August 18, 2017 at 13:06Avito office: work hard, play hard
When we first came to the Avito office for a meeting, we simply looked around, dropped out of reality and photographed individual things on phones, so that later we could show colleagues and acquaintances. The second visit turned out to be more meaningful - I realized that this is the case when the office is not a set of felting spots and well-placed spot feeders, but a combination of absolutely functional elements. That is, not frills and beauty (although it is), but a real encyclopedia of office space usability. “ And let's make a photo report from your office, it’s both useful and interesting, ” we suggested after the second meeting. Well, where is the second, there is a third - and two people (as part of Boomburum+1) from our team TM went to Avito to listen, ask around, shoot. It turned out more interesting than we could expect. And yes, there is not a single production shot in the report.
It was July 5, the heat finally entered Moscow for a few hours, and I really wanted to get out of the subway and breathe in the air-conditioned coolness. Fortunately, it was a stone's throw to the cool. Directly opposite the Belorusskaya metro station, the skyscrapers of two business centers squeezed the skyscrapers - from a noisy square with a fountain, a bunch of cafe-restaurants and even gas stations, you get into the office kingdom. To us, on the right is a magnificent glass building.
Inside there are huge elevators with a cunning floor entry system on a separate board. Rrraz - and we are at the reception of Avito. We are met by an old friend Mikhail Klyuyev, DevRel, and a new employee of his unit, Antonina. A great tandem: be sure to talk separately with Tonya to ask how she, the newcomer, is here. Let's go
Avito occupies four floors, each of which is made in a certain theme, but at the same time a single style and philosophy of organizing space can be traced. Let's start with the general, and then go to visit the developers. We leave for the 15th “public” floor, which all those who come on business get to know for an interview or decide to visit one of the many Avito meetings.
Have you seen the word Avito in this wall?
The schedule for the meeting rooms on all floors is not just a formality, but part of the schedule. These are comfortable ascetic rooms with all necessary equipment and furniture. At the entrance to each of the meeting rooms there is a touch panel that allows you to view the list and time of reservations, change it, notify colleagues that the room has been vacated earlier than expected. Such severity is a necessary measure: teams constantly hold meetings, meetings, short rallies in order to quickly solve working issues.
By the way, on this floor, all the meeting rooms are named after the Swedish islands: for example, Kungsholmen, Gamla Stan, Södermalm. This is due to the fact that the two founders of Avito are Swedes.
The meeting rooms here seem relatively small, but this is a very misleading impression: during the rallies, they are transformed into one large hall for 200 people. For listeners, 3-4 screens are available on which information from the projector can be displayed. This is despite the fact that you will never find these screens during working hours - as if they are not there, as well as a huge hall.
And here it is - lifting tables on winches. At the right time, they soar to the ceiling and free up space for a mitap, hackathon, conference, etc.
Pay attention to the blocks under the ceiling - with their help tables can be raised up and free up space
On the same floor is the dining room. However, if it were open to everyone, it would have gained fame as a good city cafe with excellent panoramic views. We will talk about the species separately, they clearly deserve it. In the meantime, back to the daily food: employees have free lunches, fruit snacks, light snacks and sandwiches for dinner every weekday and breakfast on Fridays.
Meals are free, but lunch - lunch, and accounting - accounting
Back in January 2016, food was brought in containers. Warmed her in the microwave. Now the food is fresh, hot, aromatic. It is noteworthy that in the dining room there is a flipchart with sheets of paper, where the date and comments of employees are written about the quality and taste of the dishes. Someone praises, someone criticizes or makes a comment about the found bones, cooking, etc. Even such trifles are thought out, and this cannot but catch attention.
Picky what! Either the bone in the olives or the gazpacho failed ...
By the way, themed parties are held in the same dining room on Fridays. For example, recently, football matches were watched on the big screen (manage to get into Avitobefore the World Cup 2018). And on the eve of our arrival there was a Mexican party, with sombrero and Mexican beer. Not really. Well or yes.
This is the ceiling in the dining room - all sorts of sea scum
Opposite the plaintive flipchart is a blackboard with a schedule of non-technical internal trainings for Avito employees. Training is conducted by the Training & Development department under the motto: “Train your brain!”.
