History of colonial slavery in IT

Hi all! In my article I want to share with you a story and thoughts about how developers from the regions lived in pre-pandemic times and what prospects opened up for them in their work. Even within the same company, the salary of a developer from the region was usually 1.5-2 times less than that of a developer from Moscow, but this was usually not discussed openly. Despite the fact that many considered office work to be productive, it was in fact often a limiting factor for high-quality development in this area.

Attention, the situation may be fictitious, and the similarities between the characters and real people are coincidental!

In the article described, the actions will take place in an abstract large company specializing in brokerage services, with a main office in Moscow and a key office in Novosibirsk, responsible for key areas of the company's activities. . In which there is a constant struggle for significant projects and conflicts against the background of low quality of work performed.

Introduction to the department from the colony

Vosya, also known as Eight-legged, becomes a participant in all events. He is a novice developer, and by that time his prospects look like this: work in an office from 9 to 18 hours, with a salary from 80 to 130 thousand rubles, without the possibility of further career growth. Indeed, in Novosibirsk, salaries in excess of 130 thousand rubles for an ordinary developer at that time seem unattainable, except for cases when he occupies a high position, such as the head of a department or technical director.

And so, striving for new opportunities, he joins the Novosibirsk department of the company mentioned in the article as a developer. He is warmly greeted by his manager Vadik, who introduces him in detail to the peculiarities of the work and clarifies that all communication with colleagues from Moscow and on other issues should be carried out exclusively through them. And in general, who are these Moscow colleagues to report to them, right?

Some time passes, and Vosya gets used to working in the department. At first glance, everything is fine, but more and more often he begins to notice that Vadik is constantly putting spokes in the wheels and extending the centralized bureaucracy to any actions. He rejects any proposals to improve the project’s code base, and also sabotages the implementation of monitoring and error alerting systems, explaining that “These guys from Moscow will be watching us.”

After talking with other colleagues from the department, Vosya realizes that they are all satisfied with the current state of affairs. After all, constant mistakes are like a gold mine: you come to the office, blow out a cigar smoke, have lunch, correct the mistake and go home without worrying about anything else. In general, they have a simple attitude towards the product: if something is broken and doesn’t work, they calmly go home, and they don’t care about any problems, because Vadik will sort everything out for them in front of these annoying Muscovites.

And such passivity appears among workers due to the lack of special prospects, because they are limited by the level of their location of stay, and in order to really want to change something, they need to move, and not everyone has the opportunity.

And this continued until a certain turning point: before the onset of the new year, an important project of the company suddenly stopped working, and Vos’s colleagues, not wanting to solve the problem, left after a shortened working day for the winter holidays, leaving everything as it was. However, Vosya, the responsible person, stayed and worked on troubleshooting almost until nightfall. His colleagues from Moscow contacted him and actively helped solve the problem. Thanks to joint efforts, the situation was corrected.

After such events, after the new year, an escalation occurred, and a commission was formed to review the actions of the department and, in general, the work of the head. As a result of the commission’s work, Vadik still remains in his place, but part of the funding and the project are transferred to the Moscow department, and Vosya moves to Moscow with them.

The beginning of covid times and changes

Arriving in Moscow and beginning to adapt, Vosya feels all the advantages and freedom of the new environment. The approach to projects begins to change: the new team is actively implementing the changes previously proposed by Vosya, adding metrics, and every month the project is becoming more and more perfect. Certain difficulties arise, but they are no longer the same as before. There are fewer and fewer bugs, and more and more new business tasks.

Suddenly Vosya realizes that his previous work experience was not real, but rather amounted to supporting a local leader in a position. Due to the remoteness of Novosibirsk from Moscow and the significant difference in time zones, no one controlled the situation or carried out checks.

Then the Covid epidemic begins, and departments switch to remote work, which becomes a key moment in changing the company's workflow. The division into Novosibirsk and Moscow departments is gradually disappearing – just a team of testers, front-enders and back-enders remains. Salaries begin to level out, and along with them, the quality of work of all the changed teams increases, since now there is no obstacle in the form of location and local management, which adapts to itself.

And in the new reality there is no longer any place for a leader like Vadik, because the teams are now distributed and have great powers. As a result, everything came to what the modern IT sphere looks like now, where there are no longer departments far from the capital, where you can hide all your mistakes, and the teams are distributed.

Conclusion

For regional developers, remote work has brought enormous changes. With equal opportunities, there are options not only for sitting still in the office, but also for significant growth in salary and position. Perhaps developers from Moscow perceive remote work as a simple choice of a place where it is comfortable to work, but for me these changes have had a dramatic impact on my life.

Thank you for your attention!

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