As a remote company at the forefront of translation technology, OnTheGoSystems is embracing AI tools to revolutionize our workflows and drive innovation.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been transforming the workplace for some time now. With the recent release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, we are witnessing the transformative power of AI in our daily work.

Powered by a large language model, ChatGPT uses artificial intelligence to understand and generate human-like text. Ask it to write a story, tell you about rocket science, or for personal advice –  it always has an answer. And while ChatGPT has its limitations, the advancements in AI show us just how crucial it is to stay ahead of the curve. 

At OnTheGoSystems, we can’t (and won’t) deny that machines have evolved in their ability to plan, reason, communicate, and learn. Instead, we are choosing to leverage AI’s potential to work faster and better.

OnTheGoSystems’ Teams: Tapping into the Power of AI

In the last months, we’ve noticed that AI tools like ChatGPT have numerous advantages: 

Here’s a deeper look into how we’re using AI tools to improve the way we work across different teams.

Building Innovative Products – Development Team

Our developers have always been committed to building software that meets the needs of our clients. We use a combination of technologies to build our most popular products, WPML and Toolset, and our new software translation tool, PTC (Private Translation Cloud). 

Now, our software developers and AI are working hand-in-hand on our existing products and to bring big, meaningful ideas to life. 

They also use AI tools to help with everyday tasks, such as:

Of course, it’s important to note that our developers are highly knowledgeable and always check the code ChatGPT produces. This is essential, since AI tools like ChatGPT don’t always get it right. 

At the moment, our Head of Engineering, Eduard Martini is busy building a custom ChatGPT interface.

How OnTheGoSystems Works Remotely with AI Tools

The latest AI tools have transformed our development process, speeding up projects and automating mundane tasks.

For example, we now use ChatGPT to generate release notes by simply feeding it the comments from our commits, and it compiles meaningful summaries in no time. We’ve also built our own ChatGPT UI, making it more accessible and functional.

We’re researching AI tools to improve the quality of WPML’s machine translations. While this is still in its early research phase, we’ve made steady progress and are excited about the potential impact it could have on our services and the industry as a whole.

With the help of new AI tools, I am at least 20% more productive.

Eduard Martini

Head of Engineering

Navigating the Global Talent Pool – HR Team

OnTheGoSystems is a remote company with team members across 45 countries and 4 continents. For our teams, this is a huge benefit. We can learn from talented people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets. 

But for our HR professionals, building a global team comes with its own unique challenges. Our HR team members need to make sure that anyone joining us is a good fit for working remotely. They need to attract diverse talent while also maintaining a strong company culture and ensuring good collaboration among international team members.

Currently, our HR team is using AI to find the right person for each role, create a more engaging hiring experience, and take over time-consuming administrative tasks. Overall, we’ve found that AI tools actually help us keep the “human” in human resources. 

How OnTheGoSystems Works Remotely with AI Tools

While we don’t use AI as extensively as other teams, it does add value to our HR processes.

For example, we provide ChatGPT with job specifications and it helps us craft meaningful job ads. For each role we are recruiting for, it helps us generate the questions we can ask candidates and suggests how to assess technical capabilities for specific roles. We use ChatGPT to do research and proofread texts and emails.

Overall, AI tools like ChatGPT really streamline the recruitment process.

Laura de Figueiredo

HR Manager

Crafting Compelling Narratives – Content Team

Our content team creates a wide variety of content, including how-to guides, blog posts, tutorials, announcements, and more. This requires not only a high level of product knowledge, but also resources. Putting different types of content together takes time. From our team members, it also requires a fair share of research and a deep understanding of our products. 

For the most part, AI tools don’t have the understanding or knowledge needed to produce ready-to-use content. But, they are capable of generating ideas faster than humans can. 

Because of this, we use AI to help us produce high-quality content. With the right prompt, tools like ChatGPT provide outlines, headlines, and even first drafts for articles. We then carefully review what ChatGPT generates and add our personal touch to create better, well-rounded content in less time.

How OnTheGoSystems Works Remotely with AI Tools

ChatGPT and AI tools are proving to be a great help for the Content team. AI can’t replace our skilled writers, but it helps speed up the content creation process. It’s like having a writing assistant that helps us write outlines, headings, social media posts, and even whole drafts for blog posts and tutorials.