How to effectively disperse the brain
It is aimed at the development of soft-skills, training of thinking, the development of creativity. The development directions are chosen by the employees themselves, participation in the trainings is voluntary.
“How to convey your thoughts”, “Effective leader”, “Public speaking skills”, etc. Everything you need without water.
Well, since we relaxed, then before we go to the developers' floor, let's talk about fun and beautiful. Fun is corporate parties. At Avito, employees get rid of tedious gatherings with custom-made presenters. Events are held in the office with beer, pizza, burgers and entertainment, among which are traditional for the company: board games and the Mafia. Among old-timers there is a legend about the first corporate event in a new office on Belorusskaya. One of the floors before the repair was a sad concrete blocks. The staff painted his graffiti and had a cool party. And since there were few employees, they called guests from the street - as a result, a queue gathered at the business center to see what was so fun and interesting happening upstairs. In the summer there are corporate trips.
Dizzy at this place
Now about the beautiful. These are views from panoramic windows and from numerous verandas around the office (with wicker furniture, flower beds and a mini-pond, but without a hookah and a smoking room - all healthy lifestyles and a rocking chair).
The pond is on the right, next to the blue ball. Misha claims that so far no one has fallen into it. You
can see almost all of the classic, beautiful Moscow: from the Ostankino tower to the bell tower of Ivan the Great. During the parade on May 9, all aviation flies over the roof of the business center, so this day there are always a lot of employees in the office. However, people are in the office 24/7 - many people prefer to spend weekends in the office. Of course, solving your personal, not work tasks.
Oh, what a beauty! Lepota! Ivan Vasilievich would approve.
From the windows you can see the skyscraper of the MATC “Arms” on Novoslobodskaya. At first it was built with a flat top floor, but then they decided to finish building it. The guys from Avito, who can make cool time-lapses, set up a camera and filmed the process of building a spire. Now the video is in post-production, here is a small fragment of the source material:
To move faster between floors, the former CTO Avito offered to make a pole (like firefighters and Ghostbusters). But the owners of the business center protested, and this idea (one of the few) remained unrealized. But an office without such a wow-ladder annually wins corporate space contests in various nominations.
The real usability of the office space The
developer floor (14th) is decorated in a rustic style and is called Avito Village. Here, meeting rooms with the same strict rules are named after the constellations: Sirius, Vega, Altair, etc. The natural atmosphere is maintained in all the details of the interior - for example, there are seats in the form of lambs.
It's time to talk about getting into Avito. The peculiarity of the company is that it’s very difficult for a junior to get into the development team, the chances of the middle are much greater. In general, there is always a need for personnel at Avito, as the company is actively growing and developing. Talented and smart heads are constantly needed: engineers, product managers, quality specialists, databases, mobile developers. The company expects to see highly qualified specialists who are good at doing their job, responsibly approaching it, and want to develop a product or any specific technology within the company. These should be people who can friendly, structured, constructively discuss issues, problems, propose their solutions. In general, proactive and professional - there are not so many requirements for cool work.
Adaptation of new employees takes place painlessly and almost imperceptibly (recently working Tonya confirmed that she alwayslived here and worked). There is an incubator system: a new employee understands professional issues with a mentor assigned to him, and difficult questions are asked by employees of the HR service. By the time of a full-fledged start, the employee is already systematically joining the team. This is largely due to the adaptation plan, which excludes unpredictable movements and force majeure. And how can one not fit in when there are holes in the office?
Legendary burrows ...
... and their inhabitants
In general, the employees here are treated with great respect and care: they can arrange the workplace to their taste, everywhere there is something that connects the team.
So, for example, this meeting room was painted by designers according to this principle: everyone said that he wanted to see on its walls, and the artist made a sketch or an inscription. Here is such a diverse but uniform portrait of the team.
A graffiti conversation similar to a garage. Coziest inside. Look at the
pictures closer - they are cool. Especially the rays of good and cochlear biceps please
Two more signs of a reverent attitude towards people: jigsaw puzzles with the faces of employees everywhere and paintings on the walls. Puzzles are a legacy from the old wall: when a newcomer came to work, his photograph became one puzzle in the overall picture, and he became a member of a close-knit team. The paintings hanging in the openings between the windows were painted by the employees themselves several years ago during a team building in Morocco. Then the Avito team was still very small, and this could be afford.
