How we opened development offices



    Our site for electronic trading began with five PHP developers 10 years ago. True, strong. Among other things, we updated the main PHP branch with respect to cryptographic algorithms for working with e-mails. During this time, due to the numerous integration with banks, customer systems and simply because of the company's intensive growth and the development of new services, the development department has grown more than 20 times, and, of course, we needed separate development offices in different cities.

    Since PHP is now almost taught in school, there are many good specialists in the country. So we started to make remote offices. Somewhere there are teams of developers and analysts (without PM), and in Cheboksary there is a whole department of testers.

    The principles are simple and the same in all regions:

    • Moscow salary.
    • Agile-manifesto in the part “it is better to do the work than to write pieces of paper” - in action.
    • The dress code does not apply to the development (we work with government customers, so this is an important point for the same sales).
    • Skype interview at the same time with Eychar and future leader. There are no problems about hatches.

    Where offices are open:

    • Kaliningrad
    • St. Petersburg
    • Moscow
    • Kazan
    • Cheboksary
    • Yekaterinburg
    • Chelyabinsk
    • Novosibirsk
    • Khabarovsk
    • Vladivostok



    Four cities stand out in this list: Moscow (this is understandable: here is the largest office and head office of the company), St. Petersburg (many people, many IT specialists, many customers), Kazan and Kaliningrad. We opened these two cities literally recently, and the development teams and analysts are not yet fully staffed. And they are interesting in that there was a surge of interest in IT in Kazan several years ago, and now there are very good specialists on the market, and there are many. Perhaps this is because of Innopolis. And Kaliningrad is almost a European city with an appropriate approach to life, but at the same time not as noisy as Moscow. And many IT professionals have moved there in recent years. Therefore, without an office there is no way.

    Here is an example of how the office works, Kazan:



    This is a detached two-story building in Millennium Park close to the center. In Innopolis they decided not to endure an office: it turns out to go too far. Specifically, at this place everyone is comfortable. From above, of course, not agile-space, but such a building has got from many options, and it is the best. For teams - big rooms. This is not a hefty open space, but not separate rooms for each, because most often in the same office all are united by one project and constantly communicate.

    There is no corporate catering: we decided that it would be inappropriate to do dining or catering to the office. When choosing “all amenities and local salary” against “find a cafe on your own and Moscow salary”, guess what the developers choose. And all our offices are not in the suburbs, so finding a cafe is easy. But as far as I know, many carry food from home calmly. Refrigerator and coffee machine is, tea, sugar, coffee is also updated.

    Relocation is not very developed, but in theory it is possible. There are several people who regularly travel between Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg. Often, developers go on business trips to other offices. This is either a task, or a meeting with a customer, or a conference. All company employees are invited to corporate events. But there is a global retrospective for the development office, so you need to meet and talk to everyone. This is a mandatory trip for 2 days two or three times a year.



    Internal online conferences for the project office are in webinar format, many share their experience right inside the department. Every Tuesday the guys exchange experiences. After Tuesday mitapov - usually internal reports on conf-call. Here are the last five topics that were:

    1. Introduction to unit and functional testing, phpunit, and the basics of unit testing, with examples from legacy
    2. Analysis of nuances unit testing legacy. Analysis of functional testing with examples of symfony and zend with nuances of legacy
    3. Design patterns
    4. DI and DI Symfony
    5. Docker and Gitlab CI

    There is no VHI, but we pay extra up to 100% of hospital coverage (that is, while the developer is sick, he gets not less than the rate, but the rate), 100% cover vacation (similarly: time costs as much as working, and not less, this is especially important for those who want to go on vacation in January or in May). We always pay for processing according to the standard for shopping mall (the output is a double rate and by the hour). We do not force people to study, we do not force people to attend or attend courses, but if an employee is willing, and the manager approves, we agree. Got sick - there is a remote exit, but it is necessary to warn the manager in time. I was late - not a problem, if this did not prevent the team, but in the evening it is necessary to work out as much.

    Here is what the experts themselves say:

    Feedback from Chelyabinsk:
    As a programmer from the region, I can say the following about work at the EETP: this is a great opportunity to gain access to the capital's level of knowledge and competences, to work under the authority of responsible and sensible managers. Well, what to hide - to receive the capital level of remuneration and social package. And while living in the native Urals, Siberia or the Volga region. For me, so - great!

    Feedback from St. Petersburg:
    A lot of interesting work. The opportunity to experience kubernetes.
    Excellent motivation system, competitive and completely white salary.

    Feedback from Ekaterinburg:
    It is better to work in EETP JSC than in the rest of Ekaterinburg companies, because you get Moscow experience by staying in your city. More salary, truth and responsibility is bigger. I also like the organization of processes very much, the specialist is responsible for each step, and not “shiva being torn to pieces”.

    The recruitment of new people is possible only through Moscow, through the personnel selection department and the development manager directly. Interview - an hour and a half, immediately participate and the representative of the HR-team, and the head of development. Most often we find people on LinkedIn either on HH, very rarely - on My circle. We agree on a convenient time and date, often set for the evening in the region. The first 15–20 minutes are questions in terms of motivation, projects, testing soft skills. Then the head of the development department asks technical questions and gives the task. We look at the actual math and logical thinking. Tasks are developed internally in practical cases of recent years.

    The most important thing in the selection is the focus on results, not on the process. That is, it is important that a person wants to see his code in production and bring it to the end. You can skip some of the processes, you can not very accurately execute documents - this is all solved easily. But the desire to do business is the most important thing. The second is sociability. I must say: good sociability in PHP is a rare phenomenon. And it is very important for us to quickly and openly change information, in time to know about possible problems and not to offend each other and not poison the June. Therefore, if a person has ever worked in a project team, then in general there is a skill. Alone, no one works for us. It is important that no one be beside the code review. And more important is responsibility.

    We ask about cases, examples of problem solving, what was interesting among them, what we liked and so on. Then the development manager checks the potential: for obvious reasons, we have a lot of students from yesterday and June, so it is important to evaluate not so much practical skills, as the ability to think.

    Interestingly, in one and a half years of searching, the HR specialist and the development manager have never disagreed on the candidates. Either two “for” or two “against.”

    We do not limit publicity in terms of maintaining our own blogs or participation in open-source projects, the main thing is not to disclose commercial information (we have a lot of it).

    In general, despite the fact that after the words “Single electronic trading platform” and “organization of public procurement” you can imagine people in ties, this is not so much. We are a commercial company, and very fast.

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