Tamas 0:32

Hey there and welcome back to startups, people in equity. Before we dive into the episode, I just wanted to ask everyone who's in the mood to contribute to this podcast, to share feedback ideas that they would like to hear discussed on the show. Anything that could be building for us, which Bella as podcasters or anything for the show, please shoot it our way. Welcome to the episode. Ling Ling our guest today currently runs a consultancy helping her clients bringing social innovation projects to life amongst our clients. We can find uni lever Pearson and the UK department of international development. That sounds very interesting. She has a very sturdy educational background with a degree from Harvard and MIT. And she has also delivered lectures at a number of prestigious institutions before, including Cambridge, which is kind of like the origin of our connection as well. I also wanted to share a more personal story to introduce Lingling. I knowingly through my wife and herself, and I am both very grateful to you leaning because you were kind of like the, one of the first people to trust my own, my wife professionally outside of family and close friends. So I thought that was very beautiful and, I'm very thankful for that. And this kind of make me think, that's probably just your. Relationship or connection strategy to allocate trust as a, as a starting point rather than a reward. Is that true?

Ling Ling 2:00

Absolutely. I think it works better actually. And you know, most of the time it works out just fine, every so often you get a little bite from it, but you recover pretty quickly.

Tamas 2:11

I've heard a couple of people just refer to it, like the social tax. Every now and then you pay the eight, 10, 20%, however many you kind of encounter, but it's probably worth it.

Ling Ling 2:23

Yeah. I think people live up to your expectations of them. So if you expect the best of people typically they show up that way.

Tamas 2:29

Absolutely. May I invite you to share a little bit about your origins and maybe anything that I've forgot or didn't mention from the introduction?

Ling Ling 2:37

Yeah. Sure. So we're talking about geographical pay today and I think it's really interesting and I have a completely non-academic perspective to offer very much an experiential perspective and essentially, maybe philosophical too. I don't know. Let's see, let's see how it goes. But I think I have an interesting perspective because I'm someone who, you know, despite the accent that I have and no one can see my face here on a podcast visually, but I'm of a east Asian descent. I was actually born in Vietnam right after the war and my family were refugees after the war and we escaped on a little boat where probably about half the other people die, but we made it and I won the immigration lottery of a lifetime getting both a us passport as a child. And then also a UK passport, which is where I met Mary and your wife. And I think that sort of. Within one lifetime straddling experiences of I would say. Let's not be too dramatic living in poverty. But in fact, if you're on the losing side of the war and you are, you know, post-war country, you're going to be pretty poor. So not being too dramatic about it, you know, sort of in one lifetime being one of the poorest people in the world. And then in that same lifetime sort of transcending a lot of social boundaries and becoming, I would say like really well off, you know, I'm not. Elon Musk, but I do really well in this life. And I live a very comfortable life. I have no complaints and that was very different than when I first was born. Certainly. And then growing up in a rural town in Virginia, where we were not very popular at the time, as you can imagine, even though, you know, individuals were very warm, but sort of the undercurrent of those times after the Vietnam war where, you know, you have like Bob Dylan singing songs against it, it's, you're not very popular. So, you know, actually growing up, in a very blue collar family and then, you know, having two degrees from prestigious institutions and being able to, you know, be a guest lecturer at Cambridge it's quite astounding, even for myself to reflect upon. I think it gives me a particular human perspective on what geographical pay means.

Tamas 4:56

Very interesting. So how do you think about geographical data?

