Become a Leader by Thinking Like One with Wix’s Nir Orman

Leadership doesn’t begin with a promotion. It begins with mindset.

For Nir Orman, Director of E-commerce Engineering at Wix, leadership is about taking responsibility before it’s handed to you. From her start as a simulator instructor in the Israeli Air Force to leading distributed engineering teams across startups and enterprises, Nir has learned to treat uncertainty as a feature of the job, not a bug.

In this episode of Keep Moving Forward, Nir shares her journey through the highs and lows of tech leadership, including her philosophy on learning, how she helps teams align around culture and purpose, and why the most effective engineers don’t wait for permission to lead.

2025-05-20  • 37 min

Become a Leader by Thinking Like One with Wix’s Nir Orman

Keep Moving Forward

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Own the Role Before You’re Assigned It

When engineers ask Nir how to step into leadership, she doesn’t suggest a certification or a checklist. She tells them to start acting like the role they want.

“If you think that a team leader should do this, then ask if it's okay that you take that responsibility or that sense of ownership on yourself,” she says. “The only time when a person actually becomes a team lead is that the people around them already think they are a team lead and they are a manager.”

Leadership, in her view, is less about formal authority and more about perceived value. When your peers and managers already trust you as a leader, the title becomes a formality, not a hurdle.

Culture Starts with the Smallest Moments

Nir believes that engineering culture isn’t handed down from company values. It’s built inside each team. Whether that means joining team lunches over Zoom or showing up with feedback during a crunch, her focus is on fostering alignment, safety, and mutual support.

“We could be just a group of people fetching Jiras from the same board,” she says. “But it's different when you are there for each other.”

Her teams emphasize values like professionalism, continuous improvement, and ownership. When one developer introduced team retrospectives, Nir didn’t just allow it — she championed it. The practice scaled from sprint reviews to yearly planning, helping the team refine how they worked together across time and complexity.

Leadership Means Knowing When to Speak Up

Some of Nir’s most pivotal leadership moments have come from trusting her gut in hard conversations. When her team faced the decision to rewrite a critical legacy system, Nir knew the project would be costly. But she also knew it had to be done.

“I found myself in the R&D manager hat, having to put my foot down and say, ‘We cannot ignore this problem anymore,’” she recalls. “That was a really hard conversation to have.”

The tipping point came not from data, but from a hallway conversation. A product manager told her, “If you don’t say anything in this meeting [...] you’ll regret it.” She spoke up. The rewrite moved forward. And now, that system is nearly complete.

Whether it’s deciding what to build or how to support someone through a personal crisis, Nir leads with clarity and conviction. “You just need to get this thing out,” she says. “Speak up, say what you think and let them understand that it's required.”

Nir reminds us that leadership isn’t granted by title—it’s earned through action, reflection, and the daily choice to show up with focus, curiosity and care.

Transcript

Nir Orman:

I think the number one tip would be to do what you think that role means. So if you think that a team leader would do this, then do it. And if you think that the team leader should do this, then ask if it's okay that you take that responsibility or that sense of ownership on yourself. Because from what I've seen, the only time when a person actually becomes a team lead is that the people around them already think they are a team lead and they are a manager. And that makes it very easy for management to make the decision that person is worthy and that person is capable.

Caleb Brown:

Hey everyone and welcome to Keep Moving Forward, the podcast from X-Team for tech professionals who are passionate about growth, leadership, and innovation. I'm your host, Caleb Brown, and in each episode we explore candid conversations with the tech industry's brightest minds, seasoned leaders, forward-thinking engineers and visionary experts.

Today, I'm joined by Nir Orman, director of e-commerce engineering at Wix. Nir's Path from military instructor to tech leader offers an honest look at what it means to lead through uncertainty, scale teams across borders and balance business urgency with human care. Her leadership is rooted in curiosity, conviction and a deep respect for continuous improvement.

In this episode, Nir shares how she builds high-performing teams in distributed environments, how she's navigated moments of crisis with empathy and why leadership starts long before you get the title. If you've ever faced a difficult technical decision, wrestled with culture building or questioned whether you're ready to lead, this episode's for you. Let's get into it.

Thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited about this episode. I was able to meet prior to this on our prep call and really think you just have a really fascinating background. Your journey from air force simulator instructor to tech leadership is pretty fascinating, and so I wanted to know if you could just walk us through a little bit of what sparked your interest in technology and software engineering.

Nir Orman:

Sure. So it has been a journey. Actually, first time I've heard about computer science was way back in high school when I actually thought it was super boring and I didn't want to have anything to do with it, so I chose biotechnology and things that they promised me back then was going to be the future.

But since then, as you mentioned, I was a simulator instructor and one of the things that I've done was actually bring together all the group of simulator instructors for one whole day and I was thinking what could be interesting for that type of group? And I brought in this person from Microsoft to talk to us about futurism, and he showed us this really cool movie, which back then did sound like future and today sounds like maybe past, where you walk in the mall and your glasses recognize wherever you want to go, and you put on the keys on your table and the table does things for you and the fridge orders your food, etc.

And I thought it was so cool and I just really wanted to do that to myself and know how to do that. So from what I understood, what you need to do back then is study computer science or electrical engineering, and then the sky's the limit. You can build whatever product it is that you want. That's what dragged me or lured me into this technology field.

Indeed. I went to university and I studied it, and pretty fast I understood that I want to go into software. That was the most interesting part for me. So I took it from there all the way to wherever it is that I am today.

Caleb Brown:

Love that. That's very cool. I've always thought that was really interesting. Obviously, there's other careers that are similar to this, but I thought that was always something that was really appealing about software is you learn the fundamentals and then you can choose what domains interesting to you.

If you're passionate about the healthcare space, you can work in that and influence products within it. And so I've always just liked that the ability to work across domains and find something even closer to your personal interest. I wanted to go back a little bit and talk just I'm curious what kind of key lessons from military leadership experience translate into the engineering leadership space?

Nir Orman:

Oh, I think that in general, management is management and the domain is something that is agnostic to it. And I do believe that wherever you are, even if it's a formal position or not a formal one, you need to be able to lead the people and really make them follow along, make them want to follow along, given that they think that it's an interesting path to walk to.

So I think that no matter if it is in the army... I know that in the army people think that there is more structure or discipline, but I think regardless of that, you always need to make people follow by will. And I think today armies also understand that. Nobody can actually force you if people don't want to do what you tell them to do. You can't really force anyone, even in the army. So it is all about the same skill set that walks with you along the journey.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah, that makes sense. One thing that I thought was fascinating when looking over your background, your journey. You've worked in different sizes of companies, not everyone has worked in startups, but I'm curious about your experience across these different sizes. Speaking of those startups you worked for, I believe, DID, which was a smaller company as far as I understand it, and then all the way up to a much larger organization like Wix. How has that shaped your leadership of being in those different spaces?

Nir Orman:

It's actually really interesting. I did not plan to go into startups. I was sure that I was more of the person to take stable jobs and whatever first job I'm going to pick, I'm probably going to retire from that when I am old enough to retire, and pretty fast I understood I was working at this large company where I think after four months I was just very starting up being a junior and learning all about GitHub and stuff and they fired the whole product line. I guess over 300 people, we're all fired.

And I always assumed that if you're good enough then you won't get fired. But it turns out that when they're crossing this whole spreadsheet line that doesn't make sense to finance, then it doesn't really matter how good you are. And that's really when I learned that it doesn't really matter which company you're at, what matters is the skill set that you were acquired, and if you did interesting and important things, then that's what really matters. And if you learn through the way that matters a lot, and that makes you hireable and that is really the stability in your career.

So once I understood that I'm not going to be working for the rest of my life in that first corporate that I chose, I let myself play in the playground and choose cool companies that I really wanted to work for. So I went on to some medium-sized startups and DID as a smaller startup. And I think that the leadership styles are very different between those company sizes.

So, at a smaller company we would work from sunrises to sunset and Fridays and Saturdays, sometimes, when there's a huge customer that you think is the one that is going to make the difference. But once you go into a larger companies, a lot of people think that changes things. People think that, "Oh, I'll go to a more stable company. Things are going to be calmer and it'll be easier maybe."

