Why is it so difficult in St. Petersburg to build a career of VP of engineering?
Hi, Habr! My name is Svyatoslav Kulakov, I am VP of Engineering at Aurea Software. My whole life was spent in St. Petersburg: I was born and raised on the street of the Union of Pechatniki in front of the Mariinsky Theater, I studied in the second gymnasium with in-depth study of the English language and physics, I entered the University of Aerospace Instrumentation (SUAI). After studying, I worked in several software companies in Russia and the United States, but in the end everything returned to St. Petersburg and remained here even when it seemed like the right path to a career swamp.
Based on my personal experience, I will talk about why many IT specialists cannot find work in their level in St. Petersburg, how the best specialists' tugging mechanism works - at least to Moscow, or even immediately to the United States or other countries. And how I managed to find my best job at the moment in my hometown. But first things first.
')
My work biography started from the position of a Java-developer in a small software company in 1999. Over the next 9 years, I moved up the career ladder to the position of Account Manager, where more than 100 people were subordinate to me. The crisis of 2008 brought us down on the rise, and my next employment record was Lead IT Process Manager in the Moscow branch of Deutsche Bank. A year and a half later, I received a tempting offer from the USA: to advise business clients of Grid Dynamics on how to optimize development processes.
And it so happened that the head office of one of these firms turned out to be ... Again in St. Petersburg. Only not on the Karelian Isthmus, but in Florida. In this St. Petersburg, I spent most of the two years lived in the United States, engaging in the implementation of the Continuous Delivery process for a company that employed more than a thousand engineers.
I had a chance to live in Silicon Valley for a couple of months, but I failed to gain a foothold: there are legends about the high cost of living there. This is the land of millionaires - and for millionaires. In addition, too much time had to spend behind the wheel. One and a half hours of standing in a traffic jam on the highway on the way from home to work, one and a half hours of standing in traffic in the opposite direction, from work home - all this created the feeling that the road was eating up almost my whole life.
However, the American St. Petersburg also did not become my second home. We did not converge with America on a personal level: in two years I did not have a single new friend, either local or from our emigrants. I was pulled back by a real Peter. And in 2014, with the consent of Leonard Livshits, CEO of Grid Dynamics, I vacated the American position of Program Director, where I had about 60 people in charge, and returned home to Russia, receiving in exchange the position of VP of engineering - i.e. leadership of almost the entire company in all offices with a total of about 350 people at that time.
It was a very serious increase, but problems soon began when the distance and, most importantly, the time difference, began to make themselves felt: my working hours almost did not coincide with the working day of the CEO of Grid Dynamics, in which I was now directly subordinate. Livshits offered me a choice: either I move back to the USA to work in direct contact with him, or he hires an additional employee in America, whose task would be to coordinate my work - and smoothing the time difference between us. By that time I had finally decided that America was not for me, and refused to move.
Therefore, plan “B” was put into action. I still remained VP of engineering, but now my American “avatar” has become involved in strategic decisions instead of me. This made my work in Grid Dynamics much less interesting, so in July 2015 I left the company. At the same time, we parted well and still communicate with Livshits in a friendly manner. But I had to look for growth prospects in a new place.
The following two lines of my resume came out short enough: 9 months as Operations Director (COO) Corus Consulting CIS , owned by Sberbank, and another six months as General Manager of the St. Petersburg office of the Australian company MySale . However, in the latter case, we still agreed, “ashore”, to consider it as a project work, and not full employment.
Such an approach rather organically rests on the specifics of my profession: in the new place I begin to build processes and train people, continuing this until my section of the company starts to work effectively without my direct guidance. With this, I can consider my mission fulfilled and, if current employment does not offer new challenges, then this is a great time to change jobs. And when hiring in MySale, the employer immediately realized that this moment would someday come.
Otherwise, my future was foggy, like the dawn over the Neva. This is the St. Petersburg labor market, baby: when you outgrown the position of the head of the regional office, there is nothing more to offer to your native city. All serious decisions are made at the head offices, and head offices are usually not in St. Petersburg - and the Lakhta Center will not correct the situation.