Ling Ling 5:01

Yeah, I think that you know what you were saying to me yesterday when we were preparing for this it's pretty important to sort of break down at least to two parts first, you know, the first is like, well, we're thinking about PE you know, someone's doing some work for you. So I think it's important to really break down what work means. And then when we think about pay also pay is really about value. So you pay someone based on, you know, the value of the work that they produce. So I think maybe if we start there, it's a good, good place to really. Uncover what could be a useful and more productive ways to think about geographical pay because you think about it and then you all, you get really uncomfortable and you start thinking about ethics and fairness, and then, and then you get into this spiral and twist and people start getting really upset. And you don't know why, because everyone is at a very different place when talking about this. But instead I think maybe we should question our assumptions about sort of fundamentals of what we mean by, by pay and then even geography as well, too. I think when we say geography, it's, it's like the political boundaries that define countries. Because you know, everyone just was born in a place on this earth. And if you're lucky you're born in one little plot of land. And if you're unlucky, you know, potentially you're born another little plot of land during a particular time. So let's start with works. In particular, you know, when we think of work, I have an economics background. I like to simplify it to like a unit of value, like one output, and it's so clean and clear and you can say, okay, well, if this programmer does excellent code. Then you would think that no matter where they are in the world, that that code would be on the same value. And so you might then equate well, why would you, you know, actually change, pay based on, that particular, unit of code that was produced, however, Actually works a little bit more complicated than that because we're human beings. We're not machines or robots, hardly anything is transactional when talking about human beings and our relationships and well beyond sort of the code that anyone produces. I think the work that we do as employees in an organization in particular is the, a lot of it's very social because human beings are social. So it's about, you know, does this person come into the room and does everyone feel like bonded and lights up and is excited to see them, or does when the person walk in the room, people sort of hide in cringe because they don't really want to interact with that person. and everyone knows that person, right? Like everyone has interacted with someone where they're just like, okay, I'm going to pretend to be really deep in, you know, into whatever my, on my screen, my computer now. And then everyone knows that person that walks in and you just like ready to leap out of your desk chair, you know, back in the day when we were in the office. And just wants to go and greet them because they're so happy to see them. And actually there's value in that. I think everyone would argue that. Work is then not just a unit of measure on the output that's been created. And I think that's the second part. That social element is where making sort of that value statement for pay more tricky. Because then what's introduced is bias like human bias. I'll talk about that in a little bit, but first I want to talk a little bit about value. So in terms of value You know, we pay for what we value and we think that, okay, you know, there's a market out there. And so you know, there's a market value for this particular job in the marketplace. And so, you know, we should, in, in that market value is actually based on geography. And so that defines, you know, why someone would, she should be paid something different, but actually. Sort of start deconstructing value a little bit more clearly. It can potentially help us think a little bit more about geographic way in terms that takes out fairness because at the end of the day, value is not at all objective. Especially when it comes to measuring a human being, like, how are you really going to measure the value of someone is actually very, very subjective. You know, when you think about the value of currency, it's completely based on, you know whether other countries think that that economy is strong or not, and it's completely subjective. You know, you've seen Bitcoin and these cryptocurrencies completely subjective. What is it based on? And so, we look at it, it's completely based on the world we live in and if you take it all the way and I just like to take it all the way to the extreme and actually say that it's completely arbitrary. You know, what does, what does it really even mean? Because when we talk about pay and we talk about money, it is actually completely arbitrary. So I'll take it to the extreme and say, if you were on a desert island, And you had bars of gold stacked up around you, you would think, oh my gosh, you know, how wealthy am I? Because you know, a bar of gold can actually be much more easily valued than a human being. You know, we know that the purity of gold has a particular price and no matter where you buy it, it, you know, New York or, or Germany, or, Moscow, it's going to come. Out at the same price, but all of a sudden when you're on that desert island and you're really struggling to catch fish, what you really want is one of those cheap fruit in that plastic netting, like you wish one of those things would float by and all of a sudden the value changes dramatically. So it is really based on a social system. And when you see that value is based on a social system and pay is then linked to that social system, then inherently we lead down to bias and that's where people start getting a bit uncomfortable. And we shouldn't actually, it's just human nature to Go towards the familiar and sort of shy away from what we don't understand. Unfortunately when it comes to geographical PE when people are from different cultures, like as I mentioned, the person that you don't want to talk to, and you want to look down at your computer, maybe because they're from a culture that is very direct or their English. Isn't perfect. And so they're saying things in a really awkward way that makes you quite uncomfortable, but they might be, a fine person in their in their own society. So, anyhow, I've talked a lot here. I'm going to pause and see if that makes sense.

