Leading in an Unfamiliar Field — Leonid Chernyy

Leonid Chernyy describes moving from system administration into games, search, and data. At Cybiko he began as a part-time tester, later managed an SDK testing group, and learned from developers. At Nival he helped establish testing for Silent Storm and company-wide quality processes. Similar work with expectations, acceptance criteria, and feedback later supported coordination between developers and publishers.

Launching Allods Online in Japan and South Korea required cultural adaptation and attention to local product constraints. At Yandex, Leonid had to learn about search and user intent. His account of comparing search results in a Turkish café illustrates the gap between winning a test and giving people a reason to leave a familiar service. Work on Rambler Top 100 subsequently connected his product experience with data and advertising infrastructure.

At MegaFon, Leonid joined an established data warehouse and machine-learning team. His initial priorities were personal relationships, learning, and making disagreement with the manager a normal part of work. Debate should improve the decision, while accountability remains with the manager. The conversation also examines departmental culture and protecting teams: Alexander notes that people need preparation for working with the organization beyond that protected environment.

Leonid argues that CDO roles often combine substantial responsibility with insufficient authority, while the title can describe quite different functions. After MegaFon, oneFactor brought more process work, and Uzum offered the chance to help build a business at an early stage. He currently mainly consults and is considering a return to consumer products at the intersection with data. His closing advice is to work with people, maintain professional connections, make decisions, and read.