they're having, because they take so many business decisions on a day-to-day basis that perhaps aren't aware of. So I think that is cool. Last question for Marcus, um, what's one thought value or phrase that you live by? Yeah, no, I have to, I have to translate it exactly. The direct translation of these phrases normally doesn't work very well. No, exactly. That is. But if, uh, so if I, if I do a direction, the future, the future comes, uh, whether you like it or not, but, uh, but success is created sort of, and I think that goes into like you, you can, a lot of the success and progress you're making your life is something you can create by yourself, but you also need to have a bit of luck as well. You need to be in the right place at the right time and do the right at that point of time, but you can impact impact your future loss by doing a lot of the right things. And then eventually, hopefully you're doing it for the right time, right place, the holiday work, the luckier you get. Right.
Speaker 1 00:31:37 Marcus, thank you so much for your time today, even though we met for the first time in 2017, for the same time frame, there's a ton that you shared today, um, that I've certainly learned from, uh, found super valuable. And I'm sure those that are listening, um, feel the same way too. So, um, thanks again for joining us and enjoy the rest of you that thank you for having me.
