How IT professionals work. Evgeny Potapov, General Director, ITSumma

We continue to ask specialists about the mode of work and rest, professional habits, the tools they use, and much more.

It will be interesting to find out what unites them, in what they contradict each other. Perhaps their answers will help to identify some general patterns, useful tips that will help many of us.
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Today our guest is Yevgeny Potapov, CEO of ITSumma .

What do you do in the company?

I try to understand what to do next, how to do better what we do and sometimes help other guys save projects.

One word (phrase) that best describes how you work:

Motion.

How many hours a day do you spend on work?

On average, 12 hours.

How many hours do you sleep?

In the past few years I try to sleep for 8 hours. It used to be much less.

How do you have breakfast?

Fried eggs, salad. Breakfast is a must. For a long time I was eating very poorly, I smoked a lot of cigarettes, and now I began to lead a healthy lifestyle: I eat right, play sports, run a marathon, and if I smoke, I’m just hookah.

A lot of time goes on the road?

In Irkutsk, 20 minutes, and in Moscow - 40 minutes, in St. Petersburg - 50.

What do you do at this time?

I'm driving and I think I am meditating at this moment, I don’t think about anything. For me, this is the same as running. I do not like to drive not driving. When I take the subway in Moscow or St. Petersburg, I read books.

What kind of todo-manager do you use personally?

Due. There is also an office manager - I trust her even more (smiles).

What kind of task manager do you use / issue tracker / repository?

Task Manager / issue tracker is a Bitrix and Telegram corporate portal cut through. Repository - Git.

What tools, frameworks do you use for development?

We do not have a lot of developers, because we are engaged in our internal tasks. Programmers use PhpStorm, admins use the console.

Do you have any internal projects or libraries in your department and why were they created?

We have our own monitoring, which we have been sawing for about 6 years. There is a bike that every developer wants to write his own framework, and every admin - his own monitoring. We have friends from the company Anychart, who made HTML-graphics. They helped us to make this project, and it works very quickly, because we know the format of the data that goes there. This thing works for a long time. It should not fall, because there are terabytes of data for all projects.

We have a C-developer who saws Telegram under Qt. This is an open source project. We have working chats in which you need to track answers and other nuances of correspondence. Therefore, we need a Telegram.

What annoys you most when you work?

When you can’t fix a situation or you understand that it’s impossible to fix it.

What professional literature would you recommend?

The book is not connected with adminstvo, but it is very cool - it is called I'm Feeling Lucky. Its author is a Google employee who describes how he began his work at this company.
The second book is not related to IT at all: Daniel Kahneman, "Think slowly ... Decide quickly."

What do you prefer: electronic reading rooms or paper books?

Previously, there were always paper, now electronic.

What technology (computers, tablets, smartphones) and operating systems do you prefer at work and at home?

Now MacBook 12 ”, because all the time you have to drive. Two weeks, as I switched to the Android phone, because I wanted something new.

Do you listen to music when you work?

I can not work in silence, I constantly need noise. I love music, but I don’t listen to any specific one. In our office, where I sometimes sit with administrators, some kind of music is constantly playing. But the main thing is that it should be sounded in the speakers, and not in the headphones.

Which life hack allows you to be more efficient?

I have a few friends who do not like to finish things to the end. When I do not want to do something, I remember them, and in this I find motivation for further work.

What applications and services can you do without in your work or in your personal life?

I need Word to work with treaties, sometimes I need a shell to “swoop” on Linux machines. Facebook is also important.

What would Evgeny Potapov write 10 years ago in a letter to the future to himself?

Do not forget to play the guitar.

You have come a long way. And someone is now at the beginning of this path. What would you recommend to a person trying to go the same way?

What you do should you like, and you need to believe in it. You should not do something just for the sake of "tick", you need to like it.