Can a programmer become a factory director?
Surely many habrazhiteli worked in factories. Any more or less large production site will require IT specialists, at least system administrators. Often you can meet at the factory and the whole department of software development. Did it ever occur to you that working as an IT specialist at a factory would suddenly become its director? Not a "CIO", and thus the most important. It sounds like a very bold and unrealizable fantasy, which sometimes overwhelms us after the next antics of the authorities. “If I were the main one, I would definitely put such a careless person behind the door” - we think. Or something like that. It’s like to open a cabinet and get into Narnia: talking lions, unicorns, evil wizards and a programmer who suddenly became a director. This does not happen. But Russia is a land of opportunity, and everything happened to me like this.
I have already said that for our educational project we have allocated a place at the production site in Sokatovo. And he, sadly, quickly stalled. As usual, on the way there were ordinary everyday difficulties. At first glance, the place we got was wonderful - the factory had its own boiler room, a well with water, an Internet channel, a renovated hotel, almost ready rooms. Drive in, learn, learn and work. But on closer inspection, as always happens, a huge number of problems have come out. This is a Soviet factory of the 60s built, which in 2008 was bought by our St. Petersburg investor. A considerable amount of funds was invested in it - all the main systems brought to life, made a number of capital works and launched work on it. In general, for the plant, especially local - it is in excellent condition. However, he is still very far away from the former Soviet strength of four hundred. All systems were quickly being repaired, and from that moment more than five years have passed, so that the time of the consequences of too quick decisions during reconstruction has come.
When I got into all this, the director who headed the plant decided to leave. The owner did not mind, and it was necessary to urgently look for a new leader. The process naturally dragged on, and since I already had business experience, I was offered a short time to “look after” the production, since I didn’t care here. I was only for - when no one interferes from above, and it is not necessary to share the authority to work with anyone much easier. A day passes, another, a week, two ... And looking back, I suddenly found myself a factory director.
Since the production site has now become an integral part of our educational project, I want to share with Habr some of the unique experience for the IT specialist, which I managed to get. I, of course, did not meet Lviv and unicorns, but I definitely managed to look at our life in a different way. Below I will give a number of theses, seeming at first glance, more than trivial. They were obvious to me earlier (as well as obvious to you, I think), but I will try to explain them from the other side, with which I happened to look at them.
')
This, perhaps, was the most stunning discovery. Hell, these are actually two big villages. Living in St. Petersburg, I sincerely thought that Moscow is a village. I did not dissuade this, but I understood that my hometown is also a village. Our village (more than small) is located almost in the most remote place, which can be found here. We are right at the junction of Ivanovo and Vladimir regions, and that to one, that to another city is equally far. The nearest store where you can buy meat is 40 kilometers away. In the literal sense of the word - wilderness. But when I visited the hypermarket, where local villagers buy, my jaw dropped to the floor and periodically breaks it to repeat when I go there. At first, I thought it was my personal reaction, but later I watched it with my wife and my deputy, who also came here from St. Petersburg.
To get to this store, you need to overcome 50 km (entrance to Vladimir), but in reality it is only about thirty minutes by car. The choice here is twice as much as in any Okey, Lenta or Auchan. And it is not figurative. Products that we in St. Petersburg have to search all over the city, here we buy in one store. At the box office there are no queues even at rush hour. This is a brilliant decision, but cash desks simply work there, as long as necessary. There are monitors there, and you can see at what box office how much a person costs. There are terminals for payment with a touch screen and you do not need to try on the plastic visor of the ticket office, a pen that does not write, put something there ... But most of all I was impressed by the self-service cash registers. When I saw this, I involuntarily thought that people from them should make their purchases on antigravity carts to their personal shuttles and fly to their townhouse on the Moon.
No, seriously, even in McDonalds there are self-service terminals and there is no need to stand in lines. Terminal, plastic card, number plate, you sit and wait calmly. In our village 4G. In St. Petersburg, I don’t have 3G everywhere ...
We didn’t notice at all for our snobbery as completely lagging behind life. Yes, anyone knows that we are behind Europe. But we are also behind the province as well.
