Hiring AI Talent Across Borders With Alcor

[00:00:04] How do you scale a global tech team without losing control of costs, culture or just good old-fashioned common sense? Well, my conversation today is one that I think a lot of founders, CTOs and people leaders are going to be able to relate to. Because on the surface, global hiring looks simple. Salaries seem lower in one region than another.

[00:00:30] Talent pools look huge on paper. And providers, they promise to take care of everything. But once you get into the details, compliance, hidden fees, fake AI generated profiles, language barriers and even political risk, all these things start to surface very quickly and the world can feel complicated and overwhelming.

[00:00:52] But today, I've invited Oksana, Head of Customer Success and Operations at Alcor, onto the podcast. She's someone I could just talk to for hours and she works at the intersection of growth and reality. Because she's helping tech companies build and scale engineering teams across Eastern Europe and Latin America. In fact, everywhere in the world. Often stepping in when something has already gone slightly off track with somebody else.

[00:01:19] But what I love about this conversation is how practical it is. Because we're going to talk about transparency and cost structures. Why 40-60% of outsourcing markups can quietly drain your budget. But how cultural differences can either create friction or fuel innovation. This is something we don't talk about enough. And finally, why sometimes the smartest move is to test a region before committing to a legal entity.

[00:01:49] So, if you're thinking about scaling, about expanding your engineering footprint this year. Or if you're already on that journey and starting to feel a few growing pains. You don't have the right partner in place. There's going to be a real value in listening very closely to what Oksana is going to share with us today. But enough from me. You don't tune in to listen to me talk every day. It is my guess. I'm quite aware of that. And I know my guess is going to blow you away with some magnificent insights today. So, enough from me.

[00:02:18] Let me officially introduce you to her now. So, thank you for joining me on the podcast today. Could you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Hi, everybody. So, my name is Oksana. I'm Head of Customer Success and Operations at Alcor. And what we are doing at Alcor, we are helping tech companies to grow their teams in Eastern Europe and Latin America.

[00:02:47] During my work, I very regularly cooperate with tech leaders, with CTOs, CEO, HR and operational managers in different ways. When they want to scale their teams, then they want to expand to other countries. Or when they just have some complications connecting to their current setup and want to explore alternatives.

[00:03:13] So, usually, I'm working not with some theoretical knowledge, but very practical issues. Then, for example, something went wrong with hiring. They hired people, but we are other providers and they don't see this match. Or then something changed. For example, we are top performers relocated from one country to another.

[00:03:36] And for them, it's about navigating new legal and compliance challenges and surely some operational stuff. So, usually, I'm switching to the process when everything is already going. And maybe not always in the right direction. But, yeah, so my task is to help them to make it work.

[00:04:00] And for all the involved parties like software engineers and tech leaders to be happy with this setup and surely benefit from it. It's a real exciting space that you find yourself in right now. A few years ago, every company was a tech company, they were saying. Now, every company is an AI company with the amount of technology in there and helping teams scale.

[00:04:26] And especially in a world of distributed teams where you're no longer limited to the best talent in your geographic region. It's so important. And I'm curious, in your role at Alcor, you must get to speak to so many different businesses all around the world. What are you seeing right now from that customer operations perspective? You must get to talk with a lot of people. So, I'm curious what you're seeing there. Yes, sure.

[00:04:50] So, actually, the trend which we see right now is that sometimes the budget becomes tired. But surely there is a huge demand for great talents. And the companies are more flexible to look for these talented AI engineers and other type of software engineers in different locations. And to be honest, when I first joined the industry, it was about 10 years ago.

[00:05:19] It looked in a really different way, right? And I also saw this peak during the COVID times, during 2020, 2029. Then there were a lot of opportunities in the IT market, both for the companies and for engineers. And hiring was a little bit easier, to be honest. But right now, the situation changed.

[00:05:46] It's changed due to some global challenges, but also due to, for example, AI, which is surely a breaker here. And it changed both in the way that it can be really difficult to find the right talent with the right skill set for some AI positions.

[00:06:06] But from the other point of view, sometimes recruiting and compliance can be challenging as well because AI gives some instruments for fake profiles. For example, because I know that some of our clients who tried recruiting themselves, they shared ideas that they met fake candidates due to the AI. So it's a new challenge.

[00:06:32] You know, you cannot trust a person which you meet online anymore in the same way as it was before. So that's why these local expertise can make a really difference because these challenges, then, for example, someone pretend to be like a great software engineer, for example. They usually happen then a recruiter and the candidate.

