How to Build a Successful Career in IT: Experience from the Head of Software Development at Investbanq

Zhassulan Yesmukanov, city — Almaty, Head of Platform Development at Investbanq and entrepreneur, Linkedin

About Me

I have been working in the IT industry for over 10 years. Currently, I serve as the Head of Platform Development at Investbanq. Previously, I was the CEO and founder of the startup IT.Y, which developed a platform for automating business processes (BPMS). On this platform, we successfully implemented several impressive projects, including an advanced borrower interaction system for collection agencies and a billing system for advertising structures based on blockchain technology. These projects are unique not only in Kazakhstan but also globally. I have always enjoyed solving complex problems and inventing new approaches in IT.

How I Entered the IT Field

My journey in IT began with my studies at the University of Sussex in England, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. During my studies, I was passionate about programming, and my thesis focused on natural language processing. I developed an assistant bot capable of extracting data from text and managing calendars—creating events, listing them, rescheduling them, and so on. At that time, in 2011, Siri did not yet exist, and I was already attempting to solve this problem. Today, artificial intelligence technologies have advanced significantly, and similar tasks can be accomplished in a couple of hours using ChatGPT integrations, but back then, it was much more difficult.

After graduating from university, I realized that the main problem in IT is that programmers and business often speak different languages and fail to understand each other. Therefore, I decided to start my career in the field of information systems audit and IT consulting at PwC. This gave me extensive experience in understanding various industries—from retail to manufacturing and banking. The experience gained from working with the “Big Four” provided me with knowledge that I would not have acquired by working in isolated industries.

Next, I focused on solving business problems and began developing the business process management platform that I wished I had when I was an auditor and IT consultant. After that, I was invited to lead the development department at Investbanq, where my platform significantly accelerated the implementation of new technologies into employees’ business processes and effective collaboration between departments.

How to Start a Career in IT

In the current era, with the revolution of large language models, it will be more difficult for beginners to enter IT, as the level of the latest ChatGPT models already reaches that of a Pre-Mid developer. I believe that the next five years will bring a revolution in the programming world. Therefore, beginners should start using systems like ChatGPT immediately and switch to AI-powered code editors, such as CursorAI. AI is here to stay, and we need to keep pace with the times, practicing more in solving tasks jointly with AI. This greatly accelerates development and problem-solving. It is also important to know how to properly test completed tasks and find bugs that AI still makes mistakes with.

About Career Growth

To grow in your IT career, you must constantly learn new things, observe what competitors are doing, and keep up with emerging technologies. Continuously experiment with new technologies. Additionally, regularly attend professional conferences where software architecture is discussed, such as HighLoad, Web Summit, and others. Subscribe to ChangeLog for the technologies you use and specialize in them. Do not be afraid to explore other areas within IT. If you are a backend developer, start learning DevOps at least at a basic level. If you are a frontend developer, learn mobile development, and so on. Pet projects are an excellent opportunity to try your hand at all roles in the team, as you will perform everything yourself. Perhaps another tech stack or part of the work will interest you more, and you may wish to become, for example, a DevOps engineer instead of a frontend developer.

How to Handle Difficulties at Work

Currently, the simplest way is to turn to ChatGPT and then search for information on the internet. Once you understand the problem or find a potential solution but have spent several hours unsuccessfully, it is time to turn to more experienced colleagues and ask for help. Understand that someone has likely encountered this problem before, and two heads are better than one. Do not spend too much time trying to solve a problem on your own. Always ask for help after failed attempts and several hours of work.

Promising IT Directions for the Future

In the future, blockchain, IoT, cybersecurity, DevOps, artificial intelligence, and big data will be in high demand. These areas will remain relevant for a long time because they are closely interconnected, and most technology companies operate in these fields. There are still many unsolved problems and thousands of potential business opportunities in these directions.

If we look at how artificial intelligence and large language models worked a couple of years ago and compare them with today, we see a huge leap that significantly accelerates the solution of problems related to rapid changes in IT technologies. In the next couple of years, I believe the work of programmers will change substantially. The symbiosis of human and AI work will transform the typical working day of a developer and increase development speed. Routine tasks, such as code refactoring, are already being successfully performed by machines 10 times faster than by humans.

“Hallucinations” in LLM models still occur: they may invent non-existent or outdated APIs, but this is only a temporary issue. Soon, AI will learn to independently run and test the code it writes. The approach where AI acts merely as a “co-pilot” to help accelerate development will, in the coming years, be replaced by a scenario where every developer becomes a team lead for several AI models. These models will perform the tasks of developers, testers, business analysts, DevOps engineers, database administrators, and so on.

I see a future where humans will no longer delve deeply into specific implementations but will formulate requirements and identify errors that AI could not detect on its own. This will significantly accelerate implementation speed and allow launching a prototype of almost any startup within one to two weeks. At the same time, the requirements for developers’ technical knowledge will decrease, opening doors to IT for a wider range of people.

For a long time, there has been an important problem in the IT industry hindering the widespread adoption of technologies in all aspects of life—the human factor. The ability of superusers to alter data or bypass control systems remains a serious limitation. Although various policies, security standards, and auditors strive to solve this problem, a fundamental solution is possible only with the use of public decentralized blockchain systems.

I specifically emphasize “public” and “decentralized” because in other types of blockchains, the risk of the human factor is still present, although it becomes more difficult to make changes unnoticed. We are only at the beginning of the journey toward adopting blockchain as a technology. Currently, it is mostly viewed as a tool for speculation in financial markets. But blockchain does not equal cryptocurrencies! The function of a payment medium is just one of the logical applications of this technology.

What lies ahead is the construction of new business models, such as decentralized corporations. Imagine a delivery system where collaboration between people is facilitated by blockchain: all participants in the process deposit a certain amount and can place offers, order goods, and much more. AI handles conflict resolution in this process, independently identifies potentially fraudulent operations, and imposes fines on participants’ deposits. Decisions on the development and updating of smart contracts are made by a council or board of directors, which determine changes in the logic and business processes written into the smart contracts.

This will become possible after the emergence of central bank digital currencies—blockchain versions of national currencies—and their wrapped versions for various decentralized blockchains. In the near future, we can expect a breakthrough that will surpass all previous industrial revolutions in scale.

Recommendations

1. Learn new technologies; do not stand still. As soon as you stop learning, you can fall significantly behind in knowledge. The speed of new technology emergence is high. Study technologies using LLM models. They can prepare data for you in a convenient format faster.

2. Practice. Try not just to read about a technology but to try it out in practice. If you find a bug in an Open Source project, write a Bug Report and fix the bug yourself. This way, you can demonstrate that you can solve problems independently. Look for pet projects and help others in Open Source. GitHub welcomes help from others. Help and communicate with developers from all over the world.

3. Networking. Try to build a network of contacts with IT professionals. These can be classmates or more experienced colleagues. This will help you integrate into the professional community faster and constantly receive a fresh influx of knowledge and ideas.

Do not forget about work-life balance. Try not to focus solely on IT; seek hobbies in other areas of life—whether it be sports, the gym, mountain hiking, playing musical instruments, or swimming. Do not take on too much work—try to work eight hours a day and not think about work during the rest of the time. If you are overloaded, inform your team lead and ask to slightly reduce your workload.