Why send to SAP
The Pupediya.ru project is alive and well, but in the changed conditions its timeline has undergone some changes. There are new stages, and the project, apparently, will give one or more branches, the blessing the technological kernel can be used in many ways. Now, when a long period of difficult, but fascinating work has passed, despite the fact that there is still a lot to be done, I want to take a breath. Just at such moments you look back and realize many things. A series of flashbacks rises before your eyes and the answers to the questions that you asked yourself many times crystallize in your head. Why did SAP consultant leave SAP? And what did he forget about image processing? Well, the answers are not two words.
I began to work, like many in our time, even at senior courses, trying myself in web programming, now in the field of DBMS, then writing various utilities and systems. At that time, everything for me was new and interesting, I wanted to learn more technologies, the results of my work brought a lot of joy. Often, being fascinated by work, I lingered in the office and could easily understand the people who came to work at the weekend. But gradually puppy enthusiasm gave way to healthy pragmatism and under his pressure I began to make “strategic” decisions.
The first such decision is to stop being a “stupid coder” and start doing “adult things”. By “adult things” I then understood “big” systems, in other words, KCS. “Programming”, as I thought, is an occupation for “boys”, i.e. students and other socially unsettled individuals. Among the latter, I sympathized with the many programmers I had seen who were unable to communicate with the customer without abusing professional jargon and who absolutely did not understand the applied specifics. I was not particularly impressed by the youngest of them: they left me with the feeling of overgrown children or overstayed girls.
The real thing is when you sit next to the customer, speak his language and wisely fumigate information from your rich experience, richly flavored with solid theoretical background, you solve the problems of the client company. You plan the system architecture, think through the relationships between the components. From time to time you come up with tasks that you have not yet had to solve, and with gusto you immerse yourself in them in order to further expand the baggage of your experience. You become a bridge between the customer and "irresponsible programmers", being able to speak both in the language of one and in the language of others. The customer is satisfied with the work done, the big managers in jackets heartily thank you and shake hands, everyone smiles. Well, something like that. So it seemed to me.
')
After some struggle with an unyielding fate, I still managed to bend the obstinate and put into practice my first “strategic” decision, which changed my course of a sluggishly drifting career by 90 degrees. But, as often happens in life, as time passed, the shining Grail turned out to be an inconspicuous pile of clay shards. Work in the field of CIS was quite dirty and quarrelsome businessmen. Despite the fact that I personally had to deal with, God forbid, with half of the things from my dreams, the whole process was clearly visible to me from the inside. I was a consultant, but I realized that working as a methodologist, analyst, and even the most important manager is not much better. I will not describe here in detail what a fun business this is, many people already know. And who does not know and who is interested to know, then, as they say, write in a personal.
Well, since I was not destined to see an interesting job and customer smiles, I made another “strategic” decision. Changing everything back to 90 degrees and completely leaving the area seemed silly, so I decided that I would just make money - the more, the better. As I understand now, this was my most serious mistake. Thus, I only conserved the psychological crisis that was arising within myself, which after some time gained full strength and brought me a lot of moral torment. At the same time, it seemed that continuing to exist, having conducted the “work-non-work” dichotomy, was just a matter of technique.
So, I decided to raise the loot in the field of SAP. I understood that SAP is a magic manger, once in which you will be provided for the rest of your life. But at that time I was a fully formed specialist in completely different systems, so I had to conduct another round of intense struggle with fate. My team was already rolling along the wrong track, but again I managed to get on the right track.
Then we went, as it happens with SAP consultants, implementations, trips to Siberia, support, documentation and presentations. After a while, it began to come to me that, continuing to work like this, I would begin to degrade morally and personally if I had not already begun. I realized that when the novelty of mastering an unknown system passes, when behind all the training and the first launches, you become essentially a trained monkey for implementation. From time to time you apply your minimally growing experience. For a company, you are actually a commodity, an asset with a certain monthly cost of ownership, a black box for generating profit. And companies absolutely do not care if you want to realize their full potential or engage in interesting tasks. Later, my future boss, Ruslan Smelyansky, will say: “No matter how cynical it sounds, business is not interested in personal development. He is interested in its effective return. ”And this would remain true even if I went to a completely different organization to do completely different things.