No, I do not call everyone to downshifting. But after living here, I began to understand how infinitely detrimental urban utilities. You know, here in the houses, as in the city, there is hot and cold water, and the same bathroom. Only here there is no such thing that there is already an oak on the street, and the batteries are still not drowning. Or vice versa - they have already been turned off. Or on the street, an easy minus, and the batteries are fried as if there is minus forty. In the summer turned off the hot water for a month? There is no such thing. Yes, honestly, I ran into serious problems with water, because in my house it was originally made in one place. But the rest here have no problems with utilities. At all. Well, filter, dual-circuit gas boiler. And that's all. Water does not smell like bleach, rust does not flow from the tap, and all this costs practically nothing. And for some reason the snow is removed here, no one is surprised that at the end of December a lot of snow suddenly fell. In the city, we pay a fortune for terrible service. And this is actually a real hell and completely incomprehensible backwardness for the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Getting an hour and a half to work here is unthinkable. For this you must work in another city. To live in Ivanovo, and to work in Vladimir, for example. Work at a distance of more than half an hour from home is very far away and people think very hard that they would get there. For this, the salary must be two times more.
Yes, there are serious problems with education and cultural leisure. Huge. But in reality ... do we not have them now in large cities?
This is a fairly common opinion, which is only half true. Indeed, there are enough people who earn little. Our factory is now the official salary of the workshop is ridiculous money. Even bonuses do not save the situation. But this is not true for everyone. There is no unemployment. There is only a shortage of personnel. Anyone with a specialty here comes off with his hands. Yes, they get a salary comparable to the average manager’s salary in St. Petersburg. But they do not pay horse utilities and do not spend half a salary (and life) on gasoline. And the clubs are not wandering. Yes, of course life is not a fairy tale, but it is not as terrible as we used to think about it.
Another story with those who do not have a specialty. How they live, I honestly still do not fully understand. Many of them drink, and as a result have even more problems with employment. but this is perhaps a topic for a separate article.
Our investor, sending me here, described what is happening around as a "depressed region." So maybe once was. And now do not say that there is rapid economic growth. But here and there there are shopping malls, somewhere factories and enterprises.
These times are often remembered and always a kind word. I have never heard here any memories of craters, repression, or something like that. I get the feeling that they were not there, and this is a purely urban problem. and maybe this is due to the fact that our village itself owes its existence to the USSR. The factory was built in the sixties, on the site of some old production. The plant itself is almost in the same form to this day and is in good condition. Under it was built several capital houses, and judging by the typical building of a number of village. Some machines, still those times, we use still. The plant had its own fire department, and the whole village was heated from its boiler room. Everything is good, thorough and in mind, what is done here refers to those times. Even the Internet, which was here until recently, we owe to our common communist past.
In fact, a significant part of the problems, at least in our district, is due to the fact that the state does not care about people at all. That is, in general. Yes, we have all sorts of macroeconomic programs, employment programs, national projects. But if someone up there wants to raise the real economy, then we need to deal with people. While not only young people. People should be given the opportunity to get a specialty. need to fight drunkenness. And not at all the way we do it now. All our laws struggle with drunkenness in the city, and here in the village have no effect whatsoever. At the same time, in the USSR they successfully fought against this, and this is generally not difficult for the state. But now - nothing is done.
In the city, any inspecting organization is a parasite from which you expect nothing good. You open a business - wait for the inspectors and inspectors to pounce on you for bribes and fines. Here the situation is much better. If you open or maintain an enterprise, organize workplaces, pay taxes, then they treat you accordingly, as a breadwinner. Inspections of course come, and demand what they are supposed to require. But terrible fines without a real reason do not write out, and they do not set anyone against you. In general, I would call the interaction with the state. organs even quite positive. And oddly enough, bribes are also not extorted, at least we have not yet encountered this. They say it happens, but the "prices" here are quite humane.
Living in the city, we completely forget that we are not just people - we are representatives of a great nation with a very difficult history. In the city, we are all just “citizens of the world”, and we do not feel ourselves to be part of our country. Many people write that going to opposition rallies have a special feeling of unity. In fact, this is simply due to the fact that we live in complete separation from the people around. We communicate with people from other countries as if they are right next to us, but often don’t know what our neighbors are called. What to say about your country? Today, in the next Internet dispute about different cities of our country, I asked the interlocutor - are you arguing, have you ever been to one of them? He answered me - why? I have google and yandex. If we are interested in something, we just google. And we have the feeling that we know our country.
No, we do not know. Most of them even have no idea. We say that foreigners do not understand what Russia is and be Russian. In fact, we ourselves do not understand, because living in a city, this is not understood. To do this, we must travel, and not through Egypt, Turkey and Thailand, but through the expanses of our homeland. Chat with people who live here. Not on Twitter, and in contact, but live. And then a completely different country opens up. Not Moscow Raska, but a great, eternal country, for which everything that we now consider important and significant is no more than another moment in its history.
