Office Hours: I’m a Senior Director at EPAM Systems and a business coach for idea-stage female startup founders. I’m Olena Mytruk. AMA!Featured

Posted in:Navigating Career Transitions Office Hours Management and Leadership Startups

Hi everyone! I’m Olena Mytruk and I’m a Senior Director of Delivery Management at EPAM Systems where I am responsible for managing a $27M diverse account portfolio with the globally distributed team of 300+ people.

Born and raised in Ukraine, I joined EPAM Systems in 2006 as a junior software engineer right out of college with no production experience. In these 18 years, I have continuously expanded my responsibilities and have played the role of a Project Manager, Program Manager, Delivery Manager, Delivery Supervisor, and Account Manager. In 2017, I was offered an intra-company transfer and this is when I moved to the US as a single recently divorced mom with my 4-year-old daughter. Since then I have completely transformed my life, and today I am happily remarried, and both I and my husband brace ourselves for the moment when our daughter who is now 11 becomes a teenager!

In 2021, I bootstrapped my startup - a female-focused goal-setting mobile app. It didn’t exactly go as planned (what a surprise haha!), I pivoted a few times and eventually decided to get back into stealth mode. But my passion for empowering women, particularly women in tech, combined with my corporate and entrepreneurial experience, has led me to the decision to become a business coach for aspiring female startup founders, which I do today alongside my full-time job helping women founders get traction for their startups so that they can innovate, help others and disrupt the industry.

Outside of work, I love traveling the world, taking photos with my old-school film camera, running outdoors, and rock climbing with my daughter and my husband.

Ask me anything about career shifts and advancement, managing distributed teams, leadership and executive presence, moving countries, mistakes made and lessons learned when launching your first venture, startup business coaching, staying sane in the midst of all of that as a woman, wife, and mother, or anything else!

ElphaStaff·Jul 15

Thanks so much for joining us @olenamytruk!Elphas – please ask @olenamytruk your questions before Friday, July 19th. @olenamytruk may not have time to answer every questions, so emoji upvote your favorites 🔥👍🏾➕

traciemuro·Jul 15

@olenamytruk I'm curious to know if you had a mentor or a particular resource(s) you turned to for advice when you set out to develop your mobile app? I feel like I have a list of product ideas that keeps growing but no idea how to get started outside of the "safety" of the corporate environment.

olenamytruk·Jul 19

@traciemuro Hi Tracie, thank you for your question! I didn’t have a mentor when I was starting (I wish I had!), and no one in my close circle had any experience of starting and/or running a business, so it was pretty much me figuring out things on my own. As a result, the journey was filled with lots of learnings haha (more on those below in this thread if you are interested). Hearing what you are saying though, my question for you would be, why do you want to start your own startup in the first place? What is driving you? There are absolutely no right or wrong answers here, and it’s really just for you to get to know your motivations better so you can honestly answer to yourself whether it’s even the right path for you (and again, no right or wrong answers here!). And if you are committed and you really want to do it, then I would recommend assessing your ideas using the following framework:1) Is this idea desirable? Do people want it? Does it solve a real problem in the real world?2) Is it feasible? Can I build it? Is it achievable?3) Is it viable? Can I make it profitable?4) Is it sustainable? How long could my business last in the market?5) Is it scalable? How big is the market? How big and how fast can I grow?The first 4 questions are important to answer for any business, and the last one is more important in case you want to build a VC-backable startup. But answering these questions is not enough. What you should also do is assess which of your idea(s) you as the founder are best positioned to solve. What unique expertise/perspective/insights do you bring to the table that make YOU uniquely positioned to solve this particular problem? And last but definitely not least - what problem(s) are you most passionate to solve? Being a founder is a wild journey that will require a lot of strength, courage, dedication and energy, and having true deep passion for what you are doing (instead of doing it because everyone is or because you “should”) is what will help you have that strength and energy.And if you feel like you are ready to take the leap but still feel overwhelmed, I am actually piloting my new coaching program for idea-stage startup founders and there is still 1 free spot left there! I have a separate post here on Elpha about it, or feel free to send me a private message if you'd like to chat more about it. Either way - you got it!