Russian companies here are not very different from global ones - only in our case, Moscow is already the center of gravity. I ran into this when I was applying for a VP of engineering vacancy opened in St. Petersburg at Yandex.Money. After four interviews out of five, I learned that my friend, already working in this division of Yandex, is moving to Moscow - closer to the decision-making center. From Peter, he said, it was impossible to influence something. Even one time zone does not help - so far, in many cases, it is a matter of personal contact and personal presence. If you are not physically at the center of the processes, then the processes will pass by you.
This only strengthened my confidence that in St. Petersburg I could not find a company offering a full-time VP of engineering position without moving to another city.
On one of the regular Saturdays, my periodic visits to HH.ru finally brought something interesting. The American software company Aurea , part of the Texas business conglomerate ESW Capital , differed from all my previous work in the absence of a central office as a phenomenon - the whole business was organized and operated completely remotely. Their only office is located in Austin, Texas, from where the company started more than 10 years ago - now no more than seven people physically work there at the same time. The remaining 2000+ developers all over the world are working remotely. Thus, no one has a “geographical advantage”, all communications are equally remote. Whether you are from St. Petersburg, from New York, or from the forest, the main thing is that the Internet connection is stable.
The employment process at Aurea was also set up remotely - from the vacancy page at Headhunter, I got to a separate website, where I was offered to send my resume and perform a test task of seven questions, developed jointly by Aurea and another ESW Capital subsidiary - the Crossover recruiting agency . The test did not limit the time for an answer: you could start performing it in the morning, close the page, and continue in the evening from the same place.
I answered the first three questions in two days. The fourth required a fairly serious analytical work, so I hung on it for a couple of days. Then it turned out that they were already looking at me: the Crossover manager, who received my resume and the first three answers, wrote to me so that I would pass the test to the end: “Thank you, we really need VP of engineering”. However, I was not going to give up - the questions were actually interesting, so I was already involved in this game. In total, the test took me a week to complete.
After that, I had to wait: Crossover assigned me an interview with my future boss - Andy Montgomery - of course, also online, but we could not cross. However, after 3 weeks, we finally got on the phone. For an acquaintance, it took us only an hour. A couple of days later I was waited by a “control” interview - this time with the participation of the CEO of Ignite, another ESW Capital subsidiary. His task was "view from the side", second opinion. And already within a week after the second interview I received an offer from Aurea.
Due to its decentralized organizational structure, Aurea was able to offer me something that Peter himself did not have and could not have: a position in a large software company with the ability to participate in key strategic decisions without the need for relocation.
And no compromises, for example, in the salary. In Aurea, my salary is a million rubles, which is not a secret - all positions and their salaries in the company are absolutely transparent - while taxation, unlike expectations, does not bite at all.
Unlike previous companies, in Aurea, I still soon will have nothing to do. The company's business model implies constant aggressive growth through the purchase of other software companies while simultaneously reducing the operational costs of product development. By reducing costs, we make a profit, for which we buy less successful food companies that failed to cut their bones in time. After that, we are already reducing their costs - and we are buying new companies, expanding our product line more and more.
Now I have been at Aurea for a year and two months, and all this time my work is a constant drive without the slightest chance of remaining idle, because the integration of each newly acquired company into our business processes takes 3 months. Since its founding in 1988, ESW Capital has bought over 50 businesses; at the same time, already in 2018 another 50 are planned to be purchased - one company per week. Now is the sixth week of the year - and we are still going according to schedule, having already bought five companies for a total of about $ 30–50 million. In total, for 2018, ESW Capital allocated $ 600 million for takeovers.
PS The day after tomorrow, February 10, I speak in Moscow on the closed Executive Hiring Day, organized by the Crossover agency for current VPs and job seekers. The aggressive business strategy of his parent company ESW Capital has led to an ever-increasing need for personnel. At the moment, only the positions of VP of engineering holding need to be closed in five companies, and in total we are talking about hundreds of vacancies for all subsidiaries of ESW Capital. However, I will share my experience directly with applicants for the position of VP of engineering.
