Mayur Kamat: evaluation

Transcript context

…Oh, wow. It's an incredible growth story. And that tells you you really don't need from a strategy perspective to do something completely different if you can truly compound your growth by optimizing every single thing really, really well. So there are the pros that come with, as I said, when you move, most of the time you're building products that are global, especially if you're based in the US. Very few times you're building product that just work in the US. Now, that's not true for a lot of the countries. Like in India, a lot of products are only designed for Indian market, a lot of products in China only designed for Chinese market, but from the US you're designing product for the world and a lot of the times you don't experience the same constraints or you don't empathize with the user at the same level because you just haven't lived that user's life. So in terms of just being able to calibrate yourself on what a global product might look like, being able to live in different places and understanding some of these constraints first hand, definitely a pro. As I said, especially if you have built that early reputation, you get to work at some of the best companies when you go abroad. And so there's a hit to compensation, at least initially for sure. Nobody pays anywhere close, especially here in Europe. But as I said before, don't optimize for compensation early in your career or even middle part of your career. So if you follow that advice, it'll not matter because you will have kind of something unique to offer. Even if you come back to the US later having worked in different... Having understanding, especially if you're in FinTech where the actual laws are different in different countries and that one you truly do not appreciate working in the US. Even at Google and stuff, when we would launch products, I would be like, oh, the lawyers, they're just making life difficult. But the many of now have a true appreciation of how different the world truly is. It just makes you a better stakeholder when you talk to the legal team, when you talk to compliance team, when you talk to marketing. So I think those are all the pros. The compensation could be the con. The other big con is that today, if you're in Silicon Valley, I spent 15 years in Seattle, I worked at four companies, I could change jobs and stay in Seattle because there's enough companies there. You're not going to run a ceiling at some point, in Bay Area, there's no ceiling, right? You can keep growing. The challenge now is that if I'm in Bangkok and I'm working at Agoda, at some point I need to find a new job or because let's say I'm at the CPO level, I want to be CEO now. Agoda already has a CEO, so I need to find, be a CEO somewhere else. Guess what? That company is not going to be in Bangkok. Now I have to move and move my whole family to Singapore, which I did. now. Agoda already has a CEO, so I need to find, be a CEO somewhere else. Guess what? That company is not going to be in Bangkok. Now I have to move and move my whole family to Singapore, which I did. Then you hit somewhere over there or then you hit another ceiling, now you need to move back or go somewhere else with Thailand, which I did. And then you're like, oh, maybe there's a great opportunity in Europe which would give you a whole different scale. Then you need to move to Spain, which I did. So at some point your family's like, what's happening? It turned out to be what turned out to be one step to go from A to B is now just a every year journey. So that's something to calibrate, especially later in your career that it's extremely hard if you like the job and don't like the location or vice versa, 'cause they usually come as a package deal now. We see this in Bangkok now where there's not that many great tech companies, and if you're at Agoda and you're doing really well, but it's just one company, you just don't have options. And especially if you love Bangkok, which is a great city, probably my vote for the best place to live in the world, that's a struggle. You love the city, but if you need to move your career ahead, you need to go somewhere else.…

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