Yandex

Great office facilities: food, cookies, coffee, tea, fruits, gym.

Powerful hardware: MacPro laptops, Desktops.

Discounts in all cafes nearby.

Competitive salary.

Great place to start a career or to continue with a few years of experience.

I believe Yandex is a significant step forward from a common Russian software company.

• Cons:

  • Management doesn't understand (or can't explain) why we do something. It's really difficult to get solid targets or directions for development.
  • Management believes all developers have near-to-the-same area of expertise. Thus, tasks may be reassigned by management to different owners without any discussion.
  • If a member of your team is overloaded, you would definitely get a part of their tasks, in spite of really different specialization between them and you.
  • A typical Yandex employee is a person with a few years of C/C++, surely with ACM experience. These people know 'how' to do whatever they want, but don't know what is really 'worth' doing. For example: plenty of projects have their own implementation of string (exactly, zero-copy!).
  • In spite of Yandex trying to be a western IT company, in fact, it's a Russian company. This means 'special features' of Russian management style: management doesn't discuss with employees mission and vision, targets and goals. So, it's not really a western-style company at all. Moreover, from my point of view, management isn't really open-minded and willing to hear.
  • Employees don't fully understand what they do (I mean not their particular area of work, but a bird's-eye overview), why business gives money for development (and what business expects from development), and finally, the most important, what we desire to achieve (particular technical goals).
  • The company nudges employees to develop their own 'solutions' for work in their private time.
  • Management doesn't have strong business acumen.
  • New managers don't know what it means to be a manager, not a supervisor.
  • Yandex culture exists only on paper.

• Conclusion:

  • I believe Yandex is a good place to work only for young people with a few years of professional experience and, necessarily, ACM experience. I'm not sure Yandex is a good place to work for people with any 'special' skills.

Advice to Management

Learn your line managers to be the true line managers, not to spend time on micromanagement.

First, it will improve business controllability.

Second, it will let your employees feel better and understand (and improve) what, how, and why they do.

Third, finally, it will let Yandex be a true western company.