And, of course, as far as possible I will answer the questions of the habrasoobschestva in the comments, if any. Thank you for reading.
Based on my personal experience, I will talk about why many IT specialists cannot find work in their level in St. Petersburg, how the best specialists' tugging mechanism works - at least to Moscow, or even immediately to the United States or other countries. And how I managed to find my best job at the moment in my hometown. But first things first.
')
From St. Petersburg to St. Petersburg via St. Petersburg
My work biography started from the position of a Java-developer in a small software company in 1999. Over the next 9 years, I moved up the career ladder to the position of Account Manager, where more than 100 people were subordinate to me. The crisis of 2008 brought us down on the rise, and my next employment record was Lead IT Process Manager in the Moscow branch of Deutsche Bank. A year and a half later, I received a tempting offer from the USA: to advise business clients of Grid Dynamics on how to optimize development processes.
And it so happened that the head office of one of these firms turned out to be ... Again in St. Petersburg. Only not on the Karelian Isthmus, but in Florida. In this St. Petersburg, I spent most of the two years lived in the United States, engaging in the implementation of the Continuous Delivery process for a company that employed more than a thousand engineers.
I had a chance to live in Silicon Valley for a couple of months, but I failed to gain a foothold: there are legends about the high cost of living there. This is the land of millionaires - and for millionaires. In addition, too much time had to spend behind the wheel. One and a half hours of standing in a traffic jam on the highway on the way from home to work, one and a half hours of standing in traffic in the opposite direction, from work home - all this created the feeling that the road was eating up almost my whole life.
However, the American St. Petersburg also did not become my second home. We did not converge with America on a personal level: in two years I did not have a single new friend, either local or from our emigrants. I was pulled back by a real Peter. And in 2014, with the consent of Leonard Livshits, CEO of Grid Dynamics, I vacated the American position of Program Director, where I had about 60 people in charge, and returned home to Russia, receiving in exchange the position of VP of engineering - i.e. leadership of almost the entire company in all offices with a total of about 350 people at that time.
VP of engineering is responsible for the coordination and successful implementation of all software projects of the company in full, including not only developing but also controlling business processes, mentoring and training project personnel.
- author definition
It was a very serious increase, but problems soon began when the distance and, most importantly, the time difference, began to make themselves felt: my working hours almost did not coincide with the working day of the CEO of Grid Dynamics, in which I was now directly subordinate. Livshits offered me a choice: either I move back to the USA to work in direct contact with him, or he hires an additional employee in America, whose task would be to coordinate my work - and smoothing the time difference between us. By that time I had finally decided that America was not for me, and refused to move.
Therefore, plan “B” was put into action. I still remained VP of engineering, but now my American “avatar” has become involved in strategic decisions instead of me. This made my work in Grid Dynamics much less interesting, so in July 2015 I left the company. At the same time, we parted well and still communicate with Livshits in a friendly manner. But I had to look for growth prospects in a new place.
VP is not the place
The following two lines of my resume came out short enough: 9 months as Operations Director (COO) Corus Consulting CIS , owned by Sberbank, and another six months as General Manager of the St. Petersburg office of the Australian company MySale . However, in the latter case, we still agreed, “ashore”, to consider it as a project work, and not full employment.
Such an approach rather organically rests on the specifics of my profession: in the new place I begin to build processes and train people, continuing this until my section of the company starts to work effectively without my direct guidance. With this, I can consider my mission fulfilled and, if current employment does not offer new challenges, then this is a great time to change jobs. And when hiring in MySale, the employer immediately realized that this moment would someday come.
Otherwise, my future was foggy, like the dawn over the Neva. This is the St. Petersburg labor market, baby: when you outgrown the position of the head of the regional office, there is nothing more to offer to your native city. All serious decisions are made at the head offices, and head offices are usually not in St. Petersburg - and the Lakhta Center will not correct the situation.
