Vince Filamor – Journey and Career as a Project Manager

Welcome to episode number 94 of the Outsource Accelerator podcast.  I am joined today by Vince Filamor as a part of our candidate series and for this I just want to quickly thank manila recruitment who help me find Vince as one of their past candidates.  Vince has a job so he’s not available so don’t try and poach him but I’m basically interviewing a few people trying to give you out their insight into the fantastic caliber of people available in the Philippines that can work for you, for your business out there in the west so it’s not just about call center agents there’s really deep pool of skills set here in the Philippines that I think everyone around the world should know about and take advantage of for their business.  So I’m sure you’ll enjoy this interview.  If you want to know anything more about this episode or Vince, go to our show notes which is at outsourceaccelerator.com/94. Enjoy.

Derek: Hi and welcome to another episode of the Outsource Accelerator podcast. Today I’m excited to be joined by Vince Filamor.  Hi, Vince.

Vince: Hello.

Derek:  And Vince is a part of our candidate series.  I really am excited to celebrate the depth of skill and employment opportunities here in the Philippines and Vince is a fantastic example of that for all of you listening out there in the west that you know you should really consider hiring or certainly looking and exploring candidates here in the Philippines as well as your hometown because there’s a phenomenal pool, phenomenal resource here and it’s just growing by the day.  So Vince exemplifies that and I just want to explore a little bit about Vince’s journey and his career and his ambitions for the future so thanks for joining us Vince.

Vince:  No problem.

Derek: So, Vince I suppose just to give people a little a bit of context.  Can you tell us what you do? What the role is and what education you had to move in to the space?

Vince: Ok,  I’ll start with my education.  I went De La Salle College of St Benilde.  I took up Business Management majoring in Computer Applications so that ties in with my profession now which is Project Management for IT for software development and applications so my course from college literally says management and computers.

Derek: And so for those out there De La salle it’s one of the Ivy league colleges of the Philippines and interesting you know like the Philippines has the oldest university in Asia doesn’t it which a lot of people don’t realize but there was Sto. Tomas was built in 1600 or something.

Vince:  Yup, 400 years ago or something.

Derek:  Yeah, so the philippines has a long relationship with tertiary education and education institutions so you enter this Ivy league institution and you studied a, was it a double degree or was..

Vince: It’s considered 1 degree but half of it’s literally half of it is business management and half of it is coding and software applications.

Derek: And how many years into your post grad career are you now?

Vince: By the end of the month, I would be working 6 years.

Derek: Congratulation, so you’re failure in the app but you’ve achieved great things in that time.

Vince: I like to think so, so yes.

Derek: Fantastic and so let’s explore little bit your journey then so after you graduated university you were super excited and what was the first role that you went into?

Vince: It wasn’t that smooth actually it took me 6 months to find a job because people would always want experienced professionals.  Thankfully I came across an American company based in California with an office here in Pasig City in Manila they asked me what I wanted to do, I told them eventually I wanted to be a Project Manager managing development of software and a month later after that call he came back to me and told me they have an opening for me but it was on a trial basis, I said “sure I’d love to join you guys” but the catch was I had to start during the night shift because the clients and also the company itself is based in California so that’s minus 15 hours from us here.

Derek: So you then spent the next 4 and a half years with that company developing your skills but on a night shift is that right?

Vince: Yep and the skill to sleep with the sun up.

Derek: Yeah and people out there don’t realize how common it is in the Philippines to have exposure to night shifts because I mean outsourcing is a big thing but the alliance to the US is also such big thing so a lot of the shifts are performed at night.

Vince: And I really think it’s because most Americans are comfortable speaking with Filipinos because of the English, so that works.

Derek: So you know you don’t need to go into the company but what were they doing and what kind of roles?

Vince: We basically or they basically develop software customize for their clients so it was a range of a marketing insurance, even a company that build fences and I mainly handle the insurance part.

Derek: Was it sort of tech-heavy website or is it kinda like lets build wordpress template website for a fencing company?

Vince: It was really a tech-heavy but the website wordpress just so the client themselves could put in their own content.

Derek: Fantastic. Okay, and then you’ve moved on, you were in touch with Manila recruitment so of course we met you through Manila recruitment and it is because of Manila recruitment I reached out to Manila recruitment for some star candidates because I want to highlight you know how fantastic the potential here is and it’s not just telesales so thank you Manila recruitment for introducing us, but they reached out to you and your new position in what are you working on?

Vince: OK well I just wanted to interject I went to another company first before my current one.  I spent a year in a casino industry here in Philippines, also doing IT work .  It’s a Japanese owned company but the difference was the first company we did software for a client, in that casino company I worked for, we were the client talking to different vendors from around the world and then now with my current company we do internal work to make sure our different branches have what they need to do their work.

Derek: Right, so you went from, so your first one was effectively an agency was it like they were doing projects for.

Vince: You can say that we were sort of like a vendor selling software then my second company, we were the client buying software and then now we’re just building software internally.

Derek: I have done the whole gamble.  Fantastic. Now in your existing company, how old are you now?

Vince: I just turned 27, actually.

Derek: Wow ok and you’re managing a team, so you are a software development project manager and managing a team as you said for the internal build out of their software requirements. so how big is your team?

