In pursuit of the things you love or like I was in Belgium Bashny.Net

Each of us has dreams, goals, hobbies (and have a job). Sometimes these things are the same, sometimes coexist, and sometimes even diverge. I was very lucky and, in fact, I was able to combine them and find your dream job, which perfectly combines the dreams and passions.

This post is inspired by two of today habrastatyami, namely «As I went to work in the pros London» and «Pro love of programming languages ​​», because it is the love of programming language, combined with my two main hobbies, threw me into the unofficial capital of the European Union.

Introduction
From childhood I was interested in two things: aviation and computer technology. B>

Let's start with a little autobiography my father - a military pilot, his childhood was spent in military camps, falling asleep and waking up to the roar of jet engines, while still a pupil for the first time jumped out of the helicopter serviceable with a piece of cloth, laid in his own backpack and called parachute D-1 -5u. This has not gone unnoticed and aircraft I loved with all my heart, so no doubt the choice of profession was not. After graduating aviation engineering education, I even flew a little as avionics equipment of the ship ("ship" in the Air Force plane is called a mass greater than 40 tons), but it does not showered and second passion: while studying at the institute was excavated disc with Mandrake, knopkotykanie studied in Borland C ++ Builder for writing labs (programming I can not name), and as a thesis was designed "system to suppress the effect of atmospheric turbulence on the crew" based on neural network with genetic algorithm learning, in both!

And I want to fly
But the Air Force generals I was not destined to become - the fate decreed otherwise, and I left the ranks of the Armed Forces. Next was a career Linux-engineer in various Russian and international companies, but was always drawn to the aircraft, spent hours under the glide path closest airports in simulators and Aviation Forum, a business trip, I loved only because of the flight, and always carried with him the "right» GPS navigator, who had mode "Flight" to keep track of changing trains and airways.

Of course, I am constantly monitors the vacancy and possible ways of development of civil aviation. Aircraft technician, yes - but there computers at 'A lighted lamp - Swap Block B ", but in the winter and in the summer on the concrete, and for retraining had to ask for money, and to fall into bondage to the employer very well not like self-taught not accepted needed certificates, and the salary forced to cry for the domestic aviation industry. Out of interest was, for example, open positions on the simulator in «S7 Training», but at that moment I had no rights, no car, and the salary they offered is not very high for shift work, 50 km from the house paid less than admin couple of servers.

At some point it dawned on me - but that the software for aviation also write and make ordinary people, not gods same pots, and what is the "air" programming language? Right, Ada! Hell, I had already somehow knew - flatmate praised me this "beautiful language without buffer overflows" and gradually I began to get involved in the community (yes, the community there, including in Russia),

On the way to his goal
Stood next task - to find a list of potential employers, their requirements and, if possible, to "light up" in these circles.
Search even potential employers in Russia did not give results, firms engaged in software development in this area, such as is, but whether or not they are set, or the requirements of an "expert C (++)", if not more fun ASM, but foreign world has shown that not all that bad: EADS, Boeing, several French about-airbus-ovskih companies it is currently used in the development of Ada and even occasionally appear vacancy; Well, in general, a dozen companies were recruited (for the whole world!). There was one problem - from Russia, they did not want to take (and, as will be seen further, it is not in the visa zamorochki). And then came the decision so popular lately - it's time to throw.

Emigration
Finding ways possible emigration did not take long - a well-known Red Cap Company has agreed to provide me with an old rusty tractor, for people in a support, even if the third line are always needed. No, it was not so easy and smooth, but still special complexity is also not represented. Three telephone interviews - Job Offer - 3 months of paperwork and passports pasted visa type D (long-term), the process of emigration to the Czech Republic painted on the Internet in great detail, I will not stop here. All belongings sold, the remains stacked in the Prius and a favorite on the night of December 25 (with a subtle expectation of good customs, which is not interested in the car piled with belongings on the backs of the front seats and the trunk lid up, and no queues at Christmas), our family of two man walked toward the state border Roosiyskoy Federation.

Highlights
The next step, as you may remember, was to "light up" in the "hellish" circles, and, at the same time, learn some language. Since at that time I used Fedora Linux as the main distribution, logical to create a development environment for this distribution, zapaketirovat lib, to correct errors and other routine bureaucratic work, and of passing popisyvaya something for yourself and helping others. In Debian Linux, by the way, the same work is done by Ludovic Brenta - my current colleague (but I did not know where he works until the signing of the contract).

I noticed
Finally, came the long-awaited moment: I get a message to Linkedin recruiter one of the consulting companies: "We look for Junior Software Engineer for one of our clients in the field of Air Traffic Control Management in Brussels." Three telephone interview:

Actually HR, general questions The project manager from the consulting company - Java / C ++ programmer - questions about the patterns and problems of parallel programming and a brief digression into how to behave in an interview (As it turned out) current timlid. Questions about the construction of complex, distributed systems, questions about the challenges of working with memory (everything is simple - Philip - one of the key developers of valgrind), about a bind, connect, SQL, find / grep / sed etc ... Most impressed question: "How many lines of code you wrote?" I'm even now, after two months of work, I do not remember how many lines of code I wrote on this particular project. Web testing for the presence of built-in brain kompillyatora language knowledge of the language Ada. Then I cheated a little - in a test by pressing the Ctrl button automatically puts the "deuce" (in order not to copy text and did not check how to behave in the compiler) ... Members Linux, guessed what was the trick, right? However, not all tests can be stupid copy and check, and it was necessary to collect at least 80% correct answers, and I thought that this my interview zakochilis Full-time interview coincided with my performance at FOSDEM on the theme «Ada in Fedora Linux» (presentation available on SlideShare, the performance itself should be somewhere on the internet). Tasks "to write code on a piece of paper»: «Find and Replace», «rotation of the outer boundary of the matrix" timing, zatrachivamoy climb in different atmospheric conditions and what else ... Well hell 6:00 (here I do not know from the root of Hell or Hell) torment after the flight and 14 hours on my feet. And provocative question about the frequent change of work ...
 The first question was, of course, "your citizenship?", Because my "international" resume is strongly discouraged, the answer is "Russia" their first upset, but during the second interview sounded something like: "We have learned a work permit will be Makes 2 months, you do not need a visa, it suits us, "my friend, who stood in the summary of the" Russia "did not even sobesedovat, the reasons I do not know, alas. Well, it is worth mentioning that the work permit was ready before my term ended "mining" in the Czech Republic,
And here it is - the long-awaited Job Offer! C May 1 I - programmer in the team to develop Enhanced Tactical Flow Management System company Eurocontrol. (Well, actually, not in the Eurocontrol, since all development given to sub-contract). The system is really complicated and is responsible for Flow and Capacity Management over the entire territory of a single airspace Members:





Has more than 2 million lines of code, while experienced several major changes for its almost more than 20 years of history (and this is not the limit, because the individual components were written in 1986), during which were solved very interesting problems of scalability, reliability, and once again the reliability, but more on that in the next releases!

That's because you can not talk about favorite and "working" languages, and make of your favorite work, no matter how exotic or he did not seem to be extinct. And yes, Dreams Come True , not only in the advertising of the gas giant, stands to make only a little effort, a little bit of luck diluted.

Source: habrahabr.ru/post/231121/