One of these paintings. The
columns inside the halls are wrapped with ropes in the manner of ship's ones, but we were more reminded of giant claw-claws. However, there are no giant cats or even ordinary cats in the office, but people are not the only animals.
On the day we were in the Avito office, we collected gifts for children from orphanages to school in these very boxes — kindness would definitely save this world.
So, some time ago, canaries were brought into the office in a huge spacious cage. At first they were frightened, silent and pleasing to the eye, but very soon got used to it and at first began to please their ears, and then simply interfereed with their trills. We added birds, we chose quieter fish from living creatures.
Some employees keep their fish, snails or turtles on their table; some time ago, a girl even had a tarantula - he was nice and ate cockroaches, but was evicted home to the hostess because of particularly impressive colleagues with developed arachnophobia. Even in Avito, they wanted to have a robotic cat, but the internal crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the robot is still frozen.
A smoker’s Android in the very cage in which the noisy canaries lived The
cardboard Android took the canary cage - it’s not that he was punished or Avito employees did not like him, just in the office there is a bad copy and a good one.
Android of a healthy person
In general, Avito loves to combine, try, choose and apply the most modern technologies. So, for example, along with PHP, Kotlin, Swift, Python, Go are actively used ... You can read about some of the technologies used in development in the first Avito post on Habré .
Yegor Tolstoy's table and implementation of the Rubber duck debugging method
At that moment, our hearts stopped: the cabinets at the exit from the floor are filled with unlimited power engineers. Somehow the dream closet looks like a tired and mentally overstressed employee.
Perhaps this is my paradise ...) Boomburum
At the very exit, a small guitar-billiard and massage room for meditating loneliness and afterparty corporate parties. Due to poor soundproofing, this way on a weekday you won’t be able to play a cool solo - they will be relocated to the canaries.
And ... look up.
Dummies of fruit hid in the ceiling grid, this is not a drawing. The
chip of this floor (as well as the 13th), to which we could not remain indifferent, is shelves with books on design, layout, programming, project management, administration, etc. . These are the best examples, all the classics in one place.
It turns out that the company has a Slack channel in which you can discuss books or clarify what's with the queue for them. And after passing the trial period, all employees receive a subscription to the electronic library of the MIF publishing house and the right to ask to buy any book necessary for work, including English-language publications from Amazon.
Meanwhile, we walked on the verandas.
And went to the floor-yacht. Everything here is very thematic and interesting. It is on this floor that the most amazing capsule-holes are located, in which introverts live (and all the rest - cabins are in great demand).
The entire floor is decorated in a marine theme and consists of large open space areas (cozy, with partitions and table lamps), halls, meeting rooms, meeting rooms and very small dedicated spaces for a secluded focused work or private conversation by phone, skype, eye to eye.
Open space that looks cozy. By the way, the office is quiet
Around the main space, in the corridors (the language doesn’t call them that), there are a lot of cozy, soft, informal and private cells, niche rooms, in which you can retire and work for some time. There are even real beds with stairs to them - after a successful commit, release and any other work you can sleep. Well, or, even better, to work lying with a laptop.
In the open space of analysts there is such a task board. Do you know what they call her? Procrastination board. What kind of employees, such procrastination - team analysts are also extremely professional.
Have you solved these problems? Write answers and solutions in the comments!
Not far from the analysts is a beckoning sofa-transformer, which cannot be passed by, so as not to touch and crouch.
There's also a chessboard - another office entertainment at Avito. And again, intellectual and useful. Obviously, the whole team likes to keep the brain in good shape.
Time to play a game The
meeting rooms on this floor are named after the Russian islands: Kizhi, about. Wrangel, Kotlin, Valaam, etc.
They are slightly different from the previous ones - in two of them there are psychedelic walls that you can’t look at for a long time. In fact, these are just specially made lattices that, when examined for a long time, cause the effect of optical illusion. Whether such hypnostes were conceived specifically is unknown. But it seems that this is just a coincidence.
Not exactly the same psychedelic conversation room, but also with an interesting interior
In the QA Automation unit, there is a symbolic column upholstered in soft thick material - so you can easily bang your head. Needless to say, the guys from this unit need constant psychological support. Just kidding.
