Hello! On Habré you can find many articles about moving to different cities and countries in search of a better life. So I decided to share my story of resettlement from Moscow to Tomsk. Yes, to Siberia. Well, this is where it is 40 degrees below zero in winter, mosquitoes the size of an elephant in summer and tame bears for every second inhabitant. Siberia. A few unconventional way for a simple Russian programmer, many will say, and they will be right. Usually the migration flow goes in the direction of the capitals, and not vice versa. The story of how I came to such a life is quite long, but I hope it will be interesting to many.

One way ticket. Path from engineer to programmers

Actually, I'm not a “real programmer.” I come from the Kursk region, the university graduated with a degree in "Automobiles and automobile industry" and did not work for a single day by profession. Like many others, I left to conquer Moscow, where I began working as a designer and developer of lighting equipment. Later he worked as an engineer in the production of optical instruments for space.

On Habré once there was an article that programmers will soon turn into "simple engineers" . I read this somewhat wildly, considering that quite recently in a historical perspective (see science fiction of the 60s) an engineer was practically a demigod. Some justify high salaries in IT by saying that a programmer needs to know a lot and constantly learn. I was in both incarnations - both a "simple engineer" and a "simple programmer" and I can definitely say that a good (good) engineer in the modern world should also learn and learn new things throughout his career. It’s just that the digital age has come and the title of “magicians” changing the world has passed on to programmers.

In Russia, the gigantic difference in the amount of salaries of engineers and programmers is primarily due to the fact that the IT industry is more globalized, many companies are participating in international projects, and good developers may well find work abroad. Moreover, now there is personnel shortage, and in these conditions, wages in IT cannot but grow, so the idea of ​​retraining from an engineer to a programmer looks quite interesting. Habré also has articles on this topic. Only you need to understand that this is a one-way ticket: first, there will most likely be no return to “real” engineering work, and secondly, you need to have a natural inclination and genuine interest in the profession of a programmer.

I had such qualities, but for the time being I managed to keep this part of my personality under control, feeding her sometimes with writing small scripts in Lisp and VBA to automate work in AutoCAD. However, over time, I still began to notice that programmers were fed much better than engineers, and the mantra Software Engineer is not an Engineer, spied on in Western forums, began to crash. So the decision to try their hand at a new profession has matured.

My first program was designed to automate the calculation of "crystal curtains" and it was written in Qt. Not the easiest way for beginners, frankly. The choice of language was made thanks to a brother (programmer by education and profession). “Smart guys choose C ++ and Qt,” he said, and I sincerely considered myself sensible. Plus, I could count on my brother's help in mastering the “big” programming, and I must say, his role in my development on the software development path is difficult to overestimate.

Before the start of development, a plan was written, which was extremely optimistic and assumed that everything would take a couple of months to complete. In fact, the development lasted more than six months. The output turned out to be a good application with a little graphics, the ability to save and open a project, download actual prices from the server and support for various calculation options. Needless to say, the UI, the architecture and the code of the project were terrible, but ... the program worked and brought real benefits to a single company.

My first program

By the time this project was completed, I had already changed my place of work, so I was paid separately for the application. It was the first money directly for writing working code. I felt like a real programmer! From the immediate transition to the dark side of the force, I was prevented only by the fact that the big world for some reason did not think so.

The search for a new job was somewhat delayed. Not everyone is ready to take over the over-age Junior. Nevertheless, he who seeks will always find. Here I met
a small company engaged in the development of applications for AutoCAD in the construction industry. Development was assumed in C ++ (MFC) using COM. Quite a strange decision, frankly, but this has historically been the case. I knew AutoCAD and the basics of programming for it, so I confidently said that I could produce a result. And they took me. What is characteristic, I began to issue the result almost immediately, although I had to master everything in parallel.

I never regretted my choice. Moreover, after a while, it was realized that I was much happier in the role of a programmer than an engineer.

One hundred years of solitude. Experience of remote work

After a couple of years of work as a programmer, I learned a lot, grew up as an expert and began to understand the books of Meyers, Sutter and even a little Alexandrescu. But at the same time, the shortcomings were also clearly visible, and it was possible to close my eyes for the time being. I was the only C ++ programmer in the company. On the one hand, this is of course good - you can experiment as you please and apply any libraries and technologies (Qt, boost, template magic, the latest version of the standard - everything is possible), but on the other - there’s almost no one to consult with, no one to learn from and As a result, it is impossible to adequately assess your skills. The company itself is stuck in its development at the level of the late 90s and early 00s. There was no Agile, Scrum and other advanced development methodologies. I even used Git on my own initiative.

Intuition suggested that I had reached my ceiling at this place, and I used to trust my intuition. The desire to grow and move on with each passing day intensified. To calm this itch, additional books were purchased and a slow preparation for technical interviews began. But fate was different, and things did not go according to plan.

It was a normal work day: I was sitting, I did not touch anyone, I repaired the legacy code. In a word, nothing foreshadowed, but then suddenly there was an offer to earn some money.
writing C # programs for AutoCAD for one Tomsk company. With # I previously touched only a 6-meter stick, but by that time I was already firmly on my feet and was ready to step onto the slippery path of a .NET developer. In the end, C # is almost the same as C ++, only with garbage collector and other pleasures, I convinced myself. By the way, it turned out to be almost true, and my skills in C ++, as well as information about WPF and the MVVM pattern, which I learned from the Internet, was enough to successfully complete the test task.

I worked at a second job in the evenings and on weekends for a couple of months and (suddenly) I found out that combining the remote and main jobs, provided that you spend three hours a day on the road, a little ... tiresome. Without thinking twice, I decided to try to become a completely remote developer. “Remote work is stylish, fashionable, youth,” they were told from all the irons, and I was young in my heart and was still going to leave my main job, so the solution was easy enough for me. So began my remote career.