But I think that the person that you are is the thing that affects the most the way you're going to work, because you can take the person out of the workplace, but no the other way around. You can take the workplace and change it, but you can't really change the person. So I found myself even at larger companies still bringing in that startup mode and being able to manage even with a small team and really come up with great impact and deliver results fast because you have that startup mode within you.

And you know what, it came out to be very useful because it turns out that in large companies there is also always scarcity in resources. And if you know how to do more with less, it's always a useful skill.

Caleb Brown:

100%. Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit, shift to some culture stuff about engineering culture. Was curious if you could tell me how you'd define rather in cultivate a strong engineering culture, especially in a distributed environment.

Nir Orman:

So I think that an engineering culture is something that every group has, like an engineering group. Once you take a look at engineering groups, and it could be two groups, parallel groups, at the same organization and they could each have their own DNA and culture, and they think it's a lot about the leadership and how the leadership positions that DNA, and it depends on the people that you recruit obviously. And also if you're going into an existing organization, then the more senior engineers that are the role models for the younger, for the juniors.

I think one of the things that I believe in is that, first of all, you can talk about values in your group. So one of the values that I believe in is that first of all is being a team. That's a really big value because we could be just a group of people fetching Jiras from the same board or Monday or whatever it is, but I think it's different when you are there for each other. When you feel that the other people are backing you up and that you want to back someone up.

It's like in anything that you do, if it's giving a proper feedback on your code review, if it's filling in for each other when you need switching on the on-call or whatever it is that we're trying to achieve together as a team, it's much stronger when it's a team. And I know that at some companies when working remotely is the thing, is the main way of work, then some of it gets lost. But there is a way to do that.

So I remember back when it was COVID and we used to work from home, we even had a lunch group meetings, so we would have lunch together over Zoom. And I remember this really funny one-time lunch that one of the team members had shown us the way he does salsa, so he was dancing over Zoom with his lunch. So that was one lunch I can't forget. So that was the first value being a team, but I think that there are more values that we can discuss, like professionalism and constant improvement and those things and how you assimilate that into the team.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, a nice segue there is when we did our initial prep call before the podcast, you had mentioned sending books out to new team members before they start and you're obviously a very curious person from your telling us about deep learning and not really even knowing what that was and diving in and doing it on weekends and everything. So I wanted to know if you could elaborate there just about your philosophy on continuous learning and doing that gesture for a new team member.

Nir Orman:

Yeah, I think that once you think of yourself as a learner, and this has been mentioned in Atomic Habits, one of my favorite books. So the way to really assimilate that new habit of learning is think of yourself as a person who is a learner. That's just an example. Of course, whatever skill that you're looking to install, I would call this is a new operating system for yourself. You're installing a new version of yourself that has this new skill.

And so learning, if you're thinking about yourself as a learning person, then there are a lot of things that you can do. So for me, what works for me is that, and people are going to hate it when I say this, but 9:00 PM is the time for me. I have an hour in my calendar every day that, it says learning, but I don't actually every day learn at 9:00 PM but I have this slot of time and I could be learning on my way to work during listening to an audiobook or I could be taking a course in university. I'm taking one right now and just always be learning.

I have been doing French classes in the past two and a half years because I like to learn. So whatever it is, if it's a new language, if it's a new skill, if it's a new technology topic, I think that it keeps the mind fresh. And it's when you learn it's probably the only time when you're not scrolling through your phone and wasting your life away, I would say through that. So bringing that to the team is really important in my opinion, because once people like to learn and they see that they can still learn because if you don't, you just fall behind you.

Technology keeps moving so fast all the time, and if you're not on it, you're top of things, you're just left behind. And that brings me to my first topic that we discussed and then you should be scared for your career. So keeping on top of things, that's really important. So the book that I like to send to developers depends on, I usually ask them have they read certain books or not? And if they haven't, then my first one would be test-driven development. The full name is Growing Object-Oriented Software Guided by Tests, catchy.