AIexplorer·Jul 16

@olenamytruk your story especially inspiring to me because I’m currently a software engineer looking to make a career change. You have several different roles since becoming a software engineer. Are there any other roles you feel a software engineer could pivot into ?

olenamytruk·Jul 19

@AIexplorer Hi Yvette, thank you for your question! Let me give you a very short answer first, and then I will unpack it. I don’t think there are any roles that you could NOT pivot into as an engineer - at the end of the day, it is your life and your career and you are entitled to get the most out of it! The real question is about what YOU love the most about your current job, what you enjoy doing the most, what you do NOT enjoy doing (that is a very important question to ask too!), and most importantly WHY you love (or don’t love) doing these particular things, or what really brings you satisfaction. To put it into perspective, when I was in college and had my programming classes I discovered that it brings me a lot of joy to create something out of nothing using just the source code - it was almost like a miracle! So I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in software development. Then, once I got my job, I fairly quickly learned that being a team lead or a manager allows me to create an even bigger impact than being an individual contributor - as a team, we can create even bigger things out of nothing! And even more, what I also discovered is that turning several great professionals into a high-performing team that works in unison towards a common goal is also fueling my passion for creativity! That’s why I had no regret at all having to leave hands-on development and stepping into the managerial role.With that said, I believe that my engineering background gave me a huge advantage as a manager - I was able to speak the same language with developers that my non-technical peers would not understand. Even broader than that, being on various “sides” of the problem gives you a unique perspective and a unique competitive advantage - this is something you can use to “sell” career shifts to yourself and your employer(s)! For example, I know that as a developer I might feel that “those PMs don’t do anything valuable and only bug me for updates”, and as a manager, I might think that “those developers are so slow, how do they not understand our tight timelines!” - and having both perspectives helps me come up with out-of-the-box solutions that otherwise I would not have been able to come up with. Same applies to my shifting from delivery management to engagement management - I see it all over the place when delivery managers think that “engagement managers only care about revenue, they do anything to win the deal, they give all these unrealistic promises to the clients and then I am the one who has to deal with that!” At the same time, engagement managers think that “those delivery managers do not understand the pressure I am under, they don’t understand the implications of the decisions they make and they want to have indefinite budgets for their needs and it’s just not possible!” As you can see, it’s not easy to find common ground when you have these antagonistic thoughts, and this is why it is so valuable when someone is able to address the same situation from various angles - this is where your diverse experience comes into play and this is why you should not be afraid of it.I know someone who was intentionally shifting her roles horizontally within the organization for several years - she was a call center representative, a QA, a developer, a manager, and today she is the head of their engineering department and I am sure that her diverse background helps her do her job successfully and makes her so much more valuable to her organization.All in all, I encourage you to explore how different roles might fit you and your unique passions/strengths/values, and not be afraid to take the “wrong” step (because there is no such thing as the wrong step) - whatever step or shift you take, you will gain invaluable experience that will inform your future steps! Good luck!

kateshastakova·Jul 17

I am curious about mistakes and lessons you got out of launching your first start up.My problem are always: 1) How to check if this product needed 2) How to spread the word about it and find customers 3) Ho to check if people are willing to pay for the product So far what I see, if product improves somebody’s life just a little bit or the functionality is easily workarounded (for example, building a custom route on the map for GPS art) then people tend not to pay.

olenamytruk·Jul 19

@kateshastakova Hi Kate, thank you for your questions! I have already answered some of them in this thread, please feel free to check these two comments: https://elpha.com/posts/v95samw7/office-hours-i-m-a-senior-director-at-epam-systems-and-a-business-coach-for-idea-stage-female-startup-founders-i-m-olena-mytruk-ama#28viednjhttps://elpha.com/posts/v95samw7/office-hours-i-m-a-senior-director-at-epam-systems-and-a-business-coach-for-idea-stage-female-startup-founders-i-m-olena-mytruk-ama#ry14un12Also, my question for you would be, how did you come up with a particular product idea in the first place? If I may guess, you likely already have some insight that led you to the initial idea - if that is the case, then I’d dig deeper there. What other people do you know who are in this space/area and/or might be having this problem? Who might have mentioned this problem to you in the past? How can your own experiences help you find the right people to talk to? I cannot recommend the book “The Mom Test” enough - in this book, you will find a ton of practical ideas on how to find people to talk to, how to talk to them, and how to validate your idea the right way. The author even speaks to your direct challenge that people are not always willing to pay to have their problem solved. So give it a read, but most importantly go ahead and start talking to people :) I know that it is WAY easier said than done - I am an introvert who is terrified of even thinking of talking to people, to the point that when we need to call customer service in my family, I beg my husband to do it. But I also know that nothing will happen unless I actually put myself into the real world :) And so I really encourage you to do it - you will be surprised by how much other people are willing to help (I was surprised too!!). And last but not least, if you feel like you could use some help along the way, I am piloting my new coaching program for idea-stage female founders and I have 1 free spot available! I have a separate post here on Elpha about it, or simply send me a private message if you'd like to chat more.Good luck to you - you got it!

