8 years in one place! That’s crazy, I used to start looking for something new after just 2-3 years. But it’s because at EPAM it feels like you’re changing jobs (=projects) every few years or even more often, only the badge remains the same. Maybe the title gets upgraded, too.
Ultimately, over these eight years, I essentially worked with the world’s biggest niche e-commerce businesses. These are worldwide businesses with millions of products and massive traffic, usually brands that everyone knows. Probably, there are about three that are the largest, plus many smaller ones that are well-known in their field.
In essence, each project is like a separate job. There’s a distinct team, only partially consisting of EPAM colleagues, its own technologies, its own know-how. Typically, I am involved in two roles on such projects — Solution Architect and Senior Java Developer / Team Lead. I’ve largely moved away from management, retaining only the part that falls under Team Lead.
Formally, my current title is Chief Software Engineer L2. I transitioned into this from Solution Architect because over time I realized that I was slightly uncomfortable in the SA crowd: too much about diagrams and not enough hands-on. You occasionally meet SAs who barely understand what’s under the hood, or understand it in theory only (though sometimes well). But the position itself doesn’t really decide much. It can’t be completely ignored because it somewhat ties to the salary, but in general, what I do matters to me more than what I am called.
Essentially, I am now drawing the same diagrams and discussing the same solutions, but in between, I dive into tons of Java Spring code (including or not including SAP Commerce Platform) and periodically contribute to it. Every now and then, I have to puzzle over various borderline things between programming, networking, and server administration in a cluster.
Our company just turned 30 years old. It’s nice to see that things are going very well, and even known problems have been survived without major losses. The company has fully recovered, moved everyone who needed to be (and could be, and wanted to) to safe places. Work continues.
In general, thank you #EPAM
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 