Meet Ishal, The Weaver of Accommodation Web
If you have ever booked a hotel from Traveloka.com, chances are you have encountered with one of Afrishal Priyandhana’s works. As the tech lead in Accommodation Web & Tools, he focuses on the front end side and makes the UI Designer’s hard work into a reality. His life and background in tech had allured me into writing, and I think you should know him as well.
The Start of His Journey
I had the opportunity to talk to Afrishal, whose friends like to call him Ishal, earlier this month to dig deeper into his stories and career life. He first joined Traveloka on August 2015 as a back end engineer for Customer Operation team (It was so long ago, the team does not even exist anymore). He was at his freshest point as a fresh grad. With two other coworkers in Customer Operation, he was assigned to create an in-house customer service system similar to Zendesk. At that moment, he was still very green. He had no prior working experience beforehand and he had to understand Traveloka’s framework that is very JavaScript-heavy. The JavaScript skill that he learned back at campus was way simpler in all forms, so he had to jump all in (head-first) into grasping various complex things that Traveloka uses in daily routine. It took many exploration and trial-errors in the first couple months of his career until the team finally decided that the project should be discontinued. Not because they weren’t capable, but the effort that they had to give was way higher than the outcomes. It was disappointing, but It surely wasn’t a burden to Ishal. He knew that his struggle in diving deeper will be beneficial for his journey someday.
After only 3 months of being in Customer Operation, Ishal went to be a full-stack engineer under Accommodation Supply team. Together with other fellow engineers, he contributed to developing TERA (Traveloka Extranet Reservation Access). When I asked him about his most meaningful and satisfying work that he had done in the past, he proudly showcased an ORS (Online Registration System) for hotels in TERA system.
A very simple thing indeed, but little did I know that his impact in developing an online form has changed how the business works. Ishal explained that Traveloka used to have the registration in a paper-based form, which required data entry to input every detail of the hotel. It was hand-operated and often brought mistakes and incompleteness in some of the data. That’s why ORS was initiated in the first place. This project has helped him know more about front end, and even led him to guide other coworkers to understand more about coding for an interface.
A Leap of Faith
He became a tech lead very early in his career, starting by guiding a small team as a first-line manager. Ishal learned his management skill through the hard way, without any direct help of text book. He just has to make sure that everything is fair for everyone in his team, and he prefers equity more than equality when leading. For those of you who don’t know, Equity is giving everyone what they need to be successful, while equality is treating everyone the same. “A team member once asked me why I always guide one particular member more than anyone else in the team. I just have to explain to him that I believe in his skill and capability in finishing off big tasks, but some of his coworkers still not yet have that ability. Just like an old proverb, I agree that when we want to go far, we need to go together. We work as a team. I can’t leave behind the people that need my help. It’s not a lie when I heard someone say ‘managing people is never an easy task’. This is a challenge for me, and the bigger the team, the greater the challenge,” he said.
I personally do not think he would have a hardship when leading, as he is also a true people person. Eloquent and outgoing, maybe it is not even that dramatic to call him “the life of the party”. I can see in him that communication is one of his fortes. He admitted that he is partly enthusiastic with psychology, which makes perfect sense when we associate it with his talkative trait. He loves to interact with others, to connect and bond, and even to a greater extent such as motivating. That’s a manner of a leader. His wild success in leading his friends in Accommodation Supply has brought Traveloka to entrust him as the lead for Accommodation Web & Tools up until this point. He wears his heart on his sleeve when working and it really shows.
On Giving Impact and Pursuing Dream
Ishal is someone who believes that giving impact is important. He will go above and beyond to make sure that what he is working on will benefit the customers. His abundance attention to the usability in developing Traveloka’s web has always brought him to brainstorming for extravagant user interface without forgetting customer’s needs. “When my team and I received a prototype design for web, I never forget to ask the UI Designers for justification for their work. If they can convince me well that our customers will like the new interface, albeit a very complicated artwork to implement, my team and I will try to recreate them and make it happen. I believe there’s nothing impossible when it comes to front end. I just want my team’s work to be useful for the users and actually helpful for their lives.”
On my one hour talk with him does I realize he is a truly remarkable, bubbly, and also a very lucky person. It always seems like God has paved a path for Ishal to walk into becoming an inspiring engineer. For many of us, finding our passion is like climbing Mount Everest — it’s hard, tiring, and might be impossible, but for Ishal, it just comes naturally. His current job is an extension of his own interest. We talked about what made him into discovering technology, and it turned out that his high school teacher played a major role in sculpting his life. Early exposure to visual basic, Pascal and simple web programming made Ishal felt confident enough in joining multiple competitions and fell in love with tech. He noticed his love in using logic for solving problems. Though he did not win the competition, he still continues pursuing what interests him up until now in Traveloka and has grown ever since. An overall good man with passion and dedication. If you want to have the same experience like him (or maybe even better), we’re hiring.
I would like to close this post by quoting his words that I applaud very loud in my mind.
He said, “I think every aspiring engineer should try to love solving problems, because when you created something that eases other’s lives, even if it is minor, you still created impact. I personally feel that the more that I give, the more satisfaction I will feel. I think everyone should have that same joy that comes with it.”
