Hey, super interesting. Where did you work both in Russia and Germany? I also come from St. Petersburg but had a very different feeling about work there and in Germany. I might be a bit yonger though.
I agree, our experiences are shaped by the random opportunities we were offered and were able to take.
In Germany, I am working in a mid-size international e-commerce company. In Russia, I’ve worked in many areas, from payment system to big data to b2b travel engine to publishing house to job board. From one-person-companies (where I was the second employee and the right hand of the founder) to 10K employee corporations, as a team lead and as an independent contributor.
But I think my experience was less shaped by the types of companies or teams I worked with and more by the growth of the market and local tech industry.
Spot on! When I was studying economics in Bulgaria in the early 1990s, all our professors knew was how to teach the communist-endorsed planned economy, which by then was already becoming obsolete. Then, all of a sudden, they had to start teaching market economics.
So what did they do? They gave us textbooks in English, and instead of exams, we had to translate a few chapters from those books into Bulgarian. We were just kids who had learned conversational English through evening courses or private lessons, so you can imagine how accurate our translations were. In those early 1990s, the job market was so chaotic. I've said this many, many times before, but we were all just improvising.
Interestingly, my latest piece on Substack is also about my professional endeavours, and I touch on many of the same themes you write about, but from a different perspective.
Hey, super interesting. Where did you work both in Russia and Germany? I also come from St. Petersburg but had a very different feeling about work there and in Germany. I might be a bit yonger though.
I agree, our experiences are shaped by the random opportunities we were offered and were able to take.
In Germany, I am working in a mid-size international e-commerce company. In Russia, I’ve worked in many areas, from payment system to big data to b2b travel engine to publishing house to job board. From one-person-companies (where I was the second employee and the right hand of the founder) to 10K employee corporations, as a team lead and as an independent contributor.
But I think my experience was less shaped by the types of companies or teams I worked with and more by the growth of the market and local tech industry.
Spot on! When I was studying economics in Bulgaria in the early 1990s, all our professors knew was how to teach the communist-endorsed planned economy, which by then was already becoming obsolete. Then, all of a sudden, they had to start teaching market economics.
So what did they do? They gave us textbooks in English, and instead of exams, we had to translate a few chapters from those books into Bulgarian. We were just kids who had learned conversational English through evening courses or private lessons, so you can imagine how accurate our translations were. In those early 1990s, the job market was so chaotic. I've said this many, many times before, but we were all just improvising.
Interestingly, my latest piece on Substack is also about my professional endeavours, and I touch on many of the same themes you write about, but from a different perspective.
Curious to see what you think.