How does it feel to be a developer in Russia when you are forty

    Hi everyone, I'm a forty-year-old self-taught programmer, and this is my story.

    A couple of weeks ago, I came across a distribution chart of people interested in technology, IT, and programming. And he made me think about my career.



    After some 20 years, I’ll be 60. And the likelihood that I can still do what I was created for is a very tiny amount. These thoughts led me to where it all began.

    I made my debut as a software developer in 1990, a year after my parents gave me a Mikrosha personal computer for my 14th birthday.

    World in 1990


    Then he was a little different. We did not know the words “Internet” in the USSR at that time. Parents used EU computers in production, which looked like this:



    But hard drives looked like this:



    Palm handheld computers (PDAs) did not exist in nature then, and Electronical calculators of all kinds took their place. One could only dream of a programmable calculator, the prices were sky-high:



    Kin-Dza-Dza was playing at the box office of domestic cinema, Alisa Selezneva regularly fought space pirates on central television channels, and this year a stylish three-episode science fiction film was released "Mediator":



    The Cold War ended, peace reigned in space, and I watched the live shuttle landing in the unmanned mode of the Buran space shuttle a year earlier on the news:



    Yes, the unmanned landing of a multi-ton object with the aerodynamics of an iron - it was really cool!

    My first experience as a developer


    According to A. V. Stolyarov in his book “Programming: Introduction to the Profession”, a person becomes a programmer when other people need his program and they are ready to pay money for it.

    Thanks to the excellent documentation on the Mikrosha computer, written in the Lianozovo design bureau (which I still keep as a model for compiling the user manual), I mastered BASIC for half a year, managed to become disappointed with it in terms of speed of program execution, and started writing his first assembler game. And there was nobody near me who knew programming and computers.

    In a neighboring courtyard there lived a school friend, to whom his parents presented the Partner 01.01 computer. His computer was in a box, but his friend did not know how to connect it to a tape recorder in order to download programs. I came to him, settled it, and we began to go to each other's places one by one to play. There were few games, and besides, there was a small hardware-software incompatibility between our computers up to the format of recording onto magnetic tape. Therefore, we could not download programs from one computer to another.

    Companions in computers were only interested in games, and when all the games were replayed, I showed him how I write a game for myself. It was a vertical scroller race in Assembler. He fired up this game, and asked to make him the same. I explained that the matter would be long: it would be necessary to manually recycle a long listing of the Assembler program on his computer, or drive in kilobytes of HEX code, correcting the addresses of the procedures and ports that differed on our computers. In the end, I came to him in the evening, and wrote in one sitting an analogue of my game, but only in BASIC. In the game there was a road, a machine from the letter "Zh" and logs from the symbols of the lattice #####. The longer the game lasted, the narrower the road became, the longer the logs and the higher the speed. A kilometer counter clicked in the corner. Now such a game would be called an arcade with a randomly generated landscape.

    Having written the game, I went home, saying that it is impossible to drive 100 km in it. After three or four days, a satisfied comrade called and said that he could drive more. It turns out that he was chopping this simple game round the clock, and at some point the logs on the road were placed so that it was possible to drive through. Then he called for more boys, and they chopped into her without stopping. Parents did not like this, and they mentioned that they need to take money for playing on a computer, as the co-operatives did in the Spectrum game club. The flow of interested persons sharply decreased, but he managed to earn some money. He gave me half the money, saying that if it weren’t for my game, he would not have earned anything at all. So I became a developer, satisfying all the conditions of the Stolyarov criterion.

    high school


    From the point of view of programming, I went to the institute well prepared. Not everyone had several years of programming in high and low level languages ​​plus a burned-out computer that could not stand its transformation into a voice answering machine in conjunction with the Oreanda 204-C tape recorder. There were no "programmer" specialties in our university, but there was a department of microelectronics and semiconductor devices. The department was created for the radio factory, which was built on the outskirts of the city. In the year when I began to study, staff stopped paying wages and the plant was closed.

    In two groups of my specialty there were five people who at the time of admission had a home computer, including me. After graduation, only these people and a couple of people from our stream connected their lives with information technology. I think that such an exhaust is terrible.

    At the institute we were taught the C language. I had no problems with this imperative language, with the exception of pointers. Knowing the Assembler КР580ВМ80А, and having time to dig deeper with the i8086, I wondered how such a simple thing could be done so ugly, and why this ugly implementation was also accepted as a standard. But I forced myself to take it for granted.

    In the last semester of a programming course, we were nominally read some kind of C ++ confusion. This language was "taught" by a person who did not understand it at all. He lectured on a piece of paper. This state of affairs was the norm then, and, as I understand it, remains the norm to this day. “The concept of an object-oriented paradigm is extremely simple. Each object in the system is an encapsulated abstraction endowed with the properties of inheritance and polymorphism ”- this is what we memorized in lectures. As a result, at the practical C ++ exam, I was the only person who wrote the solution in this language. The rest wrote in C. I prepared at home for days tormenting the plus side of the TurboC compiler to force the compilation of a single OOP-style program with 300 lines. It was a matter of principle: if I learn C ++, then I must understand how to write and compile at least one program. It was difficult, uncomfortable, and puzzling: why was such a perverted language invented? Why protect data inside the program from itself? In the end, I mechanically remembered the language constructs and their combination, which form the backbone of the program that "at least worked." And on the exam he just repeated it. The teacher, like me, was in a trance when I saw a program compiled at the C ++ exam (it was a clock in which the dial and hands were separate objects). I then promised myself that I would never touch C ++ again. And there was nobody near me who would understand OOP and plus programming, and would say: comrade, there is nothing complicated here. Why was such a perverted language invented? Why protect data inside the program from itself? In the end, I mechanically remembered the language constructs and their combination, which form the backbone of the program that "at least worked." And on the exam he just repeated it. The teacher, like me, was in a trance when I saw a program compiled at the C ++ exam (it was a clock in which the dial and hands were separate objects). I then promised myself that I would never touch C ++ again. And there was nobody near me who would understand OOP and plus programming, and would say: comrade, there is nothing complicated here. Why was such a perverted language invented? Why protect data inside the program from itself? In the end, I mechanically remembered the language constructs and their combination, which form the backbone of the program that "at least worked." And on the exam he just repeated it. The teacher, like me, was in a trance when I saw a program compiled at the C ++ exam (it was a clock in which the dial and hands were separate objects). I then promised myself that I would never touch C ++ again. And there was nobody near me who would understand OOP and plus programming, and would say: comrade, there is nothing complicated here. And on the exam he just repeated it. The teacher, like me, was in a trance when I saw a program compiled at the C ++ exam (it was a clock in which the dial and hands were separate objects). I then promised myself that I would never touch C ++ again. And there was nobody near me who would understand OOP and plus programming, and would say: comrade, there is nothing complicated here. And on the exam he just repeated it. The teacher, like me, was in a trance when I saw a program compiled at the C ++ exam (it was a clock in which the dial and hands were separate objects). I then promised myself that I would never touch C ++ again. And there was nobody near me who would understand OOP and plus programming, and would say: comrade, there is nothing complicated here.

