“I was a regular Webbing customer”
Yoav Yona, Product Manager at Webbing, explains why he collects certificates, how being a client led him to become an employee, and what is so special about Webbing
From medicine to engineering
I am from Israel, grew up in the city of Petach Tikva, and now I reside in a kibbutz with my wife and kids. When growing up, I didn’t think of communications or engineering. I always wanted to be a doctor. In high school, I volunteered as a paramedic at Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service that operates ambulances. I hoped I’d become a paramedic in the army, but since my forte at school was mathematics and physics, they put me in a communication engineering unit.
The day I left the army, I joined Cellcom, one of the biggest Israeli MNOs, as a NOC engineer. After one or two years there, I decided to go to university while working part time. I studied computer engineering, and my first degree is a Bachelor of Science from Tel Aviv University. However, during my studies, I decided I was more interested in engineering in a broader sense, not exactly hardware development, so I continued in communications. But since then, I have never stopped learning: I got an MBA, enhanced my medical knowledge and skills, studied nutrition, and most recently, during COVID, received a teacher’s certificate. My wife jokingly calls me a certificate collector, but I secretly dream of teaching math when I have more spare time.
But before that happens, I’m focused solely on communications. After getting my first degree, I moved from NOC to the engineering department. I worked at Cellcom for ten years in total, then I held engineering positions at StarHome and later at Ericsson. After that, I spent ten years at Teoco, the fault management solutions provider, where I got my first product manager position, and finally, I joined Webbing.
From a customer to an employee
I first heard of Webbing a few years ago, when travelling with my family to Europe and searching for a company that would provide roaming services. I was a regular customer, nothing more than that, but several years later, when looking for new opportunities on LinkedIn, I saw Webbing’s ad and decided to apply for the product manager position.
I understood that the product team was quite small at the moment and just taking its first steps, yet I felt that there were opportunities for the company and for me. Actually, I wasn’t after big names, I was looking for a job where I could contribute and make some impact rather than become a small building block in a big Lego.
In mid-October, it’ll be two years since I’ve been here. The scale of the project and the amount of work have increased dramatically. That’s a good thing for the company and also for me, since I wanted to have an impact.
Webbing is growing. When I joined two years ago, there were about 80 employees, and now we should be around 140. So, in two years we have grown by seventy-five percent. And yet, I somehow still feel like Webbing is a small company, like a family.
The best company that I’ve worked at
I feel that Webbing is the best company that I have worked at. Here’s an example of how it is very different from other companies. When I just joined Webbing and asked something from the IT department, that same moment someone communicated back and helped me and later asked me if everything was okay. And the same goes for all departments. I was amazed by the level of cooperation at Webbing. In my 30 years of experience, I’ve never experienced anything like it.
Another great thing that Webbing is blessed with is that there is no political struggle within the company. At some of my former workplaces, Department A was always struggling with Department B to get “better results”, although they had the same customers, and wanted to reach the same goals. I’m happy to say that it doesn’t exist here. Don’t get me wrong: we don’t always agree with each other, we can argue, but we’re in the same boat, we’re not like the wheels that work against each other. Besides, we can fight over what solution is better, but then go to lunch together. And that’s the beauty of Webbing, from my perspective.
What Webbing is for me
I come to work every day to meet the people. We can work from home, and sometimes it may seem even better – it’s quiet and there are fewer interruptions. But you know what? At times these interruptions are so productive, and I’m happy to come and see my colleagues. Their level of involvement and professionalism and technical expertise is amazing. It’s not only job-related, of course: I love meeting people in the morning and having lunch together. Yet it’s not that I’m at the office all the time. It really depends on the workload, but on average, I manage to keep my work-life balance, I’m trying to do my sports and running and go to the gym regularly.
And there’s a lot of fun for everyone here at Webbing. For example, I may not be much of a ping pong person, I don’t really go to the game room to play air hockey or video games, and I don’t post jokes in our WhatsApp groups every day, but I love it when we all gather together at some nice places or our summer camp for the kids. This fun, the people and their professionalism – that’s what Webbing is for me, that’s what I think of when I hear the company’s name.
