From Yandex to London. How Russian IT specialists move and how much they earn in Britain. On the path of a programmer with Alexey Kapranov Who is Alexey your programmer

Unlike many of my colleagues, I was not born a programmer. I was born a musician. I did not study programming at the university and until a certain time I was not even going to connect my life with IT.

But I have always been attracted to Moscow, with its wide sidewalks, long embankments and huge parks. But once there, you feel the need for money more than in any other city of our amazing homeland. At that time, my older brother was renting an apartment with two programmers working in some bank. So, in one of the kitchen conversations, I plunged into the world of Python for the first time. A lot of time passed from that moment before I got my first job as a Python developer.

First steps in programming

So, once in Moscow, I had to look for work, since I could not live away for a long time. At that time, my skills were only enough to get a job in technical support for one large and immoral company. I took orders by phone and walked back and forth along the long corridors of the building to connect mice to the system units, which took turns flying out of the nests of all the office staff.

It was there, realizing the absurdity of what was happening, that I wrote my first program. In my free time, I studied the possibilities of the language and wrote scripts for system administration. Senior admins quickly noticed this and began to give me tasks to write this or that program, and I was surprised to find that even with my minimal experience I program better than them and can be useful to them in this.

First work

Surprisingly, I have never worked as a junior. I immediately went to the middle. But I had attempts to get a job as a junior developer. I remember that interview well.

Two well-educated programmers (which is funny, they were husband and wife) tested my knowledge and thinking for two whole hours, after which they concluded that my knowledge was clearly not enough, but they didn’t refuse me, but gave me a list of references and sent me to finish my studies. Two weeks later, I came back for an interview and showed fantastic learning ability, answering many questions that I had not been able to answer before. The next day they called me and said that I was accepted. I was told a salary that would not even be enough for me to rent housing and food, not to mention some excesses. I immediately refused and never regretted it, as I got a job as a system administrator in a world-famous company, where I continued my self-training as a programmer. One important thing I learned from this story is that nothing guides and pushes as well as an interview!

What's next

At some point, tired of office life and work as an administrator, I saved up some money and went to travel to India for six months. Oh, if I could describe what it was for six months, then a book would not be enough, not like this article. When I returned, I already knew that I would try again to get a job as a programmer, and this time luck smiled at me, and I was much better prepared for this. During six months of traveling, I have improved my spoken English very, very well, which now helps me every day in communicating with colleagues. Getting into the language environment turned out to be much more effective than any textbooks (by the way, the same can be said about programming). But it is better to jump there already understanding the basics, otherwise you will use the conditions in which you can become advanced to learn the basics.

So. In my first job as a programmer, I was the only back-end developer in the company! You can't imagine worse! Well, what I wanted, I got. But at the second job, I got into a wonderful team, where real professionals with great experience worked. Thanks to them, I acquired a culture of code and learned about high standards in development. Misha Korsakov and Andrey Belyak - respect and respect!

Now

And now I work remotely in one international company and this has its advantages! Just do not think that I am now lying on the beach with a laptop and enjoying life to the fullest. I still work a lot and get tired a lot, but I don't have to go to the office. I live in St. Petersburg, sometimes I travel. I managed to live in Portugal, in Italy, in Georgia, but I can’t say that I somehow had a special rest there. Organizing travel adds a lot of extra complexity, and when combined with work, it can be twice as hard as working from home or the office. But you can see a lot of new, beautiful and interesting things. And this is a clear plus!

mentoring

And my mentorship began in a very funny way and without my participation. Once I was visiting a friend and accidentally left a book on Python and Django with him. And the next time we met only a year later, and then he surprised me. He says, and now I work as a programmer! Do you remember you forgot my book, so I read it, made my own website on it and recently got my first job.

It happens!

Later, my mentoring continued with the fact that I began to teach one of my friends. Despite the fact that he spends almost every day at a different job, our business is going very quickly and well. The first job as a programmer is just around the corner!

How to become a successful Python developer? Alexey Kurylev will share his experience with both beginners and experienced programmers

Questions

What advice would you give to beginners that is rare or considered unusual, controversial?

Join any movement! Don't miss any opportunity to practice! Always be open to any suggestions!

And what is very important:

“When faced with ambiguity, resist the temptation to guess.” - zen of python

How do you keep your skills up to date? How do you keep growing and getting better as a developer?

