July 21, 2017 at 16:23Developer Life in Cyprus
If you, like I once, planned to break out of the tender and tenacious embrace of the motherland into the civilized world, then you probably came across characters who could not bear such happiness and returned from immigration to the territory of the fatherland. Surely you can recall the question “Why?”, Full of perplexed indignation, addressed to the same crazy people. This question often remained rhetorical, because abstract answers about irresistible cultural differences and a passionate desire to embrace birch trees are not de facto answers.
And here I, being on a magical sunny island for almost a year, I caught myself thinking that it would be great to go back to my native foggy and cloudy Peter. Not being at least a professional psychiatrist, I can hardly give an accurate assessment of my cognitive impairment, but I will try to express my own feelings and my life experience in the form of a few loosely coupled observations and stories about life and work.
So, get acquainted, Cyprus. A sunny island within the European Union, with a record number of clean beaches per square meter of area. An island where it is almost always summer, where literally on every street orange, pomegranate, apricot and olive trees grow. An island where the locals are carefree, open and friendly. Where is the company where I work, provides free housing 10 minutes on foot from the office, plus a timely payment of money.
What, one may ask, can go wrong? Yes, in general, anything.
Let's start with the climate. Now in June, when I write these lines, the thermometer shows + 31C. In July it will be approximately + 40C. How much will be in August - no one knows, because By this time, the affectionate sun squeezes out the surviving representatives of the relatively reasonable fauna somewhere in the mountains or even outside the island. In this regard, I can share three interesting facts about the summer.
The first fact. Sometimes the air in the street is so warm that it is hotter in the wind than just calm. Do not believe? Get under the hair dryer! Now extrapolate this hair dryer to the territory of a small state.
The second fact. Air conditioning in a car is not always able to help. He blows, tries, but the cooled air is not able to sufficiently cool the skin on which the sun's rays fall through the tinted windows of local cars.
The third fact. In summer, you forget which faucet is responsible for hot water and which faucet is responsible for cold. For water flows from both of them at the “room” temperature (overboard + 40C, I remind you) of temperature. Very nice and refreshing.
I guess I exaggerate and in the winter, for sure, is everything all right? Of course good. The temperature drops significantly, but, nevertheless, remains positive. And here Cypriots begin to play the role of houses - with thin walls, large windows and no less large gaps wherever possible. As a result, the heroic maintenance of at least + 18C in a small studio apartment costs about 100 euros / month. Never before in my life have my cats been so fluffy! Well, the need to independently heat the water to wash it completely knocks out a stingy male tear in memory of centralized hot water supply.
In general, figs with them - with the features of local life. But should it be beautiful in Cyprus? Beauty is a subjective concept, but I probably agree that the view of the sun dipping into the Mediterranean Sea at sunset is not without some charm ... The
magic ends, you just have to look from the coast into the island. The country is surprisingly dull and ugly. By mid-May, all green grass dries and charred, so until October all landscapes look a bit Martian. Trees, of course, continue to stand and bear fruit, but they do not improve the global picture, and, rather, emphasize some existential hopelessness of all things.
But, of course, there are parks in Cyprus. Any fenced area that way 10x10 meters of bare land, from which a couple dozen trees grow, is already recognized as a park in which, theoretically, you can try to spend time. There are parks and larger. The Cypriots drove right into their asphalt territory on a car, went out, walked for about 5 minutes and returned to the car with a sense of accomplishment.
Fans of beautiful and / or ancient architecture in Cyprus also do not shine - all the power in the country was seized by standard 2-4-story white boxes. The churches are perhaps distinguished by brick-colored tiles, but they look so much the same that you begin to believe that the only method was used in their construction, namely Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V.
More experienced colleagues said that all these sorrows of an architectural property stem from clay soil, on which buildings have not stood for more than forty years. Only here the 17th-century fortress wall built by the Venetians, perfectly preserved to this day, gently and unambiguously hints at another reason. But, perhaps, we postpone the study of the anatomy of the growth of hands in Cypriots, and we state an obvious plus of all of the above.
