4 Lessons from a Mountain Rescue Lead (and Our Engineering Lead) to Help Engineering Teams Solve Problems at Scale Anytime Anywhere
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“In my home country of Serbia, I served in a mountain rescue service. It taught me a lot about how groups handle difficult situations,” reflects Dejan.
“The best reaction was from children. Once we had a situation where 10 children were lost in a mountain. They stayed together. Because their feet were cold, they put their feet in each other’s jackets. They were calm, smart, and courageous. Adults often panic and think of a shortcut that will take them back to safety, which leads them to more trouble.”
Such life events inspire Dejan daily.
As Head of Engineering at Pay & Ship with OLX Group, Dejan thinks a lot about building strong teams. His vast experience in leadership helps.
“I always strive to build strong teams. My experiences taught me the value of having a strong team, especially in critical situations.”
As Head of Engineering for Pay & Ship, Dejan helps shape the future of trade. Building Pay & Ship from the ground up has required a ton of work, and there’s still much to do. But having the right team and approach makes creating that future much more feasible.
Recently, we sat down to talk with Dejan and hear his thoughts on building strong teams that can overcome challenges and push boundaries. Read what he had to say!
Control What You Can Control and Stop Overthinking
What mountain rescue teach you about leadership?
“My experiences in the mountain rescue service have taught me a lot. I was a team lead, trained instructors, and was part of the board on a county level for the mountain rescue service. Some of my key learnings were:
“We need to use our knowledge and skills and do our best in a given moment, not to wait too long. Done is better than perfect when the situation is changing fast. Unforeseen situations are challenges, not blockers. The market is dynamic, precisely like nature. Solving problems with a clear mind will open opportunities for fast solutions and will enhance a flexible spirit.
You have to be calm during the storm. You need a reference point. In mountain rescue, seconds can make a difference. In engineering, you have more time to make the right decision, so use that time wisely. Put your emotions aside, take a deep breath and concentrate on the solution. Once the storm is over, allow some rest.
When the world is in a panic, you can’t afford any effort to be wasted. Most likely there are issues beyond your reach. There is no need to waste valuable energy on those problems. Identify and resolve the issues you can solve quickly and efficiently first, so you have more resources later to calmly confront the bigger, more difficult problems.” explains Dejan.
Trust & purpose build the right environment
What’s your career background and what brought you to OLX?
“The story is interesting. I’m an outdoor enthusiast from Serbia and have been involved in outdoor hiking and climbing clubs. My engineering started when I volunteered making a website for the outdoor hiking and climbing clubs. Then, I built a mountain hiking platform, which became the most popular in the region. I even got some rewards from local PC magazines on it. After that, I got referrals for work and began freelancing with clients around the world, from the USA to Hong Kong, from small businesses to big corporations. It was a valuable and rewarding experience” describes Dejan.
“While freelancing, I worked on a diversity of projects, from real estate to a stock prediction algorithm. Each month, we switched contexts and I learned a lot, especially when it comes to listening to clients. That experience helps me today, as I know how to show folks how technical solutions can solve problems.
While freelancing, I was listed in a platform called Elance, which is now Upwork. I was lucky enough that the Elance team in San Francisco saw my work and invited me to join their engineering team. This was a game-changer for me. I was solving problems at scale. I stayed five years with them and I actually built part of Upwork,” exclaims Dejan.
“Later, during a trip to Berlin to attend a conference and pitch a startup idea, I fell in love with the city. It reminded me of my hometown, Belgrade. I decided to move to Berlin with a friend to create our startup. Then, like in nature, unexpected things happen, new opportunities and challenges arise, and eventually, I decided to join OLX instead, as the opportunity was too great to pass. I liked the culture and saw the level of trust I could enjoy at OLX. The type of problems I could solve were challenging and I liked the combination of freedom with the responsibility that comes with it,” explains Dejan.
Pay & Ship: Dip your toes into your market
OLX Group platforms aims to be the leading destination for buying, selling, and exchanging products and services. To be the leader, we must ensure trustworthy, efficient transactions online. It’s not simple, especially with 20+ brands in more than 30 countries.
As Corina, Head of Product for Pay & Ship, states:
“People want to make deals online in a safe, convenient manner. You can’t always find the products you need close to your home. We need trustworthy remote deals and efficient delivery. Based on user feedback, our research, and our resources and capabilities, we’ve been creating different options for making deals and shipping and paying for items across our markets.”
Why should someone join the Pay & Ship team?
“Engineers like the impact and scale. In Poland, we have thousands of requests per second on some services. Engineers can see the immediate impact they are making. Millions of people are affected by their work. These are consumer-facing projects. There’s also the complexity of systems, especially at this scale. You can really improve your skills and knowledge,” says Dejan.
“If you want to learn and make a big impact, this is the right place.”
Tell us about your journey with OLX and Pay & Ship?
“I joined OLX Group 3.5 years ago as the first hire in the Delivery and Payments team. We started growing, from one team to two, then three teams. Over time, the Delivery and Payments teams merged with the Market Pay teams and Pay & Ship was born. We’ve grown from that first team to 9 teams today,” exclaims Dejan.
“Once we had a full team, the first task we undertook was building Python services outside of the monolith. We launched in Ukraine and then moved to Poland, where we started using Kotlin.”
What did you learn in those early days of Pay & Ship?