Tamas 10:59

Yes for me. It absolutely doesn't. And at several points in time, when you were talking, it kind of reminded me of Yuval Noah Harari as well. Like the shared myths of what we create as, as cultures and societies. I love that part of his book so much. It, it really made me realize that none of this exists countries. it's just a you know, output of our imagination.

Ling Ling 11:21

Exactly. Completely made up construct. And actually that's where there's freedom in sort of redefining things, is that when we realize thing is completely fictional and made up, well, why not make up something different?

Spela 11:34

I actually had a thought from all the way in the beginning, when you were talking about your perspective of being born somewhere and then living somewhere else and then comparing the two. That was a thought that I had in my mind for a long time, when I was discussing with myself, location, agnostic, pay what happens, what possibilities are given to someone because of pay. So if you think about it, if you keep someone on a location-based ban Vietnam, can they even afford to move to a country? Like the us? That's like a constant thing that goes through my mind that I'm actually wondering what your opinion is about this, or what is your experience with this? If you had to go through.

Ling Ling 12:21

Yeah, I think it's, you know, it gets really tricky because at the end of the day, you know, I've just spewed out a whole lot of theory and philosophy, but it's not very practical. I'll completely admit that because everyone works in a geographical marketplace defined by these very fictional boundaries and when the society and everyone's working in your competitors, if you're at a startup is working with what the field, these truths are in mind, then you end up becoming really not competitive. If you start giving, the Vietnamese programmer, the same salary as someone that's living in Switzerland, for example, and,, instead their competitor can now hire, three programmers and, you know, get to market a lot faster than you, then you wonder, well, why did I do that? Also couldn't I have given maybe, hire two people and have healthier salaries you know, would that be better off? And, those are excellent questions. And I would encourage everyone to ask themselves that I think where it gets really tricky is where you, we bought blindly just follow, the fictional system that's out there and not question this really uncomfortable feeling of, you know, fairness. I don't have a answer to that. I don't think anyone does. I think it has to be people have to think in a more productive way about it, which is why I presented a more theoretical framework in the beginning to help us. Break free and potentially look a little bit closer at what we define work being that it's not just output, but it's, you know, sort of the social side. And then,, maybe actually that social side of having a more global and diverse workforce merits it, maybe that is actually what makes you competitive when you start breaking it out into smaller pieces and really interrogating each of them and saying, you know, what does this actually really mean? Am I actually imposing my own bias onto the social component of work? Because I don't understand. I come from a particular coast culture and majority, and you know, our company come from this particular culture how might we do it differently? How might we create something that is closer to meeting people in the middle and having everyone, sort of come towards us and behave in the way that makes us feel good all the time.

Tamas 14:27

I wanted to reflect on, on the desert island example that you said a little bit before because it was interesting for me that you brought that picture into the geographical page because that's like a very fixed geographical location right here. You're dropped on this desert desert island. Absolutely. But it kind of made me think that if I can construct that efficiently just now, like, I feel like there are three key variables that go into determining your pay. One would be your job family. Like you said, software engineer people, department, customer experience, whatever it may be. Your seniority level. So the level, that you occupying an organization and currently your location. So once you fixed the location, I was also thinking to myself, how do we determine value between customer experience and software engineer or between seniority levels? That's also a very interesting question.

Ling Ling 15:22

Yeah, absolutely. And as again, determined by, this market system which is, in the end, very arbitrary.

Spela 15:33

Putting maybe a thought out there, not a defined one because it can become imposing, but rather just add it to one of the multiple data points already out there. So when I think of data, which I think is one of the key pillars of the current life that we live in, I always think of it as one of the key pillars, not the key pillar. Right. So I always want to add to, to it the human parts at least. So whenever I'm thinking of anything, that's data driven. I always end up in a circle of asking myself, what am I doing? Something that a driven or data informed, because I feel like there's a difference. If I say there's this data point that tells me the atomic bomb can have these consequences. It can also mean that I can win something. There's also human consequences to it, not just the physical or chemical ones. And I feel like the human part is so important because of societal reasons that you said before because of the actual experience of people.

