Developer Life in Cyprus
If you, as I once did, planned to break out of the tender and tenacious embrace of the motherland into the civilized world, you would surely come across characters who could not bear such happiness and returned from immigration to the territory of the fatherland. Surely you can remember the full and puzzled indignation question "Why?", Addressed to the very crazy. This question often remained rhetorical, for abstract answers about insurmountable cultural differences and a passionate desire to hug birches are not de facto answers.
And here I, being on a magical sunny island for almost a year, I caught myself thinking that it would be great to go back to my native foggy and overcast Peter. Without being any professional psychiatrist, I can hardly give an accurate assessment of my cognitive disorder, but I will try to express my own feelings and life experience in the form of several loosely connected observations and tales about life and work.
')
So get acquainted, Cyprus. Sunny Island in the European Union, with a record number of cleanest beaches per square meter. An island where almost always summer, where literally on every street grow orange, pomegranate, apricot and olive trees. An island where the locals are carefree, open and friendly. Where is the company in which I work, provides free housing 10 minutes walk from the office plus timely pay the money.
What on earth can go wrong? Yes, in general, anything.
Let's start with the climate. Now in June, when I write these lines, the thermometer shows + 31C. In July it will be about + 40C. How much will be in August - no one knows, because By this time, the gentle sun squeezes the surviving representatives of the relatively reasonable fauna somewhere in the mountains or in general outside the island. In this regard, I can share three interesting facts about summer.
Fact one. Sometimes the air outside is so warm that it is hotter with the wind than just calm. Do not believe? Stand under the hairdryer! Now extrapolate this hair dryer to the territory of a small state.
Fact two. Air conditioning in the car is not always able to help. He is blowing, trying, but the cooled air is not able to cool the skin sufficiently, on which the sun's rays fall through the tinted windows of local cars.
Fact three. In summer, you forget which faucet is responsible for hot water, and which cold one. For from both the water flows "room" (overboard + 40C, recall) temperature. Very nice and refreshing.
Probably, I exaggerate and that's really fine in the winter? OK good. The temperature drops significantly, but nevertheless remains positive. And here begin to play the role of representation of Cypriots about the houses - with thin walls, large windows and at least large gaps wherever possible. As a result, the heroic maintenance of at least + 18C in a small studio apartment costs about 100 euros / month. Never before in my life have my cats been so fluffy! Well, the need to self-heat the water to wash and completely knocks out a mean male tear in memory of the centralized hot water supply.
In general, figs with them - with the features of local life. But in Cyprus should be beautiful? Beauty is a subjective concept, but I would probably agree that the view of the sun plunging into the Mediterranean at sunset is not without some charm ...
The magic ends, one has only to translate the view from the coast inland. The country turns out to be surprisingly sad and ugly. By mid-May, all the green grass dries out and charred, so until October all landscapes look a bit Martian. Trees, of course, continue to stand and bear fruit, but they do not improve the global picture, but rather emphasize some existential hopelessness of all things.
But, of course, there are parks in Cyprus. Any fenced territory of 10x10 meters of bare ground, from which a couple dozen trees grow, is already recognized as a park in which, theoretically, you can try to spend time. There are parks and bigger ones. Right on their asphalted territory Cypriots drive in by car, go out, walk 5 minutes and return to the car with a sense of accomplishment.
Lovers of beautiful and / or old architecture in Cyprus, too, does not shine - all power in the country was seized by standard 2-4-storey white boxes. The churches, perhaps, stand out of brick-colored tiles, but they look so identical that you begin to believe that the only method used in their construction, namely Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V.
More experienced colleagues said that all these sorrows of architectural properties stem from clay soil, on which buildings are not worth more than forty years. Only here the 17th century fortress wall built by the Venetians, perfectly preserved to this day, slightly hints unequivocally at another reason. But, perhaps, we will postpone the study of the anatomy of the growth of hands in Cypriots, and state the obvious plus of all the above.