So I like to send that one out and because people don't usually read it unless their company's into TDD. And for managers I find myself, a lot of the times people ask me like, "I want to become a team lead. How do I get into that?" And I like to recommend the book Drive. I think it's very intuitive about what the motivation and what drives people, and once you install that new operating system of reading, you have no idea how efficient it is.

People have set hours to write these books and they had editors edit it for them. And then you're doing podcasts, how long it takes to find the right materials, to interview the people, to gather the information, to edit it afterwards to make it valuable for the listeners. So people have been doing that years to write a book and all you have to do is invest those four hours to read it. And once you get used to reading books, it's likes so efficient, I can't even begin to explain.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah, I will adopt that. I do like the idea of sending relevant, helpful material to new team members. Staying on this topic a little bit, when you're building an entirely new team or perhaps integrating an existing one, what strategies have you found most effective for establishing those the shared values we were talking about and those practices of the engineering culture?

Nir Orman:

I think that for the engineering culture, as I said, I think one of the two other values that are really important are professionalism and constant improvement. So for constant improvement I found that, and this has actually been brought up by one of my team members, it's not something that I came up with. But she came in with this initiative of having retrospectives and I am all up for trying new things always, and I try to let the team know about that.

If you have an idea, bring it to me, let's try it. I like to try new things, I want to give it a shot, and worst case it doesn't work out, then that's fine. Either we learn or we succeed. So she brought in this idea and we had this first retrospect for the sprint and it was very successful and we kept doing it. And we improved the retrospectives and we improved the spring plannings and we improved the daily meetings. And we found ourselves doing retrospective for large features as well, doing retrospective for their yearly plan, and did we manage to do all the things that we planned to do this year, etc.

And that really helps us get better. So if you can make it better, make it faster, make it more efficient, make it cheaper, whatever it is, once you engrave that into your operating system as well, then it's really hard to get it out of your brain. I was flying out a couple of weeks ago and I saw this something inefficient in the airport and I couldn't take it. It's a part of who you are. You want to make things better all the time. Everywhere you look, you have these glasses to make it better.

Caleb Brown:

100%. I mean, that's a really important kind of thing that I think probably that a lot of just folks that gravitate towards product and engineering as well probably have that, just seeing versions of things in the world that could be better.

Wanted to pivot a little bit to talking about operations and more so about scaling teams. I forget if it was on our initial chat or just from looking over your background, but you've led transitions of teams like between countries and managed distributed teams. I'm curious what's just the biggest challenges in those scenarios?

Nir Orman:

I want to say wars. Wars is hard. It's hard on everybody and it's also hard on, it's hardest on other people who are not in the workforce because they're away on reserve duty or whatever it is. I've gotten to work with teams in Ukraine and they are phenomenal.

And before the war has started in Israel, I was trying to support a team member in Ukraine and it's really hard to understand what's going on, because sometimes people want to make it look like everything is cool that when in fact it's like they have not slept through the night, they don't have electricity, they have alarms all the time, and they don't have a shelter or their relatives are not in a secure place. And you really need to stay on top of things and make sure that the mental health of your team is intact.

And I think that companies that are smart enough to put the best interest of their employees in front of their own really in that way also stay healthy, because the people really come first. And it's amazing to see how people want to give back once they can, and whatever it is that they can give back. And they are the most loyal employees after such hard times. So really that has been I guess the hardest, but also very educating.

Caleb Brown:

X-Team where I've been now for almost 10 years, totally remote team. And yeah, it's devastating. Unfortunately, I've seen some of exactly what you've described with some of our colleagues and I mean all you can really do is support them the best you can. But you're right, there's a lot of times you learn later that things are going on well out of their control that they put on a face that you don't even know that was happening.

Nir Orman:

And sometimes it's hard to know what your manager is expecting of you and does your manager even know what you're going through, especially in global companies and remote companies. So it really does take a lot from the manager to know and to also offer the help.

And I think it's important to know for managers that there are ways to help and there are platforms for, like Group Hug, and on all these platforms that you can offer to your employees to take care of their mental health and it really is also life-saving.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah. I'm curious, again, you're just a good one to ask these questions too, because you've been a part of a lot of different organizations and domains like we said. But I'm curious talking more about the technical leadership and innovation side of things. How do you kind balance technical debt amongst the need to be competitive and to ship features quickly?

