Jobs: Vasily Ivanov, CEO of IT-company product KeepSolid

What do you do in your work?

I run the company KeepSolid. The most ambitious project on which we are known by millions of users all over the world - VPN Unlimited. Also recently appeared on the market a product designed for the senior management of the company, - Roadmap Planner. It helps to shape and control the implementation of the strategy.

How does your workplace?

We were in the company of 95 people. Besides the standard for IT-companies of specialists (programmers, testers, marketers, managers, copywriters), we have the extraordinary employees. For example, the therapist or nurse for children who go to work with their parents.

For the sake of efficiency and increase the comfort of employees, we have opened in the company's children's room with a nanny. Employees who had run away from work to sit with the child, can now safely take during working hours the company's affairs and leave the baby in the office under the supervision of a specialist.

My workplace is no different from the others, except for the table, which rises so that you can work standing up.

But for him, I'm rarely. Constantly changing the place of deployment in the office, working on different projects and documents. Determining factors when choosing a workplace - mood and level of concentration on the task.

Peregovorka - universal place. It can be shut down from all or something to discuss with colleagues.

Recently I invented another new job - the bar in the lobby that was created based on the racks at Starbucks on the Embarcadero in San Francisco.

Employees often come here to work with laptops to change the situation.

What gadgets do you use?

With the gadgets I have is simple: do not buy a lot of quasi-useful devices.

I have a MacBook and iPhone. Why Apple? My belief is based on several facts:

• iPhone - the first device that was created as a PDA. It belongs to Apple fingers management idea, rather than a stylus or buttons.
• Apple creates the market in order to maintain demand for their devices. Yes, many of the ideas do not belong to the company, but that its workers are the first to test and implement them at the highest level.

All other devices, in my opinion, do not have IT-companies, and those who understand this more. So, my watch is not able to go online, and the machine is principally gasoline, not electric.

But with the car, I take off in full. For compatibility with iOS platform native-board computer replaced the Apple CarPlay, added Starline modules with features such as remote start and car control with phone updated mechanics.

With respect, I like the shoemaker without shoes home server. For many years trying to make time to create a family photo archive. The maximum is reached before - a removable disk. And he had already stopped using. After dozens of trips my wife and I agreed on the desire to make a small number of photos that will forever remain in Facebook, and the rest we simply remember and tell your friends.

What software use?

Products for daily work on the computer:

• Safari - the browser, which is not looking for a replacement. Its functionality is enough for me. And these additional options as tabs synced with the iPhone, put a fat point in the selection.
• Mail - Apple native email client. Nice Handoff option allows me to continue to write the text of the letter on the iPhone, though I started it on a MacBook.
• iWork. Applications, Pages, Keynote, Numbers I am fully satisfied. This is a great alternative to Microsoft Office with native support for MacOS.
• Wunderlist - a service that synchronizes all my reminders between devices. In it, we with our partners are conducting common tasks by assigning them to each other.
• Slack - means of communication with the staff.

Phone for me - a bottomless source of information, which I wake up and go to bed. In addition to social networks, I check my email, corporate Slack, KPI product that office also represented in the form of dashboards.

The most popular application - the browser. I even started a few negative attitude to people who carry a phone, tablet, computer, watch, connected to the phone, and instead of accessing the Internet trying to find interlocutors answer to their question.

Recently, I have dumped a number of meetings, events, corporate meetings and private affairs, that everything is impossible to remember. So I have always at hand «Google Calendar." The main thing - do not be lazy to take the phone and immediately assigned to record events and reminders.

There are some simple games that help to develop certain skills. For example, Tanks and Turrets 2, which I recommend to go to our project managers and managers. Its feature is that the game does not need to devote a lot of time, but eventually you get a good experience to make decisions under conditions of limited resources.

Another growing application directory associated with travel. In it I have to be very popular (TripAdvisor, Google Maps, Airbnb, Expedia), and local applications. For example, the schedule of the ferry to San Francisco.

Is there a place in your paper work?

Yes. I love to read books not on the screen, and from which the smell of paper. Leafing through the pages as if you feel the information they soaked.

Colleagues who want to quickly get from me feedback, know that it is better to print the document and bring me, you send by mail or messenger. While working on a document, it is easier to take a pen, you make changes in a text editor on your computer. No matter how powerful it may be, it is better and easier to draw something by hand.

What is in your bag?

