VP of Engineering at Wix, Aviran Mordo (@aviranm) shares what ultra-competitive technology leaders need to know about building the best teams and products, and why mistakes are good.
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Hi, everyone. And welcome to Ready for Takeoff, the new micro podcast series from Wix, all about hyper growth. I'm your host, Rob Goodman, Executive Producer for content at Wix. In each episode we go deep on one single topic in under 15 minutes, sharing insights and lessons learned from the leaders that built Wix as we talk about everything it takes to build a world class global organization.
Rob Goodman:
Today, we've got VP of Engineering at Wix, Aviran Mordo. With over 25 years of experience in software, he knows a thing or two about building great teams and products. In this episode, you'll hear about learning through mistakes and why giving ownership and autonomy to your team can turn those mistakes into really big wins. Here Aviran shares a story I think you all are going to learn a lot from. It's about how a massive failure turned into a big win for the team, our product and our customers. Imagine it, it's a beautiful day, the sun is shining, you're attending a product talk at our office in Tel Aviv, and then...
Aviran Mordo:
While I was speaking, all of the sudden, I see all the phones for the engineers starting to beep and my phone started to beep and I say, okay, what's going on? And I'm giving a talk to 50 people telling them stuff and then I see a bunch of engineers just running down the stairs, panicking, and I'm giving a talk. So I couldn't stop. So I quickly finished my talk and then I took the phone and then I looked up and I see, okay, something is really bad happening to the system. So we ran downstairs and started to investigate what's going on. Customers are calling us, some missing features. Something is wrong. We lost a lot of the features that we had.
Rob Goodman:
Okay. So here's what happened. The team was installing a backup server and in the process of syncing the files from the original server, one of our engineers accidentally reverted our system to six months in the past and in the process erased all of our latest updates and features for users. Okay, let's get back to Aviran.
Aviran Mordo:
And we were panicking.
Rob Goodman:
Did you freak out?
Aviran Mordo:
Of course. We freaked out and went, "what's going on?" and then we spent the entire night rebuilding all the system from the source code, because the source code didn't get returned, just the build artifact. So we rebuilt everything from the source code. It took us like the entire night and redeployed six months back to the future.
Rob Goodman:
Oh my gosh.
Aviran Mordo:
It was a bad night, but a very good one actually, because that was the point that we actually realized that our methodology actually worked. There was no data loss, no one got hurt, except for some missing features that we developed during these six months. And we understand, okay, our process actually works. And we have all the mitigations, the risk management, the backward compatibility that things actually worked. It didn't break. It was just missing. And this was the time that we realized, okay, we got it nailed. We know how to deliver software fast and safely. And it actually works.
Rob Goodman:
We're all humans. So inevitably we're going to mess up, but the best teams find something worthy within that. The second thing you need to know, you have to give people permission to make mistakes. Here's Aviran on what happened afterwards.
Aviran Mordo:
You would have thought that this person would get fired, but no, he actually got promoted and this was actually a good thing.
Rob Goodman:
How did that person get promoted?
Aviran Mordo:
Because we don't punish people for mistakes. We put some safeguards and we learn from it.
Rob Goodman:
Now this was a while ago, but looking back, what do you see in your leadership back then that you think may have helped create an environment where, okay, yes there's panic for good reason, but then there's calm, plan, action, and resolve and learning.
Aviran Mordo:
So it basically comes to the culture. Okay, it's the culture of taking ownership and responsibility and it's okay to make mistakes. You don't pay for your mistakes. Okay, this was actually one of the things that if you remember the story I told you, once it got beeped everybody just rushed down. It wasn't their fault, it wasn't their system, but everybody in the team felt responsible for making this work. So they all dropped everything that they do, they spent their entire night helping rebuild the system, even though it wasn't their fault, and we actually learned from that and we celebrated that process.
Rob Goodman:
That's incredible. Yeah. I love that story and there's nothing like extreme lows followed by extreme highs, to bond a team very early on together too. That's incredible.
Rob Goodman:
My main takeaway from this episode is it's really a tale of accountability and ownership amongst the team. And that a support system can really kick in when you're working within a culture that says it's okay to make mistakes. And then the entire group can take action, can learn from it, and can ultimately build better products and experiences too.
Rob Goodman:
Ready for Takeoff is brought to you by Wix. Now, if you don't know about Wix, we're the all-in-one platform for running your business online, trusted by over 210 million people around the world. With Wix, you get incredible security, reliability, performance and SEO, no matter the kind of business you run or the size. With Wix, anything is possible. So visit wix.com to start building and growing your business today.
Rob Goodman:
Thanks so much for listening. You can find more episodes and information on our website at wix.com/readyfortakeoff. Ready for Takeoff is hosted and produced by me, Rob Goodman, at Wix. With production by Lindsay Jean Thomson at Wix. Audio engineering and editing is by Brian Pake at Pacific Audio. Music is composed and performed by Kimo Muraki. Our Executive Producers from Wix are Susan Kaplow and me, Rob Goodman. We'll see you next time.
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