Who left: three stories of alumni of the HeadHunter School of Programmers

What happens to the alumni of the HeadHunter School of Programmers next when they leave the company? We decided to tell three small stories of those who studied with us in different years, worked at HeadHunter and continued their development abroad.

Getting an introduction?

Vasily Katraev, Senior Game Server Developer at DIGIT, Dublin, graduate of the School of Programmers 2011 - the very first graduation

In 2011, I went to the silo for practical experience, which I absolutely lacked. This was the first such project at that time. Now almost all large companies have their own schools / courses, then from such was only the SAD, and then it was all the other direction. I did not work anywhere, I was a fourth year student at the Moscow Medical University, and I was looking for a part-time junior programmer job. I was extremely happy when the letter came that I was selected.

The school of programmers allowed not only to master the real skills of the programmer, but also to receive a very, very worthy scholarship for that time - an order of magnitude higher than in the home university. But now I already realized that the main thing was not in money, but in the knowledge, spirit and culture that I saw in hh.ru. I learned a completely different way (compared to school projects) to relate to development, think a few steps forward, do not chase fast hacks, or insert without the need for “beautiful pieces from a recently read article,” but really create a system architecture. This is the same software engineering, which only recently began to teach in our universities.

To be honest, I still think the level of development in HeadHunter is very, very high, and I think I have something to compare with. I worked on the SRE team - we were considered “special forces” of development, controlled the performance and reliability of all our services, and developed central critical services ourselves. All this required a deep understanding, knowledge - both of hardware, the principles of networking, and the features of specific programming languages, and of understanding algorithms - all this is really in demand when working on a serious project. After that, it was easy for me to understand new things. I worked in the HFT team - algorithmic trading at Deutsche Bank, helped to create the big data from Tinkoff from scratch, again returned to SRE, but on a different scale in another country - Ireland, on Microsoft cloud services. Now I was finally able to do what I wanted for a long time: I make games, and specifically a radically new, very promising mobile MMO strategy in the excellent Irish company DIGIT.

If you want to be engaged in serious programming in your life, higher level than the layout of shops for php or forms for databases, this is definitely the right choice. The level of the School is growing, and I am sure that you will get relevant and relevant skills.

Now I live in Dublin, Ireland. Initially, I moved here to work at Microsoft, but after a year and a half I decided to fulfill an old childhood dream and moved into developing a game for a small (70 people) Irish company.

Timur Bilalov, Client Side Developer in booking.com, the Netherlands, graduate of the School of Programmers 2014

Before I entered the HeadHunter School of Programmers, I was a fourth-year student at the faculty of the Moscow Medical University, combining my studies with a job as a web developer in a small office that develops websites and applications for chess players. Quite by chance, I found an advertisement about recruiting programmers to the School at the faculty booth, literally two days before the deadline for receiving applications. I had to spend the whole weekend to answer the questionnaire and make a test task.

In the ad, I liked the fact that they would teach not just programming languages ​​or tools, but also teamwork, design, and other interesting things. I understood that knowledge would be useful in any case, so I decided to try to enter.
The first time was not so easy to combine study, work and study at the School of Programmers. The school was in the evening, classes began at 18 o'clock. Lesson lasted from one and a half to three hours. In addition, we were given homework after each lecture. It is good that his deadline was quite long.

What I learned helped me grow in my current work. After several months of lectures, the team work on a test product began. The practice was not only about how to write "good" code. It can be said that all the processes there were a reduced version of how the modern team works in a technology company.

Schooling is an important step in my career. School and work at hh.ru gave an insight into the current level of front-end development and the processes of careful product development. With colleagues from HeadHunter, with whom I studied or worked together, I still maintain good relations. I am especially interested in asking them about global changes in the company, for example, in technologies or processes that have occurred over a long period of time, and their outcomes.

To all my friends who ask whether it is worth enrolling in the School of Programmers, I always answer positively. Knowledge will not be superfluous in any case, and if you like the company, then with the successful completion of training you can also join the team.

Alexander Inozemtsev, Senior Front End Developer in Zalando, Berlin, graduate of the School of Programmers 2013

Before school, I studied in the graduate school of the Moscow Aviation Institute at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Physics. I went to school in order to get real knowledge from the world of web development and, if you're lucky, to start working in HH.

I am very glad that I was able to take part in this project. School programmers gave a lot of new technical knowledge, theory and practice of working in a team. The school gave me a lot of new friends and marked the beginning of my career. Five years ago I got to the School, six months later I came to the company as a junior developer, and after 4 years I left as a lead developer.

Now I work in the Berlin office of the German company Zalando. This is a multi-brand online clothing store, which has offices in sixteen European countries. The headquarters is located in Berlin, and the staff is about 13 thousand people. The technical department is quite large, and, in addition to Berlin, the development teams are based in Hamburg, Dortmund, Helsinki and Dublin.

I got to Zalando after successfully completing several rounds of interviews. Did HeadHunter Help Me? Of course. Without the knowledge and experience that I have accumulated over 4 years of work in HH, I would hardly have had an interview.

Those who doubt whether to go to school, I can only advise you not to doubt and try to enroll. Even in case of failure, there will be a rewarding experience of passing a technical interview. If you get to the School, I recommend to gather your strength and complete it to the end - it's a shame to miss the final project.