The history of the programmer who created the company "Maxilect", 100% working remotely
I started programming by modern standards late, being a student of mathematics SPbU. The first place of my work was the company “ TogetherSoft ” in 1998, and for the device there I needed to perform a test task related to building a Java parser C ++ code. I performed the task on a 166 Hz Pentium with a “flat” 15 ”monitor from Sony, typed the text of the program in the“ Far manager ”(I still use it) and compiled it on the command line. I had several weeks to complete it (with the payment condition in case of success), but only on the last night, in the best traditions of the students, I caught a bug (I still remember that it was a mistake, since I drank more than one liter instant coffee until found it). In the afternoon, I passed the test result on a 3.5 ”diskette, received 400 USD for it, and was hired into a strong team. My first experience was remote, the result was successful and it suited me perfectly, but then I did not attach much importance to this.
I started working in the office, spending 2 hours of my time on the road one way. Then I rented an apartment nearby, I left the hostel, and my life has changed a lot. I worked a lot, as I clearly understood how much the result of my work influences my future (which could not be said at that moment about all the courses in higher mathematics). Subsequently, some of my colleagues created several startups. As a novice developer, I received a high level of personal and team performance, which subsequently determined my thorny path of development - I tried to continue working in startups.
In the summer of 1999 there was a diploma defense (the topic of which was my activity at work, which was more important for me), in April 2000 I left for the USA on an H1B visa, and in 2001 I again had to work remotely, already in Los Angeles. The fact is that in June 2001 I decided to go back to Russia, made a public announcement about it, but my colleagues took it differently, and the employer suggested that I work the last weeks from home. Then, for the first time, I experienced problems with motivation when working remotely, because I was not expected to receive a special result, rather it was a link.
')
During my stay in the USA, I started developing a test automation product with another RF programmer. The first business experience turned out to be unsuccessful, the partner left the project suddenly (although I “broke through” his job and visa at the company where he worked), and it turned out to be difficult for one to do all the work. The project did not live to see the first stable release, and I made the right conclusions about what a partner should be and why a startup alone could not be developed.
When I returned to Russia, I did not immediately find a job in the office (and there were no other options then), and while I was searching, my former employer (or rather, manager Kostya, whom I worked with before leaving for the USA) helped me by offering to perform the task under the contract, and therefore remotely. This was my third remote experience.
Then I worked in an office, worked for the benefit of 2 companies, and in both cases it was “open space”. By that moment I had already read the book “ Peopleware ”, and was a staunch opponent of open spaces, where you are sitting facing the wall, and behind your back anyone can look into your monitor. At the same time, I felt low personal productivity indicators, when, after helping my colleagues on their issues, I did not move forward in solving my programming tasks. It was disappointing, and I, being a responsible person, “winded up” myself, worried. The lag problem was solved simply: in one day of work at the weekend at home I could program more than a few days in the office. This greatly resented me, but what could I change in that situation?
In 2006, for three consecutive days, I received a negative answer to my question: “Do I want to go to work in the office to program”? I immediately wrote a statement, completed the case and quit my job. The point then was no longer in the office, but in programming. I have always been a “resultant”, I could bypass corporate rules to achieve a goal, and I realized that programming became a craft for me that I didn’t want to pursue. Those. I came to the conclusion that in programming I did not like the process, but the result achieved. All this was accompanied by the desire to develop, to obtain new knowledge that is difficult to apply, being in the role of a developer. The logical continuation of my career was the management of teams and projects, to which I was not quite ready. Therefore, the process of self-study began, without which work remotely is unthinkable. I read books, a lot of classics (I read almost all of Dostoevsky, and in understanding of people his books gave me no less than all my past experience, then I read E. Fromm's Escape from Freedom). Due to an internal protest against what I saw in the work of the companies in which I and my friends worked, I wrote and published several articles about “Career of the programmer”, “Development trends of the software development market in the Russian Federation” (as I understood it then) , special attention was paid to the lack of professionalism of the HR services with whom I communicated a lot and which subsequently led to the creation of a better HR department in our company from all that I have ever met, and now our partners are turning to us for help in closing positions. One article was written for the portal cnews about the problems of companies-outsourcers, and there I was not ashamed of statements.