Everyone saw the inscription "Do not forget to suffer"?
In fact, Avito employees are very passionate people. We, as ardent fans of Geektimes and all kinds of gadgets there, noticed DJI Phantom drone on one of the tables. To our question, Misha calmly answered that the guy leads to Instagrama very cool aerial account. “And this is Yegor Tolstoy’s table,” Mikhail everyday shows. But we know how famous Yegor is in IT circles and what kind of special he is in iOS development. Or, for example, developers (not security!) Created their own team and are studying CTF. However, the degree of enthusiasm can be judged even by the posts of the guys.
Avito has many small units - a unit system. Many employees are distributed across cross-functional teams with the goal of effective communication. This structure is due to the fact that the ad site itself is the tip of the development iceberg. Few people know, but in Avito, for example, pro tools are also created - tools for professional market participants, for example, realtors.
By the way, Avito loves open-source. In the last year, the guys began to lay out their achievements - they regularly commit: there were requests to well-known open source projects. Avito is a large project whose mission is to grow and prosper. If you use some kind of closed technology and integrate it deep enough into the work, and there will be some problems with it, you can simply lose in the speed of response to problems. With open-source, you can fix and submit the request, and already here and now it will work well. And with closed technologies this cannot be done. So love is clearly no coincidence.
Such heaps of stickers and badges can be found on many tables - employees participate in various conferences. By the way, at the RIT ++ 2017 festival, Avito had its own separate conference-stream on microservices
Only the CEO has his own separate office (albeit with transparent walls) in Avito. But he does not use it either - he works in open space. And the office is used by employees as a meeting room for meetings and rallies, and sometimes for meetings by the CEO themselves - in the photo we found a rare moment when the director is in the office.
Before you go to the last of the floors owned by Avito, we go to the gym. In fact, there are two of them in the office - one cardio,for wickers , the other - power. There are showers on each floor, and each of the halls has changing rooms.
In the power room is Avito's most intimate room - a tiny office with a massage chair and a Do Not Disturb sign. Hussars, keep quiet!
At the last of the studied floors, the 13th, the meeting rooms are named after the space objects of the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto and the Sun. Vintage floor lamps, bedside tables, armchairs, chairs (diamonds inside, we are sure), intricate antique figures are striking. This set seduces with its antiquity and luxury, but clearly falls out of the style of the entire office. And on a no less vintage sofa, as if nothing had happened, employees are sitting. The answer turned out to be simple, but noteworthy.
Purchased on Avito
The fact is that the first interior items for the office were purchased ... on Avito. Therefore, the most unusual and eye-catching look was chosen. Then the design of such furniture became difficult from the point of view of financial statements and the idea was gradually abandoned. ButScythian gold heritage and memory remained. By the way, in other parts of the office you can also find these things - for example, not far from the reception there is a red floor lamp called “Chinese”.
More than 500 frames were shot, all the tops are clouded, the facts are recorded. It's time to stop and talk about how it is to work in such an office.
By the way, about the tone of the brain, namely the training and exchange of experience. In 2015, a controlling stake in Avito was acquired by the South African holding Naspers, whose business combines a number of major world classifications. And this means that employees can exchange experience within the framework of a huge corporation and quickly implement the experience already tested by their colleagues: each holding company has its own competencies and leads in something. In general, for each employee in Avito, depending on the level of qualification, a certain amount is allocated for development, and it is very decent. These funds can be spent on pumping skills of the English language, professional development, conferences in any corner of the world.
Misha didn’t even suspect that we were shooting him.
And most importantly, the time spent at meetings and conferences does not need to be worked out, as is the case with many companies. In general, the Avito’s work schedule is democratic - the specific hours depend on the unit, but they do not put much pressure. Remote work is not welcome, but in the event of a slight ailment or other need, you can sometimes choose the home office mode.
... They exchanged glances with office staff from the business center across the street. They are littered with papers around their necks and are probably very envious of the guys with a veranda, gym and swing.
... If a fish dies in an aquarium, especially humorous employees paste a police tape over the aquarium.