    Studying at the institute, I began to earn extra money to help my parents. The nineties passed, and every penny counted. The first serious order was from a fellow student whose father was the director of his own enterprise. They needed a program for accounting for fuels and lubricants. The idea of ​​making money on my programming skills was tempting, and I agreed. Although, honestly, what do I care about fuels and lubricants? I wanted to figure out how to code 3D on a bare processor and play with voxels. But I understood that they pay for this somewhere far away, but not with us. Therefore, I looked at the databases out of the corner of my eye, and by that time had been experimenting with FoxPro for half a year. I came to the office of the enterprise, and began to find out what they really needed. In the language of the developer, I collected user history. They showed me some kind of accounting system, and talked about their problems. The problem was that they kept a total (cash) record, and they needed a quantitative, with details on consumers and storage locations. It’s now that I’m saying exactly what the problem was. And then they poured a whole bunch of mutually exclusive paragraphs on me and expressed the hope that I could figure it out. I wrote down everything I managed to understand, took a month to develop, and made this small accounting system.

    The day before the transfer to the customer, I had the thought: what if they didn’t pay me for this removal of the brain? They will say, for example, that the program did not fit, and refuse to pay. And then they will use it. Or they won’t. But I didn’t sleep at night, I was completely exhausted. I sat, thought, thought, and finally decided: I’ll put in time protection. If they don’t pay me for a month, the program will stop working. If no one will use it, then no one will know about it. And if they pay and start using, then after receiving the money I will say that in the directory with the program you just need to delete the file with a specific name. And I made a defense. On FoxPro, making protection is another problem. At that time, there were already two decompilers, which almost one-in-one restored the source code. But I, judging that it is unlikely that the customer will look for a person, which will break protection, obfuscated the code a bit, hiding from prying eyes a system error call. The next day I gave the program, showed how to work in it, but did not receive the promised money.

    The amount was small - the agreement was about money in the amount of a monthly stipend. But they told me that they would pay in a week, when the company will give out salaries. What happened a week later? That's right, they didn’t pay me the money, referring to the fact that this month the company earned little, and it was not enough for me. I praised myself internally for my foresight. Even if I am left without money, at least I will be satisfied that at one fine moment the program (without my intervention!) Will refuse to work with bad people. And I did not begin to remind myself. No means no. And then everything happened as if by notes. Having plunged into study, I already forgot about my program. I was at home, and suddenly the phone rang. My fellow student called, whose father ordered the program. He said my program stopped working, and it has already accumulated data and weekly reports for the whole month. I humbly reminded that they paid me nothing for the program. And calmly said that I would categorically do nothing until I saw the money. A fellow student was very offended, saying that he did not expect such a setup from me. But two hours later I brought the money, and I told him which file should be deleted. I had no more business with him.

    This episode deeply convinced me that the best friends of girls are diamonds; the best friends of a programmer are his own programs. They will not fail, and will always work as intended. And the only thing I can rely on in my life (besides my parents, of course) is my own programs. They, like people, will not let me down. And so that they do not fail, programs must be written well.

    Graduation


    At the end of my studies, in my fifth year, I simultaneously earned three jobs. In general, work was then tight: even adults sat aground. My parents were one of those mentioned in a funny joke: mom is a doctor, and dad is an engineer. They could arrange me only in their field of activity. My father was completely deaf at the factory with the ZP: the plant stood and stolen. Therefore, my mother helped me in finding a job.

    Work times


    Three times a week, I traveled from the city to the village, to the central district hospital, where I worked as a tyzhprogramist. Yes, even then there was a meme "tyzhprogramist." Accounting support, payroll, reporting to the tax and pension funds, medical statistics and social insurance. Something inherited from a previous employee. Payroll had to be supplemented in accordance with changing legislation. Medical statistics was written from scratch. FoxPro, Clarion, C for small utilities. We did not see local computer networks then, and I did the wiring of the hinged LPT port to connect computers on two floors through the LPT link in Norton Commander. Although, what did I care about accounting, statistics and tax reporting? I figured out CORDIC algorithms at night, Adapting miraculously found listing Motorola assembler on i8086. I got to BUMP mapping in real time on the i386 microprocessor. I discovered FIDO, and through it the demoscene. Assembler, solid assembler, and microscopic program sizes. I made my first intro for my fidos nodes. And there was no one next to me who would understand this low-level programming of graphics and sound.

    Work two


    Twice a week I worked at the Medtekhnika workshop. Production there was considered by repaired devices. They gave me all the junk that no one wanted to mess with. There are such types of breakdowns when the device is working, then not. It is very difficult to diagnose a problem in such conditions. It would be better if it just burned down and did not work, then it would be immediately clear what to fix. I did not have any experience, and in general I consider myself a do-it-yourselfer in electronics, therefore, I was pretty tormented.

    At some point, the workshop owner came up with a business idea to buy bulk film for large-format radiography and cut into small formats. For some reason, for some reason there was a problem with small formats; medical institutions had nowhere to get them. And in order to sell the film, packaging was needed. Two kilometer rolls of opaque paper for an inner and outer envelope were bought. Welded supports for rolls, put a metal table. The result was an improvised machine. I did not participate in this business, I just watched from the side. I saw how the director and his deputy cut the paper themselves, trying to come up with a manual technology for quickly making an envelope. They stood with a stopwatch, and measured how much time they spent on one envelope. But how did they make this envelope? It struck me that they did not break down the technological operations of cutting, folding and gluing into stages, but did different work sequentially for each envelope. They did cutting with a clerical knife under a metal ruler. When marking the sheet, they twisted the ruler and so on, and that took a lot of time. I could not stand it, walked over, and asked why they would not put the markup directly on the table? This proposal struck them. How easy! They asked what else could be done. I told them the squeeze about the organization of technological processes, and made several changes to the machine. And who, in the end, was set to cut the paper? No, not Tajik from the street. I cut the paper for a month, gradually realizing that I was dumb from such a job. A month later, the film was over, and I began to repair the instruments again. Once I made a mistake and turned on the coreless transformer. The transformer burned out and had to be rewound. The cost of the spent copper wire was deducted from my already meager salary. This finished me completely, and I tied up with medical equipment.

