Alexey Pajitnov: biography and achievements. Pajitnov Alexey Leonidovich is a Russian programmer. On the path of a programmer with Alexei Kapranov How is the programmer Alexei doing there

“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 "we'll 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 work of a 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

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. It was here that 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. Alexey 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, Alexei Pajitnov, moved to the United States.

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, Alexey Pajitnov, together with his colleagues, decides to create a new version of the game, where the figures will already 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. ”

“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 was not going to London, but to a certain company,” admits programmer Artem Kolesnikov, who replaced the Moscow office of Yandex with the British office of Facebook. 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 the London office of Google, and then to the social network Badoo. 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 list it 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 are required to pay professionals in these industries no less than the minimum wage (for a developer in an entry-level position, the minimum salary 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 Nikolay 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,” warns Nikolai Krapivny.

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 employees. 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,” Artem Kolesnikov says.

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 Antal's Nadezhda Styazhkina. 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 people 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 terms. 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 "we'll 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 work of a 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 one, 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,” notes 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

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 requests by phone and walked back and forth along the long corridors of the building to connect the mice to the system units, which took off in turn from 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 administrators 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 job

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 could not 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.

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 the answer.

No, I checked.

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

I can't tomorrow.

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

Ha, I'll wake you up.

- At what time?

Programmer Aleksey promised to program it by autumn, but did not say which one.

- Finally, I can sleep.

So we'll 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, installed the 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.

Interview with entrepreneur Alexei Konyshev about attracting the first residents, the slowness of the regional administration and the revival of the village.

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Alexey Konyshev

In the summer of 2014, the developer and entrepreneur Alexei Konyshev published a column on the site about his project - the “village of programmers”. For four years, six families with children have built houses in his settlement, and Konyshev has established water supply, electricity and the Internet.

The entrepreneur told in more detail how he attracted the first residents and resolved issues with local officials.

Idea

Tell us about yourself. Who are you?

I am a development manager in a financial company. I work remotely. My experience is 12 years. At the age of 24, I moved from Kirov to Moscow and got a job at Yandex. When I first arrived, the capital evoked only positive emotions. I liked almost everything, and I was completely delighted.

In the outback, people are calmer, but in Moscow they are energetic, striving for something. Perhaps I confuse impressions from Moscow with impressions from Yandex, but at that time I, of course, could not separate them.

Then why did you leave Moscow and decide to create a “village of programmers”?

Over time, I began to pay attention to the disadvantages: traffic jams, poor ecology and high cost of services. In Kirov, everything was different. A simple example: in the summer in the outback, everyone regularly goes to swim in the river. The road to the beach takes no more than 10-15 minutes.

And when in Moscow we once decided to go to the beach with a company, we had to get up at four in the morning in order to get out of the city without traffic jams. And in the end, when a few hours later we got to the reservoir, there was already nowhere for the apple to fall.

And also the atmosphere. Over time, I began to notice that there are too many gloomy and aggressive people in Moscow, especially in the metro. Nerves are spent on any trip - either a taxi and traffic jams, or the subway and this darkness. In any case, this is a serious stress.

In addition, the safety of life in Moscow also raised certain questions. During this time, we twice heard skirmishes not far from home - although we tried to choose predominantly residential areas. There is simply no such phenomenon in Kirov.

If it's so good in Kirov, then why did you leave there?

Because there I could not earn the money that I would like. Yes, and the age was different, and when the family appeared, the priorities changed. In Moscow, I acquired certain skills through communication in a professional get-together. For the sake of this, it was worth leaving Kirov. And after that, the issue of earning money ceased to be so acute: they grew in proportion to my professional growth.

The decision was especially influenced by one weekend that my wife and I spent in the Kirov region, especially the evening before leaving for Moscow. Forest, sunset, gazebos on the river bank, smoke from barbecues, relaxed and cozy atmosphere.

And then I caught myself thinking: “How reluctant I am to drag myself to this damn Moscow.” I understood that I would fall into a roaring reinforced concrete hell, where the asphalt melts from the heat, where people scream and rush somewhere all the time. And I envied the vacationers on the shore that tomorrow they would wake up in the same unhurried and relaxed atmosphere.