I began to try in parallel to the main work to create my own projects. At first they were rather naive, then they became more serious. And it became even more difficult to combine them with work. Who has been in such a situation - he knows. Of course, basically, my projects brought more interest than decent money. The main work gradually became completely unbearable. Every morning and every evening I courageously surmounted under the ground almost the whole of Moscow obliquely, pressed down by gloomy thoughts that, e-my, how much time was wasted and that I was almost 30 years old, and my place in life was never found. I already fully realized my moral crisis, but it was impossible to drop everything overnight, preparation was needed.
Like many things in life, the project Poudediya.ru began with chance. I will not even specify who and how exactly, but random people and random events led to the thought that it would be nice to make a service that would allow to take checks from the store and, finally, solve the problem of convenient data entry into your personal budget. . The task seemed quite solvable to me, and my own history of attempts to streamline personal finances hinted that the service would be very useful. Just a few days later, the next issue of Computerra came out, in the editorial column of which this idea was repeated in black and white almost word for word. Do I have to say that this event was a great impetus to the beginning of my activity?
By that time, I knew absolutely nothing about image processing, and the mathematical knowledge that had been laid out during my studies at the University was rather knocked out of the active part of the brain by little-intellectual tasks from the typical IT specialist’s daily life. Deciding to take the first step was not easy. I understood that the topic is complex and, in any case, it will turn out to be even more complicated than I guess. For several days I just thought, trying to see the advantages and disadvantages of the idea, to present my work on the project. In the end, I decided, and here's why:
- The project is technological and science intensive. Now there are so many startups a la “Video for a candy wrapper” or “Social network picking in the nose” that, firstly, it’s just uninteresting to do such things, and secondly, they are simply copied. Here is where to exercise your brain, and fuck copy. Anyway, not so fast.
- I have always been to science, but did not want to do it as it is now accepted. In favor of the first says that I became a graduate student in my department, in favor of the second - that I never got to write my dissertation. Candidate minimum and one article - this is the maximum for which I had enough. The style of life and the amount of payment at the department made a depressing impression on me and I lost heart, having completely gone "on earnings".
- The essence of this project is engineering, i.e. junction of science and practice. For me, this kind of work is the best option, although I realized this relatively recently. When you achieve a visible and useful result, applying scientific methods that you understand why and how they work - it is an indescribable feeling. Work at the department would look much more dry, theoretical and abstract.
- I was always interested in the question: here, let's say, some study, say, physics, and go to work as a programmer. Or even better, they study geology and end up as a sales manager. Where does this knowledge go? In the sewer? They can answer me that the university, above all, teaches us to learn, receive information, communicate and perform work. Well, well, but still, a whole layer of special knowledge - it is almost fifty percent of us did not come in handy at work. Do not you feel sorry for the whole five years of life? It is a pity for me, especially since I received one of the best education - the Moscow State University Medical University. Almost always, the main purpose of studying at the university was a bureaucratic crust called a diploma. In this case, the “wealth that is always with you” has a chance to really become your strongest competitive advantage.
- Image processing, and, in general, any signals, as well as adjacent disciplines, for example, pattern recognition, is a very promising area. It is complex, high-tech, and behind it is the future, because without it, a complete fusion of IT with a person is impossible, which, undoubtedly, is and will be the predominant direction of research throughout the world.
Almost a year has passed since the start of the project. During this time, I had to huge pieces with a passion to swallow the missing knowledge and refresh half-forgotten. Much of the fact that once was somehow put into the session - just to pass - now I had to go through again, only with full understanding of why this was needed and with much greater pleasure. In many areas, a truly holistic picture began to take shape, which I could not achieve while studying at the faculty. First, the development was carried out in fragments, in his spare time from the main work. Then, a successful combination of circumstances allowed me to finally leave the hated job and devote myself to the project almost completely.
Do I say goodbye to SAP? I hope so. Well, except that if the need pripret - there's nothing you can do. And so, I think so. And about the same, I think about any hired work.
Weren't the past years useless? Well, except that only the last one, when I stopped learning anything new at all, and completely became a monkey for implementation. And the rest of the experience was very, very useful to me and will come in handy more than once, I'm sure. I learned a lot, for example, about system architecture, and I intend to use it in my further practice. Well, it would be necessary to continue to keep abreast of SAP and monitor what is happening there: the company, whatever you say, is very interesting.