Vince: Actually I manage several teams, more or less I would say a total of 30+ people different professions from coders to testers to designers

Derek: And for the tech buffs out there, what sort of what are you building out? What kind of platforms you using? What sort of things you doing?

Vince: Mostly just websites to advertise the products but there are some internal apps for tracking and it is such a big thing now, data such a big thing, people who do other work in other industries are getting in to data, making sure they use data to make the right decisions, so those are the things we need to build around.

Derek: So you build out these websites for this company that has a number of websites I mean this is for my own interest but when you get so practiced and so good are they putting up websites in three days kind of thing is it a pretty quick turnout?

Vince: That is the expectation but we are trying to let people or let non IT people understand that it takes much more than that especially if they have your/ their visions. Especially since you just don’t build the website out of code right away, you need to make a mock up of your design specially because from my experience people are really sensitive to where they want certain pictures, certain text and so on so design in itself could take 3 days with revisions.

Derek: And then so you almost not stumbled but you started with the US company, you went with a japanese casino, you are now with I believe it’s a kind of New Zealand Canadian co owned kind of a company here in the Philippines.  There’s a huge amount of overseas exposure in the Philippines and how would you compare that to the opportunities within Filipino companies?

Vince: Well, the culture is really different I can’t really speak for the filipino based companies because I never worked for one. The culture is very different, expectation is very different, requirements are also different, it’s really a whole new world compared to what I talked to my friends about work, mainly the compensation itself is very different, these people or your bosses if you go and worked for one would try to make sure you earn more than a standard filipino company, so you get more benefits more leaves definitely more cash if you’re interested in that but it’s not only that with more benefits, they expect more from you also so like in my first company I told you I had to work night shifts for 4 and a half years.  Right now with my current company, they’re very lenient enough to let us work from home but I tried to go to the office and make sure that everyone sees me there I just want to make a good example, go to the office and work even if we’re allowed to work from home so it’s pretty dynamic I guess it depends on what your boss believes in.

Derek: And then give us an insight like the nitty gritty now I don’t want to know what you earn but what is the kind of pay scale for this you’re managing about 30 people managing about 6 teams, so I think you said.  You are only 27 but you progress supremely well on your career.  What kind of pay scale are you looking at?

Vince: You mean right now?

Derek: Yeah well sort off someone in that software because if someone else is looking in to the Philippines and looking around, what is the kind of pay scale for an effective software?

Vince: Well maybe based on US rates, I would say somewhere between 1/4 I mean if I were born in the US and doing software management there in the US, I would be earning probably 4 times what I’m earning right now so just to give you an idea that would be about the amount you would be looking at if you were to hire professionals here in the Philippines.

Derek: There’s a huge difference isn’t there.

Vince: Definitely, but that is already a lot to us but there is a big difference between what people earn in a Filipino based company compared to what we earn in the foreign based company

Derek: Yeah and I don’t know how unsure but I would imagine you earn fairly good salary and it keeps you well, there’s an impression out there in the west that outsourcing is taking advantage of people here, it’s kind of sweatshop labor what do you say to that?

Vince: Again I emphasize, it may seem cheap to westerners or foreigners but to us it’s a lot bigger than what we would normally get in the Filipino based company.

Derek: So there’s actually you know it’s the inverse it’s actually you see opportunities working for foreign companies who see there it’s attractive there’s often very good working conditions and good salary and also good career ladder opportunities.

Vince: Definitely I mean just starting out, I can tell you that my first paycheck or my first salary was twice what I was normally offered back then so that’s how different the scales between compensation between a filipino owned company.

Derek: And what I find interesting is the multiples within businesses are so much greater here because you can get the runners and the whatever the cleaners and things like that and they could be on 1 or 2 hundred US dollars a month maybe maybe 2 or 3 hundred  US dollars a month and then the executives within a company will effectively bridge the gap and then earn effectively western salaries so you know it kind of spans from a sort of developing nation lower salary to then up to the best western executive salary it’s a huge span isn’t it?

Vince: I guess those people would have proven their talent, their worth early and that even include with the other benefits they get on the same.

Derek: Now that’s great insight and then so your career then where you’re only 27 but you’ve done so well and where are you hoping to go in the next 5 years, what do you want to do?

Vince: I’ve only been in my current company for 5 months, I really like them, I like what they’re doing and believe in what they’re doing so i want to stay with them for a few more years but in the future I want to own my own company maybe start up my own company  since I have a lot of experience in managing people in also helping my bosses manage the country since they’re out of the country a lot so I think that would be my answer i would like to own my own company someday.

Derek: Wow you got an entrepreneurial bent.  What are you thinking kind of web based?

Vince: Who knows I mean 5 years from now, who knows what the current trend would be, so we’ll see.

Derek: Amazing.  Thank you so much it has been an absolute pleasure, Vince and I wish you the best of luck with your career.

Vince:  Thank you.

Derek: Ok, so that was Vince Filamor, a great guy with a great career ahead of him. I’m sure, if you want to know more about this episode they go to our show notes which is at outsourceaccelerator.com/94 and if you wan to drop us a note then please do that is at [email protected].  See you next time.