12 years ago, Kirov seemed like an ass to me. And then I suddenly realized that the situation had changed, and it was I who ended up in the ass, leaving for Moscow.

For me, Moscow turned out to be a place where you can only earn money, but not live. Therefore, the decision was ripe to switch to remote work and move somewhere closer to nature.

I thought that I'm sure I'm not the only one, and other developers have similar needs. In 2012, I prepared the project "Programmers' Village" and published it on Habrahabr. There I found like-minded people.

I began to communicate with people who are trying to do something similar, but over time they abandoned projects.

For what reason?

Because it's hard. It is very pleasant to talk about the village where only programmers will live, to dream about how everything will be arranged there. But in practice, everything requires a lot of effort and time. Therefore, when everything came to real and concrete steps for people, they abandoned the idea.

I planned to find land somewhere in the Central Federal District or the Kirov Region - this is a land of forests with good ecology - and distribute it into small plots for individual housing construction: individual housing construction. In addition, I was going to build public facilities: coworking, sports and playgrounds, arrange recreational areas, and install the Internet. It was important for me to create a comfortable social environment.

At the very beginning, I did not know how much plots in the regions cost and how to solve the issue of communications - water and electricity. Therefore, I wanted to develop the project in partnership with the state or a major developer.

It seemed to me that working with a developer was the most successful option: he would build everything we needed and “recapture” the costs, and we would get space to live.

It seems that they are not interested in the project. With whom exactly did you negotiate, and why did they refuse?

Many with whom. Of the largest - with "Morton". The main reason for failures is unprofitability. I thought that with their help I would be able to make a village for a thousand inhabitants with basic infrastructure - a feldsher-obstetric station, a kindergarten and a school.

For a house with an area of ​​100 m², you would have to pay 5 million rubles. I calculated the cost of construction - it turned out to be extremely expensive, I did not want to overpay.

We had a conflict of interest - I understood that the settlers would not be ready to get into a mortgage for many, many years. One of the criteria for the optimality of the project was the low price.

In parallel, I tried to negotiate with the administration of some district of the Kirov region, so that they would help us with the land. I even wrote about my idea to the governors of neighboring regions. But there was no answer.

Kitchen-dining room of one of the houses in the village

Buying a plot

In the end, guys from the administration of one district in the Kirov region became interested in our project. Together with them and a group of potential residents from different regions of the country, we went to the site. Everyone liked everything and it seemed that we agreed.

Representatives of the administration said: “Everything is fine, register the company, write an application, we will now issue an order for land surveying.” After that, an auction would be announced for the site, and we could get the right to a long-term lease.

They promised to issue an order in a week, but then the case stalled. I wrote to them, and they fed me “breakfasts”. As a result, they released the document only four months later.

Naturally, all this time I did not sit idly by, but looked for other options. In addition, I understood that if they spent so much time preparing an insignificant piece of paper, then what to say about the main documentation.

Then I decided to buy land from my hands: I began to study the ads on Avito and figure out what I can afford. As a result, I looked after a plot of 17 hectares, four kilometers from the town of Slobodskaya - it is only 35 kilometers from Kirov. A little over 30 thousand people live in Slobodskoye.

I was bribed by the location - the site is surrounded on three sides by a pine forest (and if you walk to Slobodsky, then you go through the forest halfway), and on the fourth side a pond adjoins it.

It turned out that our future village, on the one hand, would be such a protected area, and on the other, would be close to civilization. We wouldn't have problems with infrastructure - schools, hospitals, food. I have not seen another site with similar characteristics at the same price.

How much did you pay for it?

Taking into account interest on installments - about two million rubles. On the one hand, it is inexpensive, and on the other hand, most of the costs in such a project are communications. For example, in 2017 alone, 1.5 million rubles had to be spent on the construction of a road to the site. However, it is not finished yet.

Where did they get the money for the purchase?

Two million with a programmer's salary is quite a lifting amount. Especially if you take the plot in installments.

