How do IT professionals work? Andrey Volosyuk, CTO Digital Society Laboratory at SocialKey Ads

We continue to question specialists about work and leisure hours, professional habits, the tools they use, and much more.

It will be interesting to find out what unites them, in which they contradict each other. Perhaps their answers will help to identify some general patterns, useful tips that will help many of us.

Today our guest is Andrey Volosyuk, technical director of Digital Society Laboratory , a project of SocialKey Ads.

Andrey has an incomplete higher technical education. During his studies, he became interested in web development, and then a student hobby grew into a professional activity.


Prior to DSL, on freelance, he created and maintained online store sites, managed to work at Mail.Ru Group, Lamoda and VKontakte.

Interests: outdoor activities, professional and fiction.

What do you do in the company?

As a technical director, I have many responsibilities. Most often I am engaged in the development and architecture of a service, training new employees, determining a development strategy, monitoring key indicators and optimizing development processes. In emergency situations, I put on the captain’s costume during a storm and close up the resulting holes. As on the ship, the team plays a very important role.

One word that best describes how you work:

Whack!

How many hours a day do you devote to work?

Differently. Sometimes you have to start a work day earlier than the schedule, respectively, and leave is not always on time. This is primarily due to the specifics of the position - I have control over all the technical processes in the company and full responsibility for the work done. Speaking about the clock, it is 8-15 hours a day. Depends on the load, current tasks, on the need to connect to solving urgent issues.

How many hours do you sleep?

Due to work, home and family affairs, usually 6-8 hours are left for sleep.

How do you have breakfast?

How? Quickly.

If you are talking about food, then the standard set is tea, porridge. I always have breakfast.

What are you doing along the way to / from work?

I read professional and fiction, as well as news.

Which todo manager do you personally use?

I chose Any.do for myself. I use mainly for personal purposes, sometimes - for work.

What applications and services you can’t do without?

Mail, calendar, instant messengers, development environments.

What task manager / issue-tracker / repository do you use in the company?

At work, we use Jira and GitLab.

What other tools and software do you use in your work?

PhpStorm, IntelliJ IDEA, MySQL Workbench.

Does the company have internal projects?

There is. I can’t divulge, unfortunately.

What annoys you the most when you work?

I like my job. It is annoying that it is sometimes difficult to find time for a thorough immersion in a task; you have to switch often.

What kind of professional literature would you recommend?

My top 3 recommendations:

• Deadline , Tom DeMarco;
• “How to Graze Cats,” J. Hank Rainwater;
• "Perfect code," Steve McConnell.

What do you prefer: electronic readers or paper books?

E-readers like simplicity and mobility, but I prefer paper books.

What technique and why do you prefer at work and at home?

MacBook Reasons: POSIX-system (ease of solving any work tasks), GUI, perfect touchpad and habit.

What do you listen to when you work?

It’s the same as when I don’t work. Heavy and folk music. There is no separate music for work.

Which life hack allows you to be more effective?

Prioritization of tasks and making a list of necessary solutions for the day. Make a list in the morning. Usually after breakfast or on the way to work.

What professional advice for the future can you give yourself?

Always look for development paths for myself and the products that I do. Critically evaluate your work.

What would you recommend to a person trying to go the same way?

Do not stop or give up. Alright, and you will succeed!