Three lives in IT and not only

Anton Dyaykin, Director of Parallels Academic Programs, shared his opinion on how the increase in the retirement age is related to additional education and what exactly should be learned in the next few years. Next is a first-person story.



By the will of fate, I live the third, and maybe the fourth, full-fledged professional life. The first is military service, which culminated in enlistment as reserve officers and a military pension in the prime of life. Next came the time for self-determination, career guidance and building a career from scratch in new areas for me. He taught at school, tried himself in business, but for a long time remained at the Higher School of Economics to create and develop a School of Oriental Studies. I am the first basic education translator and interpreter of Japanese and English. Having plunged into this rather specific topic, I went from a senior lecturer to deputy dean of the faculty of world economy and world politics. Having achieved certain goals, I realized that it was time to move on. After a period of searching for areas of application of his strengths and abilities, he ended up in Parallels. In fact, in my area of ​​responsibility here is the same thing that I did at the university, albeit with its own specifics: to find, select the most gifted students, organize the process of training talented children from leading technical universities, participate in the training of highly qualified specialists - future engineers for their smooth and efficient integration into the highly professional international team of our global company. And not only in Russia, but also in the EU.

About retirement reform and aging

They always said that "it is better to be rich and healthy than the poor and sick." To this we can add one more word - “young”. Indeed, when you are young and hot, you can simultaneously warm the North Pole with your energy. Doors are open, horizons extend 360 degrees. But is it only in youth itself? In fact, there are no stereotypes and “blinkers” that block the flow of new information. When you are young and don’t know how to do the right thing, you just try stuffing bumps, but gaining invaluable experience. With age, many lose this enthusiasm, which leads forward and upward.



What has changed in the 21st century? Everything is true now, but the average life expectancy has become different. Despite all the shocks, even in Russia we began to live longer. Have you read “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky? So there, the innocent murdered old woman-interest-bearing woman, the heroine of the novel, was about 60.







Gradually, the aging model itself began to change. We are increasingly able to maintain physical health and, most importantly, the "mobility" of the mind. If earlier, after an active and eventful professional period of life, a short phase of extinction was supposed at a fairly young age from the modern point of view, now the time for retirement has noticeably gone up. The authorities have already responded to this by initiating a pension reform, which provides for a later retirement. Given the general acceleration of the pace of life, perforce it is necessary to adapt to changes, learn, receive and quickly consolidate new skills. Otherwise, the quality of life may decline unpredictably at the most unexpected moment. This is true for any area and population. Even older people have to learn to order a taxi through a mobile application or an appointment with a doctor via the Internet on the website of the district clinic.



What is more significant - it is the period of labor activity that becomes longer. Plus, the requirements for knowledge and skills of a person are rapidly changing. It is no longer possible once having mastered the craft, to remain with it invariably to the grave. In any case, if we are talking about representatives of intellectual labor. Every year, dozens, hundreds of new projects appear that create new jobs and change people's lives. In addition, they require new skills from those who implement them. The basis of all changes is the desire for comfort and satisfaction of needs, which becomes a prerequisite for success. Today, the one who is educated, flexible, professional, and capable of identifying these needs and quickly responding to them clearly wins. Sitting on the stove, chewing kalachi, like Ilya Muromets “up to thirty-three years old,” and then unexpectedly fail to succeed.

How I changed and what I learned

On the one hand, my whole professional career is connected with personal organization and ability to work with people. The ability to build relationships at all levels and in any conditions is the basis of the foundations, the most important superstructure over professional skills. It has always been obvious. However, the requirements that have been and are being presented to me are constantly changing. If the army’s charter, unquestioning obedience and feeling part of a large team is the foundation, then in business only concrete results are expected from you personally at a certain time. Even working as a team you bear solely personal responsibility for everything you do.







For example, in the service, subordination and an order of a senior in rank determine the order of actions, in ordinary life you focus only on human relationships and the motivation of colleagues and subordinate or interacting employees. It is necessary to determine the strengths and means to achieve your goals, to build optimal algorithms. It is important to understand how you can interest and encourage the person you need to do the often difficult work, who will not run to carry out any orders as in the army, but can turn mountains if there is motivation, respect for the authority of the leader, and then build the right business relationship that will lead to the right the result.



When I came to Parallels, I had to significantly upgrade my communicator skills, which were superimposed on detailed knowledge of the specifics of the organization of the university educational process and internal university communications. At times, colleagues are amazed at what secret methods manage to achieve their plans.







In fact, there are no secrets - people decide everything, which means that you need to be able to build communication with them, be purposeful, persistent, active, sometimes even prompt in fulfilling promises, decent with partners, and keep your word. It always starts with finding the right professional person for a particular project and building a business relationship with him. Such an algorithm works if you yourself are professional, organized, understand the ways to achieve goals. My partners are extraordinary people, with a great education, high intelligence. They instantly see who they are dealing with, quickly decide whether to start a joint project. Fortunately, their decisions are usually positive for me.



Now about what I had to learn. Considering that before joining Parallels, I was poorly immersed in the specifics of the work of programmers, I had to master the initial conceptual level of the profession, significantly expand my horizons in terms of the main programming languages, study professional slang, try to catch the key trends in IT development and related fields. In addition, since I work mainly with young people, I need to understand their value level. Work at the university with students, social networks, thematic conferences and communities have given knowledge and allowed to develop the necessary skills.



By the way, do not think that life gives you useless lessons. Any experience is a value.

For example, as a child, I graduated from art school. Since then, my work has not been exhibited at vernissages and exhibitions. Nevertheless, when in Parallels we had to think about the design of thematic educational space at MSTU. Bauman, my artistic skills came in handy. As a result, on the walls of our educational laboratory materialized images of outstanding scientists and technicians, painted by my hands. Now, not only students, but also guests of the university come to this room with excursions, work on the magnificent new Makovsky technique and look at the design of its premises.

What to learn?

Today you can read millions of articles about the inevitability of the rapid development of artificial intelligence and, as a result, massive unemployment. It is possible that everything will be so. However, when it comes to relationships between people, the machine will always be difficult to cope with, which means that this is a niche for the application of human capabilities.





What is this talking about? The fact that people of creative specialties, experts in the field of human relations will be in demand in the future. Especially combining high-quality technical training with humanitarian. Even techies increasingly need to develop the notorious soft skills. All these professional skills that are not related to official duties, but necessary for successful work in a team - must have. By the way, emotional intelligence is also far from just another whim and fashion. The ability to recognize emotions, understand the intentions, motivation and desires of other people and their own, as well as the ability to control their emotions and the emotions of other people in order to solve practical problems - are increasingly gaining value. A creative approach to solving problems in various fields and an effective search for non-standard solutions, for which you need to have a lot of knowledge, skills, broad horizons - these are the features of the future successful person.



Such abilities are not given to everyone from birth, but this certainly can and should be learned. Maybe not everyone is ready to speak to people and, being a “hardcore” developer, someone wants to grow professionalism in the horizon of their work monitor, but even such geeks should understand that if they “code” better than people, cars are likely to learn in the foreseeable future, then they will not be able to build relationships between people for a very long time.







Everything that is aimed at developing people that diversifies their life, adds color, allows you to realize creativity, brings pleasure to life, whether it is pleasure from taste, communication, interesting activities - everything is already in demand and will be in demand as long as humanity exists in its current form .



In the meantime, programmers and developers rule, because more and more humanity is “moving” into virtual space, where and by means of it it receives everything that is mentioned above.