Once we’ll be able to train AI tools with our own data, the sky’s the limit.

Dario Jazbec Hrvatin

Content Manager

Enhancing User Experience – Support Team

The support team members for our WPML and Toolset plugins work tirelessly to provide our clients with answers to questions and solutions to issues. To be able to provide only the best user experiences, our supporters need to know our products inside out. They also need to know how to think outside the box and prioritize the tickets that come into the support forum.

Our support team is already using ChatGPT to craft summaries for resolved tickets. The advantages are twofold: 

Now, we’re looking to use AI to enhance these human interactions. We want to train ChatGPT to help our supporters with quick replies to frequently asked questions. This means developing an AI-powered chatbot.

How OnTheGoSystems Works Remotely with AI Tools

We’re building an AI-powered support chatbot to provide quick, first-tier support. The chatbot will try to resolve issues and provide clients with the most precise answers. Of course, AI tools are not always 100% accurate. One of the challenges is training the bot to know when to transfer conversations it can’t correctly answer to a human operator. 

We’re exploring new approaches, including those from Facebook/Meta, to stay up-to-date and efficient.

We are still in the research phase, but we’re determined to find a solution that meets our expectations

Andrea Sciammana

Developer on the Systems team

Looking Towards the AI-Driven Future

As a company that builds advanced translation technologies, OnTheGoSystems is always looking for ways to take the technology available to us to the next level. 

AI tools like ChatGPT play a significant role in this pursuit. While they can’t replace the knowledge and expertise of our team members, they can assist us in getting things done faster.

As we continue to explore new ways to leverage AI, we’re committed to fostering a work environment that embraces change and technological advancements. We’re excited to see how we can use AI to be a valuable asset for our team, our services, and the industry as a whole.

Our developer Ivan Larionov walks us through his recent move to Thailand and shows us that there’s more than one way to embrace the digital nomad lifestyle. 

Ivan, tell us about yourself

I’m a 35-year old developer. Originally, I’m from Russia, but I currently live in Thailand with my wife and our 4-year-old daughter.

In the desert near Dubai

How do you benefit from working at OTGS? What do you like the most about working remotely?

There’s a lot that can be said here. Personally, I think remote work comes with some great opportunities:

My daughter is scared on the 126th floor
One of my workplaces

What are some places you’ve been able to travel to while working remotely? 

Actually, I visited Thailand quite a few times in the past. Once when I was already working at OTGS, and a few times prior to that. 

As for the rest of the list, it’s pretty diverse:

Can you spot a 3-meter snake on the fence in this image?
Flying somewhere with my family

Did the pandemic affect your remote work lifestyle? How did you cope?

During the pandemic, the opportunities to travel were limited. So, I purchased a house in the countryside and I used it for 2 years to get away from the messiness of the big city life. 

It was peaceful, and I even had a dedicated “office” space. Sometimes, my family and I would go to the countryside house for the day, just to relax. We were able to make a day trip out of it since the house was only about 120 km away from our city. 

Relaxing in the countryside

Why did you decide to go to Thailand?

I found myself in the bleak situation of being from a country that recently started a war. I don’t know what the future holds, but Thailand seemed like the best place to quickly move to. For starters, I’ve traveled to Thailand multiple times in the past, so I was aware of the entry requirements and knew my family and I could easily enter the country and stay for a while. I also know my way around Thailand and enjoy being here. Now, it’s time to think about the next steps.

Feeding a giraffe is the only way to get a selfie together

What are your plans for the future, both in terms of life and work?

I’m planning to move to Yerevan, Armenia in about 2 months. Thailand has been treating us well, but it was only meant to be a temporary solution. If everything goes according to plan, we’ll be staying in Yerevan long-term. 

Once we organize ourselves in Armenia, we’d like to start traveling again. We are planning on starting with Georgia and Turkey. They’re quite close to Armenia, and have entry requirements that make it possible to stay there for 1 or 2 months.

Look up to see the bird

We’re always looking for ways to improve WPML. After some thought, we decided it was time for us to make the switch to functional programming.