[00:06:58] They are in different locations, in different countries, time zones, and so on. So deep local knowledge can be a great solution here. And surely we usually help our clients with these challenges because we have internal recruiting teams in nearly every country where we operate.

[00:07:20] We have them in Poland, Romania, Ukraine, in Czech Republic, and a variety of countries in Eastern Europe. And as well, we have a quite big team in Latin America and Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, and so on. Yeah. I was going to say, you raise so many great points there, especially around the fake AI problem.

[00:07:44] I spent far too long on Reddit and the images alone can make it almost impossible to see who is real and who isn't. But then when you throw into the mix that people could pretend they have more knowledge and expertise than they have because of an AI agent that they use to get all their answers and questions. So for any business going out there on their own and recruiting, it can be a real minefield there. And I'm curious, we will have people listening all around the world from different aspects, really.

[00:08:11] We'll have a few startup founders, we'll have small to medium-sized enterprises, and indeed Fortune 500, even Fortune 50 companies or people from there. So at what point do companies like this usually come to you? What problems are they usually trying to solve? I would imagine if you were to take all the conversations you have, there's usually a few trending issues that they come and ask to you for help with. But how does it begin that journey? Oh, sure.

[00:08:39] So actually, Alcor is not the first door which they open considering hiring in different locations. Just from our practice, usually companies start with cooperation with outsourcing companies, outsourcing tech. It just looks like pretty fast and simple and no additional worries on their side.

[00:09:01] But the challenge here is that people which are usually engaged via outsourcing company, they don't treat these tech customers as they're like real employers. They don't share this culture which the company has. So they just follow the instruction of the outsourcing company. And it can work, surely.

[00:09:26] It can work if you are talking about some hot issues which need to be fixed during a very short period of time.

[00:09:33] But it doesn't work if you are talking about scaling, about building your own team, about having this trust and having this stability and understand that your team will work for quite a long period of time and be fully integrated into your own culture, which surely can be the key to success.

[00:09:56] So I believe that from all the conversation which you have with your interviews, that culture makes a real difference in the company. It is one of the breakers. And the other thing is actually costs because from the beginning, everything looks pretty simple with some outsourcing companies. But they can raise their costs from time to time and you don't really know for what you pay.

[00:10:23] So before, actually, my current position in some of my previous experiences, I worked as a lawyer for some outsourcing companies. So I'm pretty aware about all the contracts and how it works, you know, from legal and cost perspective. And surely in the contracts, they have some rate per hour per some position, like senior engineer and so on.

[00:10:49] But you don't really understand whether this person is really senior engineer or is it middle or junior, even engineer, who just provide this service. And the other thing that you don't really understand what value you get for this cost and how much, for example, this engineer gets. So what's the salary? Maybe you can hire someone else who would provide more value to your product instead.

[00:11:18] So usually when the clients come to us after their experience with outsourcing companies, they have very pretty similar questions. And first question which they ask, what will be the cost for transfer this team to us?

[00:11:34] And so, you know, they are very excited and they are very surprised that we don't charge anything, you know, because even in some companies, if you're talking about outsourcing or ER providers, so they charge even for onboarding people. And that's crazy. So these people, you haven't had some value, but you already charge for something and it just doesn't work. Right.

[00:12:01] So the other thing which they are asking us about is what are our prices cost structure and everything connecting to that. And our prices are quite simple. So we believe in transparency as the key to success, not only for us, but also for our clients. So we show the salaries which these engineers will actually get to their bank account.

[00:12:30] And also like our transparent fee, which is a percentage. And in addition, they can opt in for some services like IT recruitment. For example, it's not mandatory. So if you don't want to hire, it's okay. If you have just already your team and want to transfer it, it works for us. We don't have such obligations. And some other services like we talked today about current challenges of the world connecting to ER.

[00:12:59] So we are doing background checks. We can support them. You know, that might be important in modern world. And also some services connecting to legal and accounting and so on because surely people need it. But what's the importance of the transparency, right? Comparing to outsourcing, that's the main differences. And also, I know it's the third problem of outsourcing contracts.

[00:13:25] Just as from my previous legal background, you know, and to the practice, it's by out fees. You cannot just say, okay, I'm good with your service. I don't really need it anymore in this way. But I want to hire these engineers. And you cannot even approach to these engineers with some offers and hire them directly. You need to pay very high buyout costs.