From Cyprus damn nice fly away! Any Tmutarakan begins to shine with architecture, each five-story building turns into a skyscraper, and from the abundance of green - and even in the center of Moscow - just breathtaking.
True, the opportunity to fly away from Cyprus, as it turned out, must still be suffered. The first time about this I was hinted at the universe last fall, when I naively got in line to check in at Larnaca airport, intending to get a boarding pass and check in my luggage. The queue stubbornly did not want to move and after some time announced that due to technical problems only self-checkin check-in via kiosks and, accordingly, without luggage is working. After another hour, the problem was heroically resolved and I even managed to take a flight.
Already at the beginning of this year, wise by experience, I registered in advance online and decided to do only hand luggage without luggage. The airport accepted the challenge with honor, so this time the information systems decided to refuse seriously and for a long time. Boarding passes were not so shrewd by companions by hand on blank sheets of paper, the airport staff tried to carry out all accompanying operations manually ... In general, we flew out 2.5 hours later, like many other flights.
What is curious when I wrote an angry letter about this, in response, I was asked to clarify the date when it all happened, in order to understand the situation. For a minute: there was a global collapse in the departure service at the airport, but the management knew nothing about it.
This case illustrates well the relationship between Cyprus and IT, but for a more complete picture I will tell another story. About taxes.
Each individual in Cyprus is obliged to independently report on income received and taxes paid, despite the fact that the employer pays taxes for it. You can report via the Internet, for this you need to get a login / password in your account, by submitting an application. A couple of months ago, this statement was written, given to our accountant. A month has passed - there is no answer, so they began to understand.
It turned out that on the day when the accountant sent my application to the tax office, the fax did not work there, so they did not receive anything. Well, in fact - and what's wrong? For Cypriot, not working anything, except for the whipping machine Nescafe, is not a big deal. Especially some kind of fax.
So, the difficulties are overcome, logins and passwords are received, we fill in the declaration. In general, it is not very different from the Russian 3-NDFL, which indicates the income received and taxes paid from them, resulting in a balance (ideally - zero).
Everything is simple, but the Cypriots would not have been Cypriots if they had not done this too. And with taste: half of the fields of the questionnaire took real numbers, and the other half - only integers, and in completely unsystematic. The result is obvious - the debit rate did not converge on a couple of dozen cents.
The solution came from the accountant (ATTENTION: if you are connected with Russian accounting, please do not read the following sentence, because it can cause irreparable harm to your mental health). With a few light movements, she simply adjusted the numbers, manipulating the material fields of the declaration. When I told one colleague about this, he simply advised not to bathe, for “at best, they will reach the verification of your declaration in seven years”.
Well, the cherry on the cake. What do you think, what is the office in which I am working, considers the salary of its one hundred employees? Praaaavilno, in Excel. By the way, an accountant, according to the LinkedIn profile, received an MBA - right here in Cyprus.
In general, speaking of money, it is impossible to ignore the other side, namely, banks. Restaurants, these are wonderful at least the fact that they work from 8:00 to about 14:30. On weekdays, of course.
You can talk for a long time about the features of banking services, or that a plastic card ordered, along with a PIN code, must be sent by letter to your home address (for the sake of security - in different envelopes and with a difference of 1 day).
In all its glory, the Cypriot banks showed themselves when I had to exchange euros for pounds for a trip to Britain. 2000 Euros is not that astronomically large, but I just don’t want to carry it with me, so I first went to my bank branch asking if it was possible to make an exchange. "Sure you may! Get your pounds for your euros, ”they replied.
Great, I take the money the next morning, return to the bank. “Nuuu,” says the same employee, “This is somehow too dofig money, we don’t have so much, we have to order. Let us order, bring the pounds, we will call you, and then you will come. ” I agree, what else to do.
Knowing that 3 more competing organizations are located next to my department, I go to them. In all three, they explain that since I am not their client, they cannot carry out a cash exchange right now.
