Welcome to #IamaGDE – a series of spotlights presenting Google Developer Experts (GDEs) from across the globe. Discover their stories, passions, and highlights of their community work.
His first computer was a black market device created from parts of a Nintendo gaming system. When he was 15 he got his first real computer but with no tech support available he had to learn everything himself. Soon after he earned his first 100 bucks by helping update an interactive map on his friend’s website. Today, he is an extremely active developer in Russia and internationally, an organizer of one of biggest conferences in Russia, such as
GDE Evgeny Kot
THE EARLY DAYS
During his school days, Evgeny had two big passions – love for music and love for computers. He enjoyed playing music a lot but has eventually made a decision to do programming full time. The beginnings weren’t always easy. In his first job, he had plenty of ideas for optimization and process improvement. He asked his boss for permission to rewrite the company’s entire software from C to C++. Granted an approval he attempted this challenge but things didn’t go as planned and the project failed completely. As he admitted himself, sometimes learning from mistakes can be a more valuable experience than succeeding at something the first time. Fortunately his boss was also of a similar opinion!
“My first manager became a true mentor for me. He taught me a lot.”
THE RUSSIAN DEV MARKET
The Russian dev market is enormous and extremely saturated. There are many Russian developers who don’t see the need of working in English or another foreign language because the core of their work is with and for Russian companies. Evgeny didn’t want to do that – he wanted to get exposed to the international market, understand how things are getting done elsewhere, learn other things from developers from different backgrounds. His first international experience was working at Dell.
I enjoyed it a lot and learned a ton. I was lucky to step outside of the Russian bubble and see how other teams work internationally.
This experience has eventually brought him to a front end developer role at