More and more developers are choosing functional programming for large-scale projects because of how predictable it is. If you’ve tried this programming paradigm, you may have found the simpler code easier to debug and maintain. Maybe you’ve seen a shift in your mindset. In functional programming, your focus is on what to do rather than how to do it.

Recently, we released the biggest update to WPML in the last couple of years. Version 4.5 of WPML came packed with new features like the option of automatically translating your entire site. For us, this was the perfect time to give functional programming a try. 

You can read about our experience in our post about why we made the switch to functional programming. We’ll admit it can take some time to learn how to “glue” your pure functions together. But considering how functional code was able to solve some of our issues, we’ll be the first to say it – functional programming is here to stay.

Jakub Bis joined OnTheGoSystems in 2016 and turned the benefit of working remotely into a life changing adventure! See how the WPML developer made the choice to move to the other side of the world and what he’s learned in the process.

What made you decide to take your development skills on the road?

I come from Poland, and my whole adult life revolves around programming. I studied in Krakow and decided to stay there after graduation. It was a very convenient place because it is one of my country’s most prominent IT Hubs. I worked in a few smaller companies and later joined a few bigger ones too.

When I still worked in the office, my friends took me on a trip to Thailand, which was a turning point in my life. I realized that I love a warm climate and definitely wanted to try something new before getting old. I was slowly approaching my 30th birthday and decided that it was the last moment for such a big decision.

It is much easier to explore other Asian countries when I am here. This is a photo from my trip to Taiwan.

How did you choose the Philippines?

I did some research and found out that the Philippines seemed to be the best destination. Due to their colonial past, the country is not as exotic as others in the region from a European perspective. English is one official language, and it is widely spoken everywhere, making life way easier. Moreover, people are naturally friendly and approachable; therefore, it seemed perfect for an inexperienced digital nomad.  

Once I knew my destination, I needed to find a source of income. Working remotely was a natural choice as it was already common amongst programmers. Eventually, I found OTGS, passed a probation time, and was ready. So in 2016, I flew to the Philippines for the first time. 

It is how I can spend my weekends now. I get to have new experiences, like jet skiing on a nearby island, a 30-minute drive from my apartment

I quickly recognized that it was a great idea. I grew up in a cold Eastern-European country far from the sea. Therefore, living in a place where the temperature seldom drops below 25 degrees and there are fabulous beaches just around the corner was an exhilarating experience. 

I also learned how to drive a motorbike and started exploring the interior too. Thanks to OTGS’s scholarship program, I completed a diving course. This was always my dream, but it was something I always thought I would do in a distant, vague future. 

Even though I loved the new place, there were some drawbacks. In my case, it was a poor internet connection and frequent blackouts. Eventually, I moved out to the second biggest city in the country, Cebu, where I have lived since. Later, I met my girlfriend, and now I am pretty sure I will stay here for good. 

One photo from my last big holiday. I love to spend December in such circumstances

What are your favorite parts of working remotely, and what has surprised you the most?

When people think about working remotely in an exotic country, they have a picture of a guy with a laptop sitting on a beach and sipping a colorful cocktail. I must admit I also had this idea. But, in reality, it looks much better on touristic prospects than in fact. Sun is shining on your screen, sand is everywhere, and you’re sweating badly due to the heat. Nowadays, I prefer to stay in the city in an air-conditioned apartment with a large screen and comfortable chair.

I keep on traveling during weekends and holidays when I can fully relax without pondering about code. It is straightforward because remarkable tourist destinations are within a few hours driving distances from me. I don’t need to postpone them for a single vacation period per year. It’s enough to find a long weekend, and I can swim under waterfalls or lay on a beach.

I also sometimes work during my trips to spend more time in new places without using so many days off. I did this, for instance, during my trip to Vietnam a few years ago.

Back when I still used to believe that working on a beach or next to a swimming pool is a great idea

The other significant benefit of working remotely is that I can go back to Poland when convenient. It’s vital to me because I want to keep in touch with my family and friends. It is now possible to stay in my hometown for a few months during the summer season and then return to the Philippines (at least, it was easy before the virus outbreak :). I love this freedom.

Now I can’t even imagine returning to the old lifestyle when I was cramped in one city and had to go to an office every day.