Russian companies here are not very different from global ones - only in our case, Moscow is already the center of gravity. I ran into this when I was applying for a VP of engineering vacancy opened in St. Petersburg at Yandex.Money. After four interviews out of five, I learned that my friend, already working in this division of Yandex, is moving to Moscow - closer to the decision-making center. From Peter, he said, it was impossible to influence something. Even one time zone does not help - so far, in many cases, it is a matter of personal contact and personal presence. If you are not physically at the center of the processes, then the processes will pass by you.
This only strengthened my confidence that in St. Petersburg I could not find a company offering a full-time VP of engineering position without moving to another city.
How I found my best job
On one of the regular Saturdays, my periodic visits to HH.ru finally brought something interesting. The American software company Aurea , part of the Texas business conglomerate ESW Capital , differed from all my previous work in the absence of a central office as a phenomenon - the whole business was organized and operated completely remotely. Their only office is located in Austin, Texas, from where the company started more than 10 years ago - now no more than seven people physically work there at the same time. The remaining 2000+ developers all over the world are working remotely. Thus, no one has a “geographical advantage”, all communications are equally remote. Whether you are from St. Petersburg, from New York, or from the forest, the main thing is that the Internet connection is stable.
The employment process at Aurea was also set up remotely - from the vacancy page at Headhunter, I got to a separate website, where I was offered to send my resume and perform a test task of seven questions, developed jointly by Aurea and another ESW Capital subsidiary - the Crossover recruiting agency . The test did not limit the time for an answer: you could start performing it in the morning, close the page, and continue in the evening from the same place.
I answered the first three questions in two days. The fourth required a fairly serious analytical work, so I hung on it for a couple of days. Then it turned out that they were already looking at me: the Crossover manager, who received my resume and the first three answers, wrote to me so that I would pass the test to the end: “Thank you, we really need VP of engineering”. However, I was not going to give up - the questions were actually interesting, so I was already involved in this game. In total, the test took me a week to complete.
After that, I had to wait: Crossover assigned me an interview with my future boss - Andy Montgomery - of course, also online, but we could not cross. However, after 3 weeks, we finally got on the phone. For an acquaintance, it took us only an hour. A couple of days later I was waited by a “control” interview - this time with the participation of the CEO of Ignite, another ESW Capital subsidiary. His task was "view from the side", second opinion. And already within a week after the second interview I received an offer from Aurea.
How dreams come true
Due to its decentralized organizational structure, Aurea was able to offer me something that Peter himself did not have and could not have: a position in a large software company with the ability to participate in key strategic decisions without the need for relocation.
And no compromises, for example, in the salary. In Aurea, my salary is a million rubles, which is not a secret - all positions and their salaries in the company are absolutely transparent - while taxation, unlike expectations, does not bite at all.
Unlike previous companies, in Aurea, I still soon will have nothing to do. The company's business model implies constant aggressive growth through the purchase of other software companies while simultaneously reducing the operational costs of product development. By reducing costs, we make a profit, for which we buy less successful food companies that failed to cut their bones in time. After that, we are already reducing their costs - and we are buying new companies, expanding our product line more and more.
Now I have been at Aurea for a year and two months, and all this time my work is a constant drive without the slightest chance of remaining idle, because the integration of each newly acquired company into our business processes takes 3 months. Since its founding in 1988, ESW Capital has bought over 50 businesses; at the same time, already in 2018 another 50 are planned to be purchased - one company per week. Now is the sixth week of the year - and we are still going according to schedule, having already bought five companies for a total of about $ 30–50 million. In total, for 2018, ESW Capital allocated $ 600 million for takeovers.
PS The day after tomorrow, February 10, I speak in Moscow on the closed Executive Hiring Day, organized by the Crossover agency for current VPs and job seekers. The aggressive business strategy of his parent company ESW Capital has led to an ever-increasing need for personnel. At the moment, only the positions of VP of engineering holding need to be closed in five companies, and in total we are talking about hundreds of vacancies for all subsidiaries of ESW Capital. However, I will share my experience directly with applicants for the position of VP of engineering.
And, of course, as far as possible I will answer the questions of the habrasoobschestva in the comments, if any. Thank you for reading.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/348634/
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