... Avito has a lot of greenery and a specially trained florist takes care of it. Mikhail once decided to air the office on a frosty day off (there was a mitap, but the air conditioning turned off on the weekend) and froze a bunch of flowers.
... New employees are given out sets of necessary things and even slippers to work comfortably all day.
... There are air purifiers all over the office.
... On the floors there are special bins for used batteries - Avito for a clean environment.
In parting, we sit down to talk with Tonya - how is it for her, new, in this office, if everything around is distracting from work. Although the answer was already clear from the love with which she participated in the tour. Of course, the situation helps - you are here and do not care about your basic needs - complete freedom for professional development. And what else does a specialist need in the 21st century?
It was July 5, the heat finally entered Moscow for a few hours, and I really wanted to get out of the subway and breathe in the air-conditioned coolness. Fortunately, it was a stone's throw to the cool. Directly opposite the Belorusskaya metro station, the skyscrapers of two business centers squeezed the skyscrapers - from a noisy square with a fountain, a bunch of cafe-restaurants and even gas stations, you get into the office kingdom. To us, on the right is a magnificent glass building.
Inside there are huge elevators with a cunning floor entry system on a separate board. Rrraz - and we are at the reception of Avito. We are met by an old friend Mikhail Klyuyev, DevRel, and a new employee of his unit, Antonina. A great tandem: be sure to talk separately with Tonya to ask how she, the newcomer, is here. Let's go
Avito: a meeting place
Avito occupies four floors, each of which is made in a certain theme, but at the same time a single style and philosophy of organizing space can be traced. Let's start with the general, and then go to visit the developers. We leave for the 15th “public” floor, which all those who come on business get to know for an interview or decide to visit one of the many Avito meetings.
Have you seen the word Avito in this wall?
The schedule for the meeting rooms on all floors is not just a formality, but part of the schedule. These are comfortable ascetic rooms with all necessary equipment and furniture. At the entrance to each of the meeting rooms there is a touch panel that allows you to view the list and time of reservations, change it, notify colleagues that the room has been vacated earlier than expected. Such severity is a necessary measure: teams constantly hold meetings, meetings, short rallies in order to quickly solve working issues.
By the way, on this floor, all the meeting rooms are named after the Swedish islands: for example, Kungsholmen, Gamla Stan, Södermalm. This is due to the fact that the two founders of Avito are Swedes.
The meeting rooms here seem relatively small, but this is a very misleading impression: during the rallies, they are transformed into one large hall for 200 people. For listeners, 3-4 screens are available on which information from the projector can be displayed. This is despite the fact that you will never find these screens during working hours - as if they are not there, as well as a huge hall.
And here it is - lifting tables on winches. At the right time, they soar to the ceiling and free up space for a mitap, hackathon, conference, etc.
Pay attention to the blocks under the ceiling - with their help tables can be raised up and free up space
On the same floor is the dining room. However, if it were open to everyone, it would have gained fame as a good city cafe with excellent panoramic views. We will talk about the species separately, they clearly deserve it. In the meantime, back to the daily food: employees have free lunches, fruit snacks, light snacks and sandwiches for dinner every weekday and breakfast on Fridays.
Meals are free, but lunch - lunch, and accounting - accounting
Back in January 2016, food was brought in containers. Warmed her in the microwave. Now the food is fresh, hot, aromatic. It is noteworthy that in the dining room there is a flipchart with sheets of paper, where the date and comments of employees are written about the quality and taste of the dishes. Someone praises, someone criticizes or makes a comment about the found bones, cooking, etc. Even such trifles are thought out, and this cannot but catch attention.
Picky what! Either the bone in the olives or the gazpacho failed ...
By the way, themed parties are held in the same dining room on Fridays. For example, recently, football matches were watched on the big screen (manage to get into Avitobefore the World Cup 2018). And on the eve of our arrival there was a Mexican party, with sombrero and Mexican beer. Not really. Well or yes.
This is the ceiling in the dining room - all sorts of sea scum
Opposite the plaintive flipchart is a blackboard with a schedule of non-technical internal trainings for Avito employees. Training is conducted by the Training & Development department under the motto: “Train your brain!”.
How to effectively disperse the brain
It is aimed at the development of soft-skills, training of thinking, the development of creativity. The development directions are chosen by the employees themselves, participation in the trainings is voluntary.