First of all, I made a survey and "cut" the land into plots for sale to the settlers. In total, I got 60 plots of approximately 12.3 "acres". In addition, there is space for public and recreational areas. On the shore of the pond, I wanted to make a beach and build a boat station.

Site plan. Gray zones - unoccupied area for residential buildings, purple - purchased plots. Yellow - recreational buildings. Green rectangle - space for public spaces

How much time and money did you spend on land surveying?

30-40 thousand rubles. But I was wrong - I did not check the contractor and ordered the services of an outsider company. As a result, instead of four months, I spent a year - there were many agreements with the local administration.

How were the settlers searched?

Since the time of the article on Habrahabr, we have formed a community of like-minded people. One of them - Vanya - became the first participant of the project. It was his energy that did not let me give up on this difficult path.

Vanya was the first to pay for his land in 2014 and began construction even before the land survey was completed. In 2015, he already moved into his house.

Risk taker.

In fact, I perfectly understand that in the beginning it all looked like a scam. We only had a field without a road. No one knew what would happen next: in order to decide to buy a plot, a certain level of faith in humanity was needed.

But then, when I began to slowly fulfill my promises - I installed the Internet, plumbing, the road - it became easier. There are no questions about trust. Therefore, for each subsequent buyer, the site will cost 20 thousand more.

The prime cost of the plot, taking into account the summed up communications, is 500 thousand rubles. Ivan bought his land for 120 thousand rubles. Now the plot is worth 360 thousand rubles.

Six families live on the territory of the village, the seventh house is being completed - most likely, its owners will move into it by the summer. Over the past year, three children have been born in our settlement.

Note: the area of ​​the house is 112 m². The price of the plot includes water supply, electricity, internet and road.

Arrangement of the future village

Was it difficult to bring communications to the "field"?

Yes, the whole story. The easiest way to solve the problem was with electricity. By law, if your site is located at a distance of up to 500 meters from the nearest electric pole, then you are required to connect for free.

The issue of water was also not difficult: a contractor was found, he drilled a well, installed pipes, a pump and an accumulator, and made the wiring for the sections.

The hardest part was getting the internet. At some point, I was ready to give up and give up the fight.

At first, we planned to lay an optical fiber from the city of Slobodskaya. We thought: “What is it, only four kilometers, 20 thousand rubles per kilometer is nonsense.” Well, plus the cost of digging a channel for laying the cable - we planned to spend no more than 200 thousand rubles.

We were embarrassed only by the fact that we would have to dig through the forest. And it is valid - according to the law it is practically impossible to make. The land is owned by the State Forest Fund, and at the first contact, representatives of the department began to dissuade us from this undertaking.

Listen, boy, do you have the ability to lay cable outside the forest?

How else can I continue it? On three sides around our village is a forest.

It's up to you, but you're tormented to agree on the project. Or you will pay fines every year.

They said that the agreement is so tricky that not even all cellular operators manage to pass it: they spit, lay lines and pay fines.

We didn't want to pay the fines. And the approval would take a year and a million rubles per kilometer of cable. There are absolutely wild requirements for the project: you need to take soil samples every N meters, carry out hydrogeological work, and so on.

At this moment, residents whose work depends on the Internet have already arrived. We have already begun to lean towards the option with a "radio relay" - a metal support with equipment aimed at the base station of a cellular operator. In this case, the "width" of the channel for the entire village would be only 100 Mbps, so the option with a "radio relay" was not the most rosy.

In parallel, I negotiated with Rostelecom, and in 2016 we reached an agreement. The company was laying its fiber optic line near our village. As a result, we paid 1.1 million rubles for a kilometer of cable to us.

I offered them different options: “Let me dig a trench myself, lay the cable and give it to you?” They are in no way: “We can’t according to the law: they won’t let the FAS pass.”

I didn’t give up: “Let’s hire us as contractors, and we will do everything through subcontractors?” This did not suit them either: “Sorry, we can only have one contractor under the tender.”

And finally: “Let me sell you this line?” This option also did not work: "We have an order from the management - do not buy any lines." In the end, they had to pay the full price.

But now every tenant has Internet with a channel width of 100 Mbps. And the service costs 300 rubles. Ping is very small - even I did not have such Internet in Moscow.