And who knows, maybe I, nevertheless, will defend my candidate? Already in the field of image processing :)
I began to work, like many in our time, even at senior courses, trying myself in web programming, now in the field of DBMS, then writing various utilities and systems. At that time, everything for me was new and interesting, I wanted to learn more technologies, the results of my work brought a lot of joy. Often, being fascinated by work, I lingered in the office and could easily understand the people who came to work at the weekend. But gradually puppy enthusiasm gave way to healthy pragmatism and under his pressure I began to make “strategic” decisions.
The first such decision is to stop being a “stupid coder” and start doing “adult things”. By “adult things” I then understood “big” systems, in other words, KCS. “Programming”, as I thought, is an occupation for “boys”, i.e. students and other socially unsettled individuals. Among the latter, I sympathized with the many programmers I had seen who were unable to communicate with the customer without abusing professional jargon and who absolutely did not understand the applied specifics. I was not particularly impressed by the youngest of them: they left me with the feeling of overgrown children or overstayed girls.
The real thing is when you sit next to the customer, speak his language and wisely fumigate information from your rich experience, richly flavored with solid theoretical background, you solve the problems of the client company. You plan the system architecture, think through the relationships between the components. From time to time you come up with tasks that you have not yet had to solve, and with gusto you immerse yourself in them in order to further expand the baggage of your experience. You become a bridge between the customer and "irresponsible programmers", being able to speak both in the language of one and in the language of others. The customer is satisfied with the work done, the big managers in jackets heartily thank you and shake hands, everyone smiles. Well, something like that. So it seemed to me.
')
After some struggle with an unyielding fate, I still managed to bend the obstinate and put into practice my first “strategic” decision, which changed my course of a sluggishly drifting career by 90 degrees. But, as often happens in life, as time passed, the shining Grail turned out to be an inconspicuous pile of clay shards. Work in the field of CIS was quite dirty and quarrelsome businessmen. Despite the fact that I personally had to deal with, God forbid, with half of the things from my dreams, the whole process was clearly visible to me from the inside. I was a consultant, but I realized that working as a methodologist, analyst, and even the most important manager is not much better. I will not describe here in detail what a fun business this is, many people already know. And who does not know and who is interested to know, then, as they say, write in a personal.
Well, since I was not destined to see an interesting job and customer smiles, I made another “strategic” decision. Changing everything back to 90 degrees and completely leaving the area seemed silly, so I decided that I would just make money - the more, the better. As I understand now, this was my most serious mistake. Thus, I only conserved the psychological crisis that was arising within myself, which after some time gained full strength and brought me a lot of moral torment. At the same time, it seemed that continuing to exist, having conducted the “work-non-work” dichotomy, was just a matter of technique.
So, I decided to raise the loot in the field of SAP. I understood that SAP is a magic manger, once in which you will be provided for the rest of your life. But at that time I was a fully formed specialist in completely different systems, so I had to conduct another round of intense struggle with fate. My team was already rolling along the wrong track, but again I managed to get on the right track.
Then we went, as it happens with SAP consultants, implementations, trips to Siberia, support, documentation and presentations. After a while, it began to come to me that, continuing to work like this, I would begin to degrade morally and personally if I had not already begun. I realized that when the novelty of mastering an unknown system passes, when behind all the training and the first launches, you become essentially a trained monkey for implementation. From time to time you apply your minimally growing experience. For a company, you are actually a commodity, an asset with a certain monthly cost of ownership, a black box for generating profit. And companies absolutely do not care if you want to realize their full potential or engage in interesting tasks. Later, my future boss, Ruslan Smelyansky, will say: “No matter how cynical it sounds, business is not interested in personal development. He is interested in its effective return. ”And this would remain true even if I went to a completely different organization to do completely different things.
