From Byblos to Barcelona — Meet Serge Harb, Software Engineer at Preply
Today we’d like you to meet a member of our Engineering chapter, Serge Harb, who joined us in May 2021 and shortly after, packed his bags and relocated to our office in Spain from Lebanon. Let’s dive right in and hear from Serge himself about his experience at Preply!
🔵 What do you do at Preply?
I am a Software Engineer working with the Marketing Optimization squad at Preply. We mainly focus on optimizing our marketing strategies by using data, analysis, predictions, anomaly detection, and automation. As for my personal scope of work, I focus on the technical side, from targeting problems in our marketing strategies flows, designing an efficient solution and then working on the corresponding implementation.
🔵 What has been your career journey before joining Preply?
Before joining Preply and relocating to Barcelona, I used to live in Byblos — Lebanon. I worked with multiple companies and clients in the past, and had the chance to work on several digital transformation projects for e-learning platforms and real-time online consultations. In addition to my job, I specialized in developing full web applications for local clients.
🔵 How was your relocation process to Spain?
My relocation process was quite smooth actually, especially considering all the additional complications because of the pandemic. At the beginning of June, I started working remotely from my place in Lebanon until I had all the relocation paperwork done. Even though moving countries can be a daunting task, thanks to Preply’s relocation specialist who took care of all the steps in the process, I felt really supported and taken care of. Relocation can be a stressful process for some people, but Preply plays a very important role at this stage by helping to find a comfortable apartment, finalizing all legal government documents, and setting up necessary appointments related to individuals residing in Barcelona. It definitely would be a very tough process if I were on my own. But luckily, already in October, I was able to explore the amazing Barcelona! Below, you can find some of the very first pictures that I took upon arriving in the city.
🔵 What motivated you to join Preply?
I was in search of an international company to improve my career growth, then I heard about Preply, and was super interested in being part of developing a learning platform. Especially since Preply is known for its flexibility, fast growth, and data-driven decision making through experimentation, which to me seemed very promising for the organization’s future standing in the market of language learning.
🔵 What has been your main challenge you’ve been working on?
My biggest challenge at Preply right now is to work with my team to optimize all the processes inside the Marketing Optimization squad. Even though it’s a newly created team, we inherited many processes from the existing teams which gave us a head start. Currently, besides improving our processes on the individual level, I am trying to implement a solution to centralize and organize our marketing-related functionalities at Preply by using the best practices and experience that I have in this domain. This is already adding tons of learnings along the way!
🔵 What are your ambitions for this year for yourself and your team?
We’ve already planned our roadmap for this quarter as well as the yearly plan in December, so we would like to see when we achieve all of our goals this year to improve Preply’s position in the market. We mainly focus on learner’s acquisition and cost optimization for marketing campaigns using analytics and predictions. In addition, we work hard on improving our marketers’ day-to-day work by automating time-consuming tasks so they can focus on the analytics and problem-solving part of their job.
🔵 How does Preply support and empower your professional growth?
From my experience, managers at Preply really make the effort to ensure a healthy work environment so we can focus on our specialties. Preply is growing really fast, so engineering managers are always trying to make sure everyone is up to speed by streamlining our communication with other teams.
In addition, we have regular check-ins and skills assessments where leads support enhancing personal and professional development. What’s great is that it’s an open discussion: recommendations for improvements are raised by engineers themselves, and managers help to reflect and support each individual’s growth paths.
🔵 What do you like to do in your free time?
Outside my work, I love to visit new places around the world, that’s why relocating to Barcelona was not a problem for me, but rather the next exciting adventure on my path. In addition, lately I started a new hobby, music production, that is something for my personal enjoyment and development.
🔵 Lastly, in the spirit of our continuous learning mindset at Preply — What are you learning right now?
I really appreciate the continuous learning mindset being so widespread at Preply. I always try to follow up with trending technologies and learn them as I am so curious to try new things — every day!
Currently, I am also learning my fourth language on Preply’s platform — Spanish. My native language is Lebanese (Arabic) as I was born in Lebanon in a very nice touristic city — Byblos. My second language is English that I use for work, with friends, and while watching movies. In addition, I also know French from school, and my level allows me to comfortably understand and communicate in it.
I believe that no matter how much free time we have in a day, the best thing in order to keep ourselves educated is to keep learning. Even if it means making tiny progress every day, it’s important to stay motivated and keep improving.
We hope you enjoyed getting to know Serge, learning about his role in the Marketing Optimization squad, and how he relocated with Preply to Spain. If you’d like to join Serge and other talented Preplers making an impact in the booming EdTech area, check out our open vacancies here!