Ling Ling 16:39

Yeah. I love that. It's really beautiful to think of it as data informed instead of data driven. Then it's like you're operating from a completely different place, which I think is absolutely necessary when we, when we talk about such mushy subjects, such as geography and pay that both, you know, in absolute terms don't exist.

Tamas 16:59

I do enjoy this theoretical. I love the conversation, but I do I think that's some value. What come out of the thought process that you kind of talked about a little bit already, but I want to dig a little bit deeper in there. So let's say that a couple of startups founders are listening to the podcast and they're wondering, this is all wonderful. How am I going to tomorrow? Go away and start thinking about this. Do you have a finite toolkit that you can share? How you think about location agnostic?

Ling Ling 17:30

Absolutely not. I can not have one of those things, but when I will, we'll sort of really iterate is just like, think about what work means to you and your organization. How would you break it apart? You know, I broken apart into two simple ways as output and then, you know, the social element, but maybe it can be broken apart and more minute pieces. And then that can help you think about, okay, well, where does the value lie on each of those? And at what point, for example, is, is, is the output half and is, the social side half, whereas it, you know, a different measure because it does help you think a little bit more clearly about then even your hiring practices of, how you would go about finding someone that matches the work that you want them to do. Because we've already said it's not just output. And then when we think about value as well, too, then it's important to look at. You know our biases. So the biases that we impose on people inadvertently simply because we're human beings and we tend towards people who are similar to us. And so those biases have have an impact. And then also if you can be so empathetic and compassionate to realize that folks that are living in countries where they're. Values them quote unquote to be a third of a European worker will likely internalize that lower value. And if you would expect them to negotiate harder on their behalf, given their entire environment. Has told them otherwise that's a really tall order, you know, could you do that yourself? I mean, it's the same for women and equal pay as well too. We weren't even allowed in the workforce and you know, we're allowed to vote and how many, you know, countries and that stuff is internalized for generations and you can't just tell someone that, oh no, but you're, you're the same. You're valuable and not actually be true and not have it be reflected in society either. So there's these biases that come into when we think about value and paying people that are both internal to, I guess, the employee candidate that you're looking at that perhaps you could be aware of. Maybe think of a more fair way to level the playing field. And then also your own biases that you observed on them and realize that for sure, their market biases that have, you know, are there, but you realize that they're fake. And so in that you actually, as a company have a very big role and a strong role to change it because once one company starts, even if it's a small startup, you know, you're going to be more than a startup one day and hopefully be huge. And then it starts changing policies all around. So you can affect the way people think about pay in the long run by sort of how you behave as an organization, because that's how, you know, the market was originally created in the first place. You know, everyone votes towards something with the sort of financial resources they're putting out there. And then I would say the other thing is just What is the word that I'm looking for? You can't have it two ways, you know, when you're, when we're thinking about, what is fair? So we can't say, okay, you know, the reason why my Kenyan programmer is being paid less is because it's cheaper for them to live in Kenya. It's so more expensive, to live in Switzerland. That's absolutely true. However, if you have a Swiss programmer deciding to move to Nairobi because their partner has gotten a job at an NGO there. The Swiss programmers unlikely to take a Kenyan salary, you know, and then, would you bring Kenyan programmer decides that, okay, actually they're moving to Switzerland because their partner maybe is now in a university and they have a visa to go there. Are you then going to upgrade their pay to Swiss salary? So thinking about it in these ways, Makes you realize that the whole geography and market, and what's fair things start breaking down. You can't have it both ways and saying, oh, those who work in Kenya are the salary, but then a Swiss person moves down there and all of a sudden it's not that anymore. And that happens all over the place. You see that very obviously. And then Tomasz yesterday, you made this really excellent point where you see location agnostic pay already existing in the world. At very, very senior levels, basically at very, very highly elite sort of the artists, the IOE ways of the world, you know, he's lives in China, but he is not going to be, getting Chinese. Prices when his art goes into auction because he has surpassed that now. And so if it already exists at these very elite realms so then it's not so foreign after all. So then we ask ourselves, well, why is it different than at these other levels? You know, why is it that, we get a little bit stuck in the valuing process when it comes to the majority, of people at work. So, yeah, this is all to say that, the third toolkits. You can't have a double standard, like if you're going to do it, be consistent at least, and also put yourself in the shoes of you know, if it's, don't think of it as to some other person that you don't know in Kenya, but maybe think of it as someone that's very dear to you your younger brother or younger sister, and, they're awesome. They have so much to contribute. What if they were in this situation, what would you want it to be for them? And I think that gets you closer. I don't know that there's an answer. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. I think that it's a really important thing to grapple with and to continue to evolve and to continue to iterate and change and to not be afraid to have the conversations, especially the ones around what our biases might be, because that actually that's just a lot of friction in the system that can be removed.