Nir Orman:

That's always a hard one. Managing technical debt is hard and there's a huge interest on technical debt and the longer you let it sits there, it rottens, it starts to smell. So I want to say that I'm a big believer in paying the debt. I don't like to owe anything, but it always depends on a lot of other things that you need to ship.

So if a debt and it's okay, nobody cares that it is like that and there is no real impact to that, then I won't be pushing that. So I want to do the things that are the most impactful. But for example, we've recently had a legacy system that needed rewriting and we knew it was going to be a costly rewrite. And it'll require all of our resources and all of our attention and everybody needs pitch in and take part, and it would not allow the business to grow.

If you kept that one old system, that tooth with, what is it called, that aching tooth, and you didn't take it out, you will be in pain, you cannot go anywhere, you cannot enjoy anything, so you have to take it out. And I found myself in the R&D manager hat, having to put my foot down and say, "Guys, we cannot ignore this problem anymore. We have to take care of it and we have to do it and there is no other choice and we cannot split it into smaller tasks. We just need to get this thing out."

And that was a really hard conversation to have. And I remember on that morning, I didn't plan to say anything. I planned to like, okay, they want to do something else and that makes sense and I'm just going to swallow it and then do what the business needs. I was walking with this really bad feeling and one of the product managers stopped me at the kitchen and he said to me, "If you don't say anything in this meeting, you will be regretting this whole year. The other decision is going to be made and you'll regret it. So at least you have to say what you think. If they don't do it, okay, but speak up, say what you think and let them understand that it's required."

And that little kitchen talk made me actually say what I believed and it happened. And it's a huge project that is really as expensive as expected ,and it's almost finished now, so hopefully it'll be worth it. So, I'm looking forward to seeing it roll out.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah, that's awesome. I wanted to stay on this higher level technical talk. When you're evaluating new technologies that you may implement and perhaps even an architectural change, what sort of framework are you using for figuring that out, for doing the decision making on if that's the right call to make or right thing to experiment with?

Nir Orman:

I think that the hardest way to make a sharp turn in your organization or on your roadmap is the turns that you're taking on your own and then you're trying to... People don't understand, "Why is the ship not turning? I turned the wheel and it's not turning." But it doesn't work like that. So I don't believe in doing that at all.

What I believe in is if I think there's a strategic decision that needs to be made, I like to have the people make that decision with me. So in this example, we've had an offsite where we brought in all the tech leads, all the senior developers, some product managers, and we all sat together in this room for I think a day or even two, and we discussed the hell out of it. And I like to break it down to...

My formula is always like, what are the big questions? So should we do X or should we do Y? That would be the framing of the question. And then I would break it down to, if we go to option A, then what are going to be the consequences and what are the pros and cons to that? And then if you go to option B, what are the consequences and what are the pros and cons to that? And sometimes when you break it down like that, it sounds very trivial, but you would be surprised how little times it actually gets done like that. So, I like this methodological way.

Caleb Brown:

Yeah, I think that's right.

Nir Orman:

Methodic way of thinking, and it makes things a lot clearer for me. And then also when I need to justify it to myself or to whoever it is that I need to justify the decision to, it's much easier to say, "Look, we could have done this. We have considered this. The team has thought that it's not the best idea and we all believe, and we all agreed that this is the preferred way. If you want us to go that way, that's fine. Just know that it will entail this and this risks and it'll take this and that much time," and blah, blah, blah.

So putting it on the board. And I also, I'm a big believer of writing, so always having that document that you can go back to and look at it and realize that this project has started X time ago and it gives you perspective, then you can go back to why you made that decision and think about six months later and say, "Oh, when I decided this, I didn't realize that this and this." So you understand what are the new things that might have popped up that you did not consider originally when you took the decision. And of course, the longer the projects, the more things that pop up that you did not plan for because life goes on as your projects run.