[00:13:52] So sometimes, to be honest, how it works that our clients, they provide internal due diligence of this team outsourced by other vendors. Some clients understand that these engineers, they are not actually seniors. So that they don't bring the value which they want. And they do evaluation. And choose only those people from the team who really perform well.

[00:14:20] And who really add to these additional value. They see the amazing results with them. And they transfer only these team members who perform at the best level. And after that, because some outsourcing costs on the top of the salaries can be about 40-60%. It's not a very cost-effective structure. So by saving these costs, they can hire more senior talents with us.

[00:14:50] And surely, in this scenario, we are happy to support them with recruiting, with contractor of record service, with employer of record service, what we do for our clients. But also, the companies, they benefit a lot because for the same budget, they have more high-level engineers. So I believe that it's a win-win solution. And you mentioned culture a moment ago, which I'm incredibly grateful that you did.

[00:15:19] Because I think very often it is more important than the technology inside an organization. Very often holds the keys to everything. And outside of that, I think technology has made the world feel much smaller. We can now work from any location, on any network, at any time. So you would think that it would be much easier. But it isn't always. So why does global hiring feel more complex now than just a few years ago? Yeah, sure.

[00:15:49] So, you know, this matter connecting to culture is very important because the mistakes which I regularly observe. Some tech leaders, for example, from the US or from the other countries, from Canada, for example, they start hiring teams in other regions, in Mexico or, for example, in Eastern Europe, like Poland.

[00:16:15] And they, so during the interviewing process, they are very happy with candidates, with their showed cases. And they agree about their self-skills that it looks like they will accommodate their needs. But when the cooperation starts and actual work starts, so it turns out there are like huge cultural differences between people from the US and people from Mexico or from Eastern Europe.

[00:16:43] So that's why when we start hiring processes with our customers, we usually pay attention to the regular standards which are on this market. So that they should be fully aware of what to expect because everything is about expectations, you know, run expectations, right expectations. And with wrong expectations, you can have like very different results.

[00:17:09] But if you understand what to expect, so surely you will get the engineering team which will fulfill your needs. And also, what's interesting here that we had some cases when some of the clients told us about their previous experience, for example, with candidates from Latin America.

[00:17:31] And they shared with us that, you know, it was good, but still not on the top level because we experienced that they needed some cultural and communication trainings. And actually, that's fine. Because surely, like people from Latin America especially, they are really very flexible and they adhere to the feedback,

[00:17:58] but they need to receive it quite often regularly. And maybe some trainings can also lead to better results. Because from this crate, surely they don't understand fully the culture of the company, where would they start working. But it is just a matter of time, the right communication, the right trainings. And surely it can work.

[00:18:21] And another thing, by the way, just if you're talking about cultural peculiarities and my experience with that, that we got some very interesting feedbacks from one of our clients. This client is a CTO of a very huge company, and they are developing software connecting to fraud prevention and AI fraud prevention, especially with using voice technologies.

[00:18:48] So their product requires compliance on the very high level. And this stakeholder is originally from India, but he is living in the United States for quite a long period of time. And he shared with us that when he started hiring people in different locations, and he had experience with hiring engineers in Eastern Europe, at SERS, he was very surprised about these cultural differences, you know.

[00:19:18] But the main question was that the team in Eastern Europe challenged his decisions pretty often. And he didn't understand why, because, for example, in some other cultures and in India, as he shared, people just follow the instructions from the top, so they don't challenge them. But after some initial period, he understood that actually it works.

[00:19:45] Because the engineers who challenged his decisions, they usually offer some different solutions. And these solutions could work even better than initial decisions. Right now, after some process, because he moved from one tech company to another on the same very high CTO position, and it's still huge companies.

[00:20:10] But he preferred to hire right now only in Eastern Europe engineers for that purpose, because he gets some additional value from them when they challenge some decisions and provide some quite good alternatives. So, also, the matter of these cultural differences, that not always when you hire people in new locations, you should change them.

[00:20:36] Sometimes these differences can bring additional value to your product and your team. I absolutely love that. And I think diversity of thought is so important. Nobody wants a team full of sycophants that just agree with everything you say and nod and smile in all the right places. Someone that challenges you and helps you improve and is on that journey with you and understands where you want to go. Yeah, that is absolutely priceless.

