Employee Spotlight: Filip Šišić

Tell us a bit about yourself.

My educational background is in engineering. In my professional career, I’ve worked in software engineering, product management, organizational roles, and people management, but out of all, I’ve realized that I love working with people the most. This is what led me to join Photomath in an Engineering Manager position. 

How did your Photomath adventure begin? 

I’ve been in Photomath for a year now. I was in my previous job for 7 years and decided to take a break before deciding on my next career destination. I knew I was going to be very picky about where I wanted to go next. A few months later, a couple of my friends contacted me and said they think this job would be a great fit for me. I’m happy to say they couldn’t have been more right :)

Tell us more about your job.

The easiest way for me to explain my job is - to make sure that the teams I’m leading deliver value to our users and accomplish business goals that are expected, but that at the same time, they enjoy their jobs.

To accomplish this, it’s necessary to listen, think and act. I listen a lot - to individuals (both from my team and other parts of the organization). I think about what I hear, think about business aspects and our long-term goals, think about a strategy that would take us there, what we need to change and what we need to continue with. Finally, I take action to move in the right direction.

What does a typical day look like? 

A lot of meetings and trying not to spill coffee or water while carrying them both and a laptop from one conference room to another.

Looking back at the last 3 or 4 years of my career, I think there is no such thing as a typical day. However, I can say what my job revolves around - meeting with individuals in my team, having the team and cross-team meetings, meetings with managers from other teams, meetings with colleagues from other parts of the organization… In between all those meetings, it’s important to organize all the information I’m hearing and leave time to focus on strategic decisions.

Tell us about your team.

When you install Photomath and use it on your phone, this user-facing part of the system you see is built by the engineers in the App team. The App team is a team of 16 people, but it actually consists of more teams and roles - Android team, iOS team and App Services team. Our team also has a Technical Product Manager who is keeping us coordinated with all other teams in Photomath, as well as leading some of our product initiatives. 

What are the most demanding challenges you’ve had at work?

I believe you can guess that it can’t be easy when you’re working with people all the time. You will have difficult situations, you will have difficult conversations and you will be the one who will have to make difficult decisions. But those challenges are a part of what I love about this job - because those difficult situations need to be resolved - and by resolving them, you will create a positive impact - on people, processes and the company.

What’s your proudest accomplishment while here? 

Every person in Photomath who feels that I helped them out with something or had a positive impact on them in any way or form is a part of what I’m most proud of.

What’s your favorite thing about working at Photomath?

It’s not a thing - it’s people. I was, and I still constantly am, thrilled with the brilliant caliber of people that are working at Photomath. There are so many people here that you can learn from in any conversation. Along with this very very high level of professional quality, the atmosphere in the company is amazing. People love what they do, they are very collaborative and respectful of each other and everyone is so excited that we are working on a product that is creating a positive impact for students, parents and teachers all around the world.

What’s your secret talent no one knows about?

I love sports, I’m a bit fanatical about football. As a result of this passion that maybe goes too far, I’m currently in 0.4% of the best players of Premier League Fantasy Football in the world (played by more than 10 million people) - completely useless but fun.

I also love traveling. I traveled a lot (a lot of European traveling, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Tunisia, Zanzibar…), but it’s been put on pause by the combination of Covid restrictions and getting my first baby. Dreams of beautiful travel destinations are now exchanged for dreams about sleeping the night through. Jokes aside, I enjoy being a dad and I believe we will also soon be able to travel again :)

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