Did you ever feel like you were playing Civilization in the real world?

Certainly. I even wanted to write on the site that I plan to build a barn, a bazaar and a library ( the first three buildings in the game Sid Meier's Civilization - website), but in the end he didn’t - he was afraid that not everyone would understand the joke.

"Village of programmers"

How much personal money did you spend on this project?

Unfortunately, I didn’t keep clear accounting and I can’t distinguish: these are the amounts I spent on living, but these are the ones I spent on the project. But if you figure it out - you get about 11 million over the past five years. This does not include proceeds from the sale of plots. With them, the amount will be even higher.

Are you going to make money on this project, or is your main task to break even?

Good question. I think going to zero is a more realistic scenario. Of course, it would be nice to make money: on commercial infrastructure or in some other way. But it is better to think about how to break even.

Life in the village

What infrastructure facilities are there in the settlement besides houses?

Recently completed playground and slide. In addition, we are completing the construction of the hotel - I think we will finish it this year. This is a place for those who come to see how we live. So they can stop for a few days and then make a more informed decision. Nothing else.

Where do you buy groceries?

in Slobodsky. There are no problems with groceries - once a week we buy in bulk and fill the refrigerator, and during the week we buy what we need when we take children to circles and sections.

Circles and sections?

Yes. For example, in a chess club. By the way, I recently learned that the World Blind Chess Champion lives in Slobodskoye. There is also a music and art school, a hand-to-hand combat section, a dance club and courses in robotics.

There are 10 schools in Slobodskoye, two of them with in-depth study of humanitarian or technical subjects. Some residents prefer home education - they themselves take care of children, take them to school only for control and verification work.

In general, I do not think that the quality of education correlates with the distance from Moscow. On the contrary, I do not believe in the quality of public education in the capital - a teacher's salary is not enough to survive. In the Kirov region, teachers receive enough to pay for housing, food, and spend on other needs.

A commercial education in Moscow costs so much that for this money you can invite tutors in Kirov every day in all subjects.

Construction of a children's town

What do you feel the need for?

At the moment - only in finance. I think that this year the dynamics of plot sales should change - since we have practically fulfilled our key obligations, and there will be more money for development.

Money will help solve all other issues. For example, residents most of all ask to build a sports center where you can play volleyball, football, badminton and work out on simulators. Residents also want coworking.

Have you contacted major Russian IT companies? Maybe one of them wants to become a sponsor of the project?

Oh sure. Before embarking on the project, I spent a year negotiating - including with IT companies. I spent a lot of time on preparation and correspondence, but to no avail: now there is a crisis in the country, and few people are interested in unpredictable investment projects.

Moreover, it is unlikely to pay off. Of course, in the future there will be more residents here - largely due to infrastructure facilities: co-working and a sports center.

But now I have no idea how to negotiate with a commercial partner without full involvement in the project. And investors are not interested in full entry into the project.

I already spent a year looking for them at the very beginning of the project, but I could develop the village. If some partner appeared on the horizon, of course I would gladly consider possible proposals. But I won't waste my energy searching. This option does not seem realistic to me.

What amount are we talking about? How much money do you need for coworking and sports center?

I think four million rubles. With large volumes, the cost per square meter will be 15-20 thousand rubles. Perhaps at the first stage it is worth making one building: half for coworking, half for a gym. And in the future - to move the simulators to a separate building.

And did you offer the tenants to "chip in" and build everything they need with their own money?

Yes, there is such an idea. It can be beneficial for existing residents to invest in infrastructure, and in the future (as shareholders) receive income from entrance fees. Of course, as the village grows.

But I don't think anyone is ready for it now. Buying a plot, building and finishing a house is a serious financial shock, from which no one has yet recovered. In addition, competent legal registration of such a scheme is a rather serious and expensive issue, so we have postponed its implementation for the future.

The interior of one of the houses.

Community

You only accept new tenants by request. Were there cases when someone had to refuse?

Yes. Most often this happens after studying profiles in social networks, when the adequacy of the applicant begins to raise questions. For example, if a person posts obscene pictures of drunk colleagues from the last corporate party, not really wondering if they like it or not.