Loree147·Jul 18

Wow! This is very impressive. What would you say are the key frameworks or strategies for managing such a large team, AND globally distributed?

olenamytruk·Jul 19

Thank you for your question! There is SO much to unpack here, but I will try! First of all, as a manager you need to understand (and this is true regardless of the size of the team you have really) that you absolutely cannot do it yourself - it is your team, and here I mean your immediate leads and managers, who make it successful. I know a lot of leaders who are afraid to surround themselves with team members who are smarter than them, and I feel exactly the opposite about it. I have always seen my role as a manager and as a leader to become useless :) - in a way that my team can continue to function, take action, and make decisions even without me being there. In order to make that happen, I spend a significant amount of time every day working with my direct managers who are leading particular projects and accounts. I mentor and empower them so that they can do their jobs as best as humanly possible - by giving them advice, supporting them, and removing the roadblocks they have (whether within EPAM or concerning the clients) - instead of imposing my orders on them. I truly believe that we attract specific people in work and in life, and by fine-tuning your own energy as a leader you are able to attract the best leaders around you - this is how you ultimately make it successful for everyone. This is why it’s a big part of what I mentor my team about. Another huge aspect of running any sizable team, especially when it’s distributed, is making it data-driven. When you have a team of 10 you can easily talk to each one of them to understand their progress, their motivation, their blockers, etc. When you work with a team of hundreds of people, you simply don’t have such luxury. At EPAM, we do our best to rely on the data - whether it’s the delivery metrics on a particular stream or project, or level of satisfaction and motivation within the team, or anything else that you might need to know as a manager. And it is not enough to have the data to react to challenges - you want to have the data that will predict them so that you can proactively prevent them. Whether it’s addressing attrition performance decrease, or project scope creep related risks, or anything else - the more proactive you are as a leader the better job you will be able to accomplish. And last but definitely not least, it ia maintaining the high level of morale and motivation that is critical. As someone who works from home myself, I know the advantages of not having to commute every day, but I also know those feelings of loneliness and isolation. I remember the good old days when we were all sitting in one office, on one floor, and for every meeting we would gather around a whiteboard - there is definitely so much value in such human interaction, and it is something that we don’t have today when we work truly globally. So whatever you can do as a leader to bring people together and to help them understand the goals behind their daily work - do it. At EPAM, we have regular townhalls where we share with all the team members what is going on with our company, our clients, and our projects, what our strategic priorities and objectives are, and how they translate into the daily work that team members do. We also arrange in-person meetups, workshops and team building activities whenever possible, but definitely at the times when new teams are formed and when there are some important milestones to be celebrated.

Kalyn179·Jul 18

Hi olena! thanks for being here. could you share some of your learnings from bootstrapping your startup and ultimately deciding to go back to stealth mode? thx

