A Day in the Life of... Or Sela, Co-Founder & VP R&D

// Name and location
Or Sela, Tel Aviv, Israel

// What is your position?
Co-Founder & VP R&D

// What’s the 1st thing you do each morning?
I meditate for 15-20min and read a book (currently The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz and Janet Mills), every morning. Once at the office, I have daily stand-ups with the team leaders, sharing business updates, requirements and hearing updates about the development processes. My goal is to have everyone aligned, resolve any pending issues, and talk about the team’s status and well-being.

// What does your office setup look like? What tools and software you cannot live without?
I work a lot with ClickUp, our task management and gantt app, in order to plan and monitor our work on a daily basis. Other tools I use are Pycharm and BitBucket to review the code (I do miss the days of writing more code..). Google Meet and Zoom of course, and last but not least – LinkedIn. We’re recruiting for multiple positions in R&D, LinkedIn is leading the pack as I search and research potential candidates to join the family.

// When did you join NoTraffic and why?
In 2017 I joined Uriel and we co-founded NoTraffic, along with Tal. I understood the need and the potential of this under-served industry, as well as the opportunity to create a deep-tech company, leveraging the most advanced aspects of technology – HW, algorithms,  dashboards, smart infrastructure, computer vision, and others.

// What’s the most mis-understood thing about your job?
Probably the difference between a CTO and VP R&D, I’m being asked this a lot.

A CTO usually directs the R&D to use a defined set of technologies, charting the technology roadmap for the company, while a VP R&D manages the day-to-day development, DevOps, and developers. The CTO and VP R&D work hand-in-hand and must have superb a relationship, but their roles are totally different.

// Why would you recommend people to join you?
In my opinion, successful companies are built first and foremost on the people. Personally, I come to the office each day with a smile, meet fascinating people, each one with their own story. We all share similar passion towards fulfilling our vision and mission – digitizing the intersections, improving the foundation layer of the mobility ‘stack’. We are developing our platform end-to-end, really a beautiful thing to code and oversee – from the HW to the system to the algorithms to the dashboard and cloud, you can find here everything.

// What’s your favorite hobby, how a typical weekend looks like?
My hobby is Calisthenics – gymnastic exercises to achieve bodily fitness and grace of movement. I do strength training on the beach at Tel Aviv, three times a week after work. I enjoy being on the beach, meeting with good friends and training together. My best weekend includes eating something good at the market, being at the beach, and if I’m lucky – enjoy a good surfing day.

// How do you spend your time commuting to work?
I cycle pretty much everywhere in Tel Aviv, being to the office, to the beach or when going out with friends.