Tamas 23:01

I really liked that picture of thinking about that person, rather than just like that really undefined, face you don't see anything else. It, more someone that is dear to you. I think that that really helps, decision-making and bringing it onto a more humane and kind level. I wanted to think a little bit together about how we talked about startups and you mentioned as well that, you know, some, some of these companies might be the Googles of tomorrow. Do you think that the seed of the practices that they will have when they will be bigger, already have to exist when they are startups? Or can they develop along the journey?

Ling Ling 23:43

I mean, theoretically, that'd be awesome, but you know, we've all been there. I've been running my own business for the last 10 years. It's really hard to do that. It's actually very vulnerable and you're taking a lot of risk. It's a huge burden, I think, to, put on a startup to say, do all these things, save the world at the same time, try to paint the world in exactly the way that you want to see it. I think that's a really tall order to put on any startup. I think that it's wonderful to have that in your mind's eye and to do your best. And everyone knows what that is. Are you doing your best? You know, can you do more if you can continuously revisit it? I think it's an important and more than actually what you do that you actually been thinking. Because so often it's just not even considered at all that we just take it for what it is. And because usually those that are in the decision-making power to, decide geographical pay or not in the market places where their salaries are depressed. You know, our third of what it is in Europe, usually these companies are typically coming from, Europe and America, and you know, not to say there, isn't a huge startup scene in the Africa region and in south and Southeast Asia as well, too. But I think we're talking about something a little bit different here. So I think the most important thing is to consider it and have, have this debate and argument and get uncomfortable.

Spela 25:03

I wanted follow on, on a point from before and I wanted to see if maybe either one of you noticed the same, but. In the recent times, or to be more exactly a year and a half, because that's how long the Corona measures have been around. There has been a huge shift towards these conversations. So one could easily say, okay, now that we have these remote locations that people can or have proven that they can work from remote. Now we're starting to have these conversations. And I think the first interesting thing to me was when I was thinking back five or 10 years ago, when there was also a huge conversation, they didn't call it remote. They called it outsourcing, but it's the same thing.

Ling Ling 25:51

Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's so interesting.

Spela 25:55

And I think when I was thinking even more about it and I would be interesting to hear your thoughts of how you get. Perspective, but I think there were remote companies in the past five, 10 years, but they were the ones that were setting the policies and they were the only people that were working remote, where people were working in these companies. So it's the policy and then people work for it. But now it was the opposite. Now everyone went through a more normal and we started talking about it and then the policies are reacting to it. So I think the conversation is completely the opposite it's from the worker's perspective. So I would be interested to hear, do you see the same or do you, have you noticed something similar?

