How IT professionals work. Dmitry Kravchuk - CTO and co-founder of LinguaTrip

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 Dmitry Kravchuk, CTO and co-founder of LinguaTrip . Dmitry’s work schedule is contradictory: it works when it is in a resource state. But at the same time he works almost every day off. And here he comes to the aid of simple life hacking.

What do you do in the company?
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Basically, I am responsible for developing a custom web application and internal systems. I understand how to implement certain business tasks in the code, write the code myself and manage the developers.

But we still have a small company, so I participate in many things: from designing A / B tests to writing articles on a corporate blog.

One word that best describes how you work:

Chaotic.

What to do! In a startup, there is no other way.

How many hours a day do you spend on work?

It is difficult to say, I do not work on hours from and to. I work all the time when I am awake and able to work productively. This also applies to weekends.

On the other hand, I do not really believe in the history of Elon Musk and Marissa Meyer about the 120-hour work weeks. It is impossible to work effectively so much for a long time.

How many hours do you sleep?

I try to sleep at least 8 hours. Getting enough sleep is the easiest way to increase your productive time per day.

How do you have breakfast?

I definitely have breakfast and simply can't start working without it. For several months I have been eating only oatmeal with raisins and cinnamon for breakfast. I will continue until I get bored.

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

This year, I worked in cities from San Francisco to Shanghai, at home, in offices, in trains, airports and hotels. So most often, the way to work for me is the way to the laptop.

What kind of todo-manager do you use personally?

At one time I was very used to Clear : a minimum of functions and a very nice interface. But now, increasingly, I’m just asking Siri to add an entry to the standard Reminders.

What applications and services can't you do without?

Of course, the mail client: used to use mutt, now - Apple Mail. Telegram to communicate with the team. Terminal. Well, the standard things - calendar, maps, browser.

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

In the role of task manager and issue tracker, oddly enough, Trello. This is convenient because it is used not only by developers. Repositories - Git and TFS.

What tools, frameworks do you use for development?

Tmux, vim, as well as vim-fireplace for Clojure and Visual Studio for C #.

Does the company have internal projects?

Of the actively used - its own CRM and analyst screwed to it.

What annoys you most when you work?

When you rush to do something without understanding the situation to the end, and you waste your time in vain.

What professional literature would you recommend?

If we talk about development, then too much of everything comes to mind. Programmers generally read too little, although there is a lot of good and time-tested literature. The person who masters the most banal Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs and Types and Programming Languages ​​will already be a cut above 90% of software developers.

Let me better call three popular, but absolutely useless, in my opinion, books:

• Code Complete (McConnell) . A set of half-obvious, half-highly controversial advice given by the tone of the school teacher.
• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (Fowler) . Attempt (successful) to sell a new book with the names of those who have a little list from the Gang of Four.
• CLR via C # (Richter) . A special guide for interviewing the position of .NET developer.

Usually, interviewers ask questions only concerning the first half of the book: very few people read it to the end.

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

I have only been reading e-books for a long time. Now I have Kindle Paperwhite.

What technique and why do you prefer at work and at home?

Basically, all Apple: phone, tablet, laptop. I have a MacBook Pro 2015 - almost perfect laptop. Before that, there were several Sony Vaio, but they are no longer released.

What do you listen when you work?

Depending on the mood and the task - different music or noisli.com.

Which life hack allows you to be more efficient?

Love what you do. Well, get enough sleep.

What professional advice would you give to yourself in a letter to the future?

If I knew such advice, I would have followed him.

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

If you are a developer, do not ignore the world around your code. Always think about the situation around you: about your colleagues, users, but the main thing is about the essence of your company's business. This will make you look at things more soberly, help bring more value and inevitably contribute to your growth.

Constantly develop. Read articles, books, see speeches. We are very lucky in the IT field: many of those who came up with the fundamental things are still published and speak at conferences.

And how to build a company, I am not ready to give some advice. Probably you just need to work hard and be lucky enough.