Yes, these are the very “clamps” that everyone is laughing at now. This, of course, is really a bit strange, and it is even probably funny when the main godfather of the country speaks of certain “spiritual bonds”. But the fact is that we are really losing them, and without an understanding of our own origin, our history and our essence, who are we?
“He will stop the galloping horse” - it was not just said so. Leading IT projects of course you will not notice. The IT woman is a good theme for jokes, a rare funny animal, but in reality nothing is different from us men. The same programmer or admin, only with its own characteristics, which are lost against the background of the general specificity of people. And in general, working with people in IT you usually perceive them as independent and adult people, with your personal space and all that. It's not like that at all. For example, a conflict with an employee has arisen, explanatory work is not going on, and it hinders the work of colleagues. Further only dismissal. And I found a very unusual solution by city standards. It sounds funny, but ... I complained to his mom. The question was closed within five minutes. Or here's the story of drunkenness. In the process of combating drunkenness, I discovered that in all cases, without exception, people use alcohol directly in the workplace, they are always replaced by sober ones. And the answer is very simple - at home wife. If our country rests on something, then, perhaps, on our women.
You can read a lot of books on psychology about the "inner child" and so on, but for all our seriousness, we are real children. Speaking of IT people, we have become accustomed to jokes on this topic. But the workers, at least I, got used to think of as stern men. A great discovery for me was that they are the same children, it only manifests itself differently. I have already written above about “complaining to my mother,” but the fight against drunkenness is even funnier. They run, hide, look down ... Though put in a corner. For pulling alcohol in the fence, they make holes, go in "secret paths" ... We behaved like this in the first year university practice. But one thing, freshmen, but of the forty-year-old men, of course, is not expected.
This work is hard and difficult. But interesting, something new happens every time. In principle, not much different from the rise of any IT start-up. Open an online store? You inevitably plunge into the subject area - work with a warehouse, logistics, marketing. Here, in principle, everything is the same, only, as always, in its own way. And every day something new. That boiler in the boiler room flowed, then drunk at work, then we buy a new machine, or equipment. That products are new, new employees, new technologies.
I can not say that I recommend everyone to give up their IT and run to raise the industry. This job is not for everyone. But it is actually interesting and fascinating, and a sensible person will be useful not only for information technology, but also for production. And in fact, the province is a good prospect for business development. There are some peculiarities here - things that are very simple in the city (like internet connection) here turn into fascinating quests. But on the other hand there are many advantages - cheap land, fresh air, the absence of state pressure. Yes, about the price of wages here all the same lower than in the city, though not as much as you take to take.
I have already said that for our educational project we have allocated a place at the production site in Sokatovo. And he, sadly, quickly stalled. As usual, on the way there were ordinary everyday difficulties. At first glance, the place we got was wonderful - the factory had its own boiler room, a well with water, an Internet channel, a renovated hotel, almost ready rooms. Drive in, learn, learn and work. But on closer inspection, as always happens, a huge number of problems have come out. This is a Soviet factory of the 60s built, which in 2008 was bought by our St. Petersburg investor. A considerable amount of funds was invested in it - all the main systems brought to life, made a number of capital works and launched work on it. In general, for the plant, especially local - it is in excellent condition. However, he is still very far away from the former Soviet strength of four hundred. All systems were quickly being repaired, and from that moment more than five years have passed, so that the time of the consequences of too quick decisions during reconstruction has come.
When I got into all this, the director who headed the plant decided to leave. The owner did not mind, and it was necessary to urgently look for a new leader. The process naturally dragged on, and since I already had business experience, I was offered a short time to “look after” the production, since I didn’t care here. I was only for - when no one interferes from above, and it is not necessary to share the authority to work with anyone much easier. A day passes, another, a week, two ... And looking back, I suddenly found myself a factory director.
Since the production site has now become an integral part of our educational project, I want to share with Habr some of the unique experience for the IT specialist, which I managed to get. I, of course, did not meet Lviv and unicorns, but I definitely managed to look at our life in a different way. Below I will give a number of theses, seeming at first glance, more than trivial. They were obvious to me earlier (as well as obvious to you, I think), but I will try to explain them from the other side, with which I happened to look at them.
')
St. Petersburg and Moscow are not the centers of the world
This, perhaps, was the most stunning discovery. Hell, these are actually two big villages. Living in St. Petersburg, I sincerely thought that Moscow is a village. I did not dissuade this, but I understood that my hometown is also a village. Our village (more than small) is located almost in the most remote place, which can be found here. We are right at the junction of Ivanovo and Vladimir regions, and that to one, that to another city is equally far. The nearest store where you can buy meat is 40 kilometers away. In the literal sense of the word - wilderness. But when I visited the hypermarket, where local villagers buy, my jaw dropped to the floor and periodically breaks it to repeat when I go there. At first, I thought it was my personal reaction, but later I watched it with my wife and my deputy, who also came here from St. Petersburg.
