Does a programmer need specialized education? What do they think in Yandex

Today begins the new school year. Hundreds of people who will become programmers in the future have become first-year students or will continue to study further. But not the fact that they will have everything written in the diploma "programmer". Is it important for them at all? This time we decided to ask Yandex employees if the programmer needs a specialized education.



By the way, we often say that Yandex is a company created by programmers. But, as Yandex co-founder Arkady Volozh somehow corrected me, none of the creators of Yandex had a “programmer” written in the diploma. What our other colleagues told you, as always, you can read under the cut.

Andrew styskin Styskin
Programs 18 years. In Yandex - 9 years.
Came to Yandex by a Java developer to the Market search group. He was engaged in the classification of commodity texts and the extraction of facts from product descriptions. So began his passion for search and machine learning. Outside of work, Andrei made various IR-toys: a generator of poems on language models, a robot for pumping social networks. Now Andrey is in charge of the ranking department, in which a team of almost 200 people works.
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It seems to me that the current Yandex is made by people who do not have specialized education and who simply like programming very much. These are mathematicians, physicists, people with an economic education or other types of technical who were so fond of programming, that they went to programmers. And it is thanks to this love, and not to their ability, that everything turns out so well. Therefore, I can not assess how useful the education of a programmer is. But, for example, managerial education was very useful for me at some stage.

I wonder how much education, even at the same School of data analysis, affects motivation and love for their work. If it helps to love your tasks more and more, then this is very cool. And if a person has learned this, can, but does not love and thinks how to build a career in another field, then it can and does harm. I am very interested in how to identify this in people at an early stage.

Mikhail Parakhin
Programs 24 years. In Yandex - 9 months.

After graduating from the MEPhI, he began working at ZAO SEC Modul. In the 90s it was almost the only place in Moscow where they were engaged in automated learning systems. Then he went to the company Parascript, which is actually a monopolist in the field of handwriting and typed text recognition. For many years he worked in the United States. The last seven years have been Microsoft, five of which headed the multimedia search services division at Bing. In the spring I came to Yandex as search technology director.

If it is considered to be a programmer education under the profile, then probably not necessarily. I have a selfish moment here, because I don’t have one - I’m a physicist by training. Although the physicist never worked. I am a self-taught programmer and it seems to me that it never bothered me. Therefore, I think that specialized education is not at all necessary.

Andrew yafinder Plakhov
Programs 24 years. In Yandex - 6 years.

He came to Yandex in 2008 as a senior developer. His first task was to create a new type of ranking factors - domain. Engaged in ranking, created a system Spectrum. Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Now manages the search functionality service - in particular, develops search tips. Understands deeply both the technology and the user properties of the product.

Before Yandex, I was engaged in computer games, and quite regularly people came to us for interviews. One of them came and said: “I am the only person who has a specialized education, a programmer’s education”. We were surprised: “As the only one?” He replied: “And so. You see what people have written in diplomas - no one has written a “programmer”, but mine has written it. Because I graduated from vocational school, where they teach a programmer. ” But I do not understand what a specialized education is. Applied Mathematics?

It is true that people who have passed the ShAD are epic people who are here and where they are still torn off with their hands, but I do not know why this happens. Perhaps, it is precisely such people who can go there for selection and complete their studies. In general, it is very nice when a person, who just came from an educational institution, immediately speaks the same language with you, understands some things, a jargon, has already managed to do something with his hands in the same field. But in classical Computer Science there are a lot of rather outdated things. For example, a large notation has little relevance to real work. It is clear that someday the state of affairs with the training will change, but before that it will take another 10 years.

Stepan Koltsov
Programs 10 years. In Yandex - 7 years.

Senior developer in the development of data storage and processing systems. Steppe from those employees of Yandex, who left, but then returned. Now he is working on monitoring systems in search.

I believe that specialized education is not needed at all. If we are talking about serious programming, which is in Yandex in many places, then a person should know mathematics. But this mathematics is not a profile education, because mathematics is separate - programming is separate. Relatively speaking, the programmer should be able to write and read, but specialized education in the sense that it should be taught to program is not necessary. A ShAD is more a very specific mathematics that is needed for serious projects. And learning programming, necessary for the tasks that people usually solve, it seems, in Russia and not. And, it seems to me, it is not necessary, because programming itself is a very simple thing. Anyone can learn how to program himself on a book in two months.

Artem Breqwas Kireev
Programs 12 years. In Yandex - 8 years.

Yandex was called for parsing data from Blog Search. They called not only to scold, but also to work. For many years, did a search on blogs, in particular, was the main developer of the Yandex.Pulse sub-service. Now he is developing an Advertising Network, one of the most critical services in terms of fault tolerance.

And we give it somewhere? Once I studied at the institute on the specialty "Applied Mathematics". I went there because I thought: “Wow, mathematics. Applied. Probably, they will teach me how to write programs. ” No, not taught. I was taught mathematics and, many years later, I learned that she did have some applications, but they didn’t tell me about them. And I was sure that I was taught a boring, dull and not interesting math, and left the institute. I have no higher education. Maybe I was not lucky and somewhere in Russia everything is different.

Mikhail mlevin Levin
Programs 18 years. In Yandex - 5 years.

You could see Misha’s lecture on how mathematics helps Yandex earn money. A very large part of his work is work in our academic programs. He teaches at the School of Data Analysis, participates in creating a curriculum at the Faculty of Computer Science at HSE and Yandex. Twice he won medals at ACM ICPC in the team of Moscow State University. Mv Lomonosov.

I finished the program, and it never focused on programming. The fact that a lot of programmers came from there is a consequence of two things. First, in the country it was not very possible to earn money as a scientist, and secondly, many people cannot go to pure science. In essence, it remains to choose to work as a programmer or economist. The two most popular options.