“How to convey your thoughts”, “Effective leader”, “Public speaking skills”, etc. Everything you need without water.
Well, since we relaxed, then before we go to the developers' floor, let's talk about fun and beautiful. Fun is corporate parties. At Avito, employees get rid of tedious gatherings with custom-made presenters. Events are held in the office with beer, pizza, burgers and entertainment, among which are traditional for the company: board games and the Mafia. Among old-timers there is a legend about the first corporate event in a new office on Belorusskaya. One of the floors before the repair was a sad concrete blocks. The staff painted his graffiti and had a cool party. And since there were few employees, they called guests from the street - as a result, a queue gathered at the business center to see what was so fun and interesting happening upstairs. In the summer there are corporate trips.
Dizzy at this place
Now about the beautiful. These are views from panoramic windows and from numerous verandas around the office (with wicker furniture, flower beds and a mini-pond, but without a hookah and a smoking room - all healthy lifestyles and a rocking chair).
The pond is on the right, next to the blue ball. Misha claims that so far no one has fallen into it. You
can see almost all of the classic, beautiful Moscow: from the Ostankino tower to the bell tower of Ivan the Great. During the parade on May 9, all aviation flies over the roof of the business center, so this day there are always a lot of employees in the office. However, people are in the office 24/7 - many people prefer to spend weekends in the office. Of course, solving your personal, not work tasks.
Oh, what a beauty! Lepota! Ivan Vasilievich would approve.
From the windows you can see the skyscraper of the MATC “Arms” on Novoslobodskaya. At first it was built with a flat top floor, but then they decided to finish building it. The guys from Avito, who can make cool time-lapses, set up a camera and filmed the process of building a spire. Now the video is in post-production, here is a small fragment of the source material:
To move faster between floors, the former CTO Avito offered to make a pole (like firefighters and Ghostbusters). But the owners of the business center protested, and this idea (one of the few) remained unrealized. But an office without such a wow-ladder annually wins corporate space contests in various nominations.
The real usability of the office space The
developer floor (14th) is decorated in a rustic style and is called Avito Village. Here, meeting rooms with the same strict rules are named after the constellations: Sirius, Vega, Altair, etc. The natural atmosphere is maintained in all the details of the interior - for example, there are seats in the form of lambs.
It's time to talk about getting into Avito. The peculiarity of the company is that it’s very difficult for a junior to get into the development team, the chances of the middle are much greater. In general, there is always a need for personnel at Avito, as the company is actively growing and developing. Talented and smart heads are constantly needed: engineers, product managers, quality specialists, databases, mobile developers. The company expects to see highly qualified specialists who are good at doing their job, responsibly approaching it, and want to develop a product or any specific technology within the company. These should be people who can friendly, structured, constructively discuss issues, problems, propose their solutions. In general, proactive and professional - there are not so many requirements for cool work.
Adaptation of new employees takes place painlessly and almost imperceptibly (recently working Tonya confirmed that she always
Legendary burrows ...
... and their inhabitants
In general, the employees here are treated with great respect and care: they can arrange the workplace to their taste, everywhere there is something that connects the team.
So, for example, this meeting room was painted by designers according to this principle: everyone said that he wanted to see on its walls, and the artist made a sketch or an inscription. Here is such a diverse but uniform portrait of the team.
A graffiti conversation similar to a garage. Coziest inside. Look at the
pictures closer - they are cool. Especially the rays of good and cochlear biceps please
Two more signs of a reverent attitude towards people: jigsaw puzzles with the faces of employees everywhere and paintings on the walls. Puzzles are a legacy from the old wall: when a newcomer came to work, his photograph became one puzzle in the overall picture, and he became a member of a close-knit team. The paintings hanging in the openings between the windows were painted by the employees themselves several years ago during a team building in Morocco. Then the Avito team was still very small, and this could be afford.
One of these paintings. The
columns inside the halls are wrapped with ropes in the manner of ship's ones, but we were more reminded of giant claw-claws. However, there are no giant cats or even ordinary cats in the office, but people are not the only animals.
On the day we were in the Avito office, we collected gifts for children from orphanages to school in these very boxes — kindness would definitely save this world.