The next day comes. The bank is predictably silent. Do not worry, go there legs. “Oh, did you send 2,000 euros to exchange?” - the cashier who has already become a native shouts through the entire hall - “And the money just arrived, come.”
Such fascinating quests await the happy inhabitants of the island literally at every turn. It took me one day to get a Cyprus criminal record certificate (Criminal records certificate). The certificate should be done in the police, but where exactly is the question. Of course, you can call the police and find out everything. We go to the website of the Cyprus police and see the list of useful phones:
Okay, let's approach the task from the other side - we ask our colleagues, who are more experienced in criminal matters. More criminal colleagues suggest the address to which I even arrive successfully. And here, of course, it turns out that foreigners are not doing this certificate here, but in a specially designated place by means of specially trained people. To my reasonable question, where, in fact, is this special place located, valiant police officers rummage to the computer for about 5 minutes, then another 5 minutes they call somewhere. Ultimately show the place on the map. Vooot somewhere here:
“Vooot somewhere there” in fact turned out to be located a whole block of buildings belonging to the police, without house numbers, without specific addresses.
Such topographic features are characteristic of the entire island, so the address of any object in Cyprus looks like this: “you are going to Nicosia on the highway. As soon as you see the first traffic light - look to the right - there will be a building with blue shutters. but turn there immediately fail. need a little further drive and turn around. when turned around you will need to drive to this building turning left accordingly. ”
Local taxi drivers, for all that, are also absolutely beautiful and wonderful people, divided into several categories:
Those who do not use the navigator categorically. First they ask for a long time where to drive and how to go, then get up halfway and go deep into the paper maps of the island. For these homegrown Flints, this is quite a reasonable strategy, because the money on the counter regularly continues to drip during such a “technical stop”.
Those who have a navigator, but he is lying in the glove compartment as a cool and fashionable accessory. If the paper map for some reason did not help, the Cypriot taxi driver begins to poke at the navigator buttons, trying to figure out how this Satan-piece is arranged. Sometimes it even works. But most often - no, because the absence of half of roads and buildings on electronic maps is quite a norm. As well as the presence of three or four of the same name streets with the correct name, located in different parts of the city. So even if it was possible to find the address in the navigator, it is too early to relax - a taxi may well not go where it should be.
Those who have a navigator with up-to-date maps, and who, without questioning, simply take them from point A to point B. Such comrades are least of all, and you should definitely make a strong friendship with them.
Instead of a taxi, in principle, you can take the risk to use public transport. He runs on a schedule with an interval of 40 minutes. The schedule itself can be viewed through the official app. Theoretically, it is possible to lay a route in it, but since it is written by professional Indians, it is absolutely impossible to use this function - it is easier to build a route using 2GIS, and then check the schedule in the application.
Bus traffic ends damn late - at about five to six o'clock in the evening. At the same time, they transport a completely phenomenal number of people per day - often the only passengers of buses on different flights are only my wife and I.
The vast majority of local people prefer personal transport, which is not at all surprising, considering all the above. The reverse side of the love of iron horses translates into the fact that Cypriots do not walk at all, and do not design pedestrian infrastructure. Therefore, rare sidewalks, as a rule, are planted with trees, and it’s not very pleasant to walk on them. About two weeks later you get used to walking to work and shops just on the roadway, the benefit of the car in sleeping areas go infrequently.
Such is the prose of life. And since this prose is published on a technical, for the most part, resource, I’ll tell you a little about the programmer’s work itself.
The office where I work, positions itself as an international company with offices around the world. The head office and development center here is in Cyprus. The owner claims that this location was chosen solely because of the incredible attractiveness of the island in all respects, although in my cynical view everything rests solely on the loot - the cost of staff due to the loyal tax system is extremely low.
However, I can not exclude the fact that someone here can really like it. At least, in the office, the British, the Germans, the French and people from the CIS countries work voluntarily (of which the development department is almost completely).