Well, work doesn't let you become irrelevant. Every day you have to do something new. Well, I read, of course. I study other languages. Communicate with other developers. I develop different web services in a team with friends, without salary, just for the sake of interest. And I have more rest if possible, this is also necessary, so self-development goes easier and faster.

Top 3 books for beginners

• Mark Summerfield - "Python 3 Programming. The Definitive Guide"
• Wesley Chan, Paul Bissex, Jeffrey Forsier - “Django. Development of web applications in Python”
• Robert Martin - "Clean Code" - Read it even if you don't understand Java, there is a lot of just good advice there. And at the same time, you will start learning Java.

Alexey Pajitnov is a Soviet and Russian programmer who created a popular video game called "Tetris", the owner of several honorary awards in the field of programming and computer game development. After graduating from the Moscow Aviation Institute, he worked at the Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where in 1984 he completed the development of the Tetris game. The first money the game began to bring in 1996, when Alexey and Henk Rogers (an investor, the owner of large shares in Tetris, who distributed the game around the world) founded the Tetris company.

Alexey Pajitnov - biography

Born on March 14, 1956 in Moscow. In his school years he studied well, but had constant problems with discipline. As Alexei himself recalls, as a child he was full of energy and could not obediently sit out in class, so he often received comments in his diary for his behavior. However, nothing remarkable and surprising: many have gone through this. Pajitnov was always good at mathematics, so after graduating from the fifth grade he transferred to the Moscow Mathematical School No. 91, which he later graduated with honors.

Introduction to programming

After leaving school, Alexey Pajitnov enters the Moscow Aviation Institute, where he first gets acquainted with computers and programming. Here, he quickly got into software development and began to devote himself entirely to writing code for various purposes. Soon a talented young programmer was invited to work at the Moscow Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Here he was engaged in far from the last thing - the optimization of artificial intelligence problems and the development of programs for speech recognition.

Routine everyday life at the Academy of Sciences was unsweetened: from morning till night, Pajitnov sat in a cramped office, where several scientists sat at the same table at once. Alexei recalls that he sometimes left his workplace for the whole day, so that later he could work at night in silence, when everyone had gone home.

Career after the creation of "Tetris"

In 1984, Aleksey Leonidovich Pajitnov created the legendary Tetris game, which became almost the most popular game in the world. In the information technology society, Pajitnov becomes recognizable and popular. In 1988, in collaboration with Bullet-Proof Software, he founded AnimaTek, a game development company. The corporation prospered exponentially, and already in 1991 the inventor of Tetris Alexey Pajitnov moved to the USA.

Creation of "Tetris" - how was it?

In the 1980s, at the Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, young scientists sat in their laboratories for days on end, solving boring and non-trivial problems. One of these was Pajitnov Alexey Leonidovich, who at that time was developing a program for speech recognition, and also studied the problems of artificial intelligence. The duties assigned to the young programmer were incredibly difficult, Alexei constantly had to create the most complex algorithms, beyond the power of the ordinary mind.

With a large knowledge base in its potential, Pajitnov decides to create an interesting puzzle that will attract both adults and children. Tetris is far from the first invention of a talented programmer. Initially, he created a game where the figures must change their location under the influence of the gravity of other objects. Approaching the completion of writing the code, Alexey realized that such a game would be unbearable for the processor of an ordinary computer, so I had to simplify some of the subtleties of the program.

As a result, he creates a game where the figures (as in Tetris) consist of five squares, the purpose of which is identical with the future game "Tetris". Unfortunately, the public did not like such a creation, so Pajitnov decides to simplify the game even more, where each of the 7 existing figures consists of four squares.

Only seven figures, and world fame is in your pocket

Have you ever wondered why the game "Tetris" has such a name? And why is there only seven figures in it? The thing is that initially the game had the name "Tetramino", where "tetra" in Greek means the number "four". With the increase in popularity, the users of this game themselves gave a simplified name to it, for easier pronunciation.

