Somehow, over the years, although I’ve mostly been an IT manager, I’ve become something of a go-to person among HR and recruiting professionals. Probably because every manager needs to know how to hire the right specialists for their team.
For a few years now, I’ve been actively recommending the book “To Hire or Not to Hire?“ by Konstantin Borisov. It’s concise and very clear, covering most hiring-related topics in our field.
That said, there are a number of points that often don’t get the attention they deserve—and I’ve promised more than once in various discussions to eventually share my own approach. It seems that time has come.
At one point, I was in charge of the audio design service department at Wargaming and even got to participate in a field recording of real tanks in Jordan. Officially, I was in charge of the entire trip, but in reality, I was mostly getting in everyone’s way 😉
A bit later, we decided to restructure the team, but I still maintained (and continue to maintain) good relationships with many of the guys. I remember when a new guy, Andrey, joined the Minsk team—now widely known as Andrius Klimka, the creator of many iconic tracks from the game World of Tanks as well as its promo videos.
Andrey truly crafted some legendary tracks, and a couple of them have found a permanent place in my playlist. Those are the ones I want to share today.
Since my school years, I’ve wanted to start some kind of business. I tried myself in various roles while simultaneously working as an ordinary developer. Although I spent more than half of my 30 years in IT in GameDev, over these years, I also had the opportunity to work in other interesting fields: educational apps, enterprise software, the semiconductor industry, and a bit in banking and telecommunications.
At some point, I realized that not everything I did turned out great.
Initially, I was upset, realizing that I wasn’t as strong in creativity or in coming up with crazy ideas and inspiring people with them. This is precisely what a leader of the inspirational type excels at (Adizes, in his framework, refers to such people as entrepreneurs).
But then I reflected on what I had done well over these years and what truly resonated with me. And I realized that my strength lay elsewhere. So, I began to develop in that direction. Over time, the list became clearer: I am good at production, evaluating and building effective teams, working with people, negotiations, operations, and administrative tasks. In other words, I am a very good “right-hand man” to a CEO, who is usually the one generating ideas and acting as the driving force. I, on the other hand, am more inclined toward the pragmatic work of “making it all happen.” This role in many companies is often gathered under the COO title or split between the CPO and COO.
And when I understood this, my career and self-esteem took off. Yes, I’m not much of an idea generator. But without people like me, even the best ideas might never be realized.
It’s impossible to be the best at everything; you need to find your strengths, the ones that interest and energize you, and develop them. The key is not to get complacent, not to stop at what you’ve achieved, and to keep learning, always asking yourself, “Am I doing everything right, and could it be done better?” Of course, here you need to guard against two well-known pitfalls. The first is perfectionism (because things can always be improved, but sometimes you need to stop and release a good product rather than chase an unattainable ideal). The second is self-doubt (when you start thinking that you haven’t done enough and that someone else could have done it better. Maybe so, but that person isn’t here, and you’re the one leading the project).
So don’t be discouraged if something doesn’t work out. Find what drives you, what you’re valued for. It’s better to become strong in that than to try to excel at everything. Even Gaius Julius Caesar, who according to legend could multitask like no other, didn’t end up too well. 😉
I frequently hire employees, so I decided to share my experience on what I pay attention to. LinkedIn is the de facto leading global resource where people publish their CVs. Therefore, I will review resume formatting based on this resource.
There are countless guides and courses on how to properly format your LinkedIn page to get noticed and hired. I can’t say that there is only one right way. Instead, I’ll describe how I look at the profiles of people who catch my interest or potential candidates.
Let me emphasize that this is my personal opinion, based on three pillars:
Personal experience in hiring
Common sense
Advice from fellow recruiters, especially Tatsiana Malinouskaya, arguably the best recruiter I’ve ever worked with
So, let’s go step by step. Any profile consists of several sections, so let’s briefly discuss each.
On the recommendation of a good acquaintance, Anton Vert, I read Timur Aslanov’s book I Know What to Tell Them. In the blurb, the author promises to explain how to deal with negative comments about you, your company, and your products online. To do this, he introduces the concepts of the “Light Knight” and the “Dark Knight.” The latter is ready to act tough, respond rudely, and wipe out comments he doesn’t like. However, the greatest benefit comes from the “Light Knight,” who constantly monitors his emotional intelligence and knows how to respond to the substance rather than the tone.