It's damn nice to fly away from Cyprus! Any Tmutarakan begins to shine with architecture, every five-story building turns into a skyscraper, and from the abundance of greenery - and even in the center of Moscow - it is simply breathtaking.
True, the opportunity to fly away from Cyprus, as it turned out, still has to suffer. The first time the universe hinted at this to me last fall, when I was naive I stood in line for check-in at Larnaca Airport, intending to get a boarding pass and check in my luggage. The queue stubbornly did not want to move and after some time it was announced that due to technical problems only self-checkin registration works through kiosks and, accordingly, without baggage. After another hour, the problem was heroically resolved and I even had time for the flight.
Already at the beginning of this year, wise by experience, I checked in online in advance and decided to do only hand luggage without luggage. The airport accepted the challenge with honor, so this time the information systems decided to refuse seriously and for a long time. Not so arrogant fellow travelers boarding passes were written out by hand on blank sheets of paper, all the related operations the airport staff tried to do manually as they could ... In general, we flew out 2.5 hours later, like many other flights.
What is curious, when I wrote an angry letter about this, in response I was asked to clarify the date when it all happened in order to understand the current situation. Just a moment: at the airport there was a global collapse in the service of departures, but the management knew nothing about it.
This case illustrates well the relationship between Cyprus and IT, but for a more complete picture I’ll tell you another story. About taxes.
Each individual in Cyprus is obliged to independently report on income received and taxes paid, despite the fact that taxes are paid by the employer. You can report via the Internet, for this you need to get a username / password in your account by submitting an application. A couple of months ago I wrote this statement, I gave it to our accountant. A month passed - there is no answer, so they began to understand.
It turned out that on the day when the accountant sent my application to the tax, the fax did not work there, so they did not receive anything. Well, really - and what is it? For a Cypriot, anything not working, with the exception of the Naskafe whipping machine, is not a big deal. Especially some kind of fax.
So, the difficulties are overcome, logins and passwords are received, we fill out the declaration. In general, it is not much different from the Russian 3-personal income tax, which shows the income received and taxes paid from them, as a result of which a balance is set off (ideally zero).
Everything is simple, but the Cypriots would not be Cypriots if they had not done it here. And with taste: half of the fields of the questionnaire took real numbers, and the other half only integers, and in a completely unsystematic way. The result is obvious - the debit with the loan did not agree on a couple of tens of cents.
The solution came from the accountant (ATTENTION: if you are associated with Russian accounting, please do not read the following sentence, because it can cause irreparable harm to your mental health). With a few light movements, she simply fitted the numbers, manipulating the material fields of the declaration. When I told one colleague about this, he simply advised me not to bathe, because "in the best case, they will reach the verification of your declaration in seven years."
Well, the cherry on the cake. What do you think, in what office, in which I work, considers the salary of its one hundred employees? Praaaavilno, in Excel. By the way, an accountant, according to the Linkedin profile, received an MBA - here, in Cyprus.
On the whole, speaking of money, one cannot ignore the other side, namely, banks. These establishments are remarkable at least in that they work from 8:00 to about 14:30. On weekdays, naturally.
You can talk for a long time about the features of banking services, or about the fact that the ordered plastic card along with the PIN code is necessarily sent by letter to the home address (in the name of security - in different envelopes and with a difference of 1 day).
In all its glory, Cypriot banks showed themselves when I had to exchange euros for pounds for a trip to Britain. 2000 euros is not that astronomically large, but you just don’t want to carry it with you, so I went to my bank branch to start with the question of whether it is possible to make an exchange. "Of course you can! You’ll get so many pounds for your euros, ”they answered me.
Well, the next morning I take the money, I return to the bank. “Nuuu,” says the same employee, “It’s somehow too much money, we don’t have that much, we have to order it.” Let us order, pounds will be brought, we will call you, and then you will come. " I agree, what else to do.
Knowing that there are 3 more competing organizations located near my office, I go to them. They explain in all three that since I am not their client, they simply cannot exchange cash directly.