    Work three


    Third workplace. Day-through-three watchman in a children's clinic. Great job to read books. If I had the opportunity to drag a computer to this job, at least I wrote my programs there. “So I would take a laptop!” - the modern reader will say. But I could not even dream of a laptop. My trip with my father on a business trip to VDNH was still fresh in my memory, where I saw in the shopping pavilion prices for laptops that were higher than the price of a car. I went shocked then, and still could not understand: are there really people who are ready to buy a laptop for the SUCH price? And there was no person next to me who would say: dude, in normal offices, these laptops are issued for work for free!

    Free flight


    In 1998, I graduated from college. Honors degree in hands. I have two funny jobs with funny salaries. In the Caucasus, the second Chechen war, and I am a conscript. They didn’t take them to graduate school - there, only at a great doom, because the reservation is from the army. A very good prospect is to study for 15 years, get a diploma with honors, and with all the store of knowledge go to a real war. But thanks to the leaky legislation, I became the official sole guardian, and received a reprieve. One problem has been resolved.

    However, there was a second problem: the lack of decent work. And there was a third problem: a default occurred in the country. That is, before default, I thought that could not be worse. And at default I found out that I could. There was no point in going to work: the earned money was only enough to travel to work. There was only one option: to come to Nerezinovaya, and there - how the curve would lead. Some relatives of the newly-minted engineers have already moved to Moscow: they worked at construction sites, in markets, in electric trains. At that moment, there was no way to get a profession in Moscow: without a residence permit, Moscow-Moscow Region would not be hired. In fact, a person was illegal in the capital of his homeland.

    A piece of summer, from autumn to spring, I ran around Moscow trains selling potato goods: poison for cockroaches, insoles, substandard felt-tip pens, books, dust tea from tea factories, expired coffee, meat grinder knives, and other incredible rubbish. On weekends he traded in the market of radiotelephones. In parallel, I tried to find a real job, but everywhere there was a refusal due to lack of registration. Once, it seemed, he found a company that could hire me. In any case, there was no mention of registration in the requirements, and when calling the manager did not know anything about whether registration was needed or not. The office was engaged in the organization of accounting / warehouse accounting, introduced 1C, and they needed quick people. Reception on a competitive basis. I came for an interview, wrote a test, and only two remained from the crowd of dozens of people.

    “You suit us.” And the last question: where do you live?
    - In Pushkino. (I shot a corner there).
    - Registration near Moscow?
    - Not. South of Russia.
    - Well then, you are so ... You didn’t pass the contest!

    The competition, mother, did not pass. I donated blood, I passed urine, I passed my feces, I fell over on math.

    One fleeting positive moment of my stay at the Mother See still was: I was able to get to the ByteFall-99 computer art festival. It, too, was postponed due to the crisis, but was finally carried out. I put my intro there, which I wrote at the institute. I did not have access to Internet / Fido computer networks, so the organizers had to kick the cherished floppy disk. The organizer worked as an administrator in the Christian mission - some Catholics or Protestants, I do not understand them. He was a fan of Linux, and then I stuck for half an hour - I first saw Linux in real work.

    In the spring, my partner and I realized that there was nothing to catch in Moscow. Eternal running from the police, bribes, monkeys, graters with competing "firms" in electric train cars. Living in a hostel with cockroaches and a shared shower. We planned to return home and do subsistence farming - the apiary topic was relevant. But on the return of a partner they took him into the army, and the apiary did not work out.

    Legal work


    1999 The beginning of summer. I sat and looked in surprise at my hands. While I was in Moscow they became wooden. Fingers forgot where the letters on the keyboard are. Where did my leisurely 250 Char / min go? A strange brain game: sometimes I recall the JCUKEN layout of my first computer, although I could get used to QWERTY over the years of studying and working with a PC.

    What can an engineer in the microelectronics department do in a city where nobody needs him? In fact, only the accompaniment of computer accounting systems. And I went to work in the state tax authorities. I was immediately given the position of leading specialist. But the salary ... It was calculated according to some ancient norms, and was purely symbolic. And frankly, what did I care about the intricacies of calculating income tax on individuals as amended by DD.MM.YYYY? I raved about artificial intelligence and expert systems. In order not to sour at work at all, at night I wrote a virtual player based on a dichotomizer for a game whose theory I could not find anywhere. The expert system is expert in that it can formalize those patterns that the developer himself does not know, and for this it is enough to train her on the samples of the “correct” game. And when my electronic player beat me, I was just happy. The game was called "Shareholder". I and my friend who wrote the GUI planned to sell the game. But nothing came of it. In the end, we put the game in free access. After 15 years, the author contacted me, who published the rules of this game in the journal Science and Life. He wrote that he found our game, and several times played "in a draw." It was cool.

    A year has passed. The country began to recover from default. Our city-forming engineering plant began to recover. Well, how to recover ... Guests from foggy Albion, who bought cheaply the Soviet atomic engineering plant, decided to start making profit from it not only by selling equipment for scrap metal. Through my acquaintances, I accidentally found out that an engineering center is being formed at the plant, where specialists are recruited. I do not care what is not in my profile, but at least the salary will be adult. In the end, in the annex to the diploma, in the graph of engineering design was “excellent”. I grabbed the documents, went through an interview, got a job, and a week later I went on a business trip to St. Petersburg. Salary, business trips - you can save up for housing. Although, what did I care about heat exchange equipment, tube sheets, flanges and expansion joints? Neural networks, training samples, pattern recognition - this is an interesting topic! But what if the neural network is applied to video encoding? Hell, MPEG-4 does just that ...

    From a design engineer, I was retrained as a calculation engineer with a bias on the calculation of flows of liquids and gases. The main tools are MathCad for analytical solutions, UniGraphics for geometry, AnSys and StarCd for finite element analysis. You can program in MathCad - cheers! You can write scripts in AnSys - fine, there will be parametric geometry! StarCd needs a STEP converter, there is a specification - write it! Oh yes, because the world still has the Internet, and someone writes sites. And it all spins on Linux! We need to study it. And what is PHP 4th version? Oh my god, this is a scripted multi-paradigm language with classes! Can OOP really be that simple?

