How IT professionals work. Peter Zaitsev, CEO and Founder of Percona

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 Peter Zaitsev, CEO, founder of Percona . He considers himself not the most organized leader. Moreover, Peter, being a man of a technical warehouse, calls himself "an atypical CEO."
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What do you do in the company?

I deal both with the strategic part of company management and with our products - services and open source. I’m probably an atypical CEO, because the CEO usually spends more time selling and marketing.

Several years ago, I pondered over this question for a long time: should I be closer to the service station and hire a CEO, or do I need to build a relationship in a team so that it can work with me as a CEO, despite the fact that I am a technical warehouse person. I decided that the second approach is closer to me.

There are people on the world market, such as Ilon Mask or Mark Zuckerberg, who are such “geeks” in their hearts, despite the fact that they hold the post of CEO. This year, for example, Mark Zuckerberg talked about plans to make himself a robot that will help him with the housework. This is great - our man.

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

Juggler.

I am not the most organized CEO in the world. I find it convenient to do several tasks in parallel.

How many hours a day do you spend on work?

Over the years, this has changed. Now about 10 hours on weekdays, on weekends - less. In general, for a person who works with his head, this is a difficult question. We can think of solutions to work problems anytime, anywhere.

How many hours do you sleep?

Usually 7 hours. Sometimes less.

Do you have breakfast

Yes, a light breakfast is coffee and yoghurt.

A lot of time goes on the road?

20-25 minutes.

What else are you doing on the way to / from work?

Listen to news or educational podcasts.

What kind of todo-manager do you use personally?

I used several, but a sheet of paper is best for me.

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

For development we use JIRA, a repository - Git.

What tools, frameworks do you use for development?

Jenkins - for continuous integration, Vagrant, Docker.

Drupal - for the website, WordPress - for the blog.

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

The largest project we have created is a time tracking system and customer account management.

We used to do such internal projects: for example, a special product for time tracking was made in exactly the way we wanted. Over the years, we realized that it is expensive to maintain our internal software and it’s hard to keep up with standard solutions - in recent years we have been transferring as much as possible to standard systems - Zendesk, Salesforce, Liquid Planner, and so on.

What annoys you most when you work?

People are not sufficiently "robots". If the computer does exactly what it says, then people may not understand it the first time. You explain ten times, then the person will misunderstand you, and even if he understands correctly, he will still do it his own way.

What professional literature would you recommend?

I like American author Patrick Lencioni. He writes books about teamwork. Very good books, easy to read.

Another book I would recommend is The Hard Thing About Hard Things. There are a lot of detailed recommendations for businessmen.

In addition, I read books about how people think and how to think better. Nasstim Taleb books are Black Swan, Antifragile or Halo Effect.

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

Both. Reading e-books is more common, but paper is more like it, because you can mark with a pen and so on.

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

I use windows on a laptop. Probably in our area now Mac is more popular, but it suits me. I like that in this case, you can choose not from three models of laptops, but from thirty. For the same reason, I use Android.

At work there is a test bench where I use several small servers on Linux.

Do you listen to music when you work?

No, I'm distracted.

Which life hack allows you to be more efficient?

Many people advise: instead of focusing on something small, on what you want to do, on the contrary, take a big task. On the one hand, this is important, but I believe that if you have something “burning”, that is, you really want to do it, you need to start with that. Personally, I feel so much easier: then I can work much more effectively on a big, important and tedious task, without being distracted.

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

First of all, google docs. Not so much mail as documents, because you can work with them collaboratively.

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?

First of all, this is the focus. I often had problems with focus, so I had to be disciplined. The mentor often told me: "Petya, you like to start projects, but it is more important to learn how to finish them."

Over time, my approach changed. At the beginning of my work I strongly focused on the possibilities. But when the company gets bigger, it will be difficult to jump back and forth. Therefore, you need to form some kind of strategy to achieve success.

Another very important is patience. Previously, it seemed to me that everything is very simple. I thought I could do anything for the weekend. Therefore, you need to calmly and carefully plan.

And the last thing: I had to take the time to understand that all people are different. People may have different motivations, and the brain works differently. If the company had only my “clones”, we probably would have fought, and the company would not be able to function.