CTO Day by Yandex

I was this weekend at a very interesting event from Yandex in Dubai, where a large number of technical leaders gathered. (Not just Russian companies) discuss interesting issues. Honestly, I have long been tired of attending conferences as a listener, this year reduced my trips as a speaker, but such events as organized by Yandex I like. There's a bunch of smart people in one place who you can talk to for hours on different topics and learn something new in the discussion, which is very important to me. It seems that since childhood, the main quality I had was curiosity and desire to learn how and what is arranged around me. (Rather conceptually, than practically.). Over the years, experience increased and many things became obvious and it became difficult to find new food to satisfy the information hunger: articles were replaced by books, books were replaced by whitepapers, books from related topics were added. But the top is personal meetings with gifted people, and the guys from Yandex managed to assemble a very dense team:) It’s cool that even on the round trip, I sat with the smartest neighbors and didn’t even really reach for the book.)

Speaking of the program, it was also very interesting: On the first night we had a welcome dinner with IT stand-up, which was excellent. The next day we started with Lesha Gusakov’s talk about the path of ML from RnD to the necessary technology for modern companies. The report was not only entertaining but also humorous, as if it continued the stand-up tradition. Vyacheslav Dubynin’s lecture on the brain and natural and artificial neural networks continued – I had already seen his lectures on the brain live several times, read books and watched recordings of lectures on Youtube, so I knew in advance that it would be excellent. (By the way, about one of the lectures I already told) Then there was a discussion about cybersecurity, from which it followed that it was necessary to make software safely, and not to do it safely. And after the coffee break, our monolithic team had to choose which discussion to participate in: about complex negotiations, the use of ML or the management of the technological stack in the company. I chose the topic of governance and it was interesting. The evening of the second day was a dinner, which gradually grew into a spontaneous fuckup nights, when a small room gathered. 10+ a person and began to discuss stories about fakapas that were in our past (And this evening ended only in 4 morning) The last day was devoted to excursions, but I flew in the middle of the day, so before departure, my friends and I drove to a private beach, plunged into the sea, and then went to the airport and returned to cold Moscow.

In general, the weekend was a success - an increased concentration of smart people stimulates the brain and allows you to think about your thoughts about others:) The organizers of the event are great, thank you for the invitation.

#Software #Management #Leadership #Vacancy #Architecture