The next day is coming. The bank is predictably silent. It doesn’t matter, I’m going there with my legs. “Oh, did you come to exchange 2000 euros?” - the cashier who has already become a native to me shouts through the whole hall - “And the money has just arrived, come.”
Such fascinating quests await the happy inhabitants of the island at every step. I once needed to get a Cypriot Criminal Records certificate. A certificate should be made by the police, but where exactly is the question. Of course, you can call the police and find out everything. We go to the Cypriot police website and see a list of useful phones:
Okay, let’s approach the task from the other side - we’ll ask our more experienced colleagues in criminal matters. More criminal colleagues suggest the address to which I even successfully arrive. And here, of course, it turns out that this certificate is not made to foreigners here, but in a specially designated place through specially trained people. To my reasonable question, but where, in fact, is this special place located, the valiant police officers rummage around for 5 minutes, then call for another 5 minutes. Ultimately show the place on the map. Vooot somewhere here:
"Vooot somewhere there" in fact it turned out to be a whole block of police-owned buildings, without house numbers, without specific addresses.
Such topographic features are characteristic of the entire island, so the address of any object in Cyprus looks something like this: “you go to Nicosia on the highway. As soon as you see the first traffic light - look to the right - there will be a building with blue shutters. but you won’t be able to turn there right away. you need to drive a little further and turn around. when turned around you will need to drive to this building by turning accordingly to the left. ”
At the same time, local taxi drivers are also absolutely wonderful and wonderful people who can be divided into several categories:
Those who do not use the navigator categorically. At first they ask for a long time where to take and how to go, then they get halfway and go deep into the paper maps of the island. For these home-grown Flints, this is a completely reasonable strategy, because money on the counter continues to drip regularly during such a “technical stop”.
Those who have a navigator, but he is lying in the glove compartment as a cool and fashionable accessory. If the paper card didn’t help for some reason, the Cypriot taxi driver starts poking at the buttons of the navigator, trying to figure out how this shaitan thing works. Sometimes it even turns out. But more often than not, because the absence of half of roads and buildings on electronic maps is quite a norm. As well as the presence of three or four streets of the same name with the right name, located in different parts of the city. So even if you could find the address in the navigator, it’s too early to relax - a taxi may very well go the wrong way.
Those who have a navigator with up-to-date maps, and who, without undue questioning, will simply take you from point A to point B. There are fewer such comrades, and it is definitely worth making a close friendship with them.
Instead of a taxi, in principle, you can risk using public transport. It runs on a schedule with an interval of 40 minutes. You can see the schedule itself through the official app. In it, theoretically, one can also lay a route, but since it was written by professional Indians, it is absolutely impossible to use this function - it is easier to build a route using 2GIS, and then check the schedule in the application.
Bus traffic ends damn late - at about five to six in the evening. At the same time, they transport a completely phenomenal number of people per day - often only my wife and I are the only passengers on the buses on various flights.
The vast majority of locals prefer private transport, which is not at all surprising, given all of the above. The reverse side of love for iron horses results in the fact that Cypriots don’t walk at all, and they don’t design pedestrian infrastructure. Therefore, rare sidewalks, as a rule, are planted with trees, and walking on them is not particularly easy. About a fortnight later, you get used to strolling to work and shops just along the roadway, since cars rarely drive in sleeping areas.
Such is the prose of life. And since this prose is published on a technical, for the most part, resource, I will tell you a little about the programmer's work itself.
The office where I work is positioning itself as an international company with offices around the world. The head office and development center is here in Cyprus. The owner claims that this location was chosen solely because of the incredible attractiveness of the island in all respects, although in my cynical view everything rests solely on loot - the cost of employees due to the loyal tax system is extremely low.
However, I can’t exclude the possibility that someone here might really like it. At least, the British, the Germans, the French and people from the CIS countries voluntarily work in the office (of which the development department is almost completely composed).