Or when the whole wall is crammed with maniacal reposts about the decaying West and the good Putin (or about the decaying Putin and the good Navalny, it makes no difference).

We do not welcome extremism and obsession in any form. At the same time, people live in the village, often holding opposing views on many issues, but without excessive fanaticism.

To call a spade a spade, we have only one criterion for selecting new residents: don't be an asshole.

In addition, we retain a natural filter - to live in the village, you need to earn "remotely". Otherwise, it just won't work - there are not very many businesses in Slobodskoye that are ready to pay a normal salary.

And if the wife in the family is not a "remote worker", then you will refuse?

Of course not. In general, earnings are an internal affair of the family. So to speak, a natural filter, not an artificial criterion that we set.

The project website says that no one drinks or smokes in the village. Are these mandatory rules?

Oh, it's not like that anymore. As it turned out at the last New Year's holiday, some residents secretly bring alcohol into the village and drink it secretly from others, thus avoiding public censure.

Speaking seriously, in most families alcohol is not consumed on principle, and this is, as it were, the norm in the village. Therefore, all general events are held without alcohol, in addition to this, residents are not allowed to smoke and drink in all public areas.

When I first heard about your project, I imagined a village with smart houses and automated farms. Are you planning to implement such things?

Over time, of course. But there are things that need to be done first. For example, an automated farm will not work if you do not have internet or water on your site.

If you have some kind of minimal automation in your village, everyone will say about it: “Cool”. But no one will say: “Cool, you have a road, Internet and electricity.” Although these are the most expensive and time-consuming things.

Now all our resources are spent on the necessary things. But gradually we understand that the focus of problems is shifting from survival to development. Therefore, of course, in the future we will deal with automation.

I believe that everything in the country can change with the help of information technology. I had an interesting experience: the year before last, I proposed to the director of a local lyceum to launch free courses on modern web development for children.

The director wanted me to prepare students for the olympiads, but I insisted: “No olympiads, I will teach them how to earn money.” In about six months, the students mastered React and other technologies from the modern stack.

Unfortunately, I have no contacts for the kids - after graduation, they left Slobodskoye. But I have another example before my eyes - an acquaintance took this course himself for a year, and soon after graduation he began to earn 80 thousand rubles. Three months later - 120 thousand rubles, working remotely.

Now imagine how everything would change if in each village after the 11th grade 10-15 people graduated. They could earn 80-100 thousand rubles without leaving their locality.

The local economy would grow, and with it, the quality of life. So next year, I'm planning to host something like a summer camp for high school students who want to learn web development. So that they can live a healthy lifestyle in nature, and at the same time master modern technologies in an intensive mode.

How do you imagine that?

We will put up a shed on the site so that you can practice in any weather, organize meals with the help of catering and a small sports infrastructure (horizontal bars, table tennis and a sports ground).

This is how we combine professional and physical development - I think this should be extremely useful.

Where will they live?

In tents.

It sounds great, but I'm a skeptic - it seems to me that the initiative will be killed by local officials. They will say: "Your camp does not comply with sanitary rules and regulations."

Firstly, there are already events in a similar format in Russia. For example, "Summer Ecological School". By the way, the guys somehow contacted us and offered to hold their school at our base, but in the end they turned out to be not very contact.

Secondly, the issue of compliance with all the rules is the most important part of the whole event, and we want to make everything here as "tight" as possible.

If you could change the past, would you go back to the village?

Of course, if I went back to 2013, I would do a lot of things differently and fix the bugs that caused me to lose a lot of resources. But I can't imagine how I would live without this project.

Write

My way

Choice of profession I have been very predictable for others and incredibly surprising for me. The fact is that both my father and mother are programmers. From the first generation of Soviet computer scientists. Dad soldered these huge EU-ki, and mom loaded punched cards into them. At the same time, at school, I dreamed of becoming a chemist, then a biologist, and then an entomologist. I love nature very much.

But in the last classes (93-95) I got acquainted with computers, and I was completely sucked in.