The job search was delayed, but I found a company that risked making me a project manager, but with one condition: I had to gain credibility with those programmers who already worked there. For this, it was necessary to immerse in the theory of stock trading options (3 weeks) and develop a server component for the construction of option spreads (4 weeks). The motivation was prohibitive, so the brains were late in the evening, but I did it and became the project manager. The goal has been achieved. I again worked in a strong team, went to the USA on business trips, continued to develop. A year later, I decided to set the task of leadership, and this work also began to seem routine. At that time I was not an experienced project manager, I had “book experience” and 1 year of practice, but I wanted to move on. Self-development and ambitions did their job, in 2008 I entered a business school (MBA) and quit my job, graduated in 2010. In 2009 I decided to create my second startup. Again it was unfortunate, but only I myself was to blame, and, strange as it may sound, the knowledge from the business school, which I wanted to apply at the start of the project, “to do everything right from the start” (instead of drinking instant coffee) prevented liters and programming that I still knew how). I also remembered this lesson. My own “burning startup” eyes were remembered by the girl I met when I was working on this project at New Peterhof: she later became my wife, enduringly enduring me and my 70–100 working hours a week.
Having spent all my money and received debts, I got an unforgettable experience of interviews, which most often ended in communicating with pretty girls-recruiters. One of them was remembered most of all: it was something unimaginable that I, after trying to create my own company, came to get a job, it was beyond her perception of the world, although she herself worked in a private company. In her eyes, I suppose, I was a “loser”, in the Russian Federation a completely different attitude to the unsuccessful experiences of startups than in the USA. It all lasted more than a year, and one of my friends told me that I was “non-harable”, and I agreed with him. As a result, I agreed with former colleagues that I would help them in the development of their business, performing various functions. This is a wonderful company “ C-Blues ”, now they are doing well, they have become a successful product company, but then I had a struggle of contradictions from what I saw: my business is damn difficult, the mountains work, it exhausts my nerves, but this is freedom. There, they finally convinced me that they had to create their own “shop” after all, they used such a funny term to designate a company. But I “blew on the water” after the second unsuccessful startup, I needed more money, there was a wedding ahead, and I went to work as a project manager, having suppressed the “entrepreneurial spirit” for a while.
As you can already guess, I started working remotely. Recalling that moment of decision making, I perfectly understand those who experience mistrust and fear when they come to work for us. But I had debts again, it was July in the yard, I was already married, and the prospect was to stay out of work until the fall (and many meetings with pretty girls from HR services, and that would have been the end of it). Therefore, I took a step forward, which I did not regret a bit afterwards. The fact is that if before that I had a successful personal experience of remote work, then here I got the experience of recruiting specialists and managing projects. Subsequently, I was in charge of the “project office”, although in essence I was performing the tasks of the operations director, i.e. the production was on me completely.
And here the circle is almost closed. I lacked only experience in marketing and sales (how I got it and why these tasks cannot be given to a “tough specialist with experience” should be written separately). I quit in the fall of 2014, and did not want to work for anyone else. But there was no concrete action plan, so it took almost a year for the situation to change. I had no idea for a “star startup”, I had already lost the skills of a programmer, so the choice of creating a company for developing custom software was logical. It was a small matter, it was necessary to make another step forward. In complete obscurity, in a fascinating journey through the “valley of death”, from where 90 +% of startups do not return alive, and 2 of the dead were mine. I did not have clients that I led away from my employer. The money should have been enough for 1-1.5 years of life for a young family (by that moment a daughter was born). And I had fear, because family, responsibility, 2 failed attempts in the past. On the other hand, I already clearly understood that I could not work for anyone except myself. Helped the guys who earn the courses "young entrepreneurs." I saw advertising on VKontakte, read it, and understood that this is exactly what I need. I went there for a “drive”, which should help me, as I thought, to take a step forward. Something it was like a visit to the "support groups" by the hero Edward Norton in the "Fight Club". Expectations were not deceived, and I received that charge of energy which I lacked. Fear was gone, but I knew from my lessons that I would not create a business alone. I needed a partner, more precisely 2, that would complement me - one in terms of sales and project management, the second in technical terms. They were two of my former colleagues from the last job. I called them to the meeting, for which I prepared a presentation on how we should start the company together and why we will succeed. A few days later, the company name was chosen and domains purchased. The company was called “ Maxilect ”, and, thanks to the experience of the founders and market advantages, was doomed to become a company where work is 100% done remotely.
