An Owl Labs study found that on a global scale, only 16% of companies are fully remote. However, 62% of workers claim to work remotely at least occasionally. The Covid-19 pandemic propelled the prominence of remote work, but now, business leaders all over the world are trying to finalize their decisions regarding remote work in general. Some believe that remote teams destroy company culture, lead to a slip in production, and tamper collaboration. On the contrary, many leaders like Mykola Sedletskyi have noticed that the adaptability of remote work pays off.
Mykola is a staff engineer at PadSplit, a tech company that makes finding and offering long-term rental situations easier than ever. Though Mykola is based in the United States, much of PadSplit's development team works remotely from different countries around the world. For PadSplit, this hasn't caused any problems; on the contrary, Mykola notices a wide range of solutions when facing a problem, a more diversified understanding of global real estate markets, and better collaboration than he ever felt when working in an office at previous companies.
After graduating in 2008 with an MS in Automation Engineering, Mykola quickly began taking on hybrid roles that allowed him to work in technical spaces and lead teams of technical experts. In 2016, he helped ShipShape, a new company, get its start. He built out the front-end application for the IoT system that impressed customers so much it resulted in a $100,000 customer contract and the first real breakthrough for the company.
Before moving to the US and leading the development team at PadSplit, Mykola spent time in a number of different roles improving his technical offerings. In Vienna, Austria, he led thea development team of TourRadar, the world's largest online Adventure Booking Platform, to improve the importers and scrapers that generated data for the business to use in its operations. He used a number of technologies including AWS, PHP, NodeJS, React, Bitbucket CI, Docker, and MySQL.
Since 2019, Mykola has helped grow PadSplit's team of engineers from a 4-person team to a 30-person team. With this kind of growth happening so rapidly, it would have been easy to let go of the mechanisms that helped support collaboration and development speed, but the team hasn't noticed a decrease in either of those variables. The code can be constantly worked on around the clock and team meetings happen only when needed, giving developers time to get focused on their projects and hone in on their code.
Mykola has personally paved the way for many improvements to the PadSplit's software architecture and infrastructure, readying the company to support a growing number of users. In numbers, it has grown from roughly 100 active members and 50 properties to 100,000 members and 5,000 properties. While growing the technological capabilities, he has also had to implement efficient operating mechanisms for the growing team. With the right tools, collaborative meetings, and leadership style, Mykola seamlessly curated a team that excels under pressure and works together to solve problems. Employee location isn't a problem for the leaders at PadSplit. Instead, they've figured out how to attract a diversified team of talent that has become the secret to the company's success.
Mykola is a talented software engineer; his development skills span a wide range and his expertise using different tools and languages is vast. However, his ability to lead a team from all over the world has multiplied the impact he has on the businesses he supports. Human connection doesn't have to be face-to-face, as long as everyone involved in a project truly cares. Thanks to Mykola's impressive ability to connect with people and cultivate team culture from behind a screen, PadSplit is advancing at faster speeds and with more success than ever before.