To get to this store, you need to overcome 50 km (entrance to Vladimir), but in reality it is only about thirty minutes by car. The choice here is twice as much as in any Okey, Lenta or Auchan. And it is not figurative. Products that we in St. Petersburg have to search all over the city, here we buy in one store. At the box office there are no queues even at rush hour. This is a brilliant decision, but cash desks simply work there, as long as necessary. There are monitors there, and you can see at what box office how much a person costs. There are terminals for payment with a touch screen and you do not need to try on the plastic visor of the ticket office, a pen that does not write, put something there ... But most of all I was impressed by the self-service cash registers. When I saw this, I involuntarily thought that people from them should make their purchases on antigravity carts to their personal shuttles and fly to their townhouse on the Moon.
No, seriously, even in McDonalds there are self-service terminals and there is no need to stand in lines. Terminal, plastic card, number plate, you sit and wait calmly. In our village 4G. In St. Petersburg, I don’t have 3G everywhere ...
We didn’t notice at all for our snobbery as completely lagging behind life. Yes, anyone knows that we are behind Europe. But we are also behind the province as well.
Megapolis - a disgusting place to live
No, I do not call everyone to downshifting. But after living here, I began to understand how infinitely detrimental urban utilities. You know, here in the houses, as in the city, there is hot and cold water, and the same bathroom. Only here there is no such thing that there is already an oak on the street, and the batteries are still not drowning. Or vice versa - they have already been turned off. Or on the street, an easy minus, and the batteries are fried as if there is minus forty. In the summer turned off the hot water for a month? There is no such thing. Yes, honestly, I ran into serious problems with water, because in my house it was originally made in one place. But the rest here have no problems with utilities. At all. Well, filter, dual-circuit gas boiler. And that's all. Water does not smell like bleach, rust does not flow from the tap, and all this costs practically nothing. And for some reason the snow is removed here, no one is surprised that at the end of December a lot of snow suddenly fell. In the city, we pay a fortune for terrible service. And this is actually a real hell and completely incomprehensible backwardness for the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Getting an hour and a half to work here is unthinkable. For this you must work in another city. To live in Ivanovo, and to work in Vladimir, for example. Work at a distance of more than half an hour from home is very far away and people think very hard that they would get there. For this, the salary must be two times more.
Yes, there are serious problems with education and cultural leisure. Huge. But in reality ... do we not have them now in large cities?
In the provinces, people earn little
This is a fairly common opinion, which is only half true. Indeed, there are enough people who earn little. Our factory is now the official salary of the workshop is ridiculous money. Even bonuses do not save the situation. But this is not true for everyone. There is no unemployment. There is only a shortage of personnel. Anyone with a specialty here comes off with his hands. Yes, they get a salary comparable to the average manager’s salary in St. Petersburg. But they do not pay horse utilities and do not spend half a salary (and life) on gasoline. And the clubs are not wandering. Yes, of course life is not a fairy tale, but it is not as terrible as we used to think about it.
Another story with those who do not have a specialty. How they live, I honestly still do not fully understand. Many of them drink, and as a result have even more problems with employment. but this is perhaps a topic for a separate article.
Our investor, sending me here, described what is happening around as a "depressed region." So maybe once was. And now do not say that there is rapid economic growth. But here and there there are shopping malls, somewhere factories and enterprises.
People miss the times of the USSR
These times are often remembered and always a kind word. I have never heard here any memories of craters, repression, or something like that. I get the feeling that they were not there, and this is a purely urban problem. and maybe this is due to the fact that our village itself owes its existence to the USSR. The factory was built in the sixties, on the site of some old production. The plant itself is almost in the same form to this day and is in good condition. Under it was built several capital houses, and judging by the typical building of a number of village. Some machines, still those times, we use still. The plant had its own fire department, and the whole village was heated from its boiler room. Everything is good, thorough and in mind, what is done here refers to those times. Even the Internet, which was here until recently, we owe to our common communist past.
In fact, a significant part of the problems, at least in our district, is due to the fact that the state does not care about people at all. That is, in general. Yes, we have all sorts of macroeconomic programs, employment programs, national projects. But if someone up there wants to raise the real economy, then we need to deal with people. While not only young people. People should be given the opportunity to get a specialty. need to fight drunkenness. And not at all the way we do it now. All our laws struggle with drunkenness in the city, and here in the village have no effect whatsoever. At the same time, in the USSR they successfully fought against this, and this is generally not difficult for the state. But now - nothing is done.
