"I Intentionally Hire Employees with No Experience, It's What Helps Us Grow"

In recent months, with the launch of the new Hidabroot website, programmers Ido Portal and Amity Vah experienced one of the most stressful periods of their lives.

"Although we had many months to program the site and work on it thoroughly," explains Ido, "the decision to go live was very sudden, and a promised launch date was given to users, so we couldn't disappoint them."

So these two brilliant programmers found themselves going to work every morning at six and staying until late at night, engaging their entire office team, and dedicating massive efforts. Even after the site launched, they went through busy nights and days, fixing every detail and comma, sometimes visible issues and sometimes those known only to the team behind the scenes.

"But the effort was worth it," says Ido, "because eventually, it was the smoothest website launch we've ever experienced." He says this based on his 17 years of experience in the industry, during which he supported very leading and popular sites.

Nowadays, after the two can finally take a deep breath (before the next project, of course), they take the time to share their experiences and offer a glimpse into a creative and decidedly unconventional programming office.

Think Big Programmers

You might have met Ido Portal in his other role, as a musician performing on stage, composing, and singing, but his real work is in programming. "It started when I had a teacher in seventh and eighth grade who recognized my potential and gave me a book to learn the basics of programming. Since then, I've developed rapidly," he shares, "I owe my career to that teacher and the fact that I founded a programming company at 17. Recently, I performed before an audience and suddenly saw that same teacher in the crowd. I stopped everything and seized the opportunity to thank him."

Shortly after founding the programming company, Ido enlisted in the army, and after completing his service, he returned to work with even more vigor, soon employing additional workers. "What all our employees have in common is that they are in their early 20s; none of them studied programming formally or by the book, they are all graduates of short courses we sent them to for specialization. But despite that, they are all outstanding, truly unique," praises Ido.

"I strongly believe in this approach," he adds, "because the people who work for us come with humility, they are targeted precisely in the specific area they came for, and thus they last a long time in the position, which is of course a very big asset to our office."

It sounds like you're trying to create a shortcut. Do you think it's really effective?

"It's not a shortcut, but rather more efficient work," he clarifies, "What happens in practice is that often people go through years of education and many courses, so theoretically they know a lot, but have zero experience, whereas my employees gain a lot of experience right from the start, and they learn the theory along the way, through practice. This is why they eventually become even more professional than employees who study high-tech formally, because they can tackle outside-the-box challenges, and the main thing – they fit the office I established, because all the knowledge they acquired came through it."

If a good programmer doesn't need prior knowledge, what does he need?

"A good programmer needs to love the field, be attracted to it, and see it as a form of creation. Sometimes people wonder what the connection is between my two roles, as a musician and a programmer, and I tell them both touch on art, and that's really my feeling. I truly believe that someone who loves the field will be able to advance greatly, and someone who isn't attracted will struggle to sit all day in front of a computer."

The Routine of Work

This is how Ido met Amity Vah, who is now his partner in the office management. "I was discharged from the army in 2019," Vah relates, "and I was quite unsure about choosing a profession. Since high-tech attracted me and I knew Ido as someone involved in the field, I decided to reach out to him for advice. Ido sent me to an online course and then I interned in his office for a few months until I learned the ins and outs of the profession. We continued to advance major projects together, and about a year ago, we became partners. In the meantime, our company also expanded and we added more employees."

What does a workday look like for you?

Amity: "We arrive early in the morning, so by 9:00 all employees are already in the office. We have software that organizes our clients' tasks, and we work accordingly, with me managing the employees and assigning each of them their tasks for the day. Some team members are better at design, some excel in software writing, and others are suited for different roles. Each one gets what suits them, and the atmosphere is very good.

"Alongside teamwork, Ido and I handle especially important projects that we take under our wing, sometimes alone and sometimes collaboratively. For example, the new Hidabroot site is the result of my and Ido's joint efforts."

Do you also engage in the site's content, or are you just "the brains behind the scenes"?

"The question amuses me," replies Amity, "because it's impossible to engage in design and planning without dealing with content. We all find ourselves exposed to the content of the websites we program, reading them and listening to them constantly in the background. When there's an interesting article, it also comes up for discussion in our office."

"I always ask my employees to occasionally glance at the content to live the site, and accordingly, know how to program it," Ido clarifies, "Personally, I have visited the Hidabroot house several times, just to get a feel and breathe the atmosphere. I believe that someone who comes with understanding and knowledge will always perform better in practice and will know how to adapt to the atmosphere and style."

Hidabroot Then and Forever

Ido's first acquaintance with Hidabroot was nearly a decade ago when he completed a one-time project to build an internal site for the organization, and as a result, he was asked to program the main and official site. Until then, there was an existing site, but it was based on a very old system, crashing several times a day and not functioning as required from a Jewish site of such magnitude.

"Dudu Cohen, the site's editor, approached me and asked to set up the new site," Ido recalls. "Indeed, I managed to create a site that was considered very innovative at the time, with a colorful layout that appealed to broad and diverse audiences. That was also my first introduction to Haim Benisty, the web designer who created the site's visual concept. To this day, we work collaboratively, with him coming up with ideas and asking me to produce and plan what's needed."

And why was there a need for a new site now?

"The media world has undergone a very significant change in recent years, and there was a need to adapt the site's structure accordingly. This includes external adjustments reflected in the site's appearance, as the new site, as you can see, is less rigid, and much more pleasant to browse. In addition, we also upgraded the technologies the site offers, allowing any article to be shared on all relevant platforms. We also worked on a new app and invested in making the site very fast. In our generation, this is a crucial point, as users don't have much patience, and if they have to wait an extra second for a page to load, they might lose patience."

And of course, there's the issue of fashion. Ido notes that like in any other field, in web design too, there's a dominant fashion, and it's essential to be aligned with it. "Of course, it may change in the future, and indeed it could be that in a year or two, we'll need to refresh again," he remarks.

If someone thinks setting up a new website is a minor issue, Amity clarifies that the project is more complex than one might imagine. "Especially since many unforeseen challenges emerged during the work," he shares. "For instance, we were asked to set up a system in parallel to the site to send messages to thousands of people requesting updates several times a day. It's not directly related to programming the site, so it challenged us a lot, but after we invested thought and effort, we managed to create a speedy and quality system that provides an amazing product, thank G-d, and this is just an example, as the site's creation was full of tasks and challenges."

And where do you draw all the knowledge for these things from?

"It begins with when clients ask us: 'Is it possible to do this and that?' our immediate answer is 'yes,' because our unequivocal motto is that 'everything is possible with us.' This is also why, by the way, we don't build branding sites, because for creating such sites, you can turn to specific companies that would do it better than us. We're here for the truly complex things, so we sometimes get requests that sound the most absurd and strive to implement them.

"We use Google a lot, with the assumption that any question that arises for us has arisen somewhere online, and we dig through sites to find answers," Ido clarifies, "and if there are no answers, we initiate creative and bypassing ways to find solutions. To this day, I don't remember ever giving up, and even when we struggled and didn't find, we'd learn a bit more and succeed."

In conclusion, he can't hold back and adds with unusual emotion for tech people: "I'm connected to every project that passes through our office, but for Hidabroot, I feel a special connection. It's not just the site's great success, but also the mission it carries. Every time I work and strive, I remind myself that maybe because of me, more good is coming to the world, and that gives a lot of strength."