Photo: Lisa Shvets/Facebook
Liza Shvets began her career at a cable factory, worked as a salesperson in a small shop in Orel, and a few years later got into Microsoft. Now she is working on the Dodo Pizza IT brand. She faces an ambitious task - to prove that Dodo Pizza is not only about food, but about development and technology. Next week, Lisa is 30, and we decided together with her to sum up a little of her career path and tell you this story.
“You need to experiment as much as possible at the beginning of your career”
I come from Orel, it is a small city with a population of around 300-400 thousand. I studied at a local institute to be a marketer, but I was not going to be one. It was 2007, and then the crisis just struck. I wanted to go to crisis management, but all the budget places were taken, and marketing turned out to be the closest available (my mother advised). At the time, I didn’t really understand what I wanted and who I wanted to be.
At school, I took career guidance courses in the specialty "secretary-referent", I learned to type quickly with five fingers, although I still type with one, because it is convenient. People are very surprised.
There was a misunderstanding on the part of relatives. They said - you need to go either as a lawyer or an economist.
I don't list my first job anywhere because it's a super irrelevant and super weird story. I was in my second or third year and decided to go to work at a cable factory. I thought - I'm a marketer, now I'll come and help you! I began to work in parallel with my studies. I was driving to work at the other end of the city by 7 in the morning, there they also took money for every 10 minutes of being late. My first salary was about 2000 rubles. I worked for several months and realized that the economy does not converge: more money is spent on the road than I receive. Plus, they didn't believe in marketing, but they believed in sales, and they tried to make me a sales manager. I remember such an epic: I come to my boss and say that, they say, I can’t work anymore, sorry. And she answers me: fine, but you first call 100 companies and find out why they do not want to work with us. I took my mug, turned around and left.
And after that I worked as a sales assistant in the Temptation women's clothing store. It gave an awesome experience of communicating with people. And I developed a good principle: when you work in a small town, you simply have to help people, otherwise the clients will not return, and there are few of them.
After five years of study, I moved to Moscow, and then, by chance, I got into the ITMozg startup, which at that time was a competitor to HeadHunter - it helped companies find developers and vice versa. I was then 22 years old. At the same time, I received a second education in a master's program, wrote scientific articles on marketing using the example of my work in a startup.
In Russia, the story with the developers was only in its infancy. Startup founder Artem Kumpel lived in America for some time, understood the trend from HR to IT and came home with this idea. Back then, HeadHunter didn't have any sharpening for IT, and our know-how was in the narrow specialization of the resource for the IT audience. For example, at that time it was impossible to choose a programming language on work resources, and we were the first to come up with this.
So I began to dive into the IT market, although back in Orel I had friends who rewrote their programs on Linux, read Habr. We entered the market through participation in conferences, made our own blog, at some point on Habré. We could be a cool advertising agency.
This is a key place that gave me many, many things. And I drown in front of students for the fact that you need to experiment as much as possible at the beginning of your career, because when you study, you don’t understand what you want, and understanding comes only in the process of work. By the way, a friend from the States recently told me that a trend in education is developing there - to teach children to learn. Knowledge - they will come, the main thing is that there is a goal.
In a startup, I managed to try myself in completely different roles, I was given different tasks. After graduation, I had a marketing base, but no practice. And there, for six months, an understanding of what you like and what you don’t have has been sharpened. And I go through life with the theory of chocolate candy. People are divided into two types: there are those who know how to make these sweets, and there are those who know how to wrap them awesomely! Here I can make a wrapper, and this is very much matched with marketing.
"Corporations give the experience of structured thinking"
After the startup, I changed several places, worked in a cool digital agency, tried myself in co-working. In general, when I left the startup, I was sure that I was a PR specialist, but it turned out that in the real world I am a marketer. I wanted big plans. I decided that I needed to find a startup again. There was such an e-commerce project that made tools for marketers. There I grew to a high position, determined the development strategy, set tasks for developers.
At that time, we were friends with Microsoft in terms of media partnership. And the girl from there offered to go to the SMM manager. I went to the interview, talked, then there was silence. My English was then at the level of “how are you?”. There were also such thoughts - to leave the place where you are the lord, to the position of an SMM manager, a super-minimal position in a corporation. Tough choice.
I was lucky to be in a division that was a mini-startup within Microsoft. It was called DX. This is the division that is responsible for all new strategic technologies that enter the market. They came to us, and our task was to figure out what it was. Microsoft evangelists worked in this department, techies who talked about everything. Two or three years ago, we sat and thought about how to get to the developers. Then came the idea of communities and influencers. Now it is only gaining momentum, and we were at the origins.
We made a personal development plan. There was a goal to learn English in order to communicate with colleagues, plus it was necessary to translate articles and read company news. And you begin to sink in and absorb, without really delving into the subtleties of grammar. And over time, you understand - it seems that I can talk with a colleague from Poland.