The start was difficult and painful, the reality completely broke my plans from the presentation, but we went forward, abruptly changed course and made a few "reboots." Three months after the start, there were two of us left, and neither of us at that time was a technical specialist (although both had programmed in the past). Therefore, further, my partner Kirill Antonov and I began to build a business “from sales”, where he had little experience and I didn’t have it at all (except for the sale of my idea to create “Maxilect” to him).
The dots got connected (“dots got connected”), as Steve Jobs rightly pointed out in his famous speech . Dozens of read articles on topics that were interesting (“without a goal,” as it seemed then) to read to a programmer (about business and management at 23), dozens of failed interviews, the first distant work back in 1998, and much more that it was difficult to evaluate earlier and tie together - all these “points” united and helped to create the company “Maxilect”, where there is no place for what prevented me from working as a programmer in the office, but where there is an opportunity to equip my workplace as you see fit (and the company helps with this), and where It is a guide that considers its main objective the creation of conditions for effective work of employees. Our HR department in terms of recruiting is difficult to distinguish from the sales department, and rightly so. We do not look at the staff monitor, do not use any software that allows you to monitor the work of a specialist. Instead, we build trusting partnerships where each party must fulfill its obligations. We do not arrange discrimination on the part of remuneration based on geography, because we don’t care where a specialist works in St. Petersburg, Ryazan or Tomsk. But there is also the other side of the coin - we have no other way to evaluate the work of an employee, except by the result. And this imposes a serious responsibility, which, unfortunately, not everyone understands. Therefore, we pay no less attention to the readiness check to work with us than to the verification of technical skills.
Far off everyone can work remotely. But those who have worked with us for at least a year and managed to restructure themselves are unlikely to agree to work in the office again, because this is a paradigm shift, people become different, freer and more responsible. I can say 100% about myself: I will not return to the office, although we have one, without this, we will not open a company in the Russian Federation. As the hero Robert De Niro said in the film “The Heat”: “I am going back (to jail)”.
About "Maxilect" today can be found on our website . In short, then:
About how we have developed the company from scratch to the state in which we are now , my colleagues and I will talk in subsequent notes on Habré and in our blog . Much of what we have implemented in terms of business processes is truly unique. And we will be happy to share our experience with you. Before communication!
Article author: Maxim Korotkov, CEO, Maxilect
I started working in the office, spending 2 hours of my time on the road one way. Then I rented an apartment nearby, I left the hostel, and my life has changed a lot. I worked a lot, as I clearly understood how much the result of my work influences my future (which could not be said at that moment about all the courses in higher mathematics). Subsequently, some of my colleagues created several startups. As a novice developer, I received a high level of personal and team performance, which subsequently determined my thorny path of development - I tried to continue working in startups.
In the summer of 1999 there was a diploma defense (the topic of which was my activity at work, which was more important for me), in April 2000 I left for the USA on an H1B visa, and in 2001 I again had to work remotely, already in Los Angeles. The fact is that in June 2001 I decided to go back to Russia, made a public announcement about it, but my colleagues took it differently, and the employer suggested that I work the last weeks from home. Then, for the first time, I experienced problems with motivation when working remotely, because I was not expected to receive a special result, rather it was a link.
')
During my stay in the USA, I started developing a test automation product with another RF programmer. The first business experience turned out to be unsuccessful, the partner left the project suddenly (although I “broke through” his job and visa at the company where he worked), and it turned out to be difficult for one to do all the work. The project did not live to see the first stable release, and I made the right conclusions about what a partner should be and why a startup alone could not be developed.
When I returned to Russia, I did not immediately find a job in the office (and there were no other options then), and while I was searching, my former employer (or rather, manager Kostya, whom I worked with before leaving for the USA) helped me by offering to perform the task under the contract, and therefore remotely. This was my third remote experience.
Then I worked in an office, worked for the benefit of 2 companies, and in both cases it was “open space”. By that moment I had already read the book “ Peopleware ”, and was a staunch opponent of open spaces, where you are sitting facing the wall, and behind your back anyone can look into your monitor. At the same time, I felt low personal productivity indicators, when, after helping my colleagues on their issues, I did not move forward in solving my programming tasks. It was disappointing, and I, being a responsible person, “winded up” myself, worried. The lag problem was solved simply: in one day of work at the weekend at home I could program more than a few days in the office. This greatly resented me, but what could I change in that situation?