Habré is full of articles glorifying the remote - how you can easily manage your schedule, do not waste time on the road and arrange the most comfortable conditions for fruitful creative work. Other articles are presented in a much smaller number, telling carefully that remote work is not so cool and reveals unpleasant aspects, such as a constant feeling of loneliness, difficulty in communication within a team, problems with career growth and professional burnout. I was familiar with both of them, and with another point of view, therefore I approached the change of work format with all the responsibility and care.

For starters, I set a work schedule for everyday life. Rise at 6:30, walk in the park, work from 8:00 to 12:00 and from 14:00 to 18:00. During the break - a trip to a business lunch and shopping, and in the evening sports and self-study. To many people who know about remote work only by hearsay, such a rather tight schedule seems wild. But, as practice has shown, this is probably the only reasonable way to stay sane and not to burn out. As a second step, I partitioned off a single room with a rack to separate the workspace and the seating area. The latter helped little, to be honest, and after a year the apartment was perceived mainly as a place of work.

The harsh truth of life

And somehow it happened that with the transition to a remote site with a free schedule without mandatory hours of presence in the office, I began to work more. Much more. Just because most of the day I really worked, and did not spend time on meetings, coffee and conversations with colleagues about the weather, plans for the weekend and features for relaxing in fabulous Bali. At the same time there was a reserve, so it was possible to take more work from other places. Here it is necessary to clarify that by the time of the transition to remote work I was alone, and had no restraining and limiting factors. I stepped into this trap with ease.

A few years later it was discovered that in my life there is nothing but work. The most quick-witted already understood that I was a deep introvert and it was not easy for me to make new acquaintances, and here I got into a vicious circle: “work-work-work” and I don’t have time for any “nonsense”. Moreover, I didn’t have a special incentive to get out of this eternal cycle - dopamine, obtained by the brain from successfully solving complex problems, was enough to enjoy life. But gloomy thoughts about the future began to come more and more often, so I had to force myself to take the only right decision - to return to real life.

Based on my four-year experience of remote work, I can say that the most important thing is keeping the balance between work and life (work-life balance). Difficult life circumstances may shift the interests and time towards work, until the normal life completely disappears, but this cannot be surrendered in any way; it will be rather difficult to break out later because of the burden of accumulated obligations. My return to real life took about a year.

Where dreams lead. Moving to Tomsk

When I first came to Tomsk to get acquainted with the team and corporate culture, the company was quite small and I was most struck by the work atmosphere. It was a breath of fresh air. For the first time in my life I got into the team, looking to the future. All previous work was “just work”, and colleagues constantly complained about life, salary, power. Here it was not so. People worked and did the future with their own hands without whining and complaining. A place in which you want to work, in which you feel an inevitable movement forward, and you feel it with every cell of your body. The atmosphere of a startup, which is so loved by so many, yes.

Being a remote, I constantly struggled with an impostor syndrome . It seemed to me that I was not sufficiently qualified and was running too slowly to just stay in place. But it was impossible to show weakness, so I chose the famous tactic Fake It Till You Make It. Ultimately, this very syndrome contributed to my growth. I boldly took on new projects and successfully completed them, first in the company I passed the Microsoft exams for the MCSD , and also, in the meantime , received the Qt C ++ Specialist certificate.

When there was a question about the existence of life after remote work, I went to Tomsk for a couple of months to live a normal life and work full-time. And here the terrible truth was revealed - quite ordinary people work in the company, with their strengths and weaknesses, and I look quite good against the general background, and in some places it is better than many. And even the fact that I am older than most of my colleagues somehow does not depress me much and, in fact, few people care about. So a decisive blow was dealt to the impostor's syndrome (to get rid of it completely, however, I have not yet succeeded). The company in the four years that I have been with her has grown, become more mature and more serious, but the atmosphere of a cheerful startup is still available.

On working noon

Moreover, I fell in love with the city itself. Tomsk is very small by the capital standards, a very calm city. From my point of view, this is a huge plus. It’s good to watch the hectic life of big cities from the side (watching others work is always nice), but to participate in all of this movement is quite another matter.

In Tomsk, many wooden buildings of the last century have been preserved, which create some kind of special cozy atmosphere. Not all of them are well preserved, but restoration work is underway, which is good news.

Tomsk was once the provincial capital, but the Trans-Siberian Railway passed much further south, and this determined the development of the city. He was not very interested in big business and migrant flows, but a strong university environment (2 universities are in the top 5 Russian universities according to QS and THE ratings) created the prerequisites for growth already in the new millennium. Tomsk, no matter how amazing it may seem in the capitals, is very strong in IT. In addition to the place of my work, there are several other companies that are successfully operating on the global market with world-class products.

As for the climate, it is quite severe. There is a real winter here that lasts seven months. A lot of snow and frost, just like in childhood. In the European part of Russia, such a winter was long gone. The frosts of -40 ° C are a little straining, of course, but they are not as often as many people think. Summer is usually not very hot here. Mosquitoes and moshkars, which scare many, turned out to be not so scary. Somewhere in Khabarovsk this attack is much more cheerful, in my opinion. By the way, domestic bears nobody holds here. The biggest disappointment, perhaps.

This Siberian is not one who is not afraid of frost, but one who is warmly dressed

After that trip, my fate was almost predetermined: I didn’t really want to spend a lot of my life on the road. I chose Tomsk, so on the next visit I bought an apartment and became almost a real citizen. Even the word " multifor " does not scare me much.

In conclusion, I want to say that life is too short to spend it on uninteresting work in an uncomfortable place. Actually, IT is one of the few areas where you can choose a place and working conditions. No need to limit your choice to capitals, programmers everywhere are well fed, including in Russia.

All good and choosing the right path!