Situation: Can't you think of worse?

Read these stories to slightly reduce stress level

Each company has the moment when the work processes fall apart, the team is moving, the money (and not very much!) Encourage all the time. You can’t get a good word from the client, and then competitors are crushing. How to cope with difficulties and at the same time maintain mental health? Medusa, together with the SELECTEL company, helping to create an IT infrastructure for business, talked about this with three entrepreneurs.

Vsevolod Nepchitaylenko, project manager Bimteam:

Two years ago, “Pic” decided to transfer employees to a remotes, and I was called to launch this project. At that moment, I lived in Tomsk and thought a lot why everyone was striving to leave for Moscow, although there is far from always the meaning of this. I liked the idea of ​​creating jobs for specialists from the regions and thus violating the metropolitan hegemony in a separate form of business. Since the “peak” is engaged in development, we needed to transfer to the remote control of the designers. At that moment it was believed that this was impossible: designers should work in one office. To make drawings faster, they supposedly need to be at the distance of an outstretched arm from each other. But we found a way out.

We started with a total transition to BIM. The work system is arranged on the principle of Lego cubes. Suppose I am building a wall, and my colleague wants to lay his pipe through it. At this moment, a notification comes to me with a proposal to think about whether the house will collapse due to a hole in the wall. Everyone performs their part of the work, but at the same time always aware of what others do-you can not worry about inconsistencies.

One of the most difficult challenges was then to provide employees with the necessary IT-modeling. At first we rushed to buy servers, but immediately a problem arose: we grew up so quickly that the new equipment had to be transported constantly, like products to a restaurant, otherwise the work would have risen. At the same time, one "iron" server cost about 5 million rubles. Instead, we began to search for servers for rent. And here is a new problem: having heard the name “peak”, the data centers thought that we had huge budgets, so they exhibited crazy price tags.

That period was terribly nervous: it seemed to many that the remote is horror. The transformation took a lot of time and demanded emotional efforts. There was no support from the colleagues in the market: at conferences they actually criticized me and said that nothing would work out. I felt like a bear that burns, rides on a monocoles and still juggling. But at some point I realized that this could not continue: my stress does not lead to anything. Zen was supposed to come in the team, and I decided: in order to achieve it, it is necessary to build processes more efficiently - this will reduce stress.

To do this, we came up with an internal base of knowledge. From there, employees will learn everything about our design and production culture rules, receive instructions. In the office you or at home - access to the base can always be obtained. In this sense, 2020 showed that our two -year -old rate was true.

SELECTEL comment : “It seems to some companies that their own servers are better. But in order to get from home to the airport, you do not need to buy a car, just take a taxi. With data storage is the same. Selectel is a relatively young company, our advantage is an individual approach to each client, it doesn’t matter whether it is big or small. We willingly take up non -standard tasks. For example, such as the “peak” with which we actually invented a “spherical horse in a vacuum”. We collected our services as Lego, gradually expanding the base platform and setting up the options. We were in touch with the “peak” literally 24/7 and at the exit received an absolutely custom product that is able to adapt to the needs of the client as it grows. ”

Sergey Budyakov, founder of Ussedesk:

Usedesk is a platform that helps companies automate customer support. We combine different messengers, social networks, e -mail and telephony in one window. Yes, we work with technologies, but at the same time we ourselves are not safe from unforeseen bugs.

For example, once our developer accidentally pressed the “Delete All” button in the wrong folder. As a result, he deleted the entire Ussed. Literally in a second, the whole company actually ceased to exist. Fortunately, part of the data was saved on another server, and in three hours we were able to partially restore the work. For another three days we did not sleep or ate to restore the system completely - it was very scary and nervous. As a result, they began to be more attentive to technical things and deployed a new, more powerful server. No one is safe from falls, but if this is happening now, we are calm: each department knows what to do, and we just solve the issue. Already without emotions.

I am leading a blog in which I am writing about the management of a startup and myself. These processes are similar: in one and another case, the main thing is awareness, not emotions. And in the same basic difficulty - to learn how to respond to what is happening constructively, keep the mind calm, rely on facts and numbers, and not on what it seems. For myself, I have formulated several principles that help me to control more effectively. Firstly, when I want to sharply react to something, I first count up to ten. Secondly, to make a decision I try to collect the maximum texture. Thirdly, I set the target KPI and focus on them when evaluating success. Having established clear verification criteria, it is much easier to trust people.