I began to try in parallel to the main work to create my own projects. At first they were rather naive, then they became more serious. And it became even more difficult to combine them with work. Who has been in such a situation - he knows. Of course, basically, my projects brought more interest than decent money. The main work gradually became completely unbearable. Every morning and every evening I courageously surmounted under the ground almost the whole of Moscow obliquely, pressed down by gloomy thoughts that, e-my, how much time was wasted and that I was almost 30 years old, and my place in life was never found. I already fully realized my moral crisis, but it was impossible to drop everything overnight, preparation was needed.
Like many things in life, the project Poudediya.ru began with chance. I will not even specify who and how exactly, but random people and random events led to the thought that it would be nice to make a service that would allow to take checks from the store and, finally, solve the problem of convenient data entry into your personal budget. . The task seemed quite solvable to me, and my own history of attempts to streamline personal finances hinted that the service would be very useful. Just a few days later, the next issue of Computerra came out, in the editorial column of which this idea was repeated in black and white almost word for word. Do I have to say that this event was a great impetus to the beginning of my activity?
By that time, I knew absolutely nothing about image processing, and the mathematical knowledge that had been laid out during my studies at the University was rather knocked out of the active part of the brain by little-intellectual tasks from the typical IT specialist’s daily life. Deciding to take the first step was not easy. I understood that the topic is complex and, in any case, it will turn out to be even more complicated than I guess. For several days I just thought, trying to see the advantages and disadvantages of the idea, to present my work on the project. In the end, I decided, and here's why:
- The project is technological and science intensive. Now there are so many startups a la “Video for a candy wrapper” or “Social network picking in the nose” that, firstly, it’s just uninteresting to do such things, and secondly, they are simply copied. Here is where to exercise your brain, and fuck copy. Anyway, not so fast.
- I have always been to science, but did not want to do it as it is now accepted. In favor of the first says that I became a graduate student in my department, in favor of the second - that I never got to write my dissertation. Candidate minimum and one article - this is the maximum for which I had enough. The style of life and the amount of payment at the department made a depressing impression on me and I lost heart, having completely gone "on earnings".
- The essence of this project is engineering, i.e. junction of science and practice. For me, this kind of work is the best option, although I realized this relatively recently. When you achieve a visible and useful result, applying scientific methods that you understand why and how they work - it is an indescribable feeling. Work at the department would look much more dry, theoretical and abstract.
- I was always interested in the question: here, let's say, some study, say, physics, and go to work as a programmer. Or even better, they study geology and end up as a sales manager. Where does this knowledge go? In the sewer? They can answer me that the university, above all, teaches us to learn, receive information, communicate and perform work. Well, well, but still, a whole layer of special knowledge - it is almost fifty percent of us did not come in handy at work. Do not you feel sorry for the whole five years of life? It is a pity for me, especially since I received one of the best education - the Moscow State University Medical University. Almost always, the main purpose of studying at the university was a bureaucratic crust called a diploma. In this case, the “wealth that is always with you” has a chance to really become your strongest competitive advantage.
- Image processing, and, in general, any signals, as well as adjacent disciplines, for example, pattern recognition, is a very promising area. It is complex, high-tech, and behind it is the future, because without it, a complete fusion of IT with a person is impossible, which, undoubtedly, is and will be the predominant direction of research throughout the world.
Almost a year has passed since the start of the project. During this time, I had to huge pieces with a passion to swallow the missing knowledge and refresh half-forgotten. Much of the fact that once was somehow put into the session - just to pass - now I had to go through again, only with full understanding of why this was needed and with much greater pleasure. In many areas, a truly holistic picture began to take shape, which I could not achieve while studying at the faculty. First, the development was carried out in fragments, in his spare time from the main work. Then, a successful combination of circumstances allowed me to finally leave the hated job and devote myself to the project almost completely.
Do I say goodbye to SAP? I hope so. Well, except that if the need pripret - there's nothing you can do. And so, I think so. And about the same, I think about any hired work.
Weren't the past years useless? Well, except that only the last one, when I stopped learning anything new at all, and completely became a monkey for implementation. And the rest of the experience was very, very useful to me and will come in handy more than once, I'm sure. I learned a lot, for example, about system architecture, and I intend to use it in my further practice. Well, it would be necessary to continue to keep abreast of SAP and monitor what is happening there: the company, whatever you say, is very interesting.
And who knows, maybe I, nevertheless, will defend my candidate? Already in the field of image processing :)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/28526/
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