[00:21:03] And, of course, top of everyone's mind when thinking about any of your services or scaling your team, the first thing they're going to be thinking around is, how do I budget for this? So, tell me more about budgeting and the kind of questions that you get there. So, actually, while our clients try to expand abroad, especially in new locations, we see that usually they suffer from completely estimated budgets.

[00:21:30] Because we see the situation then, for example, people ops and recruiting team, they're looking for the salaries. They see some salaries charts in the selected country where they have zero local experts. And they just use these estimation salaries for the budgeting purposes. But salaries are not all.

[00:21:54] Because surely, if you should add as well some monetary benefits, some taxes. And in some countries, by the way, what's very interesting in our practice, is that, for example, in Mexico, people usually get 13th salary. So, you don't need to multiply the monthly salary to 12. You need to do it to 13.

[00:22:19] So, the total budget can be really different from what they expect. And also, it's like a huge overhead for them. And in addition, the problem which arises while scaling globally is selecting the country based on the talent availability pool, which is only numbers.

[00:22:42] If companies don't engage local experts and just trust only their internal teams in this matter, they cannot get the information about the actual talent pool. What we face, what can be the challenge? That, for example, in Brazil, the talent pool of tech candidates, software engineers, and so on. It's amazing, you know, if to see just numbers.

[00:23:08] But the actual result is that if we dive deeper, so it depends on the stack of technology, the seniority level. And the other thing is English proficiency. Because if you just build some internal team, which will not communicate with some other global teams, maybe it's fine. But if you're building the team as extension from your US-based team,

[00:23:35] So surely you would like them to be able to communicate with them. And English can be a breaker here. So what we usually do, because our recruiters are always in touch with local candidates, we can provide these data in a more accurate way. Because we have not only the numbers of the engineers, software engineers in general,

[00:24:01] we also understand the real numbers of software engineers with the specific level of seniority and with the specific level of English proficiency skills. So that's really important. And it can be a blocker for some companies because they can see it as just okay and assume that all the engineers, surely they all have the English proficiency. But in fact, it's not.

[00:24:31] And also the other factor which would be great to consider and which we face with some of our clients. So, you know, when, for example, a company, they have already decided and they have some team in Chile and these companies from the US, and they want to expand around Latin America. And, for example, they chose Brazil. So it looks like not a bad match, right?

[00:24:59] But Chile is a Spanish-speaking country. Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking country. And also, so it can work, surely, and it will work, I guarantee you. But still, if there is a possibility to hire also people in other Spanish countries, so maybe their coordination and communication with distributed teams will be better because they will all speak their native language.

[00:25:28] And only with some teams in other locations, we will be able to speak in English, for example. And it really matters. Honestly, I have some, my direct employees in different countries. And I see this difference while they are communicating. For example, my team, which is in Latin America, they can communicate between their own team in Spanish.

[00:25:54] And the difference when they try to have these meetings in English. So surely it is. So everybody, like for everybody, it's easier to speak their native language. And if there is some opportunity to use it, surely companies should use it as well. And another area gets mentioned a lot, employer of record services. But if we zoom in on something like that, what problems does employer of record solve? And where does it become maybe limiting as team grows too?

[00:26:24] It seems to be, there seems to be two sides of this coin. Yeah, sure. So actually, if we are talking about employer of records, that's something new. Like 10 years ago, there were no companies which provided these services. And what's interesting here that they actually take care of all the legal and compliance measures connecting to hiring people in different locations.

[00:26:50] The only thing here is that they do not provide a recruitment. So if you want to scale the team, you need to coordinate separately with your provider, with some recruitment provider, maybe with some actually to deal with laptops purchases yourself, with your own team or another provider.

[00:27:14] And it looks like a little bit challenging when you need to coordinate all these involved parties. And just in practice. So for example, if finally the candidate which you really want to have on board signed the offer letter, and this candidate is ready to start in five days, and you are happy that you really want this candidate in five days on board.

[00:27:40] But you need to coordinate the onboarding with a lot of providers. So you need to coordinate it with your provider. So they need to sign all the documents with this person during this period of time. You need separately to coordinate with sending of the laptop or some other devices to this engineer. And it all takes time. And all these coordinations, just it's a piece of your time,

[00:28:08] which you can spend on some maybe more important issues as well. So that's why what we're doing for our clients, we have recruitment service. We have EOR and COR service. And actually, we have these procurement. So the procedure here is pretty simple. Our recruiters, for example, found a very nice talent with the same particularities. We need to onboard him during five days. We can do it.