In general, there is a feeling that the office has just moved from a small "home" enterprise to the stage of maturity, and has not yet realized this fact. The organizational structure of the development department, despite the growing number of employees, is a star with a project manager in the center.
Moreover, the PM itself is not childish: it requires to conduct through it absolutely all technical solutions and all communications between developers, while demanding independence and teamwork. And to find this border between “why did you come to me with this nonsense” and “why didn’t you come — I would immediately say how to do it right” is not possible.
Therefore, the optimal strategy is to independently develop the most flexible solutions to the problems that arise, praying that the PM never wondered “how does all this work for you?” And did not start giving very clever advice. It is truly better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
With all this, the manual listens to the experience of developers and is not afraid to take risks and try new approaches and technologies. For example, the company began introducing .NET Core into a product and stuffing cones along the way almost immediately after its appearance.
On the other hand, such an approach, in the absence of a holistic vision by the management of business processes, leads to the fact that only tasks that are interesting to proactive developers are in focus, and not all of these tasks reach the final “licked” implementation.
For example, to work with packages, a half-numeric nuget server is used, which almost every day needs to be reanimated by hands, and the launch of the next product assembly is triggered by hand only by authorized people. Such continuous integration.
What, in general, conclusions can be drawn from this long and not quite coherent story?
First of all, Cyprus is a very, very specific place. And I would not recommend him to anyone besides lovers of the sea and the inhuman climate of masochists.
Secondly, life here very very greatly reduces all possible levels of expectations from the surrounding reality. On the one hand, this somewhat hardens the character, and allows you to look more calmly and philosophically at the emerging life troubles. On the other hand, it revives the true meaning of the words of gratitude: if something happens (almost) on time and (practically) as agreed, then my “thank you” will be a completely sincere manifestation of joy because everything turned out. Even if it’s just a pizza delivery: they both found the address and didn’t confuse anything in the order, and it’s still hot, but found the courier and delivery!
Thirdly, all this turned out to be a very interesting language experience: where else can one find such a variety of accents and variations of the English language? And for those who do not have much English, they can always go for practically free Greek courses. Although, from my point of view, unlike English, this skill is absolutely useless for any practical purpose.
And here I, being on a magical sunny island for almost a year, I caught myself thinking that it would be great to go back to my native foggy and overcast Peter. Without being any professional psychiatrist, I can hardly give an accurate assessment of my cognitive disorder, but I will try to express my own feelings and life experience in the form of several loosely connected observations and tales about life and work.
')
So get acquainted, Cyprus. Sunny Island in the European Union, with a record number of cleanest beaches per square meter. An island where almost always summer, where literally on every street grow orange, pomegranate, apricot and olive trees. An island where the locals are carefree, open and friendly. Where is the company in which I work, provides free housing 10 minutes walk from the office plus timely pay the money.
What on earth can go wrong? Yes, in general, anything.
Climate
Let's start with the climate. Now in June, when I write these lines, the thermometer shows + 31C. In July it will be about + 40C. How much will be in August - no one knows, because By this time, the gentle sun squeezes the surviving representatives of the relatively reasonable fauna somewhere in the mountains or in general outside the island. In this regard, I can share three interesting facts about summer.
Fact one. Sometimes the air outside is so warm that it is hotter with the wind than just calm. Do not believe? Stand under the hairdryer! Now extrapolate this hair dryer to the territory of a small state.
Fact two. Air conditioning in the car is not always able to help. He is blowing, trying, but the cooled air is not able to cool the skin sufficiently, on which the sun's rays fall through the tinted windows of local cars.
Fact three. In summer, you forget which faucet is responsible for hot water, and which cold one. For from both the water flows "room" (overboard + 40C, recall) temperature. Very nice and refreshing.
Probably, I exaggerate and that's really fine in the winter? OK good. The temperature drops significantly, but nevertheless remains positive. And here begin to play the role of representation of Cypriots about the houses - with thin walls, large windows and at least large gaps wherever possible. As a result, the heroic maintenance of at least + 18C in a small studio apartment costs about 100 euros / month. Never before in my life have my cats been so fluffy! Well, the need to self-heat the water to wash and completely knocks out a mean male tear in memory of the centralized hot water supply.
