Initlab in person. Interview with Sergei Sinitsa

— My first encounter was when I was still in high school. My father worked as an engineer and built a ZX Spectrum, my first computer. On it I started writing my first Basic programmes for Spectrum. I was very fascinated by it.

Later, a crowd of friends started coming over, playing computer games and writing programmes. I became interested in computer science at school, went to the Start centre in Krasnodar, and took part in programming Olympiads. After a while, I got a personal computer, a 486, and in high school I naturally had an interest in the web.

The first orders, the first development contracts were somewhere around the eleventh grade and the first year of my first course. I was making websites when access to the Internet was still via a modem with a speed of 56 kilobits per second. I was very interested in the development of the Internet, information technologies. It was 1999-2000. That was probably the start.

— Yes. My parents helped me, of course. They noticed my interest and took me to university, choosing a faculty where there were other students like me. Maths was easy for me and I entered KubSU at the Faculty of Computer Technologies and Applied Mathematics. At that time it was called just the Faculty of Applied Mathematics - computer technologies were attached later, but even then it was one of the leaders in information technologies in the region. That is why I applied only there. Although there is basic mathematical training and my speciality is «Mathematician. System programmer».

— No, I haven't. Although sometimes I think maybe I should start my own rock band (laughs). But so far IT doesn't let go.

— In my second or third year of university, it was 2001-2002. I was just chatting with my classmates who were also interested in the Internet. I realised that I was not the only one and that in case of emergency there was someone to call for help.

And help was already needed back then. I started my work in IT with web design. First I drew business cards and posters in Photoshop, then websites. I knew all the hotkeys in Photoshop, even if you woke me up in the middle of the night. I designed websites for the first companies in Krasnodar as a designer and did the layout.

I didn't know much about back-end programming at first, so I found a fellow student who helped me with it. At that time, languages like Perl and Parser were popular in web development, and later php became the main language. Over time, my interest in programming led to the fact that the back-end I learnt thoroughly. I didn't make it as a designer, though - development is closer to my heart.

And in the end, it was the other way round: I got partners who helped me design, and I did the programming. A team of 2-3 people started to fulfil orders. That was probably the first prototype of Initlab.

— We founded Initlab with Roma Agabekov. He had already worked in a large trading company as an economist, which was his second degree. Even then he had a desire to organise something of his own in the field of information technology, because he had a wealth of experience in both programming and business. Roma is a classmate of mine, and we also worked together for a while in system programming in a company in Krasnodar.

I already had a small flow of orders at that time and I lacked a partner who would help me share the initial risks and costs of starting a company with me. Our third founder, Galya, helped us a lot at the initial stage with the legal aspects and accounting.

So the three of us sat down in a café and drew on a piece of paper the principle of how technical support works: how requests are distributed, how internal processes function, and so on. Support was our first area, which we conceived of as our core business. At that time, it was not just websites and servers - we also supported the IT infrastructure of companies in Krasnodar (local networks, servers, workstations).

All of this has changed, rebuilt and evolved many times. Now one of the main services is Drupal development and support, server support, but initially we planned that it would be some broader IT support on the topic of information technology in general. We were fans of computers, networks and did everything we could for the company related to IT. Now we only do what we are best at.

— Roma has two educations: he is a mathematics system programmer and studied economics at the same time. And I have two other degrees. I studied to be a mathematics-system programmer and RGF (Romano-Germanic philology). So I'm also a translator in professional communications, Russian-English translation. So he and I graduated from three faculties together.

— Almost immediately. At that time I was already working in freelancing and had a small flow of orders. For me, the point of organising a company was precisely to hire assistants.

I graduated from the institute in 2004, after that I worked as a developer for six months to a year, and at the same time I went to graduate school. So the foundation of Initlab in 2007 coincided with the defence of my PhD thesis. That is, I finished my postgraduate studies, defended myself, and we opened Initlab.

— I am a candidate of technical sciences, speciality «Theoretical Foundations of Informatics», defended in Taganrog, at the Radio Engineering University. The thesis is devoted to the architecture of web-based systems for teamwork. It was also a commercial project that automated the work of a large number of people and at that time I did it for one of my clients. It was a site where orders were distributed among the performers of work. The site, by the way, was on Drupal.

— That's right. Two days at university, three days at the office. My studies were easy for me in principle. I graduated with a red diploma, my grades in my major subjects were good, so I was invited to do postgraduate studies and then to teach.

I am now continuing to teach a course on web technologies, i.e. at university I tell you what I encounter at work. This helps me to systematise my knowledge and close some gaps, because the best way to learn something is to teach someone else.

— That's right. Because I communicate well in English, I often have to communicate with university or faculty partners. I also travel to various European universities as an exchange of experience. It is interesting to see how things work there. Plus I look at how I can make my courses better so that everything is on a world-class level.

So I am sometimes called to teach some courses at European universities. Apparently, there is no-one to teach there (laughs).

— Actually, the last one was the Rhine-Main University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden, in Germany. I did a course on blockchain technology and e-commerce in the master's programme there last year. This year I'm being called again, with the same course.

— At the time of Initlab's creation, as I have already said, I had a flow of orders and an understanding that it would work. Personally, I enjoyed doing web work, making websites, solving clients' problems. Entrepreneurial activity also brought joy. Of course, something might not work out, there were various difficult moments, but on the whole....