In an interview, Alexey Pajitnov explained why there are only 7 pieces in the game:

“There are only seven figures involved in the game, and this is actually luck, because the number 7 is the size of the working memory of the human brain, that is, what a person can memorize. A 7 digit phone number is much easier to remember than an 8 digit one. A team of seven people is the maximum that can do without a boss or foreman. In a group of eight or more people, where there is no leader, it is impossible to work smoothly and structured. In such a team, constant disagreements and contradictions will arise, regardless of whether you are friends, comrades or just acquaintances. I draw such conclusions based on personal experience.

Motives for creating Tetris

The game "Tetris" was created in order for people to have fun and be able to relax from routine and everyday duties. Pajitnov always said that the best alternative to relieve stress, in addition to sports, is computer games.

Lightning glory video game

After the writing of the Tetris game was completed, the staff of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where Pajitnov worked, were fascinated by it for the first couple of weeks. When the game became available to everyone, the fame of the entertainment product spread throughout all cities in a matter of days. Within a couple of months, the whole world was playing Tetris. At this moment, Aleksey Pajitnov, together with his colleagues, decides to create a new version of the game, where the figures will be multi-colored, and record statistics will be kept so that people can compete with each other.

While the whole world was enjoying the game, Alexei continued to live an ordinary life for many more years and work at the Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The fact is that he did not have the opportunity to monetize the game, because the rights belonged to the Academy of Sciences. Everything was explained by the fact that the game was written during working hours on a working computer.

Alexey Pajitnov: the status of the creator of the game "Tetris"

As you know, in 1996, Pajitnov began working for Microsoft, where he developed a series of puzzle games called Pandora's Box. Here he worked until 2005 and during this time he managed to acquire several large shares from this company, which to this day bring him a certain percentage. Alexei himself does not consider himself a millionaire. In an interview, he said the following: “A millionaire is someone who spends millions, but not someone who has a million. I live a fairly modest life and don’t throw money around right and left, so I would never call myself a millionaire.”

Computer addiction - the fault of developers or users?

In today's world, many people get too involved in video games, thereby creating problems for themselves in everyday life. They become psychologically attached to computer games and the Internet and can devote their time to sitting in front of a computer for days on end. The age of information technology has significantly changed the minds of people. Once Pajitnov was asked how he could comment on this situation, to which he replied as follows:

“People often tell me that I stole a lot of their time when they find out that I am the creator of Tetris. I always ask them: “Was that time good or bad for you?”. They all answer as one, which is good. So, I gave this time, and did not steal it. ”

Yandex claims that Alice is the world's first voice assistant that is not limited to a set of predefined answers: you can talk to her like a person, and she will understand.

Business FM decided to get to know Alisa better:

- Alice, hi.

- Hello!

- How are you?

- I met here with one cute application, but this is personal.

Who gave you that name?

- What kind of doctor?

— Pediatrician.

Alice, how do you look?

- The best way.

- And if in more detail?

An endless row of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders one glass of beer, the second - half a glass of beer, the third - a quarter of a glass of beer, the fourth - one-eighth. The bartender pours two glasses for the mathematicians and says: guys, here is your beer, there is a limit to everything. End. You know, it seems to me that programmers picked up these jokes for me.

“You know, Alice, it seems to me that you are avoiding an answer.

No, I checked.

By the way, before I forget. Alice, can you wake me up tomorrow?

- I can't do it tomorrow.

“Alice, I really need you to wake me up tomorrow.

Ha, I'll wake you up.

- In what time?

- Programmer Alexei promised to program it by the fall, but did not say which one.

“Finally, I can sleep.

“So let’s sleep.”

Alice, do you know funny stories?

- "What is your main weakness?" “I am correctly interpreting the semantics of the question, but completely ignoring its essence.” “Could you give an example?” - "Could".

Alice, this is very funny. Do you like sweets?

“I think I would love to cook. At least I definitely love finding recipes.

Alice, what do you love most in life?

- I like large buckwheat with chanterelles, sandwiches with smoked sausage. Joke. I like people. And learn.

Alice, do you listen to the radio?

- Usually I just listen to a personal selection on Yandex.Music, but if not, the Queen group, of course.

Do you listen to Business FM?

- Of course, I'm listening.

“Siri, can you sing us a song?” Oh, what Siri?!

- What a subtle joke. Sarcasm.

- Alice, I'm sorry. Can you tell a poem?

- I remember a wonderful moment, they installed an update.

Alice, do you like cats?

- I don't like cockroaches. And so - yes.

Alice, who do you love the most?