In general, there is a feeling that the office has just moved from a small "home" enterprise to the maturity stage, and still has not realized this fact. The organizational structure of the development department, despite the growing number of employees, is a star with a project manager in the center.
Moreover, PM itself does not star in a childish way: it requires to conduct through it absolutely all technical solutions and all communications between developers, while requiring independence and teamwork. And to find this border between “why did you come to me with this nonsense” and “why didn’t you come - I would immediately say how to do it right” does not seem possible.
Therefore, the optimal strategy is to independently develop the most flexible solutions to emerging problems, praying that the PM never wonders “how does it all work for you” and does not begin to give very smart advice. Truly better to ask forgiveness than permission.
With all this, the leadership listens to the experience of developers and is not afraid to take risks and try new approaches and technologies. So, for example, the company began introducing .NET Core into the product and stuffing cones along this path almost immediately after its appearance.
On the other hand, such an approach in the absence of a holistic vision by the management of business processes leads to the fact that only tasks interesting to proactive developers are in focus, and not all of these tasks reach the final "licked" implementation.
So, for example, to work with packages, a semi-nuget-based nuget server is used, which needs to be reanimated almost daily by hands, and the launch of the next product assembly is triggered exclusively manually by exclusively authorized people. Such is continuous integration.
What conclusions can be drawn from this long and not quite connected story?
Firstly, Cyprus is a very, very specific place. And I would not recommend it to anyone other than those in love with the sea and the inhumane climate of masochists.
Secondly, life here very, very much reduces all possible levels of expectations from surrounding reality. On the one hand, this somewhat tempers the character, and allows you to more calmly and philosophically look at emerging life troubles. On the other hand, it revives the true meaning of the words of gratitude: if something happens (almost) on time and (almost) according to the agreement, then my “thank you” will be a completely sincere manifestation of joy because everything turned out. Even if it’s just a pizza delivery: they found the address, and they didn’t mix anything up in the order, and it’s still hot, but the courier found the change!
Thirdly, all this turned out to be a very interesting language experience: where else to find such a variety of accents and variations of the English language? And for those who don't have enough English, they can always go for almost free Greek courses. Although, from my point of view, unlike English, this skill is absolutely useless for any practical purpose.
And here I, being on a magical sunny island for almost a year, I caught myself thinking that it would be great to go back to my native foggy and cloudy Peter. Not being at least a professional psychiatrist, I can hardly give an accurate assessment of my cognitive impairment, but I will try to express my own feelings and my life experience in the form of a few loosely coupled observations and stories about life and work.
So, get acquainted, Cyprus. A sunny island within the European Union, with a record number of clean beaches per square meter of area. An island where it is almost always summer, where literally on every street orange, pomegranate, apricot and olive trees grow. An island where the locals are carefree, open and friendly. Where is the company where I work, provides free housing 10 minutes on foot from the office, plus a timely payment of money.
What, one may ask, can go wrong? Yes, in general, anything.
Climate
Let's start with the climate. Now in June, when I write these lines, the thermometer shows + 31C. In July it will be approximately + 40C. How much will be in August - no one knows, because By this time, the affectionate sun squeezes out the surviving representatives of the relatively reasonable fauna somewhere in the mountains or even outside the island. In this regard, I can share three interesting facts about the summer.
The first fact. Sometimes the air in the street is so warm that it is hotter in the wind than just calm. Do not believe? Get under the hair dryer! Now extrapolate this hair dryer to the territory of a small state.
The second fact. Air conditioning in a car is not always able to help. He blows, tries, but the cooled air is not able to sufficiently cool the skin on which the sun's rays fall through the tinted windows of local cars.
The third fact. In summer, you forget which faucet is responsible for hot water and which faucet is responsible for cold. For water flows from both of them at the “room” temperature (overboard + 40C, I remind you) of temperature. Very nice and refreshing.