    At this time, my friend returned from the army, with whom I worked on electric trains in Moscow. He is a good circuit designer, and instead of apiary, we decided to touch the business of manufacturing LED running-board type displays along with the main work. It would be better if we took up the apiary. We naively believed that if we can make an inexpensive and simple (in our understanding) product, we can ensure our existence. To begin with, we decided to make a test model. The creeping line consisted of a home-made LED matrix and a home-made circuit board with a KR580VB55A chip, which was inserted into the i386 motherboard via an LPT port. The calculation was that motherboards with i386 were so outdated by that time that they could be bought in kilograms for a penny. And our software did not need more. I made a simple markup language to display messages, in which there were loadable fonts, animated sprites, effects, date-time meta-symbols, sensor values. And he wrote a driver to output dynamic pictures to our device. When the prototype was fully assembled and worked, we began to calculate how much the final product would cost. It turned out that the most expensive is the manufacture of a matrix with diodes and a housing. The prices voiced by local enterprises for drilling even holes in plastic and bending metal were somehow inadequate. They are many times higher than the price of a finished running line, which could be obtained in China. We sold a prototype at the price of components, and this is where our high-tech enterprise ended. And he wrote a driver to output dynamic pictures to our device. When the prototype was fully assembled and worked, we began to calculate how much the final product would cost. It turned out that the most expensive is the manufacture of a matrix with diodes and a housing. The prices voiced by local enterprises for drilling even holes in plastic and bending metal were somehow inadequate. They are many times higher than the price of a finished running line, which could be obtained in China. We sold a prototype at the price of components, and this is where our high-tech enterprise ended. And he wrote a driver to output dynamic pictures to our device. When the prototype was fully assembled and worked, we began to calculate how much the final product would cost. It turned out that the most expensive is the manufacture of a matrix with diodes and a housing. The prices voiced by local enterprises for drilling even holes in plastic and bending metal were somehow inadequate. They are many times higher than the price of a finished running line, which could be obtained in China. We sold a prototype at the price of components, and this is where our high-tech enterprise ended. which voiced by local enterprises for drilling even holes in plastic and bending metal, were somehow inadequate. They are many times higher than the price of a finished running line, which could be obtained in China. We sold a prototype at the price of components, and this is where our high-tech enterprise ended. which voiced by local enterprises for drilling even holes in plastic and bending metal, were somehow inadequate. They are many times higher than the price of a finished running line, which could be obtained in China. We sold a prototype at the price of components, and this is where our high-tech enterprise ended.

    For three years I was engaged in calculations. Not to say that this is an easy task: a big responsibility, and every day is like an exam in physics. The tasks are always new: either calculating stresses, then heat-mass transfer, then profiling aerodynamics, then tube bundles. Everywhere has its own methodology, everywhere its own characteristics. At some point, I realized that I was missing for everything. I finished off the order for an oil heat exchanger for ship equipment. The marine theme is generally a separate song. It has its own standards and requirements, which are very different from classical, ground-based engineering. I “bit” the problem, but the existing calculation methodology gave an error more than the degree of optimization of the characteristics. The gurus of the settlement group shrugged: get out as you like, we don’t know how to count. Instead of an analytical solution, I decided to use the finite element. But there was a catch: the oil was very cold, and the change in viscosity could not be neglected. Calculations with variable environmental parameters were required. The pirated StarCd had the required functionality (yes, then all the software in the production was pirated), but there was a mistake: the coefficients of the calculation formula were lost. And it was impossible to get around this. I even tried to derive the coefficients for the equivalent formula, where the lost coefficients would be compensated, but no. For very distant connections, in some Moscow institute I found a person who was involved in calculations in this program. And he said that the problem exists, and can not be solved in the version of software that I have. But in newer versions the problem is solved, the question is only in the purchase. I reported this to the chief engineer, but he just twisted his finger at the temple: where it is seen, to buy programs for production needs? As for the calculation, it is necessary to write a fictitious one, and close the amount for the work done. I refused, and after a strange conversation, “either you write a left science-like calculation and put your signature, or you bring down”, I quit of my own free will.

    Where to go now? The former college friend worked for the city’s largest grocery store owner. Then the topic of self-service stores, forgotten from the Soviet era, only appeared: they were afraid to let people go over the restructuring of goods, and all trade in the city was counter, and, accordingly, slow. The owner was very afraid that the Magnit and Pyaterochka networks would come to the city. And it was decided to transfer stores to the format of trading floors. It took a person to implement this idea. In the absence of a better offer from employers, I began to do this. Although, what did I care about electronic scales, barcode scanners, postings in 1C “Rarus” and cash register modules? Computer graphics and animation! What is the most affordable? Flash! VirtualDub and streaming scripting on AVISynth! What to do, to understand technology? Of course, your own clip! In the afternoon - work to eat. At night - creativity.

    In a year, ”scary to recall,“ I launched four self-service stores. They were the first in the city. The rest lagged behind construction work. Relative calm came: the arrival of Pyaterochka with Magnet was postponed. What else should I hang on to an IT specialist who accompanies three markets and a fourth with the prefix “super”? Of course, a revision! A programmer, you know how to count, and while there is not much work (shops are magical, and work on their own), you have to count the goods at night. And if the shortage? Well, let's see: the stores are entrusted to you, the records are kept on computers, so who is responsible for the shortages? Clear?

    After conducting several audits, and seeing what is happening in the distribution network, I firmly decided to move out of this topic. But one must understand that the dashing nineties in the outback continued in the two thousandths. The owners of large urban businesses are not ordinary people, and many things are decided by concepts. Therefore, you can’t just get off topic. And just at that moment the incredible happened: my friend gave my apartment to an apartment in Moscow, but she married her husband and left for Italy. He moved to Moscow, and somehow got a job as a beta tester in an office that wrote games for Linux. He talked about me, and I was invited to an interview. I collected all my free money and went to Moscow. He got a job, found an apartment, and immediately paid the triple amount of the monthly stay: to the agency, a deposit to the owner, payment of the first month.

    Specialty job


    2005 year. Moscow was completely different! Luzhkov’s laws were repealed, and it was possible to walk the subway and the streets calmly, without fear that a comrade policeman would suddenly be interested in your personality. Employers have experienced personnel shortages, and companies are happy to arrange specialists, regardless of registration. And employment, which is surprising, under the Labor Code! Removing housing in Moscow is still an expensive pleasure, but a six-fold increase in salary makes this pleasure permissible.

