"Focus On The Problem, Not On The Solution", Interview with Alexey Grigorev

Alexey Grigorev from Germany has been nominated for a 2020 #Noonie in the Future Heroes and Technology categories.

The Noonies are Hacker Noon’s way of getting to know — from a community perspective —  what matters in tech today. So, we asked our Noonie Nominees to tell us.

Here’s what Alexey had to share.

1. Which 2020 Noonie/s have you been nominated for?

1. Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - CAREERS
2. Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - DATA SCIENCE
3. Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - MACHINE LEARNING
4. Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - RECRUITING

2. Tell us a bit about yourself.

I live in Berlin with my wife and son. I'm a software engineer with a focus on machine learning. I work at OLX Group as a Lead Data Scientist. Previously I took part in data science competition and wrote a couple of books. One of them is “Mastering Java for Data Science” and now I'm working on another one — “Machine Learning Bookcamp”.