I guess I exaggerate and in the winter, for sure, is everything all right? Of course good. The temperature drops significantly, but, nevertheless, remains positive. And here Cypriots begin to play the role of houses - with thin walls, large windows and no less large gaps wherever possible. As a result, the heroic maintenance of at least + 18C in a small studio apartment costs about 100 euros / month. Never before in my life have my cats been so fluffy! Well, the need to independently heat the water to wash it completely knocks out a stingy male tear in memory of centralized hot water supply.
Nature and cities
In general, figs with them - with the features of local life. But should it be beautiful in Cyprus? Beauty is a subjective concept, but I probably agree that the view of the sun dipping into the Mediterranean Sea at sunset is not without some charm ... The
magic ends, you just have to look from the coast into the island. The country is surprisingly dull and ugly. By mid-May, all green grass dries and charred, so until October all landscapes look a bit Martian. Trees, of course, continue to stand and bear fruit, but they do not improve the global picture, and, rather, emphasize some existential hopelessness of all things.
But, of course, there are parks in Cyprus. Any fenced area that way 10x10 meters of bare land, from which a couple dozen trees grow, is already recognized as a park in which, theoretically, you can try to spend time. There are parks and larger. The Cypriots drove right into their asphalt territory on a car, went out, walked for about 5 minutes and returned to the car with a sense of accomplishment.
Fans of beautiful and / or ancient architecture in Cyprus also do not shine - all the power in the country was seized by standard 2-4-story white boxes. The churches are perhaps distinguished by brick-colored tiles, but they look so much the same that you begin to believe that the only method was used in their construction, namely Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V.
More experienced colleagues said that all these sorrows of an architectural property stem from clay soil, on which buildings have not stood for more than forty years. Only here the 17th-century fortress wall built by the Venetians, perfectly preserved to this day, gently and unambiguously hints at another reason. But, perhaps, we postpone the study of the anatomy of the growth of hands in Cypriots, and we state an obvious plus of all of the above.
It's damn nice to fly away from Cyprus! Any Tmutarakan begins to shine with architecture, every five-story building turns into a skyscraper, and from the abundance of greenery - and even in the center of Moscow - it is simply breathtaking.
An airport
True, the opportunity to fly away from Cyprus, as it turned out, still has to suffer. The first time the universe hinted at this to me last fall, when I was naive I stood in line for check-in at Larnaca Airport, intending to get a boarding pass and check in my luggage. The queue stubbornly did not want to move and after some time it was announced that due to technical problems only self-checkin registration works through kiosks and, accordingly, without baggage. After another hour, the problem was heroically resolved and I even had time for the flight.
Already at the beginning of this year, wise by experience, I checked in online in advance and decided to do only hand luggage without luggage. The airport accepted the challenge with honor, so this time the information systems decided to refuse seriously and for a long time. Not so arrogant fellow travelers boarding passes were written out by hand on blank sheets of paper, all the related operations the airport staff tried to do manually as they could ... In general, we flew out 2.5 hours later, like many other flights.
What is curious, when I wrote an angry letter about this, in response I was asked to clarify the date when it all happened in order to understand the current situation. Just a moment: at the airport there was a global collapse in the service of departures, but the management knew nothing about it.
This case illustrates well the relationship between Cyprus and IT, but for a more complete picture I’ll tell you another story. About taxes.
Taxes
Each individual in Cyprus is obliged to independently report on income received and taxes paid, despite the fact that taxes are paid by the employer. You can report via the Internet, for this you need to get a username / password in your account by submitting an application. A couple of months ago I wrote this statement, I gave it to our accountant. A month passed - there is no answer, so they began to understand.
It turned out that on the day when the accountant sent my application to the tax, the fax did not work there, so they did not receive anything. Well, really - and what is it? For a Cypriot, anything not working, with the exception of the Naskafe whipping machine, is not a big deal. Especially some kind of fax.
So, the difficulties are overcome, logins and passwords are received, we fill out the declaration. In general, it is not much different from the Russian 3-personal income tax, which shows the income received and taxes paid from them, as a result of which a balance is set off (ideally zero).