My bag of those things that are a pleasure to hold in their hands. I'm with her and travel with her as I go to work.

She noticed and bought my wife in one of the trips. A very unusual shape and structure, the internal organization of thought so that even in each pocket has a vent tape for removing small objects lying on the bottom.

There always is a laptop. Often, a company it is a book or print e-books, keys, headphones.

In traveling to join them passports and extra battery for your phone. The trips we went on the mode of "a minimum of things." If something unexpected will need, it is easier to buy on the spot than to carry with them. As a result, the two of us manage to travel with a suitcase that fits in your hand luggage.

How do you organize your time?

According to the head of operations, I am doing is very wrong. The head should not be loaded enough to howl as much from a lack of free time. His role - to delegate the implementation of the decisions taken. While I justify themselves by saying that the company has serious transition period, during which it is I have to build a series of processes.

Assist in the organization of the working day calendar remaynder. Without them, I would have skipped half of the meetings.

Another feature of the organization of time - this KPI. In addition to pre-planned tasks, there may be unexpected problems or, conversely, pleasant chores. The duty of top management - to manage such events. Negative correct, and enhance positive.

To do this, we have placed the office dashboards, which displays key performance indicators of the company, information about the behavior of our products in the market, work units and so on.

Passing the dashboards during the day, could not help the studied parameters and, if necessary, take action.

How to pass the time in traffic jams?

In situations of forced downtime leave the digital world: take out my phone or computer and go back to work cases.

Very much I love airports. Each terminal - a kind of coworking, which I appreciate in terms of usability.

Pay attention to the existence of outlets, Internet access, free of comfortable seats, a cafe and a means for notification of flights.

On the way to work I love to listen to music. Favorite music styles are quite varied: from heavy metal to electronic. Due CarPlay all of my music is only in the phone.

What's your hobby?

My hobbies are diverse: in the summer I master wakeboard, winter confident feel on a snowboard. Once a week - basketball with friends, which gradually turns into beer.

I like cycling, especially in San Francisco. An amazing trip for half a day, which begins in downtown, continues over the bridge "Golden Gate" and ends on the opposite side to the return ferry.

But the greatest passion - traveling. In addition to long-distance flights, and love road Trips. Perhaps the most memorable to date remains a road trip with my wife. We took the car on the West Coast of the United States, reached the East and then went north to Niagara Falls and across the Miami reached the southernmost point of States (Key West).

Layfhakerstvo from Vasily Ivanov

Over the lifetime of the literature I read to the end, only two books. Both Boris Akunin. All the other books I have read in one way or another connected with a trade, business, management, marketing.

From my point of view, the fiction - a refuge for those who are bored and want to take other people's inventions head.

Perhaps I will ever change this point of view, but now I want to concentrate on the affairs of the benefit of the company and employees.

Here is a book about the business that I liked:

• «From good to great», «How great are dying and why some companies never give up"And"Built to Last. The success of companies with vision"Jim Collins;
• «IT-Art of Project Management"Scott Berkun;
• «strategic marketing"Jean-Jacques Lamba;
• "Marketing Warfare" by Al Rice and Jack Trout;
• «My life, my achievements"Henry Ford;
• «Business adventure. 12 classic stories of Wall Street"John Brooks.

Each of them is interesting in its own way. For example, Jim Collins before writing the book, a five-year study, in which analyzed hundreds or even thousands of companies. Together with the team he gets to the bottom of the points that were actually causes rising or falling.

I also really like Coursera. There gathered a huge amount of useful information for IT-specialties, and a plus for many people may be able to get a certificate after passing the course.

What advise readers Layfhakera?

People often ask me how to succeed. I think it is important to:

• To decide on a profession, type of activity, type of business, which is really like.
• Put yourself BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal - big hairy audacious goal).
• Divide it into short and clear objectives behind which is easy to follow.

Should not give up, if someone Success gets easyAnd you have to overcome many obstacles. For example, in his essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox," Isaiah Berlin has described two types of personalities. Foxes know a lot, but superficially. They are cunning, able to constantly come up with new methods of hunting for urchins. Jerzy clumsy but confident in its strategy. They go directly to the fox, and every time the fox tries to attack, just curl up in a ball.

And in business: do not despair if you do not come up with the idea of ​​a new virus. It is enough to choose what you like and, if you really want this, your ideas translate into successful projects.