First, endless computer science olympiads, then the first modem at home, then in our Bryansk Technical University they opened the specialty "Programming" and of course I passed it. I didn’t notice how the years passed, I woke up at about the 5th year, around the diploma, grieved for my school dreams for about 10 minutes and since then I have been working non-stop in my specialty.

I started working “for real” in my 3rd year, when, on my mother’s order, I began to write small things for the bank, where she then headed IT. First, some kind of file transcoders, then scripts in the Telemate terminal program for working with the cash settlement center, then there was a big project - the workplace of a currency teller. There was no Internet, as well as an abundance of books - he absorbed all the information that he could reach.

I read to the holes and manuals for Clipper, and the news of Turbo Pascal 7.0 in the magazine "Computer-Press". Tried all programs. So one day I brought home a FreeBSD disk and put it next to Dos. I got sucked in instantly: I completely abandoned FoxPro and Delphi, started writing in awk and Perl, and after two years managed to find a job at an ISP.

I had my idols: the industry is young, hot, everything is seething, every six months there is a discovery and a new star.

But mostly admired all sorts of great foreign scientists of course. Dijkstra, Diffie, Butch. Richard Stallman when I got older and wiser. Well, one of my mother's colleagues, a programmer from Bryansk, Leonid Osovtsov :) He was so alive, a real idol, not an icon. He left a long time ago, lives happily in Israel.

The main discovery of those times for me, the incredibly vast world of free software. One FreeBSD distribution disk contained more software than I had seen in all previous years under Dos. And none of them required a search for a serial number. Yes, and everything is in the source code. I quickly got involved in the development process, wrote patches, discussed with the developers. Somehow, at one moment, the computer turned from a slot machine and a typewriter into a window to the big world. The Internet consisted almost entirely of programmers, and therefore it was very easy for me then.

I quickly reached the ceiling in Bryansk and immediately after receiving my diploma, I left for Moscow. Artus, Agave, Inline, Channel One, Rambler. I worked at Rambler for 4 years, first I programmed web mail, then I created a department for 15 people for it and supervised it.

Approximately in 2002, having already moved to Moscow, I discovered Runet :) Having become deeply bogged down in the English-speaking environment (I don’t say “websites”, because at that time the Internet consisted not only of the web), I simply missed the moment of its appearance. I had to hurry up.

Need to

Now I work as a universal technical soldier in the startup NadoBy.ru. Formally, he is a technical director, but part-time also a system administrator, tester, architect, task manager, product and project manager, usability designer, layout designer and programmer in 3.5 languages. In general, I help my technical team of 4 people on all fronts. The tasks are mostly easy conceptually, but require a quick response in the face of a large number of unknowns. I try to assign interesting, large, creative tasks to employees, otherwise I can get carried away and go headlong into them for a long time, and then management suffers. [Editor's note: now, 4 years after this text was written, Alexey works in the Yandex postal department]

There are activities outside of work. Recently I have been associated with the organization of all kinds of technical conferences. I take part in the work of the Moscow group of Pearl programmers Moscow.pm. From time to time I create, support and participate in various open source projects. Interestingly, all this can be well combined with the ongoing process of self-education, so it turns out win-win.

Work in startups

I am sure that absolutely every person is obliged to work in a startup. And the sooner the better. For example, right after university or in the last years, when more or less free life circumstances allow you to safely take risks. A startup is a practice according to the principles of a market economy, resource management in the conditions of scarcity of these same resources, it is an opportunity for a specialist to understand why marketing is needed in principle, why people wear business suits and wear meaningless wristwatches, why advertising is a necessary evil, etc. e. You can continue indefinitely. I have all this happening right now, quite late, but what can you do.

In a startup, you learn differently - there are no difficult, complex, research tasks, but there are a lot of very urgent, very important and very small tasks. This is constant communication, partners-agents-clients, this is the experience of hiring not only the best, but also the cheapest people. I strongly recommend everyone to try it.

Ideal programmer

A few words about some ideal comrade in our profession, which I did not become, I will never become and will forever regret these two “not”.

This comrade should have realized very, very early that a programmer is a mechanic, from whom a machine is taken away every 15 minutes and a new, next model is brought.

