From Israel to Bangkok: Shlomi’s Life at Agoda
- Shlomi Green, 39 years old
- Engineering Manager, Engineering & Technology
- Living in Bangkok since 2024
I started my career as a Software Engineer in 2004. Prior to joining Agoda I worked for other corporations like Microsoft, Cisco, and in my last role I worked as a Senior Software Engineering Manager at Optum, an American corporate in the healthcare industry.
My family and I had a general desire to relocate to another country, but Bangkok wasn’t even on our radar. One day, I came across a job listing on LinkedIn for a position in Bangkok. My initial reaction was, “Bangkok? Really? Nah, that’s not for me”, without knowing much about the city.
Two weeks later, I saw the same job posting again. I casually mentioned it to my wife, and she encouraged me to apply, saying, “What’s the worst that could happen?” So, I did. As I progressed through the interviews, I started researching Bangkok and discovered it’s a world-class metropolitan city with a high quality of life. Everyone I spoke to had only positive things to say about both Agoda and Bangkok.
The interview process was clear, fair, and professional, and the people I spoke with were personable and kind. That gave me confidence in the company. Eight months after moving, I can wholeheartedly say it was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.
A Day in the Life in the Core Engineering team at Agoda
I’m an Engineering Manager in Agoda and I lead two development teams in the Core Engineering group. My teams develop bot detection solutions to protect Agoda and to keep our core business up and running, which to me gives a lot of purpose and meaning. We’re practically superheroes!
My day-to-day starts early, on office days (twice a week) I’m usually the first one in the office – I arrive at 8am sharp! This gives me some quiet time to focus on my work before I start my meetings, while I’m enjoying an iced latte at my desk. Then, I have my morning standups with my teams where we sync up and talk about our sprint progress. On office days I also have my 1-on-1 meetings with my engineers, so we can have some time to talk about work, challenges, tasks, and about growth, both career-wise and in the company. For the rest of the time, it varies between design review meetings, OKR and roadmap planning, Product Review, and tech deep-dive sessions where we learn about new technologies and skills.
As you probably guessed, working for one of the leading online travel agencies, and working in a team which protects against bots, some days could get even more exciting than others. Every once in a while, we get called into War Rooms to battle off some serious threats. These could get pretty interesting as we get to work with a lot of data, with various teams and talented people to solve complex problems together and gain new insights along the way.
3 Reasons Why Agoda is an Exciting Workplace
I’ve worked in many tech companies in my career, and I think Agoda has a very different culture than other companies for a few reasons.
Firstly, despite being a very large corporation, every team moves fast and efficiently, which is great and suggests very good organizational health. The company has built many tools and automations including vast use of AI, to make our day-to-day more productive, allowing us to focus on what’s important.
Secondly, the standards here are impressively high. This shows in everything we do, from code quality to the people we hire. The talents here are smart and capable, and it feels great to work around professionals that are experts at what they do. I’m not just saying that lightly – I genuinely think that the talents here are, at least, one level higher than the industry standard. When you surround yourself with talented people, you grow as well.
And lastly, and more on the materialistic side of things, Agoda is really good at having fun! Every 1-2 weeks on average we have social events with drinks, food, fun activities, video games and more. It’s nice that Agoda invests back into the employees and keeps them engaged.
Growing at Agoda: A Structured Approach to Professional Development
There is also a very noticeable mentality of professional growth and development. As we do many other things in Agoda, we look at professional growth as something that could be, and should be, addressed with a structured approach. We don’t just leave it to chance and “hope” that people would grow as part of their professional journey – we look at growth as something that should be discussed often, with frequent feedback, and coaching from your manager, to help you become your better self and reach the full potential of your career.
Relocating to Bangkok with Kids and Pets
The way Agoda handled our relocation was beyond my expectations. We received support from start to finish and the whole process was very smooth. You can feel the teams are experienced, providing support at every stage, from paperwork to the actual logistics of the move. I moved with my whole family (me, my wife, 4-year-old daughter, 1 dog and 1 cat). The relocation package was very generous; we were able to pack our things in a shipping container and send them here.
The process was very efficient, too. A packing company did all of the work for us – they packed everything neatly and carefully into the shipping container. Fast forward a couple months, we’re already in Bangkok, found our own apartment, the shipping container arrived and was unpacked into our new apartment. It required almost no effort from our side.
Living in Bangkok: A World-Class City with Endless Opportunities
Bangkok is really a unique place because it offers the benefits of a world-class city while you can still maintain a relatively low cost of living. It has everything here: fine dining, luxurious hotels, huge malls, bustling nightlife, Thai massage parlors, and many places to visit, both in the city and outside. It feels just like living in New York or maybe even better, but in Asia. This place has endless options, you can always find new places, activities or areas that you haven’t explored before.
At first, we were worried about the education for our daughter and how good will it be. We signed her up for an international school, and while these aren’t cheap, I can now say this is the best school she has ever been to. We also got a nice discount thanks to Agoda which provides a list of schools we have partnerships with. A great addition to our lifestyle has also been the ability to have a helper with us, to take care of the house chores and our daughter.
The quality of healthcare is better than in our home country. There are very high-end hospitals and doctors here. Sometimes they are so luxurious, you could confuse them with hotels! We’ve had the opportunity to use the healthcare system for more extensive procedures, and we were very happy with the treatment.
For activities there are many things to do, but it really depends on your style and preference. For kids there are many awesome indoor playgrounds which can keep them busy for a few hours.
Building Community in Bangkok: Making Friends and Building Your Circle
Bangkok is a big city and is truly multicultural, it can be challenging to make new friends at first. After a while we did make a few new friends, both at work and in other circles as well. We meet up on weekends, have dinners together, and go out together to have some fun after work.
I really recommend going to the new-hire event that Agoda organizes, you can really make some new friends there that are in the same situation as you, and you could make long-lasting connections there which are important both for work and for your own benefit.
Cost of Living in Bangkok: Tailoring Your Lifestyle
The interesting thing about Bangkok is that you choose your own cost of living. You can live modestly and save up some money or be a little more spendy to have some fun and have a high quality of life. Bangkok offers and allows many ranges for cost of living and in all of them you can live a nice decent life here.
Restaurants are cheap here in comparison to Israel. For a nice fancy meal, we would usually pay around $30 per person (vs $55-67 in Israel). This includes multiple dishes, drinks, tax and service charge. But if you go to a food court for example, you could even go as low as $3 for a full meal, while it would cost minimum 18 for a full meal back home! For accommodation we pay the same as we did in Israel, but the size of our apartment is twice the size!
In Israel we could not afford a maid, but we had a cleaner that came for 4 hours a week to help tidy up. We pay the same price here (around 585$/month) for someone who cleans, cooks, does the laundry, and helps out with our daughter full time! This has been an incredible life upgrade, allowing us to buy time to spend together as a family, to study, for trying new hobbies, and so on.
My wife and I realized that relocating to another country together with a toddler and two pets is a bold move, and we wanted it to succeed. So, we made a conscious decision to spend a little more to make our first year feel a little easier and more welcoming. So overall, we actually have similar expenses to our home country, but the quality of life has improved drastically, and we are very thankful for that. For our second year, we might adjust our lifestyle to save more.
Final thoughts: Why Agoda is the Place to Be
Life is short, why not take an adventure? If you’re already considering an adventure, do it with a company like Agoda that supports your move, helps you grow personally and professionally, and offers a lot of fun along the way. It’s a no-brainer!