[00:28:36] And the client, so the client shouldn't do anything. You can just relax and wait for your engineer. And we are taking care of everything. So we are coordinating our internal teams, connecting to signing the documents with this talent to onboard him. We are coordinating also laptop procurement and sending this laptop to this engineer in this specific location.

[00:29:01] So during the start date, this talent, which was like really wanted, right? We'll have everything to start work for the company, for our client in time, with positive experience, without any worries, with all the documents signed, laptop procured and anything. And his manager will be happy as well because the manager didn't spend time on coordinating.

[00:29:28] The manager spent time on what was most important for him. And to bring to life everything that we're talking about here, let's take one particular area. Let's say research and development. What do companies most often get wrong when choosing what country for their R&D? Any stories you can share there of the kind of mistakes you've seen made in the past? Sure. So actually, if you are talking about research and development centers,

[00:29:56] so it's not, you know, these centers are not built for short perspective. So it's not like to finish some project or anything like that. It's company's investment to have this long-time team and corporation who would provide the amazing results and additional value to the company.

[00:30:20] So sometimes companies, they just see it as an experiment, as to give a try. And they start to hire people in a new country without deep dive into the compliance measures, the legal one, or even the political situation in this country or anything like that.

[00:30:46] So they just focus on talents, budgets, and so on. They don't dive deeper in any other circumstances. And in this case, the situation can quite change because if you want to be a strong team for a long-time perspective, surely you should also consider not only salaries and budgets and team availability.

[00:31:11] You should also consider whether this team will be able to perform stably, considering economical, political, and other external factors. So what's interesting here from our case study, you know, we had a client who wanted to open R&D center in Colombia. Pretty decent location with the talent pool, which they wanted.

[00:31:37] But recent events with Venezuela turned their consideration into different direction. So after that, they started to reevaluate whether Colombia can be a good scenario for them. Actually, from our perspective, because we have local experts on the ground, so I'm not talking, you know, from the United Kingdom about Colombia, Venezuela, and so on. So we have a lot of people in that region.

[00:32:05] We understood that there should be no risks. That risks are everywhere in the world. They are average there, so no high risks, and surely they can move forward. But it was one of the triggers for these clients to also maybe to be open for some other locations in the world. The same situation about, for example, teams in Eastern Europe, because of the political situation, some tensions, and so on.

[00:32:34] So surely some clients, due to political situation, they decided to move their teams from Ukraine to Poland, to Romania, to Czech Republic, to Spain, Portugal. And we supported them with these needs and hired engineers in the new locations for them. So R&D is the long-term perspective, is for long-term perspective.

[00:33:00] And surely it works considering all the internal and external factors. I'm curious, for everybody listening that are on a similar journey and looking to you for guidance and help, what are the most common scaling mistakes that you see? And which ones are the most expensive long-term? Because very often I think people take the path of least resistance, thinking that's the easy route, but it ends up taking much longer and more expensive. But what are those common mistakes that you see?

[00:33:28] Are there any ones that you see again and again? Yes. So from my experience, the most dangerous mistake here is to start hiring engineers by incorporating your own legal entity in the new country.

[00:33:49] So if you're just starting, if you don't know how it will go, you know, you never hired people, for example, in Latin America. You don't know the local specifics. You don't know, you don't have your own experts in these locations. So you are blinded.

[00:34:09] And you start from researching and engaging some external providers, but not for hiring, but also, for example, incorporation of your own legal entity in one of the countries. That would be Argentina, right? So you start from that. And in parallel, you are looking for talents. But it turns out that incorporation of a legal entity in Argentina can take up to six months. So you cannot start immediately. You can only start in six months.

[00:34:39] And after that, it turns out that when you found these talents and employed them to your own legal entity, that the talent pool is not so big as you expected. And also, it turns out that there are some currency exchange rate challenges in Argentina.

[00:34:57] And so you cannot, for example, keep your own investments and money of this legal entity on the bank account in USD or some other stable currencies. You can only use local currency. Engineers don't want to receive their salaries in local currency and so on.

[00:35:19] And you are just, you are having a legal entity who you need to, which you need to support and take all the legal and administrative burden. You have engineers, but you cannot hire so much people because of some other limitations like tech skills or English proficiency or anything and talent pool specifics.

