By Nancy Dahlberg
On Monday, Refresh Miami reported on Kaseya’s plans to add 3,400 jobs over the next three years in Miami-Dade County. The hiring will be across the board for the global software company: software engineers, security analysts, account managers, technical support, technical architects, marketing, accounting and finance.
The hiring will bring Miami-based Kaseya’s local workforce from under 1,000 now to more than 4,200 employees. With the expansion, Kaseya will have offices in four office buildings in close proximity in the Brickell-downtown corridor.
[ICYMI, catch up quick: Kaseya to create 3,400 tech jobs in Miami-Dade paying an average of $107K]
Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola said on Monday the provider of IT management and security software is expanding in Miami, in part because of the DNA of the local workforce, with its immigrant work ethic, sense of ownership and grit, and he lauded the education systems that are “focused on preparing students for the real world.”
In interviews with Voccola and Executive VP of Marketing Communications Xavier Gonzalez, Refresh Miami took the opportunity to go deeper into the global software company’s hiring plans and how the company’s culture and strategies have also set the company up for this massive hiring goal. Here are excerpts from those conversations, lightly edited for brevity.
A lot of companies are laying off employees but you’re doing the opposite. How are you able to do that?
Voccola: We’re lucky in that our customers are small to midsize businesses around the world. That market segment is not digitally transformed yet. So when the economy slows down, our customer base is spending more on technology, because they need technology to give them the differentiation, the efficiencies to withstand the next economic slowdown. So just by the nature of our market, we’re positioned better. The second reason is we’ve been financially responsible, unlike a lot of technology companies, a lot of my peers. The approach that this company has always taken and always will take is a very, very conservative approach to growth. We’re growing over 30% a year. We are incredibly profitable. We are planning and we foresee some pretty strong economic headwinds ahead of us. So the thousands of employees that we are looking to add are based on the assumption that the economy is not going to be sunshine and roses for the next couple of years. We’ve never fallen into the trap of “we’re a tech company. profits don’t matter.” That’s never been our DNA and never will be.
What is Kaseya’s secret sauce to attracting and retaining employees?
Voccola: Walk around Brickell. You see Kaseya shirts all over the place and it makes us feel a little bit tighter to the community, which is super cool. It benefits everybody. It’s always been about being involved in the community. We’re doing this Bounce Back From Cancer, working with the folks at Miami Cancer Institute at Baptist Health, and we’re going to have a very, very large presence there. First off, it’s cool because we raise money to help fight cancer. That’s awesome. And from a business perspective, it makes our employees feel good that they’re working for a company that actually cares about the place where they live and the people around them. It also makes other people see that. They see 350 people bouncing basketballs wearing Kaseya shirts. We do a lot of things to try to make people aware that this is a place where we give them the opportunity to do things that they wouldn’t be able to do in other places. And that message sticks and the more people that work here, the more people they tell, and the more the message spreads.
Gonzalez: We put them on a career path, they have regular touch points with executives. We give them a good amount of training on a constant basis. We give them opportunities that very few other companies might give them early in their career. We let them grow into it, and we give them the tools to be successful. In addition, obviously, we’re a tech company. the compensation is strong, and gives folks an opportunity to be very financially successful in their careers. And we’re a private company where equity becomes something interesting as well. We provide what we think is a very compelling overall financial package and opportunity for these individuals to really take that next step, not only professionally but personally.
What role or roles do you find most difficult to fill locally?
Gonzalez: In the Miami area, I wouldn’t say that there’s one individual role. Our overall strategy is hiring individuals early in their career and then really investing in them through mentorship, through training. It’s part of our program we call Grow Your Own. If we bring someone in – let’s say it’s for an engineer for an r&d role, maybe someone that that on paper may be a year or two away – will bring them in and will and will train them up. I think the challenge for us is more around the volume [of hiring Kaseya will undertake] than it is individual roles. We’ve had a good track record recruiting from FIU, from Miami Dade College from University of Miami, and many other universities in the area.
You’ve announced Kaseya is expanding in Orlando, with plans to add a thousand employees in that city by the end of 2024. Is this part of a Florida strategy?
Voccola: When we were thinking of where do we scale, we decided to make Miami the big scale, and Orlando’s going to grow to a couple of thousand over the next five or six years, but it’s not the primary location. But what’s nice about Orlando is when the Brightline comes in, it’s easy to go back and forth. And if a hurricane hits, very rarely does a hurricane shut down both Miami and Orlando. That gives us in the state of Florida the ability to have a secondary location where we can make sure that we can take care of our customers and business operations don’t shut down.
Gonzalez: We’ve actually already hired about 125 in that Orlando office, and that’s continuing to grow. it’s a big support center for us. We’re strong believers in Florida as a hub for tech talent and obviously as a very business friendly environment.
What are some benefits of working in Miami people may not think about?
Voccola: A lot of people don’t realize that here in Miami, there’s a lot of mass transit options. We have hundreds of people who take the Brightline from the Fort Lauderdale area down to Miami to work every day. Of course, we reimburse it, we’re a big fan as a company of people taking mass transit. It’s another reason why we’re continuing to grow here in the downtown-Brickell corridor – we call it the Kaseya Corridor. And once here, with thousands of Kaseya employees within a block of each other, collaborating between co-workers is easy. We’re committed to this area not just because of the people but because of the city itself and, and some of the benefits that it has in addition to Sunshine.
READ MORE ON REFRESH MIAMI:
- Kaseya to create 3,400 tech jobs in Miami-Dade paying an average of $107K
- Growing the tech talent pipeline is what Miami Tech Works is all about. Employers, here’s how to get involved
- Silicon Valley tech company LeverX is relocating to Miami
- Is there AI innovation in Miami’s tech scene? Here’s everything you need to know
- Marco secures $200M to grow LatAm-focused SME financing platform
Follow Nancy Dahlberg on Twitter @ndahlberg and email her at [email protected]
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