Life as a Productboard Engineering Manager — an interview with Viktor Tymoshchuk
For the latest interview in our People of Productboard series, we caught up with Engineering Manager Viktor Tymoshchuk to discuss his journey to Productboard and engineering leadership.
Hi, Viktor! Can you start by telling us about your journey to Productboard?
If we start at the very beginning, my interest in engineering began thanks to my father. He is an electrical engineer, and one day he brought home a ZX Spectrum computer and assembled it. At that time, it was a cutting-edge piece of tech. My brother (who went on to become a software developer) and I were fascinated by it.
I didn’t feel like becoming a developer myself, so I became a software tester. I was working for different companies in Ukraine, and one of them provided some great training on software testing. That was a unique opportunity back then because there was no other chance to get a software testing degree in Ukraine.
I was testing software for Apple Macs, and it was very detail-oriented — every pixel counted, and everything had to be as perfect as possible. It was amazing! I learned so much, especially about attention to detail. I also learned the basics of test automation.
Were you still a student when you got your first job?
Yes, it was a crazy time! I was a student in my third year of university. I went to school during the day, and then I went to work at night, before getting a few hours of sleep and going to school again.
After finishing my degree, I switched jobs to do more automation testing and met some awesome people. I then joined a startup based in New York, but I stayed in Ukraine. The company calculated weather-related risks for different insurance companies, and I learned a lot about how agile and start-ups work.
Then I was looking for something else, and by chance, I got in touch with a friend who was working here in Prague for Monster Technologies. That’s how I ended up coming here to the Czech Republic. It was my first international experience, and I didn’t speak English much at the time. But thanks to the international environment, I learned a lot and knew how everything worked pretty quickly.
I got promoted from Quality Engineer to Principal Quality Engineer. As I enjoyed leading teams, I left Monster after six years and joined Concur as a QA team supervisor. I then got promoted to manager and started leading an engineering team. It was amazing for me to lead a team of developers who were delivering something to real customers.
Concur was awesome. Even after it was bought by SAP, which is a huge corporation, it still felt like a small company. We had a lot of freedom, and there were incredible people. But at some point, I realized that I would either stay at SAP Concur forever or try something new. I was looking for options in Berlin and even Vienna. I even tried the US because my brother lives there, but it didn’t feel like home. Then I was going through LinkedIn and stumbled upon Productboard. I had heard many good things about the company, so I decided to give it a try — and here we are!
“Joining Productboard was an instant wow for me. I was excited about all the technology that Productboard is using, all the tools. And I’m so happy I joined! I’m still learning a lot, and it has been an amazing journey.”
And we’re delighted to have you here! So in retrospect, what’s it like to be an Engineering Manager at Productboard? I’m pretty sure we can be transparent even about the not-so-perfect parts.
Well, I knew that the company is new and that it’s a startup, so it was fun at the beginning when I joined and ended up leading a completely different team than the one we had talked about when I accepted the offer. Also, COVID hit shortly after I joined, and it was difficult to establish connections and get to know people. When you don’t randomly meet people in the hallways, you have to reach out and set up meetings actively.
“People have been super friendly the whole time. Everyone has been very open, finding the time to talk to me, and that’s something you don’t find in every company.”
It was great that the restrictions lifted a bit during the summer, and we got to spend some time in the office, too. I felt very supported by my manager, Josh, and overall I had great support from my peers as well.
Outside of Productboard, you’re part of an organization called Toastmasters. Can you tell me a bit more about that?
Toastmasters is a non-profit organization that helps people develop their public speaking and leadership skills. I was working on that in my previous company and decided to establish something similar here at Productboard. I got approval from our CTO Daniel, and we have already started a new club — Productboard Toastmasters 🎉 Feel free to join our meetings as a guest to see how it works. 😉
We already had our first few meetings, and it’s a great opportunity for people to enhance their public speaking skills and leadership skills, and to help them advance their careers. No one forces you to speak right away. If you don’t want to talk, that’s OK. I had one guy who was attending for a year and didn’t speak at all — and then he delivered such an amazing speech. It is fascinating to see people grow!
This is also a great opportunity for networking within the company. There are people from across the departments that you wouldn’t normally meet during “normal” meetings.
We’re living in a COVID-19 world now, which has been quite challenging for a lot of managers. How has it been for you? Do you have any tips and tricks for your fellow managers?
I’m still trying to figure out how things work. But it made me realize how important it is to have a good leader.
“The need for good managers will not go away. On the contrary, it might be even more important now. You need to keep things running, keep people happy, remove the roadblocks and concerns, and provide support in a human way.”
As a leader, you also have to give people some space to spend time with their families. It’s completely fine when someone is on a Zoom call, and their kids are running around every few seconds.
We should try and understand each other, and we should all think about reaching out directly to our team members, asking, “How are you doing? Is everything bearable? Is everything fine?” Sometimes it hits me that I’m isolated at home and need to talk to someone. So we need to support each other and other managers to reach out and get in touch.
That sounds great! Could you go more into the specifics of being an Engineering Manager here at Productboard? What are your responsibilities, and what does an average day look like?
Being an Engineering Manager here at Productboard is a lot about people management. It’s still very technical, but you’re not coding day to day. You need to understand the technology and what your team is working on very well. You also need to understand the product and be able to see it from the design perspective, so it’s very complex. You’re kind of a mix of people manager, product manager, and project manager in one role.
What are some of the biggest challenges that you’re working on right now? If you look back in a couple of months on your work, what will you be most proud of?
When I joined, our team started working on Segmentation for Productboard. That helps users understand how to approach particular problems based on the different segments — enterprise, small and medium businesses, and very small businesses. So when you’re creating a new feature, it can help you understand better what to build next.
This project involved a lot of work with data as well — we had to figure out how to get the data into Productboard to build these segments. So we built a CSV import that allows our users to import the data themselves. We’ve also built a Salesforce integration for Productboard so that they can import data from there as well.
That sounds amazing! And now for my last question: Where do you take inspiration? Are there any interesting people that you follow? How do you become a good Engineering Manager?
Well, I started this interview with a story about me and my brother — and he was a huge inspiration for me along the way. He got me into this in the first place. And throughout my career, I have had a lot of great managers as well as great mentors.
Back in SAP Concur, I had a mentor who led an organization of around 600 people. He was a great coach and mentor to me. And my previous manager as well, our Director of Development. I learned a lot about building teams and even how to approach tough situations, like how to let someone go.
Now I’m very much into product management, and I’m finishing a book that we like here at Productboard called Inspired by Marty Cagan. I would definitely recommend it!
Also, despite all of its challenges, I think that COVID has changed the way we think about conferences and events. Now that everything’s online, you get to meet interesting people from all over the world. I recently met with a guy from Spotify, for example, at one of these networking events. I’m curious about how this trend will continue.
Interested in joining our growing team? Well, we’re hiring across the board! Check out our careers page for the latest vacancies.
