Techdir Day in St. Petersburg. Beer, pizza, two microphones

We had a long rainy St. Petersburg evening, a Selectel conference room for 70 seats, two dozen technical experts, more than fifty IT developers of varying degrees of unshaven, several HR, a powerful Dmitry Simonov, 200 cans of beer, 100 bottles of lemonade, several interesting topics, 6 speakers , tuned broadcast, 3.14 liters of concentrated good mood and even one elusive techdir girl. Not that all this was needed in St. Petersburg the day before the Slurm DevOps, but if you started organizing events, then go in your hobby to the end. The only thing that bothered us was the address of the KorovaBar restaurant, where we whiled away evenings during the February Slurm. There is nothing more enthusiastic in the world, ignoring physical obstacles and objective reality, communicative and loud than several CTOs gathered in one place at one time next to an explosive mixture of beer, colleagues and discussion topics. We knew that one way or another we would plunge into it all with our heads.

Dmitry Simonov (left) greets the venerable public and congratulates on the Day of Tehdir.

Each took up his own front of work. Dmitry Simonov, creator of the techdir channel CTORECORDS, organized the celebration. Slurm took care of all organizational matters. Readless startup paid for the broadcast. Selectel provided the premises. SimbirSoft paid for beer and pizza for guests.

There was no salvation. Everything indicated the inexorable approach of the holiday.

All gathered in advance - and the atmosphere in the conference room felt warmer. A cool St. Petersburg evening retreated beyond the walls of Selectel's office. At 19-00 the reports began. The topics were deep - and therefore not everyone was able to fully reveal them in a limited time.

Kirill Malevanov, Selectel CTO, spoke about the infrastructure through the eyes of a provider. The audience was fascinated by the schemes, diagrams and drawings, where the number of communications and connections increased with each slide.

Kirill Malevanov shows on the screen what the headache and suffering of the tehdir look like.

Kirill Malevanov talked about network scaling: many racks, many clients, many servers. About different architectures for different projects. About dedicated WAN, LAN, IPMI servers and network infrastructure redundancy. About protection against DDoS.

To live well. And when everything works well, life is even better.

Denis Ilinykh, technical director of GT-Shop, spoke about the tasks of the technical director, whose solutions he is usually busy. How did he manage to become a technical director about the role of broadening one's horizons in professional activity. On working with a lack of resources and staffing. About the most interesting cases in practice. Three stories - one more fascinating than the other. He had one of the liveliest performances at the event.

"... and then we called the device manufacturer in China."

The audience especially liked the story of how one of the customers came across tricky Chinese comrades who were ready to share manuals and technical documentation of the product only after buying a batch of 100 devices. We will tell about this fascinating story of the interaction of two civilizations in a separate material.

Tatyana Albertovna Gavrilova, Doctor of Technical Sciences, professor of the Department of Information Technologies in Management at the Higher School of Management, told how to establish effective interaction between specialists of different subject areas, different ages and education. How to overcome the abyss of misunderstanding, which is especially important when setting goals and communicating with the customer. Strict academic report: communication models, types of information, knowledge engineering, the main phases of knowledge processing, information science, information loss during communication.

The dinosaur with all its appearance demonstrates a slight shock from the scientific information that has fallen upon it.

And then we build mind maps correctly - and take over the planet.

Big Brother is watching you.

At this time, the participants were already waiting for strategic stocks of beer and pizza, so that communication would become even more active and laid back.

As for the amount of beer and lemonade, we did not joke at the beginning of the article.

An active discussion ensued about the need for short-term and medium-term planning - and what this means for company owners and technical directors.

Alexey Vasiliev, Agile coach, trainer-consultant, managing partner of BIPULSE.RU, shared how to fulfill all the obligations of the organization on time in full in the face of uncertainty and multi-project environment.

And at the same time, Alexey Vasiliev showed a special IT magic with the help of stickers.

Dmitry Peterson and Petr Urvaev, director and technical solutions manager at SimbirSoft, talked about managing the development process and the most common mistakes in team building. Every day, SimbirSoft works on 70 projects, so the report had a lot of cases and tips on how to put together a balanced team. The speakers also touched on the topic of vertical teams.

Then came the time for negotiations, a snack, a break and an exchange of views.

Happiness to all, for nothing. And a slice of pizza.

... and no one will leave offended.

HR and recruiters all came together and looked around appraisingly. Headhunters are ready to headshot.

"... my pizza is cooler than your pizza"

Daniil Podolsky, development manager at MTGroup, before his presentation on the professional and emotional burnout of IT people, which is fraught with the loss of the most involved and key employees, he decided to train for the audience in advance.

Varvara Golubeva, CHRO Study world, Founder HealingResource community, told what requirements HR places on CTO, how hunting works. In fact, practically no one knows what exactly SRT should do, and what should not. And no one can clearly articulate how to become a technical director. Often a problem arises - how to check the techdir, the real one or just pretending. And how to deal with this problem.

Ivan Mikheev, Deputy CTO at AGIMA, shared case studies from personal practice. How to lose three leaders and understand what could be better without them. The fact that KPI is not always an adequate argument for improvements. What to do if resources are scarce, and how reorganization of current capacities can help. Ivan shared universal life hacks to solve the most popular problems.

A little closer to 22-00 the participants almost in full force moved to KorovaBar to continue the celebration and communication. And rob the cows.

Dmitry Simonov: “Colleagues, the holiday does not end. The feast of Tehdir is now in everyone’s heart. ”

The record can be viewed here:

And at the same time to join the special atmosphere of Tehdir Day.