olenamytruk·Jul 19

Thank you for your question! Oh boy, looking back I realize that I probably made each and every mistake a startup founder can possibly make haha! But it has taught me SO much that I am truly grateful for it!Definitely one of the biggest (if not the biggest) mistakes I made was falling in love with my idea way too much. Here’s what I mean by that. My startup was about creating a goal setting app for women, and my intentions were absolutely the best - I truly wanted to help women from all over the world achieve their goals successfully. But at the same time, as soon as I got an idea for this app, I immediately fell into the trap of thinking about all the cool features that this app would have. I wanted my app to also be the prettiest - because it is MY app so it has to be the best! Interestingly, I didn’t even realize back then that it was really all driven by my ego - I genuinely believed that my desire to create the best goal setting app was purely based on my wanting to help others (and I saw this as a differentiator that I was going for). I hope I am making sense here - we as founders often find it too hard to draw the line between ourselves and our ideas, which is completely normal because we pour our own blood, sweat, and tears into it. So it’s natural to be attached to it. But it is very dangerous, and here’s why. If you are too much in love with your idea, you become blind to the signals from the outer world about whether your idea is even a viable one. In my case, another trap I fell into was during the market research - without even realizing it, I was basically seeking validation of my idea instead of trying to objectively assess its viability. I absolutely love the book “The Mom Test” - it completely changed the way I look at market research now and I wish I had read this book before I started my venture! Another danger of being too attached to your idea (and I already touched on it) is you spend too much time thinking about all the cool features your startup will have, and you forget that at the early stage, you have to stay focused and as lean as possible. What I also know now is you almost want to make your MVP crappy and not pretty (unlike what I was doing back then), because if people are willing to use your product despite all the flaws in it then this is the biggest and most important signal that you are really onto something with your idea.To continue onto the mistakes and learnings, I remember wanting my app to help each and every woman on the planet - in every country, with every goal, and at any age. And while it is a good vision, it completely disoriented me both during the MVP development process and during the marketing efforts later. If your target audience is everyone then it is impossible to establish a deep enough connection with anyone. You don’t know where to find them, how to talk to them, etc. In the first year after releasing my app in the App Store, I threw a ton of money into FB marketing, HOPING that a particular message would click and give me a strong positive signal. That never happened, and I ended up walking blind for another 2 years before finally deciding to shut it down. What I know now is before you start “growth hacking” (and paid marketing campaigns are definitely a part of it), you absolutely have to go through the “growth scrapping” period where you do the leg work and manually acquire the first users or customers in order to fully understand what works and what doesn’t when it comes to customer acquisition.Now, when it came to deciding whether to shut it down and go back into stealth mode, it was NOT easy. I already touched on us (founders) being too attached to our ideas, and another danger of it is not noticing when it’s time to accept the fact that things are not working and more importantly that they will NEVER start working. In his book “Essentialism” (which I very highly recommend!), Greg McKeown tells the story of Concorde - how the French and British governments were pouring money into the program for 40 years, and the more money they were pouring the more invested in it they were becoming, and the harder it was for them to stop the program. It is true for each one of us: the more time/money/effort we invest in something, the harder it is for us to press the “Stop” button. We keep thinking to ourselves, “Ah I am SO close, I will just do this one more thing, and it will start working!” And so we end up pouring even more time/money/effort into it, and it still doesn’t work. And this cycle repeats. In order to break it, you have to zoom out and re-assess from “outside” what is going on. And you have to have an honest conversation with yourself about what is REALLY driving your desire to continue - is it your strong belief (that is backed by the data!) that it WILL work, or is it your fear that if you decide to stop it means you failed? It was a turning point for me when I realized that for a few months I’d been wanting to stop but fear was holding me back. Once I learned that and once I confronted my fear, I was finally able to press “Stop”. It took me a bit of a personal pep talk to reach out to all of my users and tell them that I was discontinuing the app, but once I did that I felt a lot of relief which proved it was the right decision.

Moriah172·Jul 18

Hello Olena! Thanks for sharing your story (and time!) with us. What an inspiration! Was the startup you bootstrapped in 2021 your first one? What things led you to think that was a right time in your life to start a company?And how did you balance that with a FT job at EPAM?

olenamytruk·Jul 19

Thank you for your kind words, and thank you for your questions! Yes it was my first one (and this is why the journey was full of learnings haha - more on those in the comments below). Funny enough, when I decided to start my own startup, I barely knew what I was getting myself into. No one from my family or from my close circle of friends had ever run their own businesses, so the only perspective I had was from working with my corporate clients, but since they are primarily mature established companies I didn’t really understand what it takes to get a completely new venture off the ground. So to me, it was more of a personal calling rather than a rational business decision - I felt that I was ready for more, I was seeking personal and professional satisfaction and fulfillment that I was lacking in my corporate job. And the moment I came up with an idea that “felt” right to me, I went for it. To be completely honest with you, if I were to rationalize my decision now, I would have probably advised AGAINST starting a business in the midst of COVID, but I guess I was also going a bit crazy during those times (weren’t we all?).Speaking about balancing my venture with my full-time job, working remotely definitely helped - first, I didn’t need to waste time commuting, but also I didn’t have to worry about being in the office and someone looking over my shoulder and noticing that I was working on some non-work stuff. But more importantly, I did all I could to stay as efficient as possible - in my work, my startup, and my personal life. I would create todo lists in the evening for the next day, I’d book the blocks of time on my calendar to do “job” tasks and “startup” tasks, and I would ensure that I’d address the “job” tasks during the first half of the day - this way I wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting something important so I could focus on my startup activities. On top of that, adding this extra layer of responsibilities into my life forced me to become even better at delegating and setting boundaries, and my passion for my startup and my dedication to both the startup and my work helped me find the strength to do it. Looking back, I find that time is a very interesting substance :) When I was in college and had classes from 9 to 4 I thought that I didn’t have time for anything else. Then I got a job and started working 9 to 6 and still believed I had no free time. When my daughter was born and it was time to go back to work, I somehow was able to juggle both work and parenting (while again feeling like I have no time for anything else). Then, when my startup came into play, I was able to add it too! What this tells me is that a) “free” time does not really exist - we fill it with whatever we believe is important (or someone fills it for us!); and b) if we are being wise about it, we can accomplish SO much more in life than we think!

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