So, some time ago, canaries were brought into the office in a huge spacious cage. At first they were frightened, silent and pleasing to the eye, but very soon got used to it and at first began to please their ears, and then simply interfereed with their trills. We added birds, we chose quieter fish from living creatures.
Some employees keep their fish, snails or turtles on their table; some time ago, a girl even had a tarantula - he was nice and ate cockroaches, but was evicted home to the hostess because of particularly impressive colleagues with developed arachnophobia. Even in Avito, they wanted to have a robotic cat, but the internal crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the robot is still frozen.
A smoker’s Android in the very cage in which the noisy canaries lived The
cardboard Android took the canary cage - it’s not that he was punished or Avito employees did not like him, just in the office there is a bad copy and a good one.
Android of a healthy person
In general, Avito loves to combine, try, choose and apply the most modern technologies. So, for example, along with PHP, Kotlin, Swift, Python, Go are actively used ... You can read about some of the technologies used in development in the first Avito post on Habré .
Yegor Tolstoy's table and implementation of the Rubber duck debugging method
At that moment, our hearts stopped: the cabinets at the exit from the floor are filled with unlimited power engineers. Somehow the dream closet looks like a tired and mentally overstressed employee.
Perhaps this is my paradise ...) Boomburum
At the very exit, a small guitar-billiard and massage room for meditating loneliness and afterparty corporate parties. Due to poor soundproofing, this way on a weekday you won’t be able to play a cool solo - they will be relocated to the canaries.
And ... look up.
Dummies of fruit hid in the ceiling grid, this is not a drawing. The
chip of this floor (as well as the 13th), to which we could not remain indifferent, is shelves with books on design, layout, programming, project management, administration, etc. . These are the best examples, all the classics in one place.
It turns out that the company has a Slack channel in which you can discuss books or clarify what's with the queue for them. And after passing the trial period, all employees receive a subscription to the electronic library of the MIF publishing house and the right to ask to buy any book necessary for work, including English-language publications from Amazon.
Meanwhile, we walked on the verandas.
League of Developers Yacht Club
And went to the floor-yacht. Everything here is very thematic and interesting. It is on this floor that the most amazing capsule-holes are located, in which introverts live (and all the rest - cabins are in great demand).
The entire floor is decorated in a marine theme and consists of large open space areas (cozy, with partitions and table lamps), halls, meeting rooms, meeting rooms and very small dedicated spaces for a secluded focused work or private conversation by phone, skype, eye to eye.
Open space that looks cozy. By the way, the office is quiet
Around the main space, in the corridors (the language doesn’t call them that), there are a lot of cozy, soft, informal and private cells, niche rooms, in which you can retire and work for some time. There are even real beds with stairs to them - after a successful commit, release and any other work you can sleep. Well, or, even better, to work lying with a laptop.
In the open space of analysts there is such a task board. Do you know what they call her? Procrastination board. What kind of employees, such procrastination - team analysts are also extremely professional.
Have you solved these problems? Write answers and solutions in the comments!
Not far from the analysts is a beckoning sofa-transformer, which cannot be passed by, so as not to touch and crouch.
There's also a chessboard - another office entertainment at Avito. And again, intellectual and useful. Obviously, the whole team likes to keep the brain in good shape.
Time to play a game The
meeting rooms on this floor are named after the Russian islands: Kizhi, about. Wrangel, Kotlin, Valaam, etc.
They are slightly different from the previous ones - in two of them there are psychedelic walls that you can’t look at for a long time. In fact, these are just specially made lattices that, when examined for a long time, cause the effect of optical illusion. Whether such hypnostes were conceived specifically is unknown. But it seems that this is just a coincidence.
Not exactly the same psychedelic conversation room, but also with an interesting interior
In the QA Automation unit, there is a symbolic column upholstered in soft thick material - so you can easily bang your head. Needless to say, the guys from this unit need constant psychological support. Just kidding.
Everyone saw the inscription "Do not forget to suffer"?
In fact, Avito employees are very passionate people. We, as ardent fans of Geektimes and all kinds of gadgets there, noticed DJI Phantom drone on one of the tables. To our question, Misha calmly answered that the guy leads to Instagrama very cool aerial account. “And this is Yegor Tolstoy’s table,” Mikhail everyday shows. But we know how famous Yegor is in IT circles and what kind of special he is in iOS development. Or, for example, developers (not security!) Created their own team and are studying CTF. However, the degree of enthusiasm can be judged even by the posts of the guys.