There are a few important words here.

First, locksmith. A programmer-creator, a valuable person who quickly does a lot of good things - is far from being a creative or even a research profession, despite the halo with which it is shrouded to this day. For such a person, patience and perseverance are a hundred times more important than talent, abilities in mathematics and linguistics, and similar things that are praised at school.

Second, 15 minutes. The programmer is constantly learning. Just generally always. This is a common feature of many (if not all) young professions, but it doesn't mix well with locksmithing. With the fact that a person must be both an eternal student and a good worker. After all, as it is with working people - with your favorite hammer you can work perfectly, productively for 20 years. We have it the other way around. Although there is a separate big story about people who reach the level of creating their own machines.

Thirdly, this very machine. Now every programmer uses (the numbers are taken from the ceiling) 45 libraries, 5 frameworks, 2 text editors, 2 operating systems, 5 closely intertwined languages, 2-3 version control systems and many other tools, such as a bug tracker, a wiki environment, a debugger , profiler and so on. This is a really large and complex machine, almost the cockpit of an aircraft. The workplace itself has become a complex system, a CNC machine. People who thoroughly know one text editor and the C language are not applicable anywhere. (As a rule, they are very valuable in their places, but these places - one, two, and miscalculated).

Maybe...

There is a very good option for those who have doubts: go into science. I highly recommend. After the diploma, immediately look for a good graduate school in Europe or the USA and go to gnaw granite.

We, programmers, lack so many things, we really want as many people as possible to write articles, and not launch high-loaded projects or, God forgive me, search engine optimization. There are so many more interesting things to be discovered, so many foundations to be laid. Incredibly, it's 2010 and there is no artificial intelligence. Instead, a cluster of half a million servers shows ads, hundreds of chic distributed botnets send spam, and the idol of millions is the company that launched the first mass DRM. A disgrace, ashamed before the Universe.

If I had not become a programmer myself, I would have been a scientist, a 100% naturalist, most likely a biologist.

Why? Well, in general, I don’t understand people who choose a profession rationally, according to calculation. We had such guys at the institute - they went, for example, to study for the dull specialty "Turbines", because turbinists were taken to Gazprom. I see that for a modern person, work is a big and often the most important part of life, and it should be chosen only for love. I had my first love with biology, but then I left it for computer science.

Everyday life of a programmer

Now my work consists of filling the skeleton of the product task with “meat” and fully providing the programmer with the opportunity to completely solve it comfortably for himself. This is the job of a development director. In any startup, the technical director is first the development director, and only then the real technical director, that is, the supply manager. To be a household, you must first develop it.

All marginal places, integration moments, even just complex mistakes I control and correct myself in my free time. Everything is moving very fast, as I wanted, as I predicted. Every day I study. Every day I read blogs, not only because it is interesting, but also because it is impossible to do otherwise.

The bad thing is that there is too much business at work. I hate business, I love honesty, freedom and communism :)

Fortunately, I realized early on that only business guarantees freedom. Honesty, if you strain, you can observe in yourself and in those close to you, and we will build communism when we invent artificial intelligence that will get us free energy. As long as everything goes according to plan :)

The qualities that you need to try to develop in order to become an outstanding professional are:

• Patience. A programmer who has solved 10 problems 10 times is often better than another who has solved 100 different problems. Because (surprise) repetition is the mother of learning.
• Communications. Autistic programmers are no longer hired. As the industry matures, there are fewer worthwhile things you can do alone.
• Courage in taking risks.
• Ease of lifting.
• Blind print :)

Set high, worthy goals for yourself. Practice, practice, every day. In the morning, immediately after charging, half an hour or an hour of simple coding. Take good care of your health. Try not to eat, watch or read too much. Don't do useless things.

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. It was here that 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. Alexey 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, Alexei Pajitnov, moved to the United States.

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, Alexey Pajitnov, together with his colleagues, decides to create a new version of the game, where the figures will already 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. ”

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 requests by phone and walked back and forth along the long corridors of the building to connect the mice to the system units, which took off in turn from 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 administrators 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 job

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 could not 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.