“User experience and user behavior, and what is the most valuable approach for our users. We tried different approaches and ran a lot of experiments in Ukraine. In Poland and Romania, we moved to Kotlin to improve the service.
After all, the core of the system is a transaction between buyer and seller. There are very strict rules when it comes to transactions. You can go from one status to another, and in some cases, it can go back. There are so many different routes a status can take. For instance, if I order a product and you reject the order, I get the money back. This is a sort of complex status machine that is updated at each step and is easier to control in Kotlin. We use EKS AWS and that’s powering the ecosystem.”
“At first, we decided to divide Pay & Ship by market. There were reasons for this. First, the maturity of each market differs. Second, given different security standards, safety environments, and regulations, it made more sense to take the service market to market,” notes Dejan.
“For example, in Poland, there are lockers and you can pick up your order there. In Romania, we have a delivery provider that has different levels of what the receiver can do, such as just receive the package, open it and touch it, open it and try it, and other options.
But after dipping our toes into local complexities, we learned that, while we’re trying to solve problems for each market, we solved the same problem three times. So, we changed the structure of the team to handle various parts of Pay & Ship.
We’ve arrived at having 9 different teams now. We are building components that are reusable for all the markets. And we organize the teams to support all markets at the same time. If there’s specific local complexities, we have teams that optimize for those complexities.”
Pay & Ship is a complex ecosystem of partners that needs constant orchestrating. Tell us more.
“The primary focus of our work is about integrating logistic partners and payment providers into our platform. When the pandemic hit, the entire world trade moved more online and we decided to speed up. Our users needed it. First, we rolled out the model for package ordering, then added a payment options on our platform. The payment side is extremely complex. You need mechanisms for identifying users, as it’s a legal requirement, then mechanisms for refunds and payouts, making sure the seller and delivery company both get their money. Some external partners do not allow monitoring. From our perspective, it either works or doesn’t. With our competencies, we can see if something’s misbehaving, and we can take steps to prevent a problem.
To prevent a partner’s system from affecting ours, we must build to recover and communicate well with our users. For example, our users shouldn’t know if an external delivery partner’s system is down.They should be able to complete the request on our platform fluidly. Recovery means we don’t lose that data. We pile up and store requests. Our internal system needs to absorb the heat. It should be transparent to the end user. However, this is not always the case. For instance, if a delivery is delayed, we should notify the user. We should communicate to the user to not worry, that there might be a delay. But, that the situation will resolve itself,” details Dejan.
Learning creates change from the bottom up
Your team has grown from 1 to 50+ people. What’s been key to success?How has COVID-19 impacted your teams?
“It’s been a journey of 1 to 50.
It is challenging, especially now, during the pandemic, when people are living in isolation and constantly worry about the health of their families. Our personal life suffers a lot and psychological pressure exists. It’s important to be empathetic and to invest in understanding each other. For me, the number one value is collaboration. Pay & Ship is one team. We have different packs with different responsibilities. But we’re all the same team,” emphasizes Dejan.
“We have a safe environment for open communication. Everybody needs to be genuine. I insist on this. We’ll accept everybody and if we do this, we can have honest, respectful communication. We playfully joke with one another too, which helps build team camaraderie.”
Read insights from OLX on how to make the remote office successful.
Have you done anything to make work easier during the pandemic?
“We don’t pretend everything is fine. It’s different. The OLX Tech and HR teams did a lot, from office equipment to fruit baskets and surprise packages that arrived directly to our homes. We have online events and evenings together. We take comfort in knowing one day this will all be over and we’ll be able to meet again…”
How do you ensure consistent learning and growth?
My role is to understand each engineer’s goals and create the environment where they can realize those goals. That means ensuring they have the right tools and use the right processes. The OLX Group is taking learning and development seriously. We have access to more than 5000+ courses from leading ed-tech providers like Udemy, Harvard Publishing, and more. We also have access to the much-coveted Udacity Nanodegree programs. The diversity and the richness of the programs offered can be challenging across all seniority levels, from college graduates looking for the first job to senior engineers looking to solve complex algorithmic problems.”
“We have a program where engineers can switch teams for a month or two. A lot are taking the opportunity. They really find it engaging and they can learn how to work better with one another. Some engineers take certificates together, like the AWS certification. We have weekly checkups and weekly team learnings. We learn together as a team. We also have the career tracks defined. For those on a managerial track, we seek the opportunity to assign temporary engineering managers to lead a team with a mentor. This is a hands-on leadership experience with a new team. For me, a bottom-up culture is very important. That’s how you come up with the best solutions, that’s how engineers grow.”
An extra note: As a study of medical practices published by the Harvard Business Review found, organizations can orchestrate change by “leveraging the structural power” of low-level workers to push new ideas and practices. By giving his engineers a more prominent role, Dejan ensures all great ideas get heard, tested, and implemented.
It’s time for a hike in the Dolomites
That concludes our talk with Dejan. We hope you’ve learned a lot about how to build teams strong enough to overcome any challenge and scale successfully.
To finish, we’ll leave you with some final advice from Dejan and wonderful images of his journeys in the Dolomites.
“As I mentioned, I love the outdoors. It’s crucial to your personal health and career to get out in nature and exercise and relax. I really like the Dolomites in Italy. If there’s one thing I could have told to my childhood myself it is travel more before 2020 and the pandemic, and enjoy the outdoors even more!”