    The company I settled in made games for Linux. Sounds incredible? Who needs Linux games? It turns out they are needed. For example, if these are slot machines with gambling. The scope of such a business is called the bourgeois word "gaming". Remember the "columns" and the halls of slot machines for money? This is it.

    To reduce costs, and not to bother with licensing, the company led the development on Linux. SDL, OpenGl, png for graphics, ogg for sound. The company was engaged in a full production cycle. The development department (where I got a job), the electronics design department (their motherboards for protection and equipment controllers were connected to the PC motherboards), the quality control department, the production of cases, the assembly of finished products, and other non-production departments. When I got a job at this company, the peak of super-profit has already passed. Rumors of a ban on slot machines flew in the air. Therefore, the company slowly reoriented itself to orders from abroad.

    I worked in this company for a year “on a permanent basis”. He brought into production two projects that he did practically “from scratch”, but using and developing brand libraries. In addition to C, C ++ and Java programmers, artists, animators, musicians, type designers, testers worked with me. I really enjoyed it. There really was a team, and for once I was not a lone specialist.

    Historically, games were assembled from C and C ++ code, slowly moving completely to the pros. I had to write both low-level things, and the front-end on OpenGL, and the financial and monetary part, and math tests. Outwardly, everything had to look catchy and beautiful, aiming at the “upper” segment. Three-dimensional objects licked to the ideal: high-quality textures, partial shade, moving glare, blur for emulating fast motion, splines for soft animation, etc. In my work, I used the principles of writing code "from NASA": a one-time placement of an object / resource in memory at startup, no dynamic work with a bunch during the execution of the program. This paid off: nothing slowed down, everything worked smoothly, since all the data at the start were prepared and available. Of course, without optimizing the data itself, this would not be possible. Due to this approach, Games worked for months without shutting down. There were other methods: a student worked with me who wrote his own allocator for his projects with a triple level of pointers. I looked at his code with awe. His projects then worked, then segfoltilsya, but he quickly corrected everything. When he quit, the code of this specialist had to be rewritten from scratch, since no one could pull his escort.

    For all the time I have localized my projects to twelve countries: the countries of the former USSR, Europe and Latin American countries. For some countries they had to go through certification in order to be allowed to enter the market. The requirements were non-trivial, most of all exported with the Czech Republic and Peru - one conditional compilation could not get off. But it was interesting to work!

    Although, honestly, my conscience gnawed: I still did gambling. Behind the excitement was always a semi-criminal business, and I did a service for it. And I really didn’t like it. Therefore, in order to straighten out a little karma, I began to think about starting my own OpenSource project. For the good of society, so to speak. I walked and considered possible useful projects. And there were already some hints when they suddenly adopted a law on the regulation of gaming activities. And the company I worked for began to make a sharp peak, since most of the revenue was still from the Russian market. They began to optimize production, there was a move to a cheaper office. I agreed on a decent salary by the standards of my city, which turned out to be beneficial for the employer, and went back. And for several years he continued to work remotely. Personal experience showed

    Remote work - freelance mirror


    On a remote site, I ran into the same problems that freelancers face. The biggest problem, in addition to the violation of the circadian rhythm, was the lack of communication with colleagues. Skype, email, bugtracker, version control system - all this is good, but it will not replace live communication with your own kind. It is impossible to just discuss a particular idea or technology. It is impossible to learn and understand something new just like that, with explanations along the way on the knee. And this is the biggest brake in the development of a specialist.

    To remain “in the subject”, I was taken into account by Khabar and Lor, while realizing that this lesson would not lead me to the knowledge of the same level that I received in the “pre-Internet” era. The Internet forms a very mosaic picture of the world, and it seems that people who are able to explain in a consistent, detailed and accessible way have already disappeared. With books, too, things do not matter: for many reasons, I can not "deeply" read from the screen. Therefore, I always buy paper books. But there is a problem with them: most modern books are overt slag. And those books that are really needed have become a rarity and are not sold in paper form. In general, humanity has entered a phase when there is nowhere to take deep knowledge from, and instead a surrogate is slipping in the form of endless statues of people who “finally understood everything”,

    I decided that only work, experience, and projects using new technologies will keep me from falling out of the industry. And OpenSource then seemed like a good way out. I had several projects that I could put on public display, after bringing the code into a more or less decent look. I chose one of them, written in C ++ with Qt, and in parallel with the remote, I began to saw a project for people. I very much hoped that there would be people who are interested in the project, and at least a small skeleton of the development team will be formed. However, a miracle did not happen: people occasionally appeared (and I am very grateful to them) who helped pointwise if I couldn’t figure anything out, but there wasn’t anyone to be found. I pulled the project alone, and I continue to do it now. Accordingly, I did not receive any exchange of experience within the team, due to the lack thereof. (Remark: after publication on Habré, several people began to commit to the project repository. But now I don’t have time to clear these commits and continue the group development).

    As for the main work on the remote site, then five years later what happened was what was supposed to happen. In the modern world, the software development life cycle is about 5-6 years in the most optimistic case. Further, without the radical introduction of new technologies (which leads to a radical alteration of the entire project), the project will gradually disintegrate until it decays completely. The company understood this, and started moving the entire infrastructure to new tracks. Remotely involved in such a major alteration was not possible. It either required a personal presence, or it was necessary to quit. I just got a place to live, and to start a new move, and this time not only with my family, there was neither an opportunity nor a desire.

    Just work


    2011. Well, so I sailed. Now there are few options: either freelance, or a web studio, or a local manufacturing enterprise.

    1. Development freelance is a very specific thing. I periodically made several orders in freelance mode, and I know that this is an eerie brain takeaway. Usually, everything happens according to the same scenario: trying to save money, the customer finds some muddy performers who saw something around until the moment “something starts to work”. Performers receive some money, and disappear for the most phantasmagoric reasons. The customer is trying to the last to get the project completion from the executors, but no. As a result, all the deadlines were reached, there is no budget, and the customer begins to frantically search for someone on freelance exchanges or acquaintances who will figure out what has been done and “add a little”, because, in his opinion, the gigantic part of the work is already done, already "almost everything works." Or another eternal story: make me an analogue of VK in a month, I pay 8 thousand rubles. In general, you can talk about this for a long time, but in my experience, it is very difficult to find an adequate customer in Russia. The best you can count on is a bunch of small orders for little money. They are more adequate, but their number is usually limited. As a temporary income, such a job may be and has the right to life, but constantly doing such things is not serious.

