Today at ‘Expert Speaks‘, we have with us Amitai, the Vice President of Elementor, a hugely popular tool that allows you to make a beautiful website effortlessly.
In this interview, Amitai talks briefly about some of the top lessons he has learned, the importance of goal-setting, and staying focused. He also mentions how this pandemic helps in Digitalization.
We thank Amitai for sharing his valuable tips and inspiring ideas with us to help young people. We hope you guys enjoy going through his perspective.
Please tell us about your journey from a Recording Engineer to the VP, Product at Elementor?
When I moved from music to tech, I had no idea how similar creating music and creating products would be.
This seems to always surprise non-musicians. However, when talking to devs and product people you’ll find a surprising percentage of them are musicians in some capacity (this is purely based on my personal experience of course).
I soon discovered my journey was not all that unique as many devs and product people I know started out as musicians and made the switch to tech later in their careers. I found the transition to be much easier than I imagined and certainly more enjoyable!
Moving from engineering to product was natural for me in order to maintain a sense of creativity and be in a position to make decisions about the products I was working on.
As the Product VP of Elementor, you must have a lot of responsibilities and pressure. Which aspect of your work do you like the most?
I love the variance.
My day can begin with a hiring interview, followed by an all-hands meeting with our entire product team. It can continue with a presentation to our marketing department, followed by a technical meeting with the R&D team regarding our new data infrastructure. Then I may join a work session with a product manager regarding a new feature we’re working on and finally wrap up with a strategic discussion about the future of the web with the executive team.
There’s so much variance and intensity almost every single day — I love it.
What does your normal day look like?
My normal day is made up of plenty of meetings. This includes meetings with several levels of the product department as well as meetings across other divisions of the business.
This means I need to create space in my timetable to assess information and make decisions. So what I do is I block away chunks out of my day to get some work and actual thinking done, but according to my Google calendar’s “Time Insights” feature, it’s still mostly made up of meetings.
What are the pros and cons of working for yourself?
I’ve done a lot of both, and for me, personally, it was a matter of where I was in life at the time. There were times when “freedom of movement” and “flexibility” were much more important than “stability and security”, so working for myself was ideal.
Later in life, after my kids were born, stability became a big consideration all of a sudden so I changed things up.
How do you manage your time efficiently? Any tips on time management for our readers?
I think each of us wishes we could be better at managing our time better. The key is to prioritize your hours into their order of importance.
For example, you don’t necessarily have to sit in on every meeting. Sometimes an email or a summarized slideshow will do. Likewise, at other times, a quick face-to-face phone or video call will save you from sending messages back and forth.
Order your day, week, and month with a result mindset. Everything else will follow.
Find what works for you and make every effort to make your time matter. This goes for both your professional time as well as your personal time. Spend your time wisely
During Elementor’s current stage of growth, what are the top challenges to deal with?
There are many! Finding and hiring the most talented people out there (this is a challenge at any stage), cultivating company culture, implementing processes to support our growth without impacting our velocity and agility, effectively communicating all around and in all directions — technical debt, product debt, and the list goes on and on.
Our growth has been tremendous, and the pace has been incredibly fast. This has presented us with a ton of challenges. But we are passionately working through and dealing with each and every one of them by laying down the infrastructure to handle our scale and growth. I’m super optimistic about the future!
What are the future projects of Elementor including upgrades you are currently working on?
We are working on many things right now and have some really big features coming out soon such as containers and the mega menu (and many, many more — so stay tuned).
A lot of the work we are planning for 2022 is directed at our existing product since there are innumerable things we can do to improve its existing features, infrastructure, and performance. So in addition to the features roadmap, we have an entire roadmap dedicated just for this.
Outside of work, what do you enjoy the most? And how do you manage work-life balance since it’s quite difficult nowadays?
I love the mountains. I love hiking, climbing, skiing, and sometimes just relaxing in the mountains.
Managing work-life balance in my line of work is not an easy thing to do and I admit that I’m not the best at it. But I do try to keep my weekends open for family time and I do try to take a couple of big vacations throughout the year to spend some quality time with family and friends. These vacations are usually at… you guessed it — the mountains!
How do you see the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on online businesses, especially in Elementor’s market? Has this helped your industry?
COVID-19, as we know, accelerated some trends that were already happening.
At Elementor we operate at the forefront of the “moving online” trend that has been going on for many years so naturally, we felt this acceleration firsthand.
What is the motivation behind your success and what advice do you want to give people who want to follow your path?
It is important to believe what you’re building has a real impact on your users’ lives. At Elementor, we see this all the time in our thriving user community.
Users write to us all the time telling us how it has changed their lives. Elementor allows a large number of people to participate in an economy that would otherwise be unattainable.
There aren’t too many products like that on the market. This product is 100% pure goodness.
Real value, real impact, real people – and it’s wonderful to be a part of it all. This is what motivates me on both a professional and personal level.
