Yandex

Had an hour-long conversation with the head of one of the software development groups. Despite the overall spectrum of matters discussed, the feeling that the expertise is somewhat pigeonholed (which is a great issue for North-European companies) per

The first stage was a contest with Olympiad-style problems. Competitive programming experience might be very helpful for passing it. On the interviews, they also give problems, but those are much easier.

Improving existing algorithms and creating new ones involves several key elements: * Machine learning * Working with very large amounts of data * Writing algorithms to work with them An example of this is image search optimization in Yandex.i