The first time an offer from Armenia came at the end of August or September 2018. At that time I was looking for a job, but the offer did not impress me. There was no information about the country on the website of the HR agency, but the company (Vineti) was interested even then. Later played a key role , where Armenia was described very well and in detail.
In January-February 2019, I had a clear desire to go either to some remote location outside the Russian market or to relocate. I wrote to all recruiters who recently offered me something. In fact, I almost didn't care where I went. Any place of interest. The Russian economy and the current course of power do not give me confidence in the future. It seems to me that business feels this too, and even many good companies operate on a βjust grab nowβ strategy, which is contrary to playing the long game and does not provide investments for the future. After all, it is when the focus is on the future that really interesting engineering problems appear, and not an engineering routine. This is the feeling I got from my experience. Maybe I just got unlucky. As a result, it was decided that we should try to dump, and the likelihood of getting something else would be higher. Now I see that my company has a focus on the future, and this is felt in the business behavior model.
Needless to say, everything went very quickly. It took about three weeks from the moment of my message to the recruiter to the offer. In parallel, they wrote to me from a Canadian company. And during the time that they were trying to accelerate, I already had an offer. And this is nice, because often the process takes an indecently long time, as if everyone has an airbag for several months and a desire to spend it.
Interested in what the company does. Vineti develops software that helps to quickly deliver personalized medicines for cancer and a number of other serious diseases. It is really important for me what kind of product I make, what I bring to the world. If you help people get treated for cancer, it's nice to know. With this thought, itβs more pleasant to go to work, itβs easier to experience some negative moments that will happen anyway.
Company selection process
The company has an interesting three-stage interview structure.
The first stage is a technical interview that takes place in the form of pair programming in a remote format. Together with one of the Vineti developers, you are working on a task. This is not just a method of conducting interviews that is divorced from the realities of the company; inside, pair programming takes up a significant part of the time. So already at the first stage, in a sense, you get acquainted with how you will feel inside.
The second stage It's kind of like pair design. There is a task, and you need to design a data model. You are given business requirements and you design a data model. Then they give you new business requirements and you need to evolve the model to support them. But if the first stage is the simulation of the engineer-engineer relationship, then the second is about the simulation of the engineer-customer relationship. And you go through all this with those with whom you will have to work in the future.
The third stage is cultural fit. There are seven people sitting in front of you, and you just communicate on various topics that may not directly relate to work in any way, in order to understand whether you get along as people. Cultural fit is not some rigidly asked questions. I later saw several more similar interviews from the company, they differed by 70 percent from mine.
All interviews were conducted in English. This is the main working language: all meetings, rallies and correspondence take place in English. Otherwise, Russian and Armenian are used approximately equally, depending on the mutual convenience of the interlocutors. In Yerevan itself, 95% of people speak at least one language - Russian or English.
Move
I gave myself a week before moving, and by and large to collect my thoughts. I also moved a week before the start of work. This week was to realize where I ended up, where to buy and so on. Well, close all the bureaucratic moments.
Accomodation
With the search for housing, the HR team helped me a lot. While you are looking, the company provides accommodation for a month, which is enough to find an apartment to your liking.
In terms of apartments, there is a wide choice. Against the background of programmers' salaries, it may be even easier to find something interesting here than in Moscow. I had a plan - to pay the same amount, but to live in much better conditions. It is rare to find an apartment here that will cost more than $600 a month, if we consider no more than three-room apartments in the downtown area. There are more interesting layouts here. For example, in Moscow I have never seen two-story apartments in the price tag that I can afford.
It is easy to find something in the city center, within walking distance from work. In Moscow, finding an apartment near work is quite expensive. Here is what you can afford. Especially for a programmer's salary, which may be slightly lower than in Moscow, but because of the general cheapness, you will still have more.
Documents
Everything is relatively fast and simple.
- It is necessary to issue a social card, for this you need only a passport and one day.
- It took about a week to issue a bank card (three working days + fell on the weekend). Keep in mind that banks close quite early. This applies to any move, that you need to get used to new work schedules. In Moscow, Iβm used to the fact that after your work, almost all authorities are still working, but here itβs not like that.
- SIM card - 15 minutes
- At work, they signed a contract before the first working day. There were no peculiarities with this, only a social card was needed to conclude an agreement.
Setup in the company
The process varies by company, not country. Vineti formalizes the onboarding process. You come, and expectation sync is immediately given: what needs to be mastered in the first month, what goals to achieve in the first three. If you do not intuitively understand what to do, then you can always look at these goals and consciously approach the work. Somewhere after a month and a half, I completely forgot about this expectation sync, I just did what I felt I should, and nevertheless acted in accordance with it. Expectation sync does not run counter to what you will do in the company, it is quite adequate. Even if you don't know about it, you can do 80% automatically.
In terms of the technical setup, everything is also clearly built. There are instructions on how to set up your machine so that all the necessary services work. In principle, I have not encountered this in my past jobs. Often in companies, onboarding consisted in the fact that the immediate supervisor, a teammate, or how it will turn out, says what and how. The process has never been well formalized, but here it is really well done. This is one of those moments where I say business is trustworthy.
Household little things
- I have never used local public transport before. Here a taxi costs like a minibus in Moscow.
- Sometimes it is very easy to create the illusion that you speak Armenian. Sometimes I go by taxi and the driver doesn't even know that I don't understand. You sit down, say barev dzes [Hello], then he says some Armenian words and the name of your street, you say ayo [Yes]. At the end you say merci [thank you] and that's it.
- Armenians are often not very punctual, since this does not seep into work. It is also a self-balancing system. From the fact that many are late here, everything is still going well. If you relax, everything will be ok. But still, when planning your time, you should make allowances for this local feature.
Source: habr.com