I used to experience the greatest stress when hiring employees. We have a difficult rhythm of work, failures occurred literally in every position - marketing, support, development. Sometimes I generally wanted to clone myself: it seemed that no one could cope with work faster and better than you. Now we are more often hired according to the recommendations, for each position we think over test tasks, we carry out on the introduction of a person into the workflow. The key to peace is detailed preparation for the tasks. When working with the client, you first need to learn about it, understand how our product can help, calculate some numbers, imagine what the client expects from the meeting, and only after that go to it.

Another guarantee of calm is a thorough filling of the calendar. This gives me an understanding of how much time it takes to solve different problems. My opening of the year is postponed messages in Telegram: I send messages to myself when I need to do something and remember something. Or colleagues and clients-when they should remember something.

Comment by Selectel : “The guys from Ussed came to us with a request for a specific“ iron ”that would be ideally suited for their tasks. We selected for them nine servers of an arbitrary configuration based on Intel Silver 4114 and Silver 4214. The peculiarity is that these servers can be modernized throughout the lease. Adding memory, discs and other components, reconfigure the housing, replacing processors is very convenient. All the platforms are also used on NVME-disks, including the new NVME U.2 format. The servers have a 1 Gb/s Internet channel both in the internal network and in local, but are located for greater safety in not one place, but at two different points in Moscow. ”

Pavel Sedakov, co -founder of Oggetto:

Our company creates online stores for large stores like PUMA, subsidiaries of Lʼoréal, Canon, Castorama, Golden Apple. It all began in 2008: we entered the business without experience, but with the knowledge of how to launch effective online stores and look for customers. We rented a tiny office on the outskirts of Taganrog, registered on the International Freelance Birge Odesk and began to work. Our first customers were from America: micro and small businesses, unknown construction agencies, restaurants from conditional arizona, recording labels from Texas.

We worked through an intermediary, so there were always problems with agreements: customers fantasized one thing, we understood the other. As a result, we subscribed to something that went beyond the budget. It was nervous. We made about 200 projects in the American market, but all are local. And we, as a young team, wanted to do something really large-scale.

In 2014, we abruptly changed the vector and began to work with large companies in Russia and Ukraine. The new customer is a federal network for the sale of cell phones. Ambitious project, a large budget. We were sure that we all know and can: what's the difference, to make an online store for John from Texas or for a large network? But the first task we failed with a bang. It was necessary to transfer the client’s data from the old platform to a new one. Previously, this was a maximum of half a day for this, but this time, due to the scale, many additional nuances appeared that we did not take into account. As a result, I had to redo more than 10 times, and the budget grew 2.5 times - all expenses, of course, were extinguished from their own pocket. It was the most difficult moment in our history. Then I realized: we spend money, but we buy experience. We finished that year (the only one for all the time of work) with losses, but the next project we worked clearly: we appreciated the task adequately and built the necessary processes. In addition, we have become more stable morally. When there is no way to learn from other people's mistakes, obstacles should be perceived as a useful training.

Today we continue to work with large business in different segments. Of course, corporations have a lot of bureaucratic troubles: endless contests, tenders, meetings, clarifications and meetings. The fastest transaction takes at least six months. And some even last for two years. This is nervous, but such a situation has its advantages. When you met 10-15 times with the client, by the beginning of the work you know him as a native and it is comfortable to interact with him. In addition, work with large business is more stable, predictable and allows you to launch ambitious projects.

Selectel has products for any projects. For example, experienced teams may be useful to selected servers with the possibility of flexible customization for a specific task. Young teams are a cloud platform, focused on rapid scale under high load (including classic virtual machines, database as a service and other cloud functions). Or, for example, professional administration, protection against cyber attacks, backup service, integration through route private networks and much more. You can find a product that is suitable for your business on the Selectel website.

Made in sold!

Photo in the announcement: Hussain Warraich / Shutterstock