'Emigration must be difficult': how an IT specialist from Ukraine built a career at Netflix

Alex Borisov is a Ukrainian IT specialist who has been working at the American company Netflix since 2019. His youth was spent in the city of Bakhmut, where today the Ukrainian Armed Forces are fighting stubbornly against the Russian occupiers. Dev told the story of a Ukrainian developer.

Photo: IStock

Alex studied in the city of Dnepr, worked at the game development company Playtika, and then moved to the USA. There he worked at Google, and after some time he moved to Netflix.

Detstvo

“I was born in Kyiv. But since my father was a military man, we moved often. Before university, I studied at five schools,” says Alex.

When the guy was 5 years old, his family moved to Bakhmut, Donetsk region. He went to first grade in this city in eastern Ukraine.

“I grew up in Bakhmut. This was my youth. First friends first. I learned to play football in this city. I still play it. It’s very hard to see what Bakhmut has become now,” says Alex.

After 9th grade, Alex entered the military lyceum in Donetsk. The guy has a military dynasty: his grandfather was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet army, his father is a colonel in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. But after a few years, the guy realized that he wanted a different future for himself.

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“When I said at home that I didn’t want to be a military man, there was a scandal in the family. Every head of a family wants the best for his children. This is how my father saw my career. I have two children, so I understand him,” says Alex.

And when Alex said he wanted to go into computer science, his father called it a “false profession.” At that time, computers were just beginning to appear en masse. The guy became interested in PCs by reading about them in printed magazines. He says that he didn’t always understand everything, but it was like entering another world.

“My parents did not insist on their way, for which I am grateful to them. They said: “Your life is yours to decide.” With computers, I was under the impression that you could create things with them and that would have an impact on people,” says Alex.

Dnieper

When Alex was studying at a military lyceum in Donetsk, his parents moved from Bakhmut to Dnepr. The guy left the military school and entered the Dnieper educational complex No. 66.

“In January, a Russian missile hit a residential building in Dnepr, which is located near the educational institution where I studied in the 11th grade. It’s creepy,” he recalls.

Soon Alex entered the Dnepropetrovsk National University of Railway Transport, where he began studying computer science. “We even had analog rather than digital computers (electronic computers, prototypes of modern computers). We did laboratory work on them,” says Alex.

He remembers how in the early 2000s at the university they taught programming languages ​​that were rarely available anywhere. This came in handy at Netflix, where Alex works today: he understands one of the rare programming tools the company uses. And I received this knowledge while still a student in Dnepr.

Also in the 90s, the university began to use training programs from American universities. Therefore, engineers with knowledge of computer science, popular at that time, began to graduate from Dnepropetrovsk University. In 2006, in his 4th year of study, Alex got a job at a company that was located in a neighboring area of ​​the city. It turned out to be PrivatBank.

Privat recruited several groups of students from my university, whom they trained in the tools that the bank used. Then there was an exam and we were offered a job. This was my first job, where I worked for three years. The first salary is $270 per month. The increased scholarship was then 100 hryvnia,” he says.

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Alex recalls a funny story from his student life. Since he studied well, he was nominated for a personal scholarship from Ukrzaliznytsia, which amounted to 300 hryvnia. However, a “kind” fellow student intervened in the matter, who went to the dean’s office and reminded that “Borisov had a B in English, he only received an A after a retake, so he did not deserve the scholarship.”

The young man did not receive a scholarship. “This is very ironic, considering that it is now my main language of communication. Today I remember this with a grin. The teacher said: “If you need English in life, then you will learn it,” says Alex.

After Privat, Alex got a job at the IT company InfoReach, which had offices in Dnipro and Chicago. In Ukraine and the USA, there were 20 IT specialists each developing solutions for trading operations.

“In 2011, I was sent on a business trip to the USA for 3 months. This is how I first found myself in this country and I liked it. There I realized that as an engineer I could compete with specialists around the world,” he says.

In addition, Alex found a local professional and sports community. I went to local meetups, java user group and similar meetings. He also played football, becoming part of American society.

Returning to Dnepr, Alex began to wonder how he could move to work in an American office on a permanent basis. Sometimes InfoReach made similar transfers of people. However, at that time there was no such possibility. Alex did not wait and began to act.

USA

The guy moved to Kyiv, where he got a job at the game development company Playtika. “I was the first backend engineer in their office. They then made the first product in Vinnitsa. In 2 years we grew to hundreds of engineers,” he says. At the same time, Alex focused on moving to live and work in America.