Nature and cities
In general, figs with them - with the features of local life. But in Cyprus should be beautiful? Beauty is a subjective concept, but I would probably agree that the view of the sun plunging into the Mediterranean at sunset is not without some charm ...
The magic ends, one has only to translate the view from the coast inland. The country turns out to be surprisingly sad and ugly. By mid-May, all the green grass dries out and charred, so until October all landscapes look a bit Martian. Trees, of course, continue to stand and bear fruit, but they do not improve the global picture, but rather emphasize some existential hopelessness of all things.
But, of course, there are parks in Cyprus. Any fenced territory of 10x10 meters of bare ground, from which a couple dozen trees grow, is already recognized as a park in which, theoretically, you can try to spend time. There are parks and bigger ones. Right on their asphalted territory Cypriots drive in by car, go out, walk 5 minutes and return to the car with a sense of accomplishment.
Lovers of beautiful and / or old architecture in Cyprus, too, does not shine - all power in the country was seized by standard 2-4-storey white boxes. The churches, perhaps, stand out of brick-colored tiles, but they look so identical that you begin to believe that the only method used in their construction, namely Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V.
More experienced colleagues said that all these sorrows of architectural properties stem from clay soil, on which buildings are not worth more than forty years. Only here the 17th century fortress wall built by the Venetians, perfectly preserved to this day, slightly hints unequivocally at another reason. But, perhaps, we will postpone the study of the anatomy of the growth of hands in Cypriots, and state the obvious plus of all the above.
From Cyprus damn nice fly away! Any Tmutarakan begins to shine with architecture, each five-story building turns into a skyscraper, and from the abundance of green - and even in the center of Moscow - just breathtaking.
Airport
True, the opportunity to fly away from Cyprus, as it turned out, must still be suffered. The first time about this I was hinted at the universe last fall, when I naively got in line to check in at Larnaca airport, intending to get a boarding pass and check in my luggage. The queue stubbornly did not want to move and after some time announced that due to technical problems only self-checkin check-in via kiosks and, accordingly, without luggage is working. After another hour, the problem was heroically resolved and I even managed to take a flight.
Already at the beginning of this year, wise by experience, I registered in advance online and decided to do only hand luggage without luggage. The airport accepted the challenge with honor, so this time the information systems decided to refuse seriously and for a long time. Boarding passes were not so shrewd by companions by hand on blank sheets of paper, the airport staff tried to carry out all accompanying operations manually ... In general, we flew out 2.5 hours later, like many other flights.
What is curious when I wrote an angry letter about this, in response, I was asked to clarify the date when it all happened, in order to understand the situation. For a minute: there was a global collapse in the departure service at the airport, but the management knew nothing about it.
This case illustrates well the relationship between Cyprus and IT, but for a more complete picture I will tell another story. About taxes.
Taxes
Each individual in Cyprus is obliged to independently report on income received and taxes paid, despite the fact that the employer pays taxes for it. You can report via the Internet, for this you need to get a login / password in your account, by submitting an application. A couple of months ago, this statement was written, given to our accountant. A month has passed - there is no answer, so they began to understand.
It turned out that on the day when the accountant sent my application to the tax office, the fax did not work there, so they did not receive anything. Well, in fact - and what's wrong? For Cypriot, not working anything, except for the whipping machine Nescafe, is not a big deal. Especially some kind of fax.
So, the difficulties are overcome, logins and passwords are received, we fill in the declaration. In general, it is not very different from the Russian 3-NDFL, which indicates the income received and taxes paid from them, resulting in a balance (ideally - zero).
Everything is simple, but the Cypriots would not have been Cypriots if they had not done this too. And with taste: half of the fields of the questionnaire took real numbers, and the other half - only integers, and in completely unsystematic. The result is obvious - the debit rate did not converge on a couple of dozen cents.