Officials are not evil
In the city, any inspecting organization is a parasite from which you expect nothing good. You open a business - wait for the inspectors and inspectors to pounce on you for bribes and fines. Here the situation is much better. If you open or maintain an enterprise, organize workplaces, pay taxes, then they treat you accordingly, as a breadwinner. Inspections of course come, and demand what they are supposed to require. But terrible fines without a real reason do not write out, and they do not set anyone against you. In general, I would call the interaction with the state. organs even quite positive. And oddly enough, bribes are also not extorted, at least we have not yet encountered this. They say it happens, but the "prices" here are quite humane.
We lose our roots
Living in the city, we completely forget that we are not just people - we are representatives of a great nation with a very difficult history. In the city, we are all just “citizens of the world”, and we do not feel ourselves to be part of our country. Many people write that going to opposition rallies have a special feeling of unity. In fact, this is simply due to the fact that we live in complete separation from the people around. We communicate with people from other countries as if they are right next to us, but often don’t know what our neighbors are called. What to say about your country? Today, in the next Internet dispute about different cities of our country, I asked the interlocutor - are you arguing, have you ever been to one of them? He answered me - why? I have google and yandex. If we are interested in something, we just google. And we have the feeling that we know our country.
No, we do not know. Most of them even have no idea. We say that foreigners do not understand what Russia is and be Russian. In fact, we ourselves do not understand, because living in a city, this is not understood. To do this, we must travel, and not through Egypt, Turkey and Thailand, but through the expanses of our homeland. Chat with people who live here. Not on Twitter, and in contact, but live. And then a completely different country opens up. Not Moscow Raska, but a great, eternal country, for which everything that we now consider important and significant is no more than another moment in its history.
Yes, these are the very “clamps” that everyone is laughing at now. This, of course, is really a bit strange, and it is even probably funny when the main godfather of the country speaks of certain “spiritual bonds”. But the fact is that we are really losing them, and without an understanding of our own origin, our history and our essence, who are we?
Women - the stronger sex
“He will stop the galloping horse” - it was not just said so. Leading IT projects of course you will not notice. The IT woman is a good theme for jokes, a rare funny animal, but in reality nothing is different from us men. The same programmer or admin, only with its own characteristics, which are lost against the background of the general specificity of people. And in general, working with people in IT you usually perceive them as independent and adult people, with your personal space and all that. It's not like that at all. For example, a conflict with an employee has arisen, explanatory work is not going on, and it hinders the work of colleagues. Further only dismissal. And I found a very unusual solution by city standards. It sounds funny, but ... I complained to his mom. The question was closed within five minutes. Or here's the story of drunkenness. In the process of combating drunkenness, I discovered that in all cases, without exception, people use alcohol directly in the workplace, they are always replaced by sober ones. And the answer is very simple - at home wife. If our country rests on something, then, perhaps, on our women.
We are all children
You can read a lot of books on psychology about the "inner child" and so on, but for all our seriousness, we are real children. Speaking of IT people, we have become accustomed to jokes on this topic. But the workers, at least I, got used to think of as stern men. A great discovery for me was that they are the same children, it only manifests itself differently. I have already written above about “complaining to my mother,” but the fight against drunkenness is even funnier. They run, hide, look down ... Though put in a corner. For pulling alcohol in the fence, they make holes, go in "secret paths" ... We behaved like this in the first year university practice. But one thing, freshmen, but of the forty-year-old men, of course, is not expected.
It is interesting!
This work is hard and difficult. But interesting, something new happens every time. In principle, not much different from the rise of any IT start-up. Open an online store? You inevitably plunge into the subject area - work with a warehouse, logistics, marketing. Here, in principle, everything is the same, only, as always, in its own way. And every day something new. That boiler in the boiler room flowed, then drunk at work, then we buy a new machine, or equipment. That products are new, new employees, new technologies.
I can not say that I recommend everyone to give up their IT and run to raise the industry. This job is not for everyone. But it is actually interesting and fascinating, and a sensible person will be useful not only for information technology, but also for production. And in fact, the province is a good prospect for business development. There are some peculiarities here - things that are very simple in the city (like internet connection) here turn into fascinating quests. But on the other hand there are many advantages - cheap land, fresh air, the absence of state pressure. Yes, about the price of wages here all the same lower than in the city, though not as much as you take to take.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/214041/
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