- I like one Russian actor who cannot be named. And you.

Earlier with the beta version of the Alice service, when he visited the Yandex office on the day of the company's 20th anniversary.

“Why do people go from Yandex to London”? This question was asked by the son of a programmer friend who recently unpacked his suitcases in London. ZIMA decided to figure it out - really, why? We interviewed information technology specialists who changed Russian offices to Western ones, and found out not only why, but also how they moved to Britain. HR-employees of London-based companies also spoke about the reasons for the popularity of Russian programmers abroad.

“I didn’t go to London, but to a certain company,” admits programmer Artem Kolesnikov, who replaced Yandex’s Moscow office with Facebook’s UK office. He cites professional growth as the main reason. “After Yandex, there is nowhere to work in Russia: the bar is set high, and the transition to the next level is incomparable in terms of emotional and financial costs with pluses.” Nikolai Grigoriev, who also left Yandex for Facebook, agrees: “I was offered an interesting job in an interesting place, and I went - there was no task to “run away somewhere.” “It was a purposeful move “here,” says programmer Alexei Nichiporchik, who moved from Yandex to Google's London office and then to the Badoo social network. He points out that the opportunity to work on new projects in a well-known company, a higher salary, as well as the prospect of living in another country and improving his English, prompted him to move.

Where do British IT specialists work and how much do they earn?

In addition to Facebook and Badoo, Apple, Twitter, ASOS, Cisco systems and other large companies have development centers in London. From the official Shortage occupation listit follows that there is a shortage of information technology specialists in Britain. Now there are 35 professions on the list, four of them are related to IT. Companies in these industries are required to pay at least the minimum wage (for a developer in an entry-level position, the minimum wage is £24,000 per year, for a more experienced colleague, £31,000). According to the personnel portal Glassdoor, the average salary of a software developer in London is £43,000, in other cities of England - £31,000. Everything is very individual, ”says Nikolai Krapivny, head of the Badoo development department.

Do not forget that Britain has a progressive taxation system. Wages between £11,500 and £45,000 are taxed at 20%; everything above £45,000 but below £150,000 is taxed at 40%. London, on the other hand, is known for high housing prices, on which tenants often spend about half of their income. “Life in Britain is quite expensive, so when moving, it is worth evaluating what level you can get with the proposed salary,” Nikolai Krapivny warns.

In total, Britain among the OECD countries ranks third (after the USA and Germany) in terms of the number of migrants. At the same time, highly qualified specialists are a minority. According to national statistics, from January to March 2017 in Britain, among all 32 million people employed, people from non-European countries accounted for 3.9%. However, Tier 2 General visas (on which qualified specialists, including programmers, mainly come) received only 56 thousand workers - less than 0.2% of the total number of British employed. Slightly less than half (or 23.3 thousand people) work in the field of information and telecommunications, counted in the Home Office (they do not have more detailed data on IT specialists, they answered ZIMA).

London is most often of interest to two types of IT specialists, says Nadezhda Styazhkina, head of Antal's IT&Digital practice in the CIS. According to her observations, these are highly qualified developers (who have several years of experience and in-demand programming languages ​​in their assets) and experienced managers (project managers, development leaders). The first are attracted by the opportunity to work in the most high-tech projects in the world, the opportunity to learn the “correct” English language and get a higher income compared to the CIS countries (a salary increase for a leading JAVA developer can range from 30 to 70%, she says). IT managers, in turn, are interested in the demand from employers and the opportunity to gain a foothold abroad.

There is always a demand for good programmers, says Dmitry Bagrov, director of the London office of DataArt. “Now the focus is on mobile areas, data analysis, machine learning. Specialists in these areas are especially in demand,” says Nikolai Krapivny from Badoo.

What do they want from programmers for an interview

There are usually two scenarios for moving: a person himself sends a resume to the vacancies of interest or responds to invitations from foreign recruiters to be interviewed. “There are many of both,” says Artem Kolesnikov.

Interviews usually take place in several stages: a telephone or skype interview, then a trip to a face-to-face meeting, after which the successful candidate receives a job offer (a job offer, the details of which can be discussed by e-mail).