In 2006, for three consecutive days, I received a negative answer to my question: “Do I want to go to work in the office to program”? I immediately wrote a statement, completed the case and quit my job. The point then was no longer in the office, but in programming. I have always been a “resultant”, I could bypass corporate rules to achieve a goal, and I realized that programming became a craft for me that I didn’t want to pursue. Those. I came to the conclusion that in programming I did not like the process, but the result achieved. All this was accompanied by the desire to develop, to obtain new knowledge that is difficult to apply, being in the role of a developer. The logical continuation of my career was the management of teams and projects, to which I was not quite ready. Therefore, the process of self-study began, without which work remotely is unthinkable. I read books, a lot of classics (I read almost all of Dostoevsky, and in understanding of people his books gave me no less than all my past experience, then I read E. Fromm's Escape from Freedom). Due to an internal protest against what I saw in the work of the companies in which I and my friends worked, I wrote and published several articles about “Career of the programmer”, “Development trends of the software development market in the Russian Federation” (as I understood it then) , special attention was paid to the lack of professionalism of the HR services with whom I communicated a lot and which subsequently led to the creation of a better HR department in our company from all that I have ever met, and now our partners are turning to us for help in closing positions. One article was written for the portal cnews about the problems of companies-outsourcers, and there I was not ashamed of statements.
The job search was delayed, but I found a company that risked making me a project manager, but with one condition: I had to gain credibility with those programmers who already worked there. For this, it was necessary to immerse in the theory of stock trading options (3 weeks) and develop a server component for the construction of option spreads (4 weeks). The motivation was prohibitive, so the brains were late in the evening, but I did it and became the project manager. The goal has been achieved. I again worked in a strong team, went to the USA on business trips, continued to develop. A year later, I decided to set the task of leadership, and this work also began to seem routine. At that time I was not an experienced project manager, I had “book experience” and 1 year of practice, but I wanted to move on. Self-development and ambitions did their job, in 2008 I entered a business school (MBA) and quit my job, graduated in 2010. In 2009 I decided to create my second startup. Again it was unfortunate, but only I myself was to blame, and, strange as it may sound, the knowledge from the business school, which I wanted to apply at the start of the project, “to do everything right from the start” (instead of drinking instant coffee) prevented liters and programming that I still knew how). I also remembered this lesson. My own “burning startup” eyes were remembered by the girl I met when I was working on this project at New Peterhof: she later became my wife, enduringly enduring me and my 70–100 working hours a week.
Having spent all my money and received debts, I got an unforgettable experience of interviews, which most often ended in communicating with pretty girls-recruiters. One of them was remembered most of all: it was something unimaginable that I, after trying to create my own company, came to get a job, it was beyond her perception of the world, although she herself worked in a private company. In her eyes, I suppose, I was a “loser”, in the Russian Federation a completely different attitude to the unsuccessful experiences of startups than in the USA. It all lasted more than a year, and one of my friends told me that I was “non-harable”, and I agreed with him. As a result, I agreed with former colleagues that I would help them in the development of their business, performing various functions. This is a wonderful company “ C-Blues ”, now they are doing well, they have become a successful product company, but then I had a struggle of contradictions from what I saw: my business is damn difficult, the mountains work, it exhausts my nerves, but this is freedom. There, they finally convinced me that they had to create their own “shop” after all, they used such a funny term to designate a company. But I “blew on the water” after the second unsuccessful startup, I needed more money, there was a wedding ahead, and I went to work as a project manager, having suppressed the “entrepreneurial spirit” for a while.
As you can already guess, I started working remotely. Recalling that moment of decision making, I perfectly understand those who experience mistrust and fear when they come to work for us. But I had debts again, it was July in the yard, I was already married, and the prospect was to stay out of work until the fall (and many meetings with pretty girls from HR services, and that would have been the end of it). Therefore, I took a step forward, which I did not regret a bit afterwards. The fact is that if before that I had a successful personal experience of remote work, then here I got the experience of recruiting specialists and managing projects. Subsequently, I was in charge of the “project office”, although in essence I was performing the tasks of the operations director, i.e. the production was on me completely.
