Left: Three HeadHunter School Programmer Alumni Stories

    What happens to graduates 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 started?



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


    In 2011, I went to NL for practical experience, which I completely lacked. This was the first such project at that time. Now almost all large companies have their own schools / courses, at that time there was only ShAD from the similar ones, and then it was still a different direction. I didn’t work anywhere, I was a fourth year student at the Moscow State University’s VMK and was looking for a part-time junior programmer. I was extremely happy when a letter arrived that I had passed the selection.


    The school of programmers allowed not only to master the real skills of the programmer, but also to receive a very, very worthy scholarship at that time - an order of magnitude higher than in the native 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 how to relate to development in a completely different way (compared to school projects), to think a few steps ahead, not to chase fast hacks or to insert without the need for “beautiful pieces from a recently read article”, but to really create the system architecture. This is the very software engineering that has only recently begun to be taught in our universities.


    Frankly speaking, I still consider the level of development in HeadHunter very, very high, and I think I have something to compare with. I worked in the SRE team - we were considered a "special forces" development, controlled the performance and reliability of all our services, and we ourselves developed central critical services. All this required a deep understanding, knowledge - both hardware, the principles of networks, and the features of specific programming languages, well, understanding of 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 make a bigdate at Tinkoff from scratch, returned to SRE again, but on a slightly different scale and in another country - Ireland, in Microsoft cloud services. Now I’m finally able to do


    If you want to engage in serious programming in your life, at a higher level than typesetting your PCP stores or database forms, this will be 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. I originally moved here to work at Microsoft, but after a year and a half I decided to fulfill my old childhood dream and moved on to developing the game in a small (70 people) Irish company.


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


    Before I entered the HeadHunter School of Programmers, I was in my fourth year at the Faculty of Computer Science of Moscow State University, combining my studies with working as a web developer in a small office that develops websites and applications for chess players. Quite by accident, I found an ad for recruitment to the School of Programmers at the faculty stand, literally two days before the end of the application process. I had to spend the whole weekend to answer the questions of the questionnaire and do a test task.


    In the announcement, I liked the fact that they will teach not just programming languages ​​or tools, but also the processes of teamwork, design and other interesting things. I understood that knowledge would be useful in any case, so I decided to try to do it.
    At first it 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 hours. The lesson lasted from one and a half to three hours. In addition, we were given homework after each lecture. It is good that the deadline for him was quite long.


    What I learned helped me grow in my current job at that time. After several months of lectures, the team began working on a test product. The practice was not only about how to write “good” code. We can say that all the processes there were a reduced version of how a modern team works in a technology company.


    Studying at school is an important stage in my career. School and work at hh.ru gave an understanding of the modern 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 a good relationship. I am particularly interested in asking them about global changes in the company, for example, in technologies or processes that have taken place over a long period of time, and their outcomes.


    To all my friends who ask whether it is worth entering 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 2013 School of Programmers


    Before school, I studied in graduate school at 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, with luck, start working at HH.


    I am very glad that I managed to take part in this project. The school of programmers has given a lot of new technical knowledge, theory and practice of teamwork. The school gave me many new friends and laid the foundation for my career. Five years ago I entered the School, six months later I joined the company as a junior developer, and after 4 years I left as a leading 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 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 ended up in Zalando after successfully completing several rounds of interviews. Did HeadHunter help me with this? Of course. Without the knowledge and experience that I have gained over 4 years at HH, I would hardly have been interviewed.


    For those who doubt whether to go to school, I can only advise you not to doubt and try to act. Even in the event of failure, a useful technical interview experience will remain. If you get to the School, I recommend that you gather your strength and complete it to the end - it’s a shame to miss the final project.



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