Cycling, swimming, hiring: A day in the life of a TransferWise engineering lead

Day in the Life is a series where personalities in the Asian tech community recount what they do on a typical day. Read more from the series here.

I’m Vadym Vasyliev, the engineering lead at TransferWise Singapore. Before this, I spent 4.5 years working as a software engineer and consultant in the banking sector. This was when I spotted the inefficiency, greed, and bureaucracy in banks.

I joined TransferWise as the sixth engineer, and over the past six years, I’ve watched the company grow from just 20 people to more than 1,000 today. I moved to Singapore just a year ago to help the company expand across Asia and build its engineering team here.

One of my main priorities right now is to hire talented, new engineers and onboard them. While I don’t do this alone (all of our engineers help out), I do facilitate and own the process.

Apart from this, I’m also part of the “Currencies Asia” team, doing engineering work to solve customer problems.

Here’s what a day in my life looks like.

7:30 am: Wake up, check calendar and Slack

It’s quite intriguing to see what people from other teams all over the world have written on Slack while I’m sleeping. These messages might affect my day, so it’s quite important to review them, look through the booked meetings in my calendar, and draft my plan for the day.

8 am: Cycle to work, swim, eat cereal

I’ve found that cycling to work and swimming at the office pool is the most efficient start of the day:

• Cycling is fast, as I reach the office in 10 minutes, and the whole routine takes ~1.5 hours.
• It keeps me in shape and is a good exercise to wake me up and raise my energy levels.
• It’s not too heavy for the morning.

I start the day by chatting with teammates over a bowl of cereal, which sets my mood.

9:30 am: Screen calls and technical interviews

This time seems to be the most convenient for candidates, and I’m happy to be there for them. Our whole engineering team conducts interviews, so it’s quite balanced, and everyone decides when they’re available for interviews.

10 am: Slack, Skype, emails

Mostly, this time is about hiring and onboarding logistics or answering questions or issues on the Japanese yen (JPY) product I initially built. I’ll also handle issues on supporting price calculation mechanisms for all types of transfers made by TransferWise users.

11 am: Engineering time!

It’s hard to deliver as an engineer if you don’t have dedicated time set aside to focus. A few days each week, I book 50 to 80 percent of uninterrupted time in my calendar to focus on coding.

Improving our customer experience is a huge priority. Leading the Currencies Asia team, part of my responsibilities include looking into measures such as our net promoter score (NPS) and identifying the factors to help improve this, such as tweaking the user interface or improving verification flow.

1 pm: Lunch

There are various options for how lunch can go. Sometimes, our engineering team might invite a candidate or new joiner for lunch at our office.

2 pm: Manage the hiring pipeline

3:30 pm: Japanese yen weekly

4 pm: Currencies Asia team stand-up

5 pm: Team call

6 pm: One-on-one, meetings with EU teams, or bubble soccer

8 pm: Dinner with my wife

9 pm: Free time