How IT professionals work. Ivan Panchenko, Postgres Professional

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.

')

Today our guest is Ivan Panchenko, Deputy General Director of Postgres Professional. He has his own approach to leadership and a controversial attitude towards the lunch break. And he reads some programming books almost like fiction.



What do you do in the company?



I coordinate the work of various departments of our company, I am its co-founder and deputy general director Oleg Bartunov [his interview at Habré can be read here ]. He travels a lot to conferences, events, forums, and the deputy does not have to sit idle. Four of the five founders of our company work in it. Oleg Bartunov is our main ideologist and inspirer, Alexander Korotkov is the head of the project, Fedor Sigaev is the main architect. I supervise issues related to the internal life of the company, customer service, educational activities and much more.



One phrase or phrase describe your style of work.



I always try to rely on people.



The tasks that confront me in this company are so wide that it is absolutely impossible to hold everything firmly in my hands. We still need the hands of comrades whom you trust. Everything that I do in this company, I do with reliance on people whom I can entrust with sufficiently large and responsible amounts of work.



Therefore, I believe that the basis of any leadership is the correct selection of a team, people who can be trusted, who will not fail at a difficult moment. When you manage to pick up such people and surround yourself with them, the work goes.



How many hours a day do you spend on work?



As an employee, I work on weekdays, but the founder has no holidays or vacations. He always thinks about his business. Therefore, we can say that I work “24 hours a day”.



How many hours do you sleep?



It is not enough to sleep worse than to sleep a lot. Therefore, even if you need to work, I try to find time to sleep. According to my observations, 7 hours of sleep per day is enough. When I have the opportunity, I sleep more.



Do you have breakfast



I have breakfast, my wife cooks very tasty. But the relationship with food is not simple. I always try to change them to find the best style for myself. For example, when I worked at Mail.ru, I always went to lunch with my staff. It was a team building factor.



We got a lot of pleasure from socializing during lunch, and it really helped to rally the team.



Here in Postgres Professional, my team is much larger, and it's impossible to have lunch with everyone.



Someone from the classics of management wrote: "If a person dines alone, he loses time in vain."



Do you live in Moscow?



Yes.



A lot of time goes on the road?



No, 35-40 minutes.



What do you do on the way to / from work?



I haven't been driving my car for 10 years. When you go by car, you also have to work as a driver, and this is too much work for one person. Therefore, I go in public transport. At this time I can read, listen to some book. When I walk, I just think.



Sometimes you have to answer someone on the way to letters or call. But usually I prefer not to.



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



Now we use JIRA and Confluence as the main means of automation. We have some add-ons around them that we do ourselves: these are scripts for interacting with the outside world (in particular, with the website), as well as various reports. In addition, we use the Gitlab repository.



What tools, frameworks do you use for development?



Our tool is based on the GCC compiler. Well, the rest of the software build kit - make, bison, autotools ... and so on. From fashion tools we use Docker, Jenkins.



So far, we have no mandatory standards: everyone can bring and try what he wants.



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



For us, this is not very typical. Creating and maintaining your website? Almost all companies have such an internal project. Organization and holding of conferences PgConf.Russia is also our internal project, we are our own customer. There are internal projects for organizing test environments, automating the assembly of packages, etc.



What annoys you most when you work?



If someone from the team does not meet my expectations.



What professional literature would you recommend?



There are a lot of good books. Once I would say that you need to read Knut's three-volume book, although I haven’t looked at it for a long time (smiles).



There was another book that impressed me a lot. True, she has nothing to do with my current activities. This is Björn Straustrup’s book Design and Evolution of the C ++ Language. It can be read almost like fiction. Very inspiring and exciting.



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



I love paper books, but not always in this format is the necessary literature for me. Then I use e-readers and fb2 format.



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



I prefer Linux and Android. Laptops - Hewlett Packard. I chose HP because they are very strong and durable. I had a case when I dropped a laptop from a great height, but it did not stop working. And Linux always works well on these laptops.



When I worked at Mail.ru, I had two laptops — from Linux and from Mac OS. Apple devices were fashionable to use then, probably, even more than now. Many of the iPhones went completely crazy. I also honestly tried to move to the Mac, but many things seemed uncomfortable to me there.



Do you listen to music when you work?



If I do some kind of non-creative work, and especially when I want to sleep, the music helps to cheer up.



And if I solve a creative task, the music is distracting.



Which life hack allows you to be more efficient?



No need to postpone the answer to any letters, messages. There are all kinds of “empty Inbox” techniques that are actively promoted in our country, for example, by Maxim Dorofeev. Of course, one should not make of this cult, but in general this approach is very useful.



The second. If you can delegate something to someone, it is better to do so. Even if you need to train an employee or anyone. The time invested in such training will pay off many times over.



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



Of course, we are now used to using GPS-navigation and e-mail. But I remember when all this was not, and, nothing, they lived no less interesting.



What would Ivan Panchenko write in a letter to the past to himself?



I would write like this: “Make a good backup.”



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?



Of course, everyone has his own way. Yes and mine, I hope, is not finished yet. But if we talk about advice, then for people of different ages they will be different.



1. There is an age when you need to learn and give up on everything else.

2. And there is an age when it is too late to study and something must already be done.



There is a period of life that ends somewhere in the middle of university education. That's when I would recommend the first option, because at this time the foundation is laid for your abilities, which you will use all your life. This is not about getting directly the knowledge that the curriculum gives (although they are useful), but about how to structure the brain, develop the ability to process information. You can then forget those “worms” that you studied in botany, but if you study them thoroughly, it will help your brain to work better in the future and delight you and those you love.