My direct work has never involved responding to user comments; more often I’ve been on the other side of the barricades — and I’ll admit that at times I can be overly emotional in voicing my criticisms. Still, I’ve always tried not to stoop to personal attacks or mudslinging just for the sake of it.
At the same time, I’m active on social media, I have my own blog, and sometimes my position or certain statements can provoke negativity — both from subscribers and from people who just happened to drop by. So I was curious what exactly Timur Aslanov might advise, especially after such a strong recommendation from someone I know.
Recently, the streaming service Okko released a documentary series titled The History of Russian Computer Games, about how the video game industry developed across the post-Soviet space—starting with the USSR era.
Anton Vert recommended it to me, immediately pointing out a few downsides. But it’s one thing to listen to smart people, and another to watch it yourself and then share your own opinion that nobody asked for.
In 30–40 minute episodes, the series talks about different milestones in the industry’s formation—first in the USSR, and then across the entire territory of this former Soviet empire. At least, that’s how the series is sometimes positioned (I’ll come back to this in more detail later).
Among some of my colleagues, it became fashionable to poke fun at Patrick Lencioni, since at one point he was practically turned into a cult figure. Nevertheless, I “got hooked” on his books from the very first one I read — a book I’ve now gone through almost three times. And all the others consistently earn the highest praise from me as well. For me, he’s probably business author number one — the writer whose books every manager should have on their desk.
In his book The Truth About Employee Engagement: A Fable About Addressing the Three Root Causes of Job Misery, written in Lencioni’s signature genre of the business fable, Patrick touches on the topic of job satisfaction.
All of us work in one way or another. And those who don’t “go” to work are most likely doing work at home: taking care of children, feeding the family, keeping things in order. That’s work too.
And sometimes people don’t even realize how sick and tired they’ve grown of their daily routine, how reluctant they’ve become to deal with it. A lack of motivation leads to falling engagement, productivity, and proactivity. And it’s unlikely that any leader wants their team — and their product — to be, at best, mediocre, if not outright sliding into a hole.
No matter how Belarusian officials try to put a brave face on it, the exodus of IT from the country is a fact. And for many years the IT sector was the nation’s calling card and a fairly substantial share of GDP.
Just the other day I had to discuss yet again what will happen to this industry now, and when it might recover. Unfortunately, my forecast is bleak: Belarus will never again be an IT country. Or at least not for decades. I could be wrong—I’m no great economist—but I’ll try here to lay out the considerations on which I base this view.
But first—a bit of history.
Belarus didn’t become strong in IT out of thin air. In Soviet times, Minsk was an assembly shop, including for computing hardware. It was in Belarus that the large “Minsk” computers were made, and later the ES personal computers, which people chased after even when I was a teenager, because they were IBM-compatible machines you could buy for home use and, for better or worse, enjoy the benefits of a personal computer.
As an IT professional with more than 30 years of experience, I constantly use a huge number of different products and services—both at work and in everyday life. In recent years we can hardly imagine our lives without all these services.
Yet in the chase for optimization and other chimeras, many have begun to forget that a product is made first and foremost for its users. And the biggest mistakes lately, in my view, are atrocious user support—often hiding behind a façade of supposedly excellent customer care.
Everyone is trying to cut costs, and so they either replace help with AI bots or hand support over to cheap, incompetent specialists. In the worst case they remove any support at all (or hide it so well you’ll spend a couple of hours just trying to find it).
What’s the result? The product itself may be wonderful. But as soon as a loyal user runs into a problem, they look for help. They’re not interested in tons of articles on the subject; they want their specific problem solved. Preferably here and now.
I am sometimes asked which books I would recommend reading. For the blog, this is generally not difficult — it’s enough to open all posts with the tag “I-recommend.” But since it’s been almost five years now since I revived my blog and began writing about the books I’ve read, I decided to put together a selection of non-fiction books I’ve read during this time that fall into the category of “you must read them.”
I have already written detailed reviews of all these books, so this time I’ve selected only the very best, grouped them by topic. For each book I give only brief recommendations on why they are worth reading, but you can always open the link to the full review. I hope this will be useful to someone. So, let’s begin.