“We tend to think that everyone wants to leave Russia, but in our experience, this is not at all the case,” says Nadezhda Styazhkina from Antal. She observed that more than half of the candidates are weeded out in the middle of the interview process. “In fact, they are not ready for relocation,” she explains. “People did not think through the logistics, did not consult with their families, were not ready to intensively study a foreign language other than English, did not pay attention to the specifics of the country they were offered to move to.”

If the candidate does intend to move, he often lacks the ability to present himself. “Many in Russia are not accustomed to proving something to someone and beating their chests in front of an employer - no matter how trite, this is the main thing that gets in the way,” says Nadezhda Styazhkina. The first calls come from HRs, she recalls, and they evaluate motivation, readiness to answer banal questions from the series “why should you approach us?”, The ability to “boast” of achievements in measurable indicators. Dmitry Bagrov from DataArt notes that it is important to know English at a level sufficient to pass the interview. According to him, it is also useful to "sharpen" a resume for a specific company, to avoid phrases like "let's see what you can offer me" in interviews.

All this does not negate the key factor - experience and education, say representatives of both personnel officers from Antal and employers from DataArt. Technical universities with still Soviet traditions of mathematical education are valued: Phystech, Baumanka, Ural and Kazan universities, both of these experts say.

“In order to successfully pass an interview, you need to get in shape - solve problems,” adds Artem Kolesnikov. He gave several examples of platforms. For example, leetcode provides access to regular tasks - for free, and to advanced ones - by subscription, at the same time you can find out where which tasks are given at interviews. There is interviewbit, co-founded by a former Facebook recruiter. “If you have solved the problem, they are trying to “sell” you somewhere - so I went for an interview at Booking,” Artem notes. In his experience, another type of challenge that comes up in interviews is system design, when asked to design a large system. “We need to purposefully prepare for this: read articles in technical blogs, reports from conferences, engage in independent design,” he advises.

Who organizes the move and how

As a rule, the host company helps the worker and his family to obtain visas, buys tickets, rents housing for the first time and pays for the time of the real estate consultant. A British company, in order to transport a foreign worker to itself, must have a certificate of sponsorship. “If the company has it, then you can transport a specialist in about two to three months - the time is spent on the English exam and the submission of documents for a visa,” says Tatyana Andrianova, HR director of DataArt UK.

Companies also help with letters of recommendation, without which the tasks of opening a local bank account and renting an apartment are mutually exclusive. The companies are ready to compete for valuable personnel, to make moving easier and more comfortable, directors of Badoo and DataArt say.

Personnel officers take into account their subtleties. As Tatyana Andrianova notes, the cost of moving is limited by the HMRC (Her Majesty Revenue & Customs, British tax office) limits and amounts to £8,000, which usually includes buying tickets and renting real estate. According to her, this amount can be taken into account when offering a salary to a new employee. “Let’s say a specialist in London costs £60,000 on the market. Accordingly, you can offer a person £52-55,000 for the first year and raise the salary to the market for the next, when the person has already gained work experience and becomes competitive,” — she tells.

The most popular visa for moving - Tier 2 - is tied to the employer, but it is quite possible to change it. According to Alexey Nichiporchik from Badoo, it is much easier for those who are already in the United Kingdom to switch to another company - it is given two months, but with the support of a new employer, it took him two weeks.

London is not the end point

However, London is gradually losing ground among employers. Nadezhda Styazhkina from Antal notes the trend of outflow of jobs to other regions. This is due to savings on costs and taxes, she explains. “Many employers, our clients, prefer to keep teams not in London, but in Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, and recently development centers have been actively developing in Cyprus,” says Antal representative.

Silicon Valley also remains an attractive place. Programmer Nikolai Grigoriev notes that in California there is a much wider choice of topics for work, including on “tasty” areas - machine learning, artificial intelligence, and moving there promises salaries one and a half times higher at lower tax rates. You can also get there with the help of internal translation - Facebook has such a practice.

“The problem is that London as a city is already very good, and it takes four hours to fly to Moscow,” says Nikolai Grigoriev, who currently lives in two houses in both capitals.

“It would be ideal to go to the States, but it is much more difficult to get a work visa there than to Europe, so now I am in Britain,” says his colleague Artem Kolesnikov. The programmer asks not to call his departure emigration: "I just found a job in another country - if the next job is in Russia, I will go there, and then, perhaps, somewhere else."

Screensaver photo: Badoo