Ling Ling 26:41

I mean, it's brilliant. I hadn't thought about it that way, but that's absolutely true. It's absolutely true. And I think that this period of actually working this experiment, the social experiment where we're all in right now of everyone working remotely is just a wonderful one to show what's possible when we're forced to actually do it. Because I mean, it never pretty much nothing else could have gotten us here to a point where we're all having to, just do meetings over video, before it's like, no, no, no, we have to absolutely be in the same plane. People fly all over the world to like come to this one place for, you know, this three-day workshop. And, and now we're realizing actually that's not true anymore. And we used to think that. There's all this and not to say there isn't value of all, you know, being together in a place physically, but we maybe overvalued that in a way that we didn't understand and realize, and actually don't realize the benefit of sort of working differently that we have been able to experience. Now. I think it's a really great moment actually, for people to be relooking at their policies because it's being, it is being demanded for, you know, folks are leaving their jobs because they don't want to go back into the office. A D urbanization has been happening where people are moving out of the city, moving into the country because they have navels work remotely and want to continue doing that. And I think that's fantastic and actually a really wonderful shift and also gets us closer to again, you know, this uncomfortable question around like, What does this geographical pay really mean? Is it really just bias? You kind of have to look at that don't you, and it is uncomfortable, but I think it really begs that question and it begs sort of re looking at everything with sort of maybe lifting up our assumptions in a more clean point of view. It's been a, it's been, it is a real opportunity and because everyone's doing at the same time it's, you know, this whole idea of, what's competitive and what's not competitive. If you're in a huge company, now you're going to define it. You know, you're actually setting the standard and how amazing how, what, what a huge power that is. Actually, we don't, we don't know, but it, it will create an entire market shifts that will be in place for much longer after. There's more control over the pandemic.

Tamas 28:53

I'm wondering if we can leave history out of this conversation.

Ling Ling 28:58

Can we leave history on the conversation?

Tamas 29:00

I have this feeling that the distribution of decision-makers and executor's in the world are heavily driven by our history. And can we just kind of disregard that completely, essentially bringing, the time element into the conversation of how Africa used to be the colony of of a major, like of a couple of major European superpowers and

Ling Ling 29:26

and hence English is the global language for working because you know, dominant colonial forces were English speaking.

Tamas 29:35

Yeah, absolutely. So when I think about location of agnostic pay, I can't think about it without understanding. That's not really a choice that was made today, but it it's a heritage that has been coming with us for hundreds of years.

Ling Ling 29:53

Yes, absolutely. You hit it. That's, that's the brood of sort of the market's being formed the way they are and stay the way they are. We all know if we don't speak English our ability to, get the jobs we have and earn are significantly less. And that was defined back in colonialism and all three of us actually have a different mother tongue from English.

Tamas 30:19

I didn't actually realize that you're another time wasn't English. How old were you when you arrived in the U S

Ling Ling 30:24

I arrived to the us when I was around two years old. But we spoke Cantonese at home. So my first language was Chinese.

Tamas 30:34

Interesting. This question points completely outside of the topic today, but I'm just very curious. I asked this from pretty much everyone that I meet who communicate professionally and personally in different languages. Do you feel like your personality is different in Cantonese and English?

Ling Ling 30:50

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Language shapes you so much, actually. So is very, yeah, I behave very differently when speaking Cantonese, it's almost like you S you shift into a different philosophical mindset. I don't know. Is it the same for you?

Spela 31:08

Yes, absolutely.

Ling Ling 31:13

Yeah. It's almost as if I can like, smell different things and, you know, a different way of holding my body and, moving in the world,

Spela 31:24

it might also be It's just a thought, not proven at all, but because English is a business language. Now we might be more similar in English to each other than we would be. If we were speaking in our languages, which might also mean that we're all developing this one personality on top of our current personality. Which kind of sounds unifying, actually, if you think about

Ling Ling 31:50

it, and that's very interesting, but a little bit boring, it's like eating the same, you know, porridge every day. Like what's, what's wonderful about each of us is our differences and it's like the spice of life, right? I mean, who wants to have the same thing you know, the same food every day. And you know, if anyone's against immigrants in Europe or in the U S then you should be willing to eat boiled potatoes all the time, because it's the immigrants that bring, you know, all of the different cuisines. And if you like tacos, you like you know, Asian cuisine, et cetera, yes, that's a spice of life. So I hope that, you know, even with the uniting, sort of bringing us together, that English language bring us together, not only in language, but in a way of interacting It doesn't, you know put too much of a barrier on allowing all of ourselves to show up, which is so important in the workplace to create a dynamic culture

Spela 32:42

yes. Or, or shut people out that don't have the same English, like you were saying before, because if there's a professional English unity, that means that there's someone that isn't a part of it. Right? Exactly. Exactly.