Practical part of the mechanics never taught. The fact that many of my fellow students work in Google, Yandex, Microsoft, Facebook and other cool companies turned out because the course was strong, and the Olympiad helped a lot. I had to learn a lot by myself. If we only took what the university gave, then it would not be enough even to get an internship at Yandex. Shad is a way to fix a situation. Mathematical education in our country is not bad in principle, although it is not quite the same as it is sung. But indeed, the top graduates of the Mekhmat and the VMK do not lose the Harvard top and MIT, but this is some sort of small sample, outside of which there is a sharp decline. In Western universities, less emphasis is placed on mathematics, but much more practical training. Graduates can immediately come to the industry and work. And we had so that people, brilliantly graduated from universities, could not pass the interview for the position of interns.

At the new faculty of Computer Science at HSE, we want to immediately try to combine mathematics and programming in more correct proportions. Less to give compulsory mathematics and more programming courses and practical tasks.

Pavel Sukhov
Programs - 9 years. In Yandex - 5 months.

He studied at the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the HSE, where he has been teaching for two years. Before Yandex, he worked in a research laboratory. In Yandex, it develops geo-applications.

If I now worked with a diploma of cooks, how would this affect my work? Exactly no way. No one is interested in how you gain knowledge, especially in the IT field. I know an example when a girl came to work as a programmer, having graduated from the conservatory. And they took her. At first there were some difficulties with salary, because formally they could not pay her the rate, but now she does not work at the lowest position. People are interested in your real knowledge and skills. And even this is not always. Very often just motivation is important. Yes, of course, specialized education in something helps, allows you to gain experience in various areas that may suddenly be useful, but this is definitely not a mandatory factor.

Andrey Mishchenko
Programs 24 years. In Yandex - 9 years.

He came to Yandex as a developer in C ++, for a long time was the head of the Blog Search Development and wrote in Perl. Andrey is a Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Now he is working on improving machine learning algorithms in search.

Do I need to finish a VMC to work as a programmer? Of course not. But I like it when a programmer has a good fundamental education. This sets the ceiling that the programmer can reach. You may not have higher education at all, finish school, go learn PHP, gain 10 years of experience and be a very good web developer. That is, you can very quickly do some online shopping, and it is clear what level of work you will have. You will receive a very good salary, make quality products within the framework of the tasks taken, but the lack of education will keep you. You will not be able to rise higher and do any deeper things. For example, search, recommender systems, their own algorithms - some high-tech things. You will have a completely different job level.

Anatoly Anatolix Orlov
Programs 25 years. In Yandex - 9 years.

The first two years he wrote Market. For a long time I was engaged in the search - mainly its performance, and then the rest. Now he is engaged in various projects in the field of speed, architecture, etc. Deputy Head of Search Services. Included in 2% of people who complete courses on Coursera.

I have studied this question many times because I myself have no higher education. I can say that it is worth sharing education as a concept for the transfer of knowledge, training and education as a diploma. I would say that knowledge is necessary for a programmer, but a diploma, in fact, not really. Obtaining knowledge is not necessary in a higher educational institution — it can be self-education. If you are unlucky, and you did not have a good university, then you just have to see a lot of lectures. There is nothing wrong.

Gregory Bobuk Bakunov
Programs 25 years. In Yandex - 10 years.

Once came to work as a system administrator, and now - director of technology distribution.

I know two or three universities that prepare programmers for real. All the rest are such indirect, related specialties. It seems to me that the programmer, of course, gets most of his knowledge in the process of self-education. Nevertheless, a profile education allows you to get all that allows you to get any other education. First of all - the right connections, the right acquaintances, the ability to communicate with people of their profession, which is also very important. Then the idea of ​​how life is organized in the industry. These are things that specialized education should give. Programmers must learn to communicate with other programmers, as well as with people from related specialties. They have to imagine how the life in the industry works, what version control systems are and how they live with it all. Education should give basic knowledge of the immediate specialty, because a person must learn to perceive the rest from the surrounding space himself. In fact, Russia already has several universities that have begun to move in this direction. And in the world, probably, there are three or four universities that live according to this scheme.

Elena Bunina
In Yandex - 7 years.

Director of computer science at the School of Data Analysis, HR-Director of Yandex, Professor of the Department of Higher Algebra of the Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow State University. Mv Lomonosova, Deputy Head of the Department "Data Analysis" MIPT. Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. The topic of her doctoral thesis is “Automorphisms and elementary equivalence of Chevalley groups and other derived structures”.

I met many mathematicians, who then retrained and became programmers, not having specialized education. But it seems to me that it is still better to learn programming early enough. So it will be much easier to move from language to language, for example. A person who learned this in the early years is somehow easier to live. There are software engineers who are not very interested in Computer Science itself, they are more likely techies. But those programmers who are interested in something new to invent and analyze, they just need to study this science.

Oleg Klimin
Programs - 23 years. In Yandex - a year.

He graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod State University. N.I. Lobachevsky. At his previous work, Oleg was involved in the creation and support of software for cellular communication nodes. Yandex is developing mobile geo applications.

It seems to me that everything depends on the person more than on the profile for which he studied. I do not have a programming education, which, in general, does not interfere with the work of a programmer. I know people who graduated from the Faculty of Economics or some humanitarian faculties, and at the same time they are excellent programmers. There are those who received a specialty, but then something did not go, something did not like. There are many self-taught people who did not finish anything at all. Profile education helps, gives a person a systematic understanding of what he does, and is probably easier with him if this person is really interested. But I do not think that it is mandatory.

What do you think? What is written in your diploma? And do the knowledge that they gave at the university help you in their work?