My dream came true there on Habr. This has been a dream since ITMozg. It was very scary, but the first post flew, it was awesome.
Photo: Lisa Shvets/Facebook
I would recommend everyone to work in a corporation. This gives the experience of structured thinking, including global thinking. The processes that are built there are a very valuable thing, it gives 30% of success.
It is quite possible to get into Microsoft if you are a person who, first of all, corresponds to the values of the company, and, of course, a good specialist. It is not difficult, but rather long. You don't have to pretend to be in the interview.
It seems to me that the key values at Microsoft, accepting which you will feel comfortable there, is the desire to develop and take responsibility. Even a small project is your merit. We all pursue our own selfish goals at work. I still have a drive from what I did there part of the work of researching marketing tools. And at Microsoft, you need to do not just something cool, but very cool, the requirements are initially overstated.
Plus, you need to correctly perceive feedback, criticism, use it for your growth.
“I went and swore at everyone who tried to write at least a word about pizza”
I understood that in the future I would have to repeat the story of the development of communities, but to other countries. And I thought that I need to go to a startup again.
Dodo was a Microsoft partner at the time, using the company's cloud. I advised Dodo on the topic of working with the developer community. And they invited me - come to us. Before that, I went to their party and was supercharged by the atmosphere in the office.
I had to go through an interview with the CEO. I didn't think it would work out before I accepted the new job offer. But in the end, everything worked out. Plus, the task was very charged - to tell about the pizzeria as an IT company. I remember our first article on Habré. And comments on it like - in the sense, what kind of developers, you will learn how to deliver pizza!
Rumors spread from the industry: everything is bad with a person, she left the corporation for some kind of pizzeria.
Photo: Lisa Shvets/Facebook
To be honest, for the past year, I've been going around and cursing at everyone who tried to write a word about pizza. The temptation to write about it is very great, but no. Even realizing that this is a company really about pizza, I jump on the scales on which we are an IT company.
I soberly assess the situation. I have my strengths, and development has its own. I'm not trying to tell them that I'm the same, but I say that they are mega cool guys, because I really think that these are the people who make the future. I don’t have a task to dig deep into the code, but my task is to understand high-level trends and help them roll out stories. When the technical stuff starts, I try to ask the right questions and help put the information in a nice wrapper (talking about candy theory). No need to try to be a developer, you need to cooperate and pay attention to motivation, do not skimp on good words. In the task flow, it is important that there is a person who will say that you did something cool. And I try not to talk about what I'm not sure about, I use fact-checking. It happens that you are in such a position in front of the developer that you cannot admit to ignorance, but then you run and conscientiously google the information.
For a whole year I hung in my projects , and I thought it was my superfail. We've run a billion different experiments to get our go-to-market reach. As a result, we decided that the site should be made really cool, for six months we were looking for ideas, interviewed developers, attracted a lead designer and, in general, the whole team. And they launched.
The most important thing I learned is the principle of “no assholes”, which helps a lot in life. If you approach everyone with kindness, then people open up. A long time ago, Werber’s phrase stuck in my head: “Humor is like a sword, and love is like a shield.” And it really works.
I realized that you can’t just focus on strategy, but you need to use intuition as well. And the team is very important.
During this year we entered the developer market, 80% of our target audience of developers know about us.
We didn't have a goal of recruiting exactly 250 developers, but rather the goal was to change the mindset. It's one thing when it comes to 30 developers, and you need to recruit 5 more, and another thing when you need to select 2 specialists in 250 years. We hired 80 people, the number of developers has doubled, and the number of the entire company has increased by a third in a year. These are hellish numbers.
We do not take everyone, the component relating to the values of the company is important to us. I am a marketer, not an HR, if a person likes what we do, then he will come. Our values are openness, honesty. In general, your values at work should be well matched with personal relationships - trust, honesty, faith in people.
"A good person loves every moment of life"
If we talk about what does not fit into the piggy bank of the workspace, then I have dogs, and I sometimes try to train them. At 15, I thought I couldn't sing. Now I go to singing, because we create the challenges ourselves. For me, singing is relaxation, plus the voice began to erupt. I love to travel. If they say - let's go to Cape Town tomorrow, I will answer - ok, I need to plan tasks, and I also need the Internet. I love taking pictures, as it changes the picture of vision. Played online games: WOW, Dota. I like to alternate books - first I read science pop, and then art.
I rely heavily on my grandfather. There was not a single person who could say something bad about him. Recently I talked with my mother, she asked: why did you grow up like that? So I taught you to eat an egg with a knife and fork! I answered: because I grew up with my grandfather, we could sit at the table and eat with our hands, and this is normal, people do that. For me, a good person is one who understands himself, accepts and is honest with others, can criticize with good intentions, loves every moment of life and broadcasts it to others.
Source: habr.com