Everything is simple, but the Cypriots would not be Cypriots if they had not done it here. And with taste: half of the fields of the questionnaire took real numbers, and the other half only integers, and in a completely unsystematic way. The result is obvious - the debit with the loan did not agree on a couple of tens of cents.
The solution came from the accountant (ATTENTION: if you are associated with Russian accounting, please do not read the following sentence, because it can cause irreparable harm to your mental health). With a few light movements, she simply fitted the numbers, manipulating the material fields of the declaration. When I told one colleague about this, he simply advised me not to bathe, because "in the best case, they will reach the verification of your declaration in seven years."
Well, the cherry on the cake. What do you think, in what office, in which I work, considers the salary of its one hundred employees? Praaaavilno, in Excel. By the way, an accountant, according to the Linkedin profile, received an MBA - here, in Cyprus.
Banks
On the whole, speaking of money, one cannot ignore the other side, namely, banks. These establishments are remarkable at least in that they work from 8:00 to about 14:30. On weekdays, naturally.
You can talk for a long time about the features of banking services, or about the fact that the ordered plastic card along with the PIN code is necessarily sent by letter to the home address (in the name of security - in different envelopes and with a difference of 1 day).
In all its glory, Cypriot banks showed themselves when I had to exchange euros for pounds for a trip to Britain. 2000 euros is not that astronomically large, but you just don’t want to carry it with you, so I went to my bank branch to start with the question of whether it is possible to make an exchange. "Of course you can! You’ll get so many pounds for your euros, ”they answered me.
Well, the next morning I take the money, I return to the bank. “Nuuu,” says the same employee, “It’s somehow too much money, we don’t have that much, we have to order it.” Let us order, pounds will be brought, we will call you, and then you will come. " I agree, what else to do.
Knowing that there are 3 more competing organizations located near my office, I go to them. They explain in all three that since I am not their client, they simply cannot exchange cash directly.
The next day is coming. The bank is predictably silent. It doesn’t matter, I’m going there with my legs. “Oh, did you come to exchange 2000 euros?” - the cashier who has already become a native to me shouts through the whole hall - “And the money has just arrived, come.”
Police
Such fascinating quests await the happy inhabitants of the island at every step. I once needed to get a Cypriot Criminal Records certificate. A certificate should be made by the police, but where exactly is the question. Of course, you can call the police and find out everything. We go to the Cypriot police website and see a list of useful phones:
Okay, let’s approach the task from the other side - we’ll ask our more experienced colleagues in criminal matters. More criminal colleagues suggest the address to which I even successfully arrive. And here, of course, it turns out that this certificate is not made to foreigners here, but in a specially designated place through specially trained people. To my reasonable question, but where, in fact, is this special place located, the valiant police officers rummage around for 5 minutes, then call for another 5 minutes. Ultimately show the place on the map. Vooot somewhere here:
"Vooot somewhere there" in fact it turned out to be a whole block of police-owned buildings, without house numbers, without specific addresses.
Such topographic features are characteristic of the entire island, so the address of any object in Cyprus looks something like this: “you go to Nicosia on the highway. As soon as you see the first traffic light - look to the right - there will be a building with blue shutters. but you won’t be able to turn there right away. you need to drive a little further and turn around. when turned around you will need to drive to this building by turning accordingly to the left. ”
Transport
At the same time, local taxi drivers are also absolutely wonderful and wonderful people who can be divided into several categories:
Those who do not use the navigator categorically. At first they ask for a long time where to take and how to go, then they get halfway and go deep into the paper maps of the island. For these home-grown Flints, this is a completely reasonable strategy, because money on the counter continues to drip regularly during such a “technical stop”.
Those who have a navigator, but he is lying in the glove compartment as a cool and fashionable accessory. If the paper card didn’t help for some reason, the Cypriot taxi driver starts poking at the buttons of the navigator, trying to figure out how this shaitan thing works. Sometimes it even turns out. But more often than not, because the absence of half of roads and buildings on electronic maps is quite a norm. As well as the presence of three or four streets of the same name with the right name, located in different parts of the city. So even if you could find the address in the navigator, it’s too early to relax - a taxi may very well go the wrong way.
