Finding your own work-life balance - Stephen Ballot

Stephen is the Director of Product at OLX Group

A lot of Stephen’s background is in product management. He started of his career as a software engineer and expected to do that for his entire career. But then, one Saturday, he was awoken by a support call where some big SMS system was down and he had to figure out how to fix it.

He realised he enjoyed life too much to keep sacrificing his Saturdays like that so he started exploring opportunities. He was looking for a role where he can still build things but not be on call all the time. This is how he discovered product management.

From this point on Stephen knew he’d found his calling. He spent time working with a very large eCommerce retailer in South Africa. From there he moved to a big global internet company where he worked in a role that involved project managing an agritech startup.

After this, he fell in love with online classifieds. And moved to OLX where he’s spent the past 6 years doing a variety of exotic things.