The solution came from the accountant (ATTENTION: if you are connected with Russian accounting, please do not read the following sentence, because it can cause irreparable harm to your mental health). With a few light movements, she simply adjusted the numbers, manipulating the material fields of the declaration. When I told one colleague about this, he simply advised not to bathe, for “at best, they will reach the verification of your declaration in seven years”.
Well, the cherry on the cake. What do you think, what is the office in which I am working, considers the salary of its one hundred employees? Praaaavilno, in Excel. By the way, an accountant, according to the LinkedIn profile, received an MBA - right here in Cyprus.
Banks
In general, speaking of money, it is impossible to ignore the other side, namely, banks. Restaurants, these are wonderful at least the fact that they work from 8:00 to about 14:30. On weekdays, of course.
You can talk for a long time about the features of banking services, or that a plastic card ordered, along with a PIN code, must be sent by letter to your home address (for the sake of security - in different envelopes and with a difference of 1 day).
In all its glory, the Cypriot banks showed themselves when I had to exchange euros for pounds for a trip to Britain. 2000 Euros is not that astronomically large, but I just don’t want to carry it with me, so I first went to my bank branch asking if it was possible to make an exchange. "Sure you may! Get your pounds for your euros, ”they replied.
Great, I take the money the next morning, return to the bank. “Nuuu,” says the same employee, “This is somehow too dofig money, we don’t have so much, we have to order. Let us order, bring the pounds, we will call you, and then you will come. ” I agree, what else to do.
Knowing that 3 more competing organizations are located next to my department, I go to them. In all three, they explain that since I am not their client, they cannot carry out a cash exchange right now.
The next day comes. The bank is predictably silent. Do not worry, go there legs. “Oh, did you send 2,000 euros to exchange?” - the cashier who has already become a native shouts through the entire hall - “And the money just arrived, come.”
Police
Such fascinating quests await the happy inhabitants of the island literally at every turn. It took me one day to get a Cyprus criminal record certificate (Criminal records certificate). The certificate should be done in the police, but where exactly is the question. Of course, you can call the police and find out everything. We go to the website of the Cyprus police and see the list of useful phones:
Okay, let's approach the task from the other side - we ask our colleagues, who are more experienced in criminal matters. More criminal colleagues suggest the address to which I even arrive successfully. And here, of course, it turns out that foreigners are not doing this certificate here, but in a specially designated place by means of specially trained people. To my reasonable question, where, in fact, is this special place located, valiant police officers rummage to the computer for about 5 minutes, then another 5 minutes they call somewhere. Ultimately show the place on the map. Vooot somewhere here:
“Vooot somewhere there” in fact turned out to be located a whole block of buildings belonging to the police, without house numbers, without specific addresses.
Such topographic features are characteristic of the entire island, so the address of any object in Cyprus looks like this: “you are going to Nicosia on the highway. As soon as you see the first traffic light - look to the right - there will be a building with blue shutters. but turn there immediately fail. need a little further drive and turn around. when turned around you will need to drive to this building turning left accordingly. ”
Transport
Local taxi drivers, for all that, are also absolutely beautiful and wonderful people, divided into several categories:
Those who do not use the navigator categorically. First they ask for a long time where to drive and how to go, then get up halfway and go deep into the paper maps of the island. For these homegrown Flints, this is quite a reasonable strategy, because the money on the counter regularly continues to drip during such a “technical stop”.
Those who have a navigator, but he is lying in the glove compartment as a cool and fashionable accessory. If the paper map for some reason did not help, the Cypriot taxi driver begins to poke at the navigator buttons, trying to figure out how this Satan-piece is arranged. Sometimes it even works. But most often - no, because the absence of half of roads and buildings on electronic maps is quite a norm. As well as the presence of three or four of the same name streets with the correct name, located in different parts of the city. So even if it was possible to find the address in the navigator, it is too early to relax - a taxi may well not go where it should be.