    2. Web studio, in my opinion, is the road to nowhere. You can pump your skills in several CMS, deal with a couple of web frameworks. Make use of PHP by looking at Python and Node. Well, then what? Endless riveting of sites, constant search for customers, for one-time work. In our city there is exactly one web studio with an incoming web programmer. There are a couple of freelance entrepreneurs working for food. Someone will say that the Internet is big. Yes, it is, but see paragraph one about freelance. In addition, commercial sites are very boring.

    In general, there were no prospects for me in the development world. Yes, I really, really wanted to develop as a developer, but no one needs developers in my environment. In fact, they are needed in several large cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk. And if we look at more other settlements, then everything is already much sadder there. Here, for example, Perm, 2016 (it is scary to think what salaries were in 2011):



    These salaries are not a mockery, this is all in all seriousness. But in the above announcement, at least there is work. In search of offers, I went through hh.ru with a filter by region. The nearest work as a developer is after 250 km. With all the estimates, the following picture emerged, which the brain constantly shoved as unacceptable: if you want to be a developer - go to a big city or change the country. If you don’t want to leave, break yourself and change your sphere of interests. Unattractive alternative.

    I sat, thought, and decided to think wider. Well, the development did not work out. But we must respect ourselves, and not throw away our knowledge, but try to transform it for other things. It is desirable that these things move humanity forward, then at least some sense will appear in my activity. Do we have such directions in our country? What do we know how to do on a global level on an industrial scale, and make at least some competition on the world stage? It seems that there is. Aviation, space and nuclear energy. Now, none of these areas of activity can do without IT technology. If I go to such a sphere, I will make my contribution, whatever it may be. What is more real to me? Nuclear power. There are nuclear industry enterprises in the city. But cosmodromes and aircraft factories are not observed. So, there is no choice.

    Development and IT with the prefix "state"


    By acquaintance, I got a job in organizing an atomic industry. The number of ~ 120 people, with a gradual increase in the number of staff. All IT was reduced to a 1C server and a file server managed by a single administrator, periodically hard drinking alcohol. 80 computers, a peer-to-peer network without a domain with a turtle speed, and the constant loss of computers from the network. I got a commissioning engineer: in the opinion of the management, the second person who would be involved in IT was not needed by the company.

    For half a year I was engaged in the affairs of the commissioning department, and suddenly the order for changing the structure of the enterprise was lowered from above. The new structure included an information technology department. However, for some reason, in addition to IT, the department’s functions included work on the metrological support of production. Consultations with the authors of the structure showed that there is no error. The admin thumped, and, in the absence of other candidates, I prepared the documents of the new department, internally calling it a chimera. In the future, I had to make efforts so that the functions of environmental supervision were not assigned to the information technology department. So the IT department appeared at my enterprise, in this form it exists to this day.

    What is the relationship between metrology, environmental oversight, and information technology? The most direct - few people understand what the experts in these areas are doing. Therefore, any "unknown crap" dumped in one heap, regardless of common sense. And the madness continues: now effective managers are transferring the information technology department to an estimated contractual unit.

    Historically, the industry has a paradoxical situation: it seems that the industry is high-tech, there is even a group of companies engaged in supercomputing. There are a lot of institutes in the industry that deal with software systems, industrial controllers, process control systems, automation of production and non-production processes, and other high-tech things. Along with all this, there is a cohort of managers who perceive computer technology and networks as an annoying misunderstanding that I would like to dismiss. These managers lack the understanding that the yard is already a different technological structure, and the most important thing in the modern corporate world is the information flows, which require infrastructure, qualified users, developers and maintenance personnel.

    If the manager suddenly has an understanding of the need to build an IT infrastructure, then he also has dreams that all this will arise from nowhere out of nowhere. The other extreme is that any information system can be done by simply issuing an order and allocating a large amount from the budget. In addition to the fact that such managers are very vague about the multifaceted nature of the IT world, and their knowledge of IT professions is limited to the names "system administrator" and "tyzhprogrammer", it is very difficult to work with such people. It is impossible to explain that yesterday’s documentation technician cannot be made a database specialist, and you cannot teach a very good boy who the head of the department vouches for himself to teach how to work with networks. And all the more it’s impossible to explain that a good Linux / Win administrator should not be involved in procurement,

    The consumer attitude to IT, combined with a lack of understanding of the subject itself, creates strange distortions in the industry: quite simple and well-scalable things, such as workflow, are very expensive for enterprises. At the same time, targeted information systems are often funded on a residual basis.

    There is one more type of managers with whom it is really possible to work fruitfully. These are former Soviet-hardened engineers who advocate for their cause, do not shy away from innovation, and instead of delaying the process, they move the matter forward. At the same time, they have a vision of the available resources, and there is no illusion about the timing and effort spent on the project, if adequate analytics is provided.

    You can really work with such people. The trouble with such managers is that they can be accompanied by clockwork and peppy performers who are eager to earn money on a complex project, carefully hiding their incompetence. Having received the “go-ahead” and administrative support, such performers are able to drive the customer’s nose for a long time, having received indigestible porridge at the exit.

    Earlier, I promised that I would never again work with 1C. Life has made its own adjustments. It turned out that at the time of my receipt at the enterprise there were no unified and unified information systems in the main areas of activity. In the field of activity of my commissioning department, each typical project had its own distinctive, unique accounting software written by vagrants on his knee. Under the new project, it was also necessary to have a package of automation programs. You could continue to use the old software, to which many claims have accumulated, the source of which disappeared with the developers. And it was possible to do everything a little differently.

    I was lucky that a person working on the rules was working next to me. At the time of my arrival, he was just developing the regulations for a new project, and I was able to adjust the regulations so that it did not spell out the names of software products and there were no bindings to specific technologies. I have long and methodically convinced him that such things have no place in the regulation, that the regulation should be written regardless of specific software technologies. Only a clean protocol for the interaction of production services, nothing more. This worked, and a regulation was adopted that did not bind us to the old information systems, and in addition, based on this regulation, it was already possible to develop TK, and at the same time protect ourselves from the violent imagination of production workers.

    If the need for regulations according to old traditions was still understood, then no one saw the need for technical requirements for an information system (especially a technical solution) for a new project. It was amazing for me, but I knew that I wouldn’t hit finger on finger until I had a signed TK. Developers know that TK is a reliable shield from the subsequent requirements to “redo everything”. Therefore, I wrote and agreed on a statement of work, which, in fact, no one read except me, but which several times helped out in the future.

