How IT professionals work. Nikolai Grigoriev, architect of mobile games and applications

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 Nikolai Grigoriev.

Nikolay works in the game department of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, in the Interactive Mult publishing house as a leading developer - an architect of children's mobile games and applications.

What do you do in the company?

I select technologies for the implementation of stories, plan seams and interfaces in the code for the parallel work of the team. As far as possible, I bring up the manual according to the guidelines in Robert Martin's “Ideal Programmer”.

I propagandize dependency injection only through the constructor and work on git-flow / gitlab-flow.

One word that best describes how you work:

Directing.

How many hours a day do you spend on work?

From 8 to 12, if you count the work is not at the computer. Some tasks are very intrusive and do not let go after leaving the office.

How many hours do you sleep?

From six to seven, the last time I try to stabilize at eight o'clock.

How do you have breakfast?

The fact that you can quickly cook: usually brew porridge in milk and make coffee.

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

I try not to think about anything intensely, turn on the music. For a quality solution of work issues, you need to immerse yourself in the process as much as possible, so I relax before coming to the office.

What kind of todo-manager do you use personally?

I personally use only GitLab and keep.google.com. In GitLab there is a versioning of documents and tasks, markdown markup.

What applications and services can't you do without?

Git - our everything (GitLab, GitHub), also often at hand I keep: online validator JSON, drive.google and music.google.

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

In the company, fortunately, we work in JIRA, in conjunction with various CI modules. The repository is a local GitLab.

What other tools and software do you use at work?

In my opinion, Visual Studio + ReSharper is the most powerful tool for working with code. For everything else, there is Sublime Text. Also on the work computer are traditionally 5-10 versions of Unity3D. Some time ago I mastered SmartGIT, threw out the sourceTree and have no regrets.

Does the company have internal projects?

We have an infrastructure development direction designed to make life easier for employees, some of their products are successfully used in projects under my leadership.

What annoys you most when you work?

In real work, the worst thing is when you work without all the necessary data. This may be due to the sparingly described history \ task or incomplete \ missing \ inadequate documentation. I try to deal with this with all my might. I get very upset when the efficiency of a team of programmers falls due to the fact that they have to invent behavior themselves, I try to organize the work of programmers so that they have all the necessary ingredients.

What professional literature would you recommend?

Depending on the level and known technology of the reader:

• “Deploying dependencies in .NET” , Mark Siman;
• Clean Code , Robert Martin;
• Unity iOS Essentials , Robert Wiebe.

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

Paper books, if used as a reference. PDF on PC, if I use for one-time \ selective reading.

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

I like the control and availability of calibration to increase efficiency, so I have a PC with Windows 10 at home, devices with MIUI Android with root access. I use the same approach at work and demand from subordinates.

What do you listen when you work?

When I write code, the only thing that really increases efficiency is the sound of rain. Everything else is distracting. When I don’t write code: I generate radio in music.google based on Russian or British rock.

Which life hack allows you to be more efficient?

Once I analyzed my replays of games from Starcraft 2 and noticed that apm and the number of victories correlate with the type of chair I sit on, has since begun to study this question.

It turned out that personally, my performance drops with incorrect posture and (unexpectedly) the presence of wheels on the legs of a chair. Since then I have been sitting on simple stable chairs and periodically unsuccessfully trying to refute this theory.

What kind of professional advice for the future can you give yourself?

Constantly develop, do not linger on some technologies, analyze the market yourself, know your ship.

What would you recommend to a person trying to go the same way?

You are well done and have chosen a very exciting and intensive development path, it will not let you get bored. Do not stop and move forward.