Technology Areas
Avito has many small units - a unit system. Many employees are distributed across cross-functional teams with the goal of effective communication. This structure is due to the fact that the ad site itself is the tip of the development iceberg. Few people know, but in Avito, for example, pro tools are also created - tools for professional market participants, for example, realtors.
By the way, Avito loves open-source. In the last year, the guys began to lay out their achievements - they regularly commit: there were requests to well-known open source projects. Avito is a large project whose mission is to grow and prosper. If you use some kind of closed technology and integrate it deep enough into the work, and there will be some problems with it, you can simply lose in the speed of response to problems. With open-source, you can fix and submit the request, and already here and now it will work well. And with closed technologies this cannot be done. So love is clearly no coincidence.
Such heaps of stickers and badges can be found on many tables - employees participate in various conferences. By the way, at the RIT ++ 2017 festival, Avito had its own separate conference-stream on microservices
Only the CEO has his own separate office (albeit with transparent walls) in Avito. But he does not use it either - he works in open space. And the office is used by employees as a meeting room for meetings and rallies, and sometimes for meetings by the CEO themselves - in the photo we found a rare moment when the director is in the office.
Before you go to the last of the floors owned by Avito, we go to the gym. In fact, there are two of them in the office - one cardio,
In the power room is Avito's most intimate room - a tiny office with a massage chair and a Do Not Disturb sign. Hussars, keep quiet!
Solar system and things with Avito
At the last of the studied floors, the 13th, the meeting rooms are named after the space objects of the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto and the Sun. Vintage floor lamps, bedside tables, armchairs, chairs (diamonds inside, we are sure), intricate antique figures are striking. This set seduces with its antiquity and luxury, but clearly falls out of the style of the entire office. And on a no less vintage sofa, as if nothing had happened, employees are sitting. The answer turned out to be simple, but noteworthy.
Purchased on Avito
The fact is that the first interior items for the office were purchased ... on Avito. Therefore, the most unusual and eye-catching look was chosen. Then the design of such furniture became difficult from the point of view of financial statements and the idea was gradually abandoned. But
More than 500 frames were shot, all the tops are clouded, the facts are recorded. It's time to stop and talk about how it is to work in such an office.
By the way, about the tone of the brain, namely the training and exchange of experience. In 2015, a controlling stake in Avito was acquired by the South African holding Naspers, whose business combines a number of major world classifications. And this means that employees can exchange experience within the framework of a huge corporation and quickly implement the experience already tested by their colleagues: each holding company has its own competencies and leads in something. In general, for each employee in Avito, depending on the level of qualification, a certain amount is allocated for development, and it is very decent. These funds can be spent on pumping skills of the English language, professional development, conferences in any corner of the world.
Misha didn’t even suspect that we were shooting him.
And most importantly, the time spent at meetings and conferences does not need to be worked out, as is the case with many companies. In general, the Avito’s work schedule is democratic - the specific hours depend on the unit, but they do not put much pressure. Remote work is not welcome, but in the event of a slight ailment or other need, you can sometimes choose the home office mode.
Bet you didn’t know that in Avito ...
... They exchanged glances with office staff from the business center across the street. They are littered with papers around their necks and are probably very envious of the guys with a veranda, gym and swing.
... If a fish dies in an aquarium, especially humorous employees paste a police tape over the aquarium.
... Avito has a lot of greenery and a specially trained florist takes care of it. Mikhail once decided to air the office on a frosty day off (there was a mitap, but the air conditioning turned off on the weekend) and froze a bunch of flowers.
... New employees are given out sets of necessary things and even slippers to work comfortably all day.
... There are air purifiers all over the office.
... On the floors there are special bins for used batteries - Avito for a clean environment.
In parting, we sit down to talk with Tonya - how is it for her, new, in this office, if everything around is distracting from work. Although the answer was already clear from the love with which she participated in the tour. Of course, the situation helps - you are here and do not care about your basic needs - complete freedom for professional development. And what else does a specialist need in the 21st century?
