Employee Spotlight: Andrija Ra?natovi?

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I am a Bachelor of Digital Marketing with experience in graphic design, project management, sales, marketing and branding, technical support, SEO, SEM, analytics, music and music production, animation, and video editing. Among other.

Long story short, I am a jack of all trades who was positive I wouldn’t be able to find a job covering at least most of my experiences and interests. Well, until I joined Photomath.

Also, it says a lot about me that I almost finished writing this thing, took another look at it, said to myself, “This is something no one would want to read to the end,” deleted it all, and started from scratch.

How did your Photomath adventure begin?

So there I am in mid-2020, scrolling casually to check out what is new on the career pages of companies I like. Which is a long shot because we are stuck home, and everything is going downhill, and which sane company is hiring during the pandemic anyway? And on the Photomath web, I see this strange “Animation Creation Manager” position. Sounds weird and I don’t quite get what it actually is, but it kind of checks all the boxes for me, so I decided to give it a shot.

I went through a couple of interviews, I loved everything I heard along the way, my dog started licking my face during the video call and they didn’t hold it against me which was obviously a good sign, and all in all, I got enough clarity to become excited about this. Luckily the feeling was mutual, so a month later I ended up leading a fantastic small team of 5 people. During the last year and a half, this number multiplied several times, and my role kept growing with it.

Tell us more about your job.

There is this team called Animation Production, and they got stuck with me. They create a part of our content we call Animated Tutorials . Essentially, what we do is we take the math problem you scanned and on the spot deliver an animation that guides you through the process of solving it just like a tutor would. My team - the Animation Creators - design and develop those procedures, that output the exact animation you need to figure your problem out. And my job is to make sure they have everything they need to do it successfully. Figuring out workflows, planning work, playing nice with other teams, thinking of cool things we can try… These are just some of the things in my day-to-day.

Tell us about your team.

An ideal person to create our desired content is someone who is amazing at math, especially teaching math. This specific person would also have to have a knack for creating multimedia content, having an eye for design etc. because our animations are all about the visual. And since those animations have to be generated for any problem the user throws at them, this ideal person has to understand coding. Obviously, a person that could handle all of this isn’t supposed to exist. Still, my team is 26 of those impossible people.

We are still very young - the first two people formed this team in June 2020, and we have managed to grow from a small tight-knit, and casual team, to a HUGE department of, well, several small tight-knit and casual teams. They are a creative bunch and thrive in an environment that supports free expression and support from one another. It was a challenge to maintain that spirit if we wanted to ship an insane amount of content at the same time. But, we managed! The team kept growing, and the team members (fun fact - 86% of the team is female) grew with it. Until recently, we had four smaller teams within, and each team had its respective team lead - these four amazing women together with me form what we affectionately call “the council” - our own personal brain trust which helps me every day to support our team. We altogether are in the late stages of refactoring this structure, though, in hopes of further improving what we have.

My ever-growing team. In the meantime, there are about ten of us more than in this picture.

What does a typical day look like?

Depending on the time of year, most days are bookended with meetings. In the morning I have the stand-up brief with the aforementioned council (although the stand-up part got lost about the third day once the girls decided they preferred sitting down) where we share updates, discuss stuff and plan out the day. In the late afternoon, it is morning for our US team, which is the only time of day when our workdays overlap, so we manage to catch up through a call or chat, regarding updates or ongoing projects. The rest of the day is filled up with whatever needs to be done, whether it be some strategic planning, meetings, discussions, spec writing… All of it completely, and I mean completely soaked in coffee. Depending on if I call in from home or actually go to the office, this coffee is Turkish or espresso, but either way, the quantity is probably too much. Also, if I can, I try to cram in a break somewhere in between and try not to look at Slack on my phone while on it.

How do you collaborate with other teams?

First off, constantly. Creating ATs is not an isolated job, even though it might seem like it. The Animation Creators have to collaborate with many other teams for quality control, implementation, and engineering support among other things. Not to mention product development, hiring, operations, and system support… The list goes on. My team could hardly do all the great things they create without the support of the rest of the company, and we also try to provide support to whoever would need anything from us.

What is your favorite part of your job?

