Month: May 2022

Book: Konstantin Borisov “How a Good Developer Can Avoid Becoming a Bad Manager”

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One of the best books I read last year was a relatively short but incredibly useful guide by Konstantin Borisov on conducting interviews—“To Hire or Not to Hire? Or How to Interview a Developer.” I now recommend it to everyone, whether they are conducting interviews themselves or preparing to be interviewed. It gives you a much clearer understanding of what a potential employer is like and whether they are worth considering.

But Konstantin Borisov also wrote another book—“How a Good Developer Can Avoid Becoming a Bad Manager.” The topic may not seem obvious at first, but it’s actually incredibly relevant. In the IT industry, it’s well known that top specialists often get promoted simply because they excel at their tasks. One day, you’re a great developer, the next, you’re mentoring a couple of interns. Before you know it, you’re made a lead developer, then given a team to manage, and suddenly—you’re a manager.

I went through a similar path myself, though for a long time, I tried to balance both roles. I loved mentoring specialists and building teams, but at the same time, I still wanted to be a hands-on developer. Eventually, I realized that trying to do both was making me worse at each, and I finally made the decision to fully transition into management.

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Song: Beautiful Far Away… Far Away, But Not There

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Today, I learned something completely unexpected about a childhood song that everyone knows—”Prekrasnoye Dalyoko” (“Beautiful Far Away”). Yes, the one from the movie Guest from the Future. And the revelation shocked me so much that I decided to dig deeper, do a little investigation, and prove that we’ve all been deceived. Turns out, we have been—but not entirely. So, here’s what I found.

I don’t know about you, but as a kid, I absolutely loved Guest from the Future. And like most Soviet boys, I had a bit of a crush on Natasha Guseva, who played the main character, Alisa Selezneva. I also read Kir Bulychev’s novella One Hundred Years Ahead, which the movie was based on—but it was completely different. Not the point right now, though.

After the movie, the song that played at the very end of the last episode became a massive hit. “Prekrasnoye Dalyoko” exploded in popularity—it was performed by various state and school choirs, released on vinyl records with children’s songs, and practically overshadowed every other song on the charts at the time. Probably the only real competition came from “Krylatye Kacheli” (“Winged Swings”) from The Adventures of the Elektronic.

“But what’s the big deal?” you ask. And here’s where things get interesting—something often called the Mandela Effect. That is, when many people collectively remember something that never actually happened. With this song, everyone remembers and sings the lyrics as: “I hear a voice from the beautiful far away, it calls me to wondrous lands…” (This research is about the Russian lyrics, but I am providing them in a literal English translation.) Sometimes the lands are far away, sometimes beautiful, sometimes something else. But in every breakdown of this phenomenon, in every reference to the Mandela Effect, they say that these lyrics never existed. Because in the actual song, the words are: “It calls me not to paradise lands.”

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Song: Kalush Orchestra “Stefania”

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Somehow, almost immediately after our wedding, my wife and I started a tradition—watching Eurovision every year. I wouldn’t say we’re huge fans of European pop music, but every now and then, some genuinely interesting bands pop up, and some of them even end up in my playlist. More often than not, they’re not even the winners. And honestly, we’ve always enjoyed the voting part the most. For example, I’ve been convinced for a long time that all professional juries should be kicked out. From those selecting the songs for the contest to those sitting there with serious faces, pretending to judge them. Ever since they started showing the jury votes separately from the public vote, it became crystal clear how far removed these so-called professionals are from the actual audience.

This year, Ukraine was the clear favorite. Of course, most commentators were yelling that it was all because of the war, that nobody actually cared about the song, and that Ukraine was going to win purely for political reasons.

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