And here the circle is almost closed. I lacked only experience in marketing and sales (how I got it and why these tasks cannot be given to a “tough specialist with experience” should be written separately). I quit in the fall of 2014, and did not want to work for anyone else. But there was no concrete action plan, so it took almost a year for the situation to change. I had no idea for a “star startup”, I had already lost the skills of a programmer, so the choice of creating a company for developing custom software was logical. It was a small matter, it was necessary to make another step forward. In complete obscurity, in a fascinating journey through the “valley of death”, from where 90 +% of startups do not return alive, and 2 of the dead were mine. I did not have clients that I led away from my employer. The money should have been enough for 1-1.5 years of life for a young family (by that moment a daughter was born). And I had fear, because family, responsibility, 2 failed attempts in the past. On the other hand, I already clearly understood that I could not work for anyone except myself. Helped the guys who earn the courses "young entrepreneurs." I saw advertising on VKontakte, read it, and understood that this is exactly what I need. I went there for a “drive”, which should help me, as I thought, to take a step forward. Something it was like a visit to the "support groups" by the hero Edward Norton in the "Fight Club". Expectations were not deceived, and I received that charge of energy which I lacked. Fear was gone, but I knew from my lessons that I would not create a business alone. I needed a partner, more precisely 2, that would complement me - one in terms of sales and project management, the second in technical terms. They were two of my former colleagues from the last job. I called them to the meeting, for which I prepared a presentation on how we should start the company together and why we will succeed. A few days later, the company name was chosen and domains purchased. The company was called “ Maxilect ”, and, thanks to the experience of the founders and market advantages, was doomed to become a company where work is 100% done remotely.
The start was difficult and painful, the reality completely broke my plans from the presentation, but we went forward, abruptly changed course and made a few "reboots." Three months after the start, there were two of us left, and neither of us at that time was a technical specialist (although both had programmed in the past). Therefore, further, my partner Kirill Antonov and I began to build a business “from sales”, where he had little experience and I didn’t have it at all (except for the sale of my idea to create “Maxilect” to him).
The dots got connected (“dots got connected”), as Steve Jobs rightly pointed out in his famous speech . Dozens of read articles on topics that were interesting (“without a goal,” as it seemed then) to read to a programmer (about business and management at 23), dozens of failed interviews, the first distant work back in 1998, and much more that it was difficult to evaluate earlier and tie together - all these “points” united and helped to create the company “Maxilect”, where there is no place for what prevented me from working as a programmer in the office, but where there is an opportunity to equip my workplace as you see fit (and the company helps with this), and where It is a guide that considers its main objective the creation of conditions for effective work of employees. Our HR department in terms of recruiting is difficult to distinguish from the sales department, and rightly so. We do not look at the staff monitor, do not use any software that allows you to monitor the work of a specialist. Instead, we build trusting partnerships where each party must fulfill its obligations. We do not arrange discrimination on the part of remuneration based on geography, because we don’t care where a specialist works in St. Petersburg, Ryazan or Tomsk. But there is also the other side of the coin - we have no other way to evaluate the work of an employee, except by the result. And this imposes a serious responsibility, which, unfortunately, not everyone understands. Therefore, we pay no less attention to the readiness check to work with us than to the verification of technical skills.
Far off everyone can work remotely. But those who have worked with us for at least a year and managed to restructure themselves are unlikely to agree to work in the office again, because this is a paradigm shift, people become different, freer and more responsible. I can say 100% about myself: I will not return to the office, although we have one, without this, we will not open a company in the Russian Federation. As the hero Robert De Niro said in the film “The Heat”: “I am going back (to jail)”.
About "Maxilect" today can be found on our website . In short, then:
- We make turnkey solutions for Fintech & Ad Tech (high-load, stress tolerant, and further point by point - this is us).
- We help grocery companies release releases faster and increase their reliability.
- We love working with startups, and are ready to offer 2 models of collaboration (custom development and revenue sharing).
- We do R & D projects (Blockchain, ML).
- The main technological development stack: Java, Python, JS, Go, PHP, R.
- We share expertise in test automation (Java, Python, Robot Framework).
- For a number of specialties, we search constantly. If we do not have a project that would be of interest to a specialist, information about it is entered into our “external reserve”. When a new project appears, we first of all contact those with whom we are already familiar.
About how we have developed the company from scratch to the state in which we are now , my colleagues and I will talk in subsequent notes on Habré and in our blog . Much of what we have implemented in terms of business processes is truly unique. And we will be happy to share our experience with you. Before communication!
Article author: Maxim Korotkov, CEO, Maxilect
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/345156/
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