Solving problems. My natural habitat is glaring at the whiteboard with whoever wants to listen to me and figure stuff out. Working from home has its pros and cons, no space for a decent-sized whiteboard in my living room is a major con. Figuring out an execution plan for a great idea, discussing, having eureka moments, and defining the next significant steps is what I call a good workday.?

What are the toughest challenges you’ve had at work?

Probably figuring out how to grow a team to where we are. My team is Animation Creators, and you couldn’t hire an Animation Creator from another company because we were the first to need this specific set of skills. This meant that the onboarding was essentially learning the ropes from scratch, and as soon as new hires were onboarded, they would step up to onboard even more recent hires. We practically grew this team on fast-forward and had to put in so much effort to make sure we were at the same time efficient and productive, and also to provide quality care and support to whoever joined our team.

Also, teaching my dog not to join the meetings, which we are still working on.

So far, it is not going well.

What’s your proudest accomplishment while here?

I could talk about many milestones that we reached as a team, but if talking about the proudest, I’d probably say the career growth of my team members. I already told you - that my team is fantastic. And we have been a team for not even a year and a half. In that little time, I’ve seen their abilities, skills, interests, and ambitions grow constantly, and I am both proud and humbled that I have had the opportunity to support them in their journey.?

What’s the best thing you’ve learned working at Photomath?

Importance of good planning in a motivating environment. It is so easy to end up wanting to do everything, putting all of the cool stuff you want to do on your roadmap, and then either overworking yourself and your team, pushing deadlines that you yourself have set, and being bummed because things you planned out for yourself aren’t here yet.

As I said, I learned that this is important. I’m still working on actually practicing it.

What’s the most exciting thing you are working on right now?

The AP team took on Algebra and we are preparing a bunch of function-graphing and equation-solving animations which, I expect, will help out our users a great deal. The coolest thing that we are preparing for them, though, is probably our improved previews on the solution screen which will soon start moving as soon as our users see the solution cards.

Also, we are turning our entire internal workflow upside-down in hopes of both doing things better and doing better things. This is something that probably won’t excite the general population that much, but I am really happy to improve the day-to-day for my team. In the end, we will end up with better content for everyone.

What’s your favorite thing about working at Photomath?

The culture. Everyone here is so excited about what we do. Yeah, we all have bad days, sometimes the ju?ina gets to you, and Mercury keeps going into that retrograde again and again, but on a good day you won’t find anyone here just doing their work for the sake of it.

People here are into improving things, fixing problems, and coming up with new and creative ideas. And the best thing is that those ideas are actually being heard and regardless of who you are and what you do, you can actually impact how we do things and what the user ends up with.

What’s the best advice you can give to someone who wants to pursue their career in Photomath?

Embrace change. We are growing and adapting fast, and do not ever hesitate to improve if there is a possibility. And there is always a possibility.

This makes for a fast-moving and a bit hectic atmosphere, where we keep shooting for the next great thing without taking time to settle and leave stuff as-is. My business-as-usual is that there is no business-as-usual, and I personally thrive in that environment. This is not for everyone, but reach out to us if you think you might like that.

What do you like to do outside of work?

In my free time, I bet on medieval knights in underground fight clubs , on weekends I like to sing in front of mountains of garbage , and occasionally moonlight as a forest monster . I also like to have a drink or two with my friends .

My weekends out, ideally.

What’s your secret talent no one knows about? What’s your superpower?

I can fit two dishwashers’ worth of dirty dishes into a single wash, with it coming out clean. I cram so much stuff into a single backpack that it weighs as if filled with concrete. I’d fit my four-piece band with complete equipment in a VW Up and go do a gig. Years of playing Tetris paid off in a strange way.

Recommend a book or any other learning material you enjoyed recently.

This is probably not the learning material you were looking for if you are reading this, but there is an amazing series of video essays that had recently come out on Netflix, called Voir. While most of the series is only really interesting but not that applicable in work, the episode The Duality of Appeal really dove into some of the interesting psychological aspects of animation.

Also, for anyone interested in UX, on that subject, I occasionally start rambling about a classic that I love - the original Super Mario Bros for the NES. Specifically, about the brilliance of design for its first level, which in its limited capacity manages to explain to the player everything they need to know on how to play the game, without a single written word. I found a great video that summarizes this, and I recommend anyone with similar interests to look into it.

Want to learn more about Photomath's Animation Production team??Check out this interview on Netokracija .

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