“The US was giving 65 work visas a year back then. When you receive an offer from a large American company, you cannot work until October 000 - then the financial year begins. You can start working if the Department of Labor has approved your application. To do this, the employer must submit it from April 1,” explains Alex.

Alex was offered an offer by the company Tango, which created its own messenger. And I submitted my application on April 1, 2013. However, that year there were twice as many applications - 2. In the USA they decided to play a lottery - whoever is lucky will work in the country.

“I lost the migration lottery. I had to wait another year. I decided to increase my chances: it turned out that the more offers, the more “lucky tickets” you have. As of April 1, 2014, I had 4 offers. Only one of them won,” he says.

Alex says that “emigration should be difficult.” Because this is a test of how ready you are to live in a new country. Alex ended up working for a startup in which Alibaba invested money.

“We have attracted a lot of investment. The startup created one of the first video messengers. But very quickly we started having growing problems. Investors expect growth from startups, but we have begun to lose users. As a result, layoffs began. I decided not to wait, but to look for a new job,” said Alex.

Google

In 2015, he managed to reach Google, where he received a job offer. He agreed. At that moment, he had already been working in the Senior position for 10 years.
Then the company tried to enter the smart home market and bought the startup Nest for $4 billion. They tried to integrate Nest technology into the company’s system, as Alex says.

The Ukrainian was creating a platform that would allow Nest devices to switch to the Google system and add new developments. It was planned that the system would become open source and in the future it would be possible to connect any “smart” gadget to it.

“I worked like this for 1,5 years, and then changed direction. I changed it because it should be a global system, but we couldn’t come to an agreement with other players in the market and left it internal,” he says.

At Google, it's very easy to change teams, as Alex says. “There are internal job search portals where you can immediately see what the team is working on. And they see your performance. And this way you can be noticed,” he says.

Alex went through several dozen places until he found what he liked. The choice fell on the team involved in the ML platform for detecting fraudulent payments (Fraud detection): their development processed 2 million requests per second.

The IT specialist explains that the tech giant has its own rules. And if you want to grow your career in a company, then your contribution to its development must be measurable. You can't just be a cool engineer. Your project must take off, you must show your role in growth, and the business must need it. Such rules somewhat create bureaucracy and races across levels, as Alex says.

“This is purely my assumption, I have no evidence for it. But according to my estimates, 20% of projects on Google are created for their own promotion in the system. This is such a “dark” side of the industry. However, working for the company is an important part of my career,” he says.

As for the salary at Google, it consists of three parts: base, shares and a bonus, which is 15-20% per year and depends on performance.
At the time of Alex's work in 2016-2019, the company paid Senior Engineer $300-$000 per year.

At some point, the Ukrainian decided that he wanted to solve specific business problems and start working in this direction. “You can’t do this with users who pay Google: they don’t care how the system is structured, the main thing is that it works. I wanted to be closer to business,” he says.

Alex wasn't looking for a job. Netflix called him themselves.

Netflix

In 2014, while still looking for work from Ukraine, an IT specialist sent letters to various American companies. Including tech giants. None of them responded, because they receive millions of similar emails every day. Nobody except Netflix.

“We talked. And everything seemed to be great, but I was politely refused. The company said it had found a local candidate. And I didn’t have a visa then. But the impression from the company remained pleasant,” he says. The company still has contacts of the Ukrainian. And when she began to expand the IT part of the business, they contacted Alex and invited her for an interview. Alex passed the interview and was accepted into Netflix. He says one of the first interview questions is about the company's culture. There they clearly position their colleagues as a sports team, not a family.

The Ukrainian is automating processes at Netflix that help continuously create content. Officially, his position is called Staff Software Engineer. Alex spends 20–30 working hours from 40 per week in work meetings, communicating with colleagues.

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“I like it when Netflix turns local stories into global ones. Like it was with Money Heist, which started in Spain, or The Squid Game from South Korea,” says Alex.

A few months ago, he posted a photo of his Tesla Model S with “I Love Kyiv” license plates. He says that when you drive on the highway, you can see both Kharkov and Kherson car license plates.

“After the start of the full-scale invasion, we held a special event where we told our colleagues about the war in Ukraine. They invited a professor who said that the war did not start on February 24, or even in 2014. Therefore, my colleagues also know me as a Ukrainian,” he says.

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