[00:35:40] And you are just spending, spending and spending all the months long to close this legal entity. So if this project is not successful, the price of mistake can be really high. And to close this legal entity will also take maybe six months, maybe years. And you always pay for it.

[00:36:05] So that's why just to touch the water, it would be better to hire people not with incorporation of your own legal entity at once. It would be great to engage local providers, for example, Alcor, surely. And in this case, you don't need to invest a lot upfront. You can just pay the salaries of people and just a small hour percentage.

[00:36:35] And after that, if everything works well. So surely we are really happy when it is in this way and the client can transfer their teams to their own legal entity. For example, we had a case in Ukraine when BigCommerce, it's a very known company. We hired for them 100 engineers. It was like in 2018, 2019.

[00:37:03] So it was before COVID times, I believe. And 100 engineers, so this is quite a significant number. And we hired these engineers during one year. And after that, they decided that they're big enough. They tested their theory. It works for them. And they opened their own legal entity and transferred all people to their own legal entity. And it's not actually, we don't treat it as our failure. We treat it as a big success for us.

[00:37:31] Because we helped the client to start hiring people in the new location where they didn't have anybody. And to grow this team from zero to 100 during one year. And it's quite significant amount and very interesting case for us. So the same we are doing in the locations as well. And I believe that it's a good approach.

[00:37:57] And it allows tech companies to avoid mistakes with large investment up front. And for any startup founder or business leader listening, to give those people a valuable takeaway. Any advice you would offer on how their companies should be thinking about growth when their teams reach a significant scale? And also, any advice that you'd give founders and CTOs scaling engineering teams this year? I realize there's several questions there.

[00:38:27] But any advice that you would offer anybody listening there around those areas? Yes, sure. So global hiring today requires a more mature approach than years ago. Budgeting must reflect real cost, market realities, long-term stabilities. The right setup depends on your goals.

[00:38:51] So if you just want to hire some team for a short-term project, your criteria for evaluation of the country where to hire generally lower. But if you would like to hire a team and strong engineers for a quite significant period, the criteria should be different. And the same thing if you are talking about the setup.

[00:39:19] Growth doesn't mean staying in the same model forever. You can experiment. You can touch the water with some providers. Understand how it works. And after that, change your decision. And for example, incorporate your own legal entity or change the setup. So, you know, it's always hiring globally. It's working on your strategy before starting. It's starting hiring and looking how it goes.

[00:39:49] And it is about to change the strategy and model and plans when something changes as well. So just correspond to changes and be open to anything which can happen. And surely it's a key to success. And I think that is a powerful moment to end on. But anyone listening wants to continue this conversation with you or your team,

[00:40:19] find out more details on next best steps or how you might be able to help or just keep up to speed with some of the announcements that you'll be making throughout the year. Where would you like to point everyone listening? Sure. So you can just text me in my LinkedIn or visit our website. Awesome. Links to your LinkedIn, the website, the social channels for Alcor. And I would urge people listening to check those out. There's always some great things happening there.

[00:40:49] But we covered so much in a short amount of time today. But for any tech team or any business looking to expand their tech team and scale, I would certainly urge they check you out. But again, just thank you for talking about this in a language everyone can understand. I really appreciate your time today. Thank you. Thank you. I think there was a moment in our conversation today where Oksana said global hiring today requires a more mature approach. It did a few years ago. And this stayed with me after the recording.

[00:41:18] Because growth, yeah, it sounds incredibly exciting. New markets, new talent, new capabilities. But without clear budgeting, local expertise, realistic expectations around culture and communication, expansion can quickly become an expensive tuition. And what I appreciated most about Oksana's perspective today is that she doesn't frame scaling as a one size fits all decision. There is a different approach here, a much more sensible approach.

[00:41:47] You can test. You can adapt. You can change your structure as you go. And if you approach global hiring with transparency and flexibility, it can 100% become a competitive advantage rather than a risk. So I generally hope that this conversation resonated with you today. I'm going to add links to Oksana's LinkedIn and the Alcor website in the show notes so you can continue the discussion directly. But please, remember, go over to techtalksnetwork.com.

[00:42:17] I'd love to hear from you. Are you building right now? What lessons have you learned the hard way? Let's keep the conversation going. Send me a DM. Send me an audio message. And most importantly, join me here again tomorrow. Same time, same place. Thank you to Oksana for bringing this conversation to life. Thank you for listening. And I'll speak to you tomorrow. Bye for now.