what is the difference between development in Europe and in the Russian Federation – Career on vc.ru

If a Russian developer feels that he is not exporting and writes about this to a Russian project, he will most likely send you a sad emoticon in response. And the German will offer sick leave for burnout. Domestic teams always closely monitor that the code does not crash. But the Polish support team may well go on vacation with the whole staff, leaving only the cleaning lady in the office.

There are not many differences between Russian and European programmers. Both work in Jira, use the same tools, and sometimes even read the same books. However, there are nuances.

We talked to developers, project managers and machine learning engineers. They have worked in large German, Portuguese and French companies, as well as on projects in other European countries. We talk about the most interesting features of development in the EU.

However, as in Russia. A senior backend developer from a French company may be very different from a senior from a Barcelona office. Small teams don’t bother with grading at all. And large corporations rank employees by degree of responsibility and the number of employees under their command.

For example, at Deutsche Bank there are interns, programmers without a role (this includes conditional juniors and middles), AVP – assisted vice president (seniors), VP – vice president and directors (team leads).

If the company is small, management sets global goals for the entire organization. For example, earn more gold. Based on these goals, developers and engineers set tasks for themselves: they put forward hypotheses, test them, write code, and so on – all themselves, just like Pasha Durov in Telegram.

In corporations, the vector of product development is chosen by the team lead – he also decides on strategic tasks. And the teams independently decide what and how to do to achieve these goals. By the way, often a team lead manages several projects at once and manages 4-6 mini-teams.

In Russia, for a code error found after the release, a specialist is quartered, first by customers, and then by management. Europeans are more tolerant of bugs, as well as the quality of the finished product as a whole.

However, a different situation is also possible. One of the speakers shared a story when a tester insisted on postponing the release. The specialist motivated this by the fact that it is better not to release anything than to give away a raw product.

By the way, if in Russia a manual tester and an autotester are obligatory members of any team, then in Europe such specialists work only on critically important projects. Or on several at once – often the code is checked by the developers or projects themselves. This way you can save quite a bit: salaries for QA engineers with up to three years of experience start from 3,000 – 3,500 euros.

Because plenty of time is allocated for the project, and the developers themselves participate in the discussion of deadlines. However, the release may be delayed by a week (or even two). Simply because many specialists are guided by the principle “well, they didn’t do it and didn’t do it, why mumble that.” Unlike domestic programmers, who will tear a part of the body that should not be torn, but will do everything on time.

It is common practice in Russian companies that bugs should be fixed as quickly as possible. Even if it’s a sunny Sunday, the employee must immediately materialize in front of the laptop and, if not correct the error, then at least understand what’s wrong. In Europe, an employee has from 30 minutes to several hours to safely get to his home or office. And if the bug is not critical, then the fix is ​​often postponed to Monday.

Companies also organize duty: a specialist or an entire team makes sure that the code does not fail on the weekend. But sometimes there is simply no one at the workplace. One of the speakers told us that in December, on Christmas Eve, the entire Polish support team went on vacation – there was not a single person in the office who could solve the problem.

They try to work on mistakes in any case. But despite the glorious centuries-old traditions of the Holy Inquisition, the focus is not on finding those to blame, but on how to avoid mistakes in the future.

Both Russian and European projects and leads try not to bother their employees once again on weekends. And if overtime does happen, companies generously compensate for them. But the habit of cutting code day and night still lingers in the hearts of domestic specialists. This approach is alien to Europeans: the average Spaniard or Italian simply does not understand why hunch over until dawn if you can leave work on time, sleep well and finish the task tomorrow.

German management will even delicately hint that overwork is not comme il faut. Working on weekends must be approved by your superiors. And if you work more than six hours in a row on Saturday or Sunday, you definitely need to take a break.

At Deutsche Bank, special managers monitor the implementation of these requirements – they also cool the ardor of particularly zealous workers. And if a person does not take it out, he may be given sick leave for burnout.

In both domestic and Western companies, it is normal to ask employees for their opinions on a variety of issues, including office layout. However, in Europe this is not always followed by real action. Not because the management doesn’t care – it’s just that many processes west of the 60th parallel proceed much more slowly.

An issue that can be resolved in a day in a Russian company may take a week to resolve in Europe. This can be seen even at the hiring stage: if in a domestic company an offer arrives a week or two after the first interview, then in a Western company a job offer usually arrives after a couple of months.

But for different reasons. If in Russia the social status of a specialist is determined by a high salary, then in Europe it is due to the complexity of the profession. Professionals are respected, just like doctors or lawyers, for example. However, being an IT specialist does not make you a demigod.

We couldn’t resist and reached into the pockets of Western specialists (data from the Glassdoor portal in terms of rubles at the rate of 100 EUR/RUB) and compared their income with the salaries of Russian employees (data from Habr Career). Below are the median salaries among specialists of all grades.

Russia lives by speed; the culture of achievement is often alien to Europe. Specialists from the Old World take their tasks responsibly, but for them work is just work. A part of life, and far from the most important: not one for which it is worth sacrificing health or relationships with loved ones. However, this approach often affects the quality of the product. We’ll tell you exactly how very soon.

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