Caleb Brown:

Well, I'll start to wrap up here a little bit and be respectful of your time. You were just talking about future products and things like that. Interested what emerging technologies and trends that you're most excited about in that e-commerce space?

Nir Orman:

I think that the most interesting one that I just can't wait to get it out there is, and it sounds lame, but it's not. It's like the omnichannel of things. So I do feel that in that area, we're not there yet. I see so many businesses, and I am building a house these days, so you go over to the different furniture companies or the different, you need to choose your wall color or whatever it is, and they are working with such old systems, old, and you would imagine, why is this so hard? You just need to change that into SaaS. We're all there.

And they are still typing in their inventory from their back office and it just doesn't make any sense. And I think that it hurts to see, it hurts my eyes to see those black screens, all black screens with old systems. And I really would love to see how the business managers are stepping up and even with existing websites that were not built in the past few years to see those old businesses that are the most successful ones because they have been around for a few years, so it means that their business case is strong.

I want to see them having a... I imagine the way you drive a shiny car, a shiny fast car, I imagine that to be their e-commerce management business. That's my vision. Seeing a race car, that's how managing your e-commerce business should feel like. And today, it feels like you have one system for your point of sale and you have another system for your ERP and you have another system for your CRM, and you have another system for your 3PL, and it's this whole thing.

It's not clicking and you need to send updates between those and you need to listen to events. And how often do you want your inventory to be synced? Do you want it every 15 minutes? No, I want it to be synced immediately. So, the world is not there yet, but the technology is. So I really want to see everybody follow along and make things much easier for their merchants. That's what I want to see.

Caleb Brown:

100%. I love that. Well said. Well then we will end it on my last question here for you. There's different kind of folks that listen in, but I know that some engineers, particularly colleagues of mine, do listen. And so I was wondering what advice you could give to an engineer or engineers aspiring to move into leadership roles.

Nir Orman:

First of all, decide that's what you want. A lot of the engineers that I know are thinking about it, they're not sure. They don't know what exactly it entails. So I think the one thing you owe to yourself is to get a taste of it. Talk to your manager, let them know this is interesting for you. You don't yet know what exactly it means and you want to taste it. You want to have a little bit of it and see if you like it.

And then once you try it, then if you like it, you take a decision, that's what you want to do, then I would recommend reading about it. And there are a lot of really cool books. You can check out my Goodreads, I have a lot of recommendations for leadership and management over there. So pick one, start reading. And I think the number one tip would be to do what you think that role means.

So if you think that a team leader would do this, then do it. And if you think that the team leader should do this, then ask if it's okay that you take that responsibility or that sense of ownership on yourself. Because from what I've seen, the only time when a person actually becomes a team lead is that the people around them already think they are a team lead and they are a manager. And that makes it very easy for management to make the decision that person is worthy and that person is capable.

So if you go through that path, even if you decide that it's not for you, that's fine because you tried it. It's not based on something that you imagined and doesn't actually happen in reality. And also if you decide that you do like it, then it's much easier to get there. And even if you're not, you don't actually have the title, you do make the impact. And I think that's the most important thing.

Caleb Brown:

Well said. I think that's excellent advice. And yeah, like I said, that was my last question, so thank you so much for joining today. This was really enjoyable. I learned a ton. And just thank you so much for your time.

Nir Orman:

Thank you so much, Caleb. I had a great time. See you.

Caleb Brown:

Awesome. Glad to hear it.

Nir Orman:

Bye-bye.

Caleb Brown:

What a great conversation with Nir about leading with intention, scaling with empathy, and building engineering teams that are set up to thrive. What really stood out was Nir's ability to translate her experiences from startups to larger orgs, from peace to wartime into actionable leadership lessons.

She reminded us that strong leadership isn't about having all the answers, it's about listening closely, showing up consistently, and taking thoughtful action when it counts. Thank you, Nir, for sharing your journey and insights, and thank you to our listeners for being part of this conversation. It's stories like this that remind us why we keep moving forward.

Join us next time for more insightful conversations with tech leaders who inspire us to grow, lead and innovate. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube music. And don't forget to share this episode if it resonated with you. Until next time.