    I could not find any other responsible software platform except 1C. I dug in the direction of the co-op Omnase, free Debit Plus, thought about Qt, ran into Lazarus, meditated on ExtJs documentation. But none of this set fit. And where would I find specialists besides myself, able to accompany such an exotic? Then I had to restore 1C skills, deal with the intricacies of writing a configuration in thin client mode. As a result, for several months the 1C configuration was written, multi-project and multi-user. The server was raised on CentOs Linux + PostgreSQL. It was organized the connection of the relevant departments from all branches of the enterprise to the leased physical server on the trunk ring. Yes, all this had to be done by myself on pure enthusiasm, as they say, "in one snout."

    And then the fun began. When the system started working, data began to be entered, reports began to be generated, immediately there were people who decided to manage the process and put their hand, so to speak, in the development and operation of the system. It also turned out that a system that unites all projects in the direction that it automated is required, no less, but at the highest corporate level for analytics. In general, as a result of all the wanderings and approvals, the accounting system suddenly began to be called industry. Then the concept of “accounting” disappeared from the name and the concept of “management” appeared, which clearly exaggerated reality. I got the impression that such mysterious transformations arise due to some fluctuations of the Universe, they are not supported by some very specific person, but the system just works like that. In the course of all this activity, I had to travel on business trips instead of working out, coordinating my papers and writing papers for my “leaders”. The security service abruptly activated, and if before nobody cared about where and how the server was located, and there was an excuse “according to the technical requirements” to my requests for the placement rules, now more and more new security requirements were put forward consistently, so I and my new network specialist had to transfer servers to completely different sites four times.

    By the time of the pilot operation of the system, I was able to convince the management of the advisability of accepting another development specialist besides me. It was just ridiculous: if I were told that one person had developed an industry information system, I would not have believed it. This does not happen. The problem was that I turned out to be this person. When the second specialist appeared, I had to deal with the coordination of putting the system into pilot production, and then into commercial operation. Assessing now the number of pieces of paper and letters, I can say that their text was comparable with the amount of code of the IP itself. The main development was done in a few months. Coordination, before commercial operation, lasted almost three years. The amount that was earned for the enterprise was very funny: about one annual Timlid salary in Moscow.

    We very much hoped that we could earn the main sums on the annual agreements on support and development of the system. But no. Traditionally, the system was transferred to support a pocket IT organization. The guys did not immediately realize that they would have to deal with Linux virtuals and accompany the PostgreSQL database, rather than having fun mouse-driving a bunch of 1C + Windows + Microsoft SQL Server. The head began to call me and demand that everything be redone for Microsoft products, and it was at that moment when the sanctions had already begun and the country had embarked on import substitution. I covered myself with TK and informed him of points in industry regulations that allowed the use of Linux distributions for information systems. After which he asked him to think about the cost, terms of approval and terms of implementation of such a rework. Apparently, this has taken action and after a couple of weeks of silence we were offered to conclude a contract for technical support. On technical support of the third stage. In fact, this meant that we would be blamed on all the problems that would arise, so that we, as system developers, would solve them for a very nominal fee. We understood that such information systems do not work just like that, they need to be accompanied and developed. Moreover, the primary data in it is entered by our employees at all sites. Therefore, even under such conditions agreed. But the matter didn’t go further: the contract for the third stage was to be initiated by the customer’s side, but no one began to deal with it and the case was released on the brakes. as system developers, they were solved for a very nominal fee. We understood that such information systems do not work just like that, they need to be accompanied and developed. Moreover, the primary data in it is entered by our employees at all sites. Therefore, even under such conditions agreed. But the matter didn’t go further: the contract for the third stage was to be initiated by the customer’s side, but no one began to deal with it and the case was released on the brakes. as system developers, they were solved for a very nominal fee. We understood that such information systems do not work just like that, they need to be accompanied and developed. Moreover, the primary data in it is entered by our employees at all sites. Therefore, even under such conditions agreed. But the matter didn’t go further: the contract for the third stage was to be initiated by the customer’s side, but no one began to deal with it and the case was released on the brakes.

    And this was one of the few moments when my principle of “programs must be written well” let me down. Our information system worked in production without support for three years on full autopilot, and continues to work now. Tremble, 1C-hitter! Application servers of this platform are able to work for months without reboots, if, of course, they are correctly configured. The only serious technical malfunction is when, after a year, the free space on the storage section has ended due to too many document scans. No one at the system owners followed this, and when everything got up, we started calling ourselves to find at least someone who could increase the quota and raise the server.

    The biggest thing I regret in this whole story is that I involuntarily worked for the managers whom I described at the beginning of the chapter. As a result of my work, I only reinforced the misconceptions of such people that information systems appear by themselves from nowhere, they simply exist and they simply work. But this does not happen. Usually.

    Professional degradation


    Not every developer is able to work in the conditions in which I had to work: instead of development - coordination, enchanting paper security, drawing up contracts for the supply and maintenance, purchase of software and licenses ... How, I have not said? Effective managers methodically issue documents, according to which each specialist should deal with the whole spectrum of all possible production matters. This is called process involvement. The all-Russian classifier of professions is forgotten, the Russian register of professional standards is forgotten. According to managers, each employee of a manufacturing enterprise should (I write from memory):
    • To be the initiator and executor of the work on the preparation, execution and registration of draft documents in industry document management systems, coordinate documents in writing and electronically, determine the approving and mandatory approving of the draft document, determine the terms for approval of draft documents, keep records of cards of draft documents as an executor. Who knows what SAP is, he imagines this hell;

    • To act as the initiator in the preparation of the relevant section of the action plan for the conclusion of expenditure contracts for the supply of the required products of the annual procurement program during the planned calendar year, to have competencies in the formation of procurement documents expressed in the preparation of sets of documents:

      • justification of the maximum / minimum price;
      • local estimates, copies or other estimates or calculations;
      • terms of reference, annexes to TK;
      • draft agreement with the attached delivery schedule;
      • payment and delivery schedules;
      • Conclusion of the PTTC and RIO;
      • other documents and applications provided by industry standards.
    • In the formation of TK it is necessary:

      • set requirements for quality, technical, functional characteristics;
      • set requirements for consumer properties of products;
      • set product safety requirements;
      • set requirements for the procedure for acceptance of products and compliance with other indicators related to determining the conformity of products to needs, requirements of standards, specifications or other regulatory documents;
      • set requirements for supporting documents to be submitted as part of the application;
      • control the requirements for quantity, configuration, location, time, delivery schedule.

