Meez is a SaaS company built for and designed by professional chefs, that transforms recipe content into an interactive database, and is backed by investors including FJ Labs.
Meez’s CTO, Marylee Rosenwald, was introduced to Remotely when she was trying to move away from an off-shore boutique agency. She was tasked with growing her tech team from scratch, transitioning to a team of individuals truly committed to the company and to the quality of the code. She faced two classic problems: time and money. Hiring good senior engineers in the US is incredibly expensive (high salary expectations plus hefty recruiting fees – as high as 30% of first year’s comp), and the majority of the hiring process falls on her.
Hiring the best software engineers, regardless of the source
She had several concerns with Remotely. First, Remotely wasn’t a well-known company at the time. Second, it may require her to manage a team that’s more spread out and culturally diverse, which she suspected could create more risk. Third, English skills were critical given that some of the roles she was hiring for required communicating with product managers and product designers.
“We worked with Remotely and with two or three other big recruiting firms in the US that I’d worked with before and had success with. We explored all three in parallel to see what worked… My view was that I was interviewing a person – I was really focused on the individual itself. The [candidates] that impressed me the most had come through Remotely.”
In the end, the first two hires Marylee made were through Remotely. “It was not because they were cheaper or because they had a lower recruiting fee – it was because they were actually better than the US candidates that we interviewed! They were better technically, they spoke very good English, and they were very committed and hard-working, culturally nice people… Every single one of [the candidates] impressed me, and that’s never happened before.”
Remotely as a partner in growth
“Sometimes you work with recruiters and it feels like they’re really selling. With Remotely it felt like a partnership — they really wanted me to find the right person.”
“The questions and actions that were taken [by the Remotely team] were taken to find a good fit for me, and not to earn more money. The reporting that was delivered with each candidate - it was very detailed. There was no miscommunication in terms of expectations of salary.” Remotely vets each potential candidate, and only presents candidates that match the job requirements in terms of both technical skills and soft skills.
Remotely engineering team
Meez brought on four Remotely developers in their first four months with Remotely.