— There was nothing very difficult. There were the standard troubles: an employee who quits at the wrong moment, a major client leaves, and you have half the team working for him. It seems to me that these are quite normal situations. We have managed to avoid some difficult things, like conflicts between founders or loss of health. We live amicably, we grow and develop.

— Probably clients-owners of medium or small businesses for whom the Internet and information technologies are the main way of attracting customers. That is, they need our experience and knowledge and they need to develop, as a rule, what their business is based on: an online shop, a system of interaction with clients, a system for selling services, training courses, etc. That is, people for whom the Internet is the main way of making money. It is interesting to work with them. It is also interesting to work with large companies and big projects, as they come up with complex tasks that other development teams have failed to cope with.

— When Initlab was created, we decided that we were very interested in open-source. So we need guys who are familiar with open-source ideas, with the Linux operating system, with GPL licences. If they have seen how the open-source community works and want to become a part of it, i.e. if they contribute to open-source, study open-source projects, ask for help from me or other team members, then these people are close to our ideology. In our experience, they make good developers who are the most interesting to work with.

And some basic things are important, which are necessary in any team: being predictable, getting the job done to the end - these are the necessary conditions. We try not just to solve a problem, but to understand how we can improve a product or a project.

— It's professional. 10% of people can read code, 1% can write code, and 0.1% can understand and write complex code, so we focus on professional competences.

— These are people with a special way of thinking, who can be forgiven for being closed or unsociable at times. Moreover, every programmer is abnormal in a good sense and a bit different from others. You can see it especially well when you work at a university. Some of them are introverted guys for whom it is hard to communicate with a client, to defend their point of view, to participate in conflicts, etc. Of course, not everyone is like that, but on the whole the mathematical mindset somehow outweighs the humanitarian component, you are more involved in maths and programming and you have less communication skills.

We at Initlab understand this, and one of our rules is that specially trained people should communicate with clients. We help developers to organise their work in the right way to make them feel comfortable.

Programming is difficult. And you have to make sure that people are not interfered with, not jerked around, not distracted. This work requires mental tension and concentration, because clients do not come to us with simple tasks. We develop or support complex systems, and people come to us with serious problems and complex tasks.

So the most important thing is whether you can basically break down a problem into its components, figure out what it is, and solve the problem. And equally important is how you communicate with your colleagues, how obliging and predictable you are. To me, these are all elements of professionalism. Well, the fact that we are open-source enthusiasts and sports guys... so lucky.

— We try to take care of overtime or mandatory activities. We don't usually insist on it, we try not to disturb anyone on weekends and in the evenings - everyone has their own families. It's more like a team that works hard during working hours and then knows how to have a good rest.

— We have a tradition: we try to go to various sporting events twice a year as a team. Most of our guys are avid hikers-skiers-alpinists-snowboarders-bikers, and in general, the transition to remote working has also increased a certain hunger for communication. Given that the main office where the developers worked was closed and now we work remotely, we started to pay even more attention to the preparation of our annual meetings. We usually go skiing in the mountains for a few days with the whole team in February-March.

It used to be a team from Krasnodar, but now we gather our employees from all over the country in one place. And in the summer we usually go to the sea, also for a few days. Now we are going to Sochi, of course not to the sea (the interview was taken in February).

— Most of the team, somewhere around 75%, in Krasnodar, sit at home. The managers go to the office, solving working issues. Now there are guys from other cities in Russia, and one works from Armenia. We hire entirely remotely, because the Drupalers in Krasnodar have run out, and we don't have time to train new ones yet.

— There are probably 30 people who have worked, become specialists and are now working here or elsewhere. But there are three times as many people who just took a course and practised.

— I'm still hesitant to pursue a career as a rock musician. I don't think I'll be useful to people as a rock star. I guess that leaves maths then. I'd do maths.

— I see it this way: in 5 years' time, we will be helping companies not only in Russia, but all over the world. Now we occasionally have clients from Europe and the USA, and in 5 years' time we will probably be working on larger international projects. And we are also 5-10 times bigger, and all the cool guys work for us. I would like to make the coolest company in the competences of Drupal and open-source.

— When you work with a large number of projects, you notice that many clients and companies basically have the same problems. Now we are picking out what everyone needs and trying to improve our support and development so that we can apply these best practices to improve support, speed up sites, and increase reliability.

I think that in 10 years we will have products that are built on these best practices and we will be able to apply them not only within the team, but also to other teams. This includes automation in support, quality assurance, productivity improvements, etc. Right now we're experimenting in internal startup mode, and I think as the company matures, we'll have more resources to experiment with these products. There will be products coming out of Initlab, and we'll be more of a product company than outsourced production and support.

So in 10 years' time, I would like us to be making products that will help thousands of customers. So far, we can only help hundreds.

— Basically enough. I try to spend weekends and evenings at home with my beloved wife and son. My wife Katya has had a great influence on Initlab. She has worked in the company for many years, helped us to get back on our feet from the very beginning, and now she supports us in less operational work, but I involve her as a manager and analyst in particularly important projects. So you could say that we have a certain element of a family business.

— In that very café, we didn't only describe the work of the support. We also had a sheet of paper on which we wrote down name variants. And there were a hundred options crossed out, and at the end there was Initlab. This is the laboratory of innovative information technologies.

The idea is that we go through everything new in IT, try it, figure it out, leave what works and help clients solve their problems with technology.

— There are no challenges in IT that we can't solve.

I am trying to build a dream company that I would enjoy working for. A company where I enjoy coming to work every day.