Those who have a navigator with up-to-date maps, and who, without undue questioning, will simply take you from point A to point B. There are fewer such comrades, and it is definitely worth making a close friendship with them.
Instead of a taxi, in principle, you can risk using public transport. It runs on a schedule with an interval of 40 minutes. You can see the schedule itself through the official app. In it, theoretically, one can also lay a route, but since it was written by professional Indians, it is absolutely impossible to use this function - it is easier to build a route using 2GIS, and then check the schedule in the application.
Bus traffic ends damn late - at about five to six in the evening. At the same time, they transport a completely phenomenal number of people per day - often only my wife and I are the only passengers on the buses on various flights.
The vast majority of locals prefer private transport, which is not at all surprising, given all of the above. The reverse side of love for iron horses results in the fact that Cypriots don’t walk at all, and they don’t design pedestrian infrastructure. Therefore, rare sidewalks, as a rule, are planted with trees, and walking on them is not particularly easy. About a fortnight later, you get used to strolling to work and shops just along the roadway, since cars rarely drive in sleeping areas.
Such is the prose of life. And since this prose is published on a technical, for the most part, resource, I will tell you a little about the programmer's work itself.
Work in IT
The office where I work is positioning itself as an international company with offices around the world. The head office and development center is here in Cyprus. The owner claims that this location was chosen solely because of the incredible attractiveness of the island in all respects, although in my cynical view everything rests solely on loot - the cost of employees due to the loyal tax system is extremely low.
However, I can’t exclude the possibility that someone here might really like it. At least, the British, the Germans, the French and people from the CIS countries voluntarily work in the office (of which the development department is almost completely composed).
In general, there is a feeling that the office has just moved from a small "home" enterprise to the maturity stage, and still has not realized this fact. The organizational structure of the development department, despite the growing number of employees, is a star with a project manager in the center.
Moreover, PM itself does not star in a childish way: it requires to conduct through it absolutely all technical solutions and all communications between developers, while requiring independence and teamwork. And to find this border between “why did you come to me with this nonsense” and “why didn’t you come - I would immediately say how to do it right” does not seem possible.
Therefore, the optimal strategy is to independently develop the most flexible solutions to emerging problems, praying that the PM never wonders “how does it all work for you” and does not begin to give very smart advice. Truly better to ask forgiveness than permission.
With all this, the leadership listens to the experience of developers and is not afraid to take risks and try new approaches and technologies. So, for example, the company began introducing .NET Core into the product and stuffing cones along this path almost immediately after its appearance.
On the other hand, such an approach in the absence of a holistic vision by the management of business processes leads to the fact that only tasks interesting to proactive developers are in focus, and not all of these tasks reach the final "licked" implementation.
So, for example, to work with packages, a semi-nuget-based nuget server is used, which needs to be reanimated almost daily by hands, and the launch of the next product assembly is triggered exclusively manually by exclusively authorized people. Such is continuous integration.
conclusions
What conclusions can be drawn from this long and not quite connected story?
Firstly, Cyprus is a very, very specific place. And I would not recommend it to anyone other than those in love with the sea and the inhumane climate of masochists.
Secondly, life here very, very much reduces all possible levels of expectations from surrounding reality. On the one hand, this somewhat tempers the character, and allows you to more calmly and philosophically look at emerging life troubles. On the other hand, it revives the true meaning of the words of gratitude: if something happens (almost) on time and (almost) according to the agreement, then my “thank you” will be a completely sincere manifestation of joy because everything turned out. Even if it’s just a pizza delivery: they found the address, and they didn’t mix anything up in the order, and it’s still hot, but the courier found the change!
Thirdly, all this turned out to be a very interesting language experience: where else to find such a variety of accents and variations of the English language? And for those who don't have enough English, they can always go for almost free Greek courses. Although, from my point of view, unlike English, this skill is absolutely useless for any practical purpose.