Tamas 32:57

Short story, we didn't just happen. The other day, we were recruiting for a talent acquisition manager and the person in the pipeline had a very strong accent that was foreign to Europe and otherwise she had great credentials and she proved to us that she could do the job, but we were wondering how her ex. What kind of be a factor, of divide between our target talent pool and the company. And if that is even something we should think about, or are we straight out racist by just thinking about this?

Ling Ling 33:37

No, I don't. I've I feel like I'm labeling it as racists. Can maybe it makes people avoid the conversation. I think that we're human beings and we're analytical and we notice these things. I think it's just being aware, of our biases and realize that our biases have huge effects on people. I mean, entire livelihoods, you know her ability to get this job is, whether you're able to really look at this in a way. That removes your biases as much as possible to see her potential and see what's possible. I think it's, you know, getting to know as well too, you know, perhaps like I was thinking about this the other day when we were talking, speaking about this conversation, like what if there were location agnostic pay? What if everyone did that? And I thought, well, I'm not really sure if it works, but if we, if we played that game people would still get, you know, pay rises based on them performing better, you know, over time and et cetera. But I thought about, what, if everyone at, in a particular function at a particular seniority level came in with some base pay and that over time you're evaluated based on all the elements of work that your organization defines in a Jew in adjust based on that. And so. Someone who's being hired in Switzerland, I'm just using Switzerland and Kenya as an example, you know, falling. That example is like, what if they got the same pay and then it adjusted because then you realize over time actually my Kenyan programmer, it's like, he's great. He's got a great sense of humor, but it took, six months to get there. And then, you know, there's biases start dissolving over time, but you don't know, but if you start setting out, someone's pay at the start low. Then all of a sudden it's like they have to climb that much higher to get to the same place. Just because there are dinged because you don't understand any like there, because they're not from the diamond dominant culture of, you know, your organization and that's tricky. So I was thinking about that as a potential way. I'm not advocating necessarily for location agnostic pay. I think it's something that we need to keep grappling with and every organization needs to determine for themselves. I think it's more important to really, you know, break apart the pieces and really do some self-examination and, and realize that we have a huge role to play in it. And we, and each hire we make is a tick towards a particular direction.

Tamas 36:02

That's such a nice summary that I feel like I shouldn't even say this next thing that I was going to save it, but I held that we can leave it on a, on a similarly nice note. But I wanted to bring something from yesterday. What you've suddenly mean is that not only you should think about it, but then you should communicate about it. Why did you decide that way? You know, whatever it is, your medium putting out a blog post as a company, this is why we decided not to adopt location, agnostic, pay for example, like get lab it I think can really drive this conversation forward.

Ling Ling 36:32

Absolutely. Yeah, the conversation is so important and you know, without conversation, then everything is just undercover. And to expect those that are working in markets where their salaries are depressed to do all the fighting for that to change. it's a tall order to have. I mean, if we're going to leave it off anywhere, I think just to leave it off to say that you might think that we don't have power to change this huge thing, you know, but if we know that this. Huge thing around, geography and pay that it's all very fictional. It's all very made up by sort of assumptions that everyone is making right now maybe that opens up some freedom to realize that you can, you can completely shape it. And it does, it gets completely shaped all the time. You know, the COVID pandemic is a one massive way. We see it very obviously shaped and, and changing very dynamically right now. But, as I said, each, and every hire you make is a vote in a particular direction. And even if it changes a bit, it doesn't have to change everything. There's progress, isn't there and, progress is great.

Tamas 37:40

I agree. I, and that kind of reminds me that my naivety is something that I am unhappy to give up. I think that's something that I brought from my childhood and I just want to hang on to it as an adult. to close it off here, then it was an enormous pleasure to have your Ling Ling thank you so much for your time giving us your Saturday morning. It's really heartwarming that you did that. Thank you.

Ling Ling 38:03

I feel like you guys are very deep and wonderful thinkers. I really enjoyed myself. So thank you.

Tamas 38:11

thank you for anyone listening today. We really appreciate your time we will see you next time. And then, so then we wish you all the best.

Spela 38:19

Thank you for listening.