Those who have a navigator with up-to-date maps, and who, without questioning, simply take them from point A to point B. Such comrades are least of all, and you should definitely make a strong friendship with them.
Instead of a taxi, in principle, you can take the risk to use public transport. He runs on a schedule with an interval of 40 minutes. The schedule itself can be viewed through the official app. Theoretically, it is possible to lay a route in it, but since it is written by professional Indians, it is absolutely impossible to use this function - it is easier to build a route using 2GIS, and then check the schedule in the application.
Bus traffic ends damn late - at about five to six o'clock in the evening. At the same time, they transport a completely phenomenal number of people per day - often the only passengers of buses on different flights are only my wife and I.
The vast majority of local people prefer personal transport, which is not at all surprising, considering all the above. The reverse side of the love of iron horses translates into the fact that Cypriots do not walk at all, and do not design pedestrian infrastructure. Therefore, rare sidewalks, as a rule, are planted with trees, and it’s not very pleasant to walk on them. About two weeks later you get used to walking to work and shops just on the roadway, the benefit of the car in sleeping areas go infrequently.
Such is the prose of life. And since this prose is published on a technical, for the most part, resource, I’ll tell you a little about the programmer’s work itself.
Work in IT
The office where I work, positions itself as an international company with offices around the world. The head office and development center here is in Cyprus. The owner claims that this location was chosen solely because of the incredible attractiveness of the island in all respects, although in my cynical view everything rests solely on the loot - the cost of staff due to the loyal tax system is extremely low.
However, I can not exclude the fact that someone here can really like it. At least, in the office, the British, the Germans, the French and people from the CIS countries work voluntarily (of which the development department is almost completely).
In general, there is a feeling that the office has just moved from a small "home" enterprise to the stage of maturity, and has not yet realized this fact. The organizational structure of the development department, despite the growing number of employees, is a star with a project manager in the center.
Moreover, the PM itself is not childish: it requires to conduct through it absolutely all technical solutions and all communications between developers, while demanding independence and teamwork. And to find this border between “why did you come to me with this nonsense” and “why didn’t you come — I would immediately say how to do it right” is not possible.
Therefore, the optimal strategy is to independently develop the most flexible solutions to the problems that arise, praying that the PM never wondered “how does all this work for you?” And did not start giving very clever advice. It is truly better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
With all this, the manual listens to the experience of developers and is not afraid to take risks and try new approaches and technologies. For example, the company began introducing .NET Core into a product and stuffing cones along the way almost immediately after its appearance.
On the other hand, such an approach, in the absence of a holistic vision by the management of business processes, leads to the fact that only tasks that are interesting to proactive developers are in focus, and not all of these tasks reach the final “licked” implementation.
For example, to work with packages, a half-numeric nuget server is used, which almost every day needs to be reanimated by hands, and the launch of the next product assembly is triggered by hand only by authorized people. Such continuous integration.
findings
What, in general, conclusions can be drawn from this long and not quite coherent story?
First of all, Cyprus is a very, very specific place. And I would not recommend him to anyone besides lovers of the sea and the inhuman climate of masochists.
Secondly, life here very very greatly reduces all possible levels of expectations from the surrounding reality. On the one hand, this somewhat hardens the character, and allows you to look more calmly and philosophically at the emerging life troubles. On the other hand, it revives the true meaning of the words of gratitude: if something happens (almost) on time and (practically) as agreed, then my “thank you” will be a completely sincere manifestation of joy because everything turned out. Even if it’s just a pizza delivery: they both found the address and didn’t confuse anything in the order, and it’s still hot, but found the courier and delivery!
Thirdly, all this turned out to be a very interesting language experience: where else can one find such a variety of accents and variations of the English language? And for those who do not have much English, they can always go for practically free Greek courses. Although, from my point of view, unlike English, this skill is absolutely useless for any practical purpose.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/333866/
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