    • As the initiator of the procurement procedure, each specialist must request and process technical and commercial proposals of potential suppliers on the basis of which the initial prices of contracts are compiled. The initiator is responsible for the validity of determining the planned cost of procurement, for the validity of the determination and the correct calculation of the NMC, for observing the provisions of the methodology for calculating the NMC in determining the value of contracts concluded;

    • Carry out activities to reflect business transactions in the accounting of the enterprise and self-registration of procurement documents under expense agreements. Fulfill the scenarios of work under the expenditure agreement: create a purchase request for the needs of the production unit, enter the primary accounting and financial documents in the enterprise management system in the business units of the contract owners;

    • Execute the receipt of goods and other assets in the unit (acts), participate in commissions for acceptance and write-off of goods (acts), provide documentation for the commissioning / commissioning of equipment and software (orders and instructions);

    • And so on about compliance with security, industry policies, and more.


    (Is it hard to read this clerical? I think that not everyone was able to read these points at least until the middle).

    The bottom line is that services such as bookkeeping, clerical services, estimated contract department, administrative department and the procurement department must fulfill a supervisory function. All the main activities of the listed units should be left to the shoulders of all employees of the enterprise.

    IT departments in this sense were unlucky than anyone else: no matter how they want to close their eyes to such incomprehensible and such unnecessary IT, and modern life dictates that everything is tied to IT technology. Therefore, each enterprise annually concludes about two dozen IT agreements: various types of telephone communications (domestic, local, long-distance, international, mobile), Internet rental, other secure / service lines, a delivery service (you must carry equipment), information systems such as legal, ITS, the base of industry technical documentation, maintenance of printing equipment, refueling and repair of cartridges, certification on various types of security, reporting, cryptography, banking systems, procurement contracts for categorical and small purchases. In no other units there are so many concluded expense agreements. We are also “lucky” to engage in metrology ... And if you read all the requirements put forward for employees and think about how much paper and signatures you need to collect for each contract, in compliance with all procedures, and take into account that reporting documents on contracts appear every month, then it is clear that the IT department is compelled all year to do not IT, but planning, contracts, procurement, accounting, training, certification and other processing of Very Important Documents.

    It seems that before it was about IT and development? After re-reading this chapter, it is impossible to find requirements that would really apply to information technology and / or development. Perhaps the fact is that IT and development are two different things, and if there really were a development department or a department of information systems, would everything be better in them? No, of course not. The software systems development department, which appeared a year ago, has exactly one and a half people with a “programming” past. In the evenings this one and a half person writes IP for the customer, and during the day works in the “field”, taking measurements on equipment. He is also annoyed by all the bureaucracy described above, plus he is very much concerned with the rapid activity on labor safety. Us - less often, we are "in the field" only at the peak of work and with any changes in the network infrastructure.

    In general, I got the impression that all production activities are regulated by people who are oriented in any of their narrow areas, and impose their narrow guidelines on controlled enterprises and employees. We are blamed on requirements for everything: from procurement to energy policies, from electrical safety exams to requirements in the field of quality and ecology, from energy standards to information interaction with representatives of law enforcement agencies. I honestly try to understand and teach all this stuff. But every time I wait with horror for the next exams. Suddenly I will not answer the question about technological systems of normal operation and safety systems of RO, Or will I say something about technological systems for maintaining water chemistry? And if I incorrectly list the main powers of state authorities of the Russian Federation of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and local authorities in the field of relations related to environmental protection? Or, even worse, forget the requirements for compulsory insurance of liability for harm during the operation of a hazardous production facility? I look at the entire volume of documents that fit into job descriptions and job descriptions, and I don’t understand: Does anyone really see all this insanity in the number of demands? I do not know a single person who is able to remember such a volume of information. I will forget the requirements for mandatory liability insurance for harm during the operation of a hazardous production facility? I look at the entire volume of documents that fit into job descriptions and job descriptions, and I don’t understand: Does anyone really see all this insanity in the number of demands? I do not know a single person who is able to remember such a volume of information. I will forget the requirements for mandatory liability insurance for harm during the operation of a hazardous production facility? I look at the entire volume of documents that fit into job descriptions and job descriptions, and I don’t understand: Does anyone really see all this insanity in the number of demands? I do not know a single person who is able to remember such a volume of information.

    Thus, I slowly began to degrade. I stopped reading, stopped accepting new things, began to forget many things that I knew before. I was confined to the limits of my brain: if earlier I could easily digest any unnecessary rubbish that was poured on me by educational institutions, the people around me and employers, now I began to slip. There is so much information that has nothing to do with me that even at home I often can’t immediately understand what the household members are telling me. Accordingly, I can no longer read either fiction or, which is important, technical literature: thoughtful reading does not work. I cautiously drive a car: already got into an accident after an enchanting working day.

    In order not to get off the coils at all, I try to relieve psychological stress by instinctive activity. Playing music helps a little, I try to play simple games with the younger generation. Well, so as not to lose skills at all, I continue to rivet my old OpenSource projects in the evenings and nights. Yes, due to my own health. But this is all a departure from the problem, not a solution to the problem itself.

    And now, when I am forty, I wonder: how much more can I extend in this mode? Who will I turn into in five, ten years? I am bored of communicating with my colleagues, both young and old: I have nothing to talk about with them, I have a different area of ​​interest. And the fact that the people around me are called information technology, real IT has a very distant relationship. And, frankly, what do I care about the timing of the coordination of the main types of reporting documents, drawn up according to the results of readiness at the facilities of electric power production?

    Afterword


    I thought for a long time whether to publish this article. Somehow she turned out to be sad and hopeless, just a midlife crisis. But I hope that this mood has turned out more due to cognitive dissonance: in all the media they say that information technologies are developing, that IT specialists are more in demand than ever, how all this is important and complicated. In fact, 95% of my work time requires only the ability to read and write clerks.

    But now I realized that I will definitely do the publication.

    Today I am sitting and fixing the violations found in my department. New rules for production journals have been released. The magazines of my department, by oversight, are stitched with synthetic thread, but a coarse thread is needed. And now the magazine is flashed through three holes, and not through two. It is very important. And most importantly - it is clear to the inspection authorities.



    I feel like a medieval clerk: I have the same barn books, an awl, a stern thread, iron scissors, a pen for writing and a decree of the Boyar Duma. This is what an IT specialist should be able to work with. Not with these computers of yours. That’s all I wanted to tell.

    PS:

    Report at the request of workers: The
    year after dismissal from Rosatom, Part 1 The
    year after dismissal from Rosatom, Part 2

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