"Failures have never demotivated me," — Alexander Kuttukov on the beginning of his career in IT

Alexander Kuttukov, city — Almaty, CTO at tekmates, LinkedIn

About me

I am the Chief Technology Officer at the outsourcing company tekmates. I also lead ABR Tech, where we develop the abr+ and Beast products. I was lucky to build my career doing what I love and working in my field: I studied mathematics and computer science at university for six years.

In school and during my first years at university, programming did not interest me at all. I used the computer to play games, watch movies, and listen to music. I consciously made my choice in my third year when it was time to choose a department. I thought pragmatically: which skills would be in demand and whether they would be paid for. As practice showed, I did not make a mistake.

About my first job in IT

I graduated from university in 2010 and joined ATFBank as a software developer. At that time, it was part of the European UniCredit group; today, the bank no longer operates in the Kazakh market. At ATFBank, I was invited to a C# developer position. I had studied it at university and wanted to apply my knowledge in practice. Therefore, I accepted the offer.

The interview consisted of a theoretical part and a practical task. By then, I was already fairly proficient in the language, so I handled the theoretical part easily. For the practical part, I needed to solve a problem involving XML document manipulation. Here, experience from my thesis came in handy.

That’s how I got my first job. In my case, my specialized education and a large amount of practical work during my final years helped me secure employment.

At the bank, I initially made small improvements to services for lending processes and maintained existing ones. Then I began developing services independently and moved on to more substantial and serious tasks: building a system for employee assessment and a solution for monitoring risks for corporate clients.

Understanding that there was still much to learn, I read a lot and tried things out in practice. I did not stay late in the office but arrived early, before eight in the morning: there was no one else around, and I could study quietly.

About difficulties

About difficulties

The main difficulty in finding your first job in IT is understanding whether you truly want to do this. If you are going just for the money, you need to think carefully, because more and more companies are raising the bar. This bar is not about algorithmic interviews but about work efficiency. It is important to be able to solve problems optimally, which is not easy. You need to learn when to stop striving for an unattainable ideal. As for employers who hire juniors, they are willing to take on people with potential. It is important to demonstrate it and justify these expectations.

As a developer, I did not receive rejections when searching for jobs. They occurred when I considered management positions, but the context for decision-making is much broader there. Nevertheless, failures never demotivated me. Rejections are growth points that you should pay attention to. I recommend not to overthink and to assess what happened adequately, finding the rational core in the rejection.

In the early stages of work, difficulties often arose: sometimes certain services did not work, or it was unclear what needed to be done and whom to ask. One of my first managers instilled in me a good habit: give yourself a specific deadline to figure it out on your own, and if you fail, go for help. In this case, either the task is solved, or you ask for help, showing what specific efforts you made to solve it and what did not work.

3 tips that will help you find a job in IT

1. Never stop learning and discovering new things. Hard skills are the core, what is easier to learn and what should always be with you. Pay attention to fundamental books and principles, do not tie yourself to a specific language or technology.

Be sure to improve your Soft Skills — they will help you stand out and grow faster. Communication, teamwork, critical thinking, problem-solving — all this and much more will be useful in achieving success.

Learn English. Without it, in IT you will always be at the "tail end," because all articles, books, and podcasts are first published in English.

2. Dive into the business area in which you are building an IT solution. Any system solves people's problems. The sooner you understand this, the easier it will be to work with clients. Communicate with users, colleagues from other departments, study other companies' cases, and train your industry insight.

3. Be honest and open. If asked something you don't know during an interview, it is much better to answer directly: "I don't know," than to make something up. Also, do not be afraid to ask questions if something is unclear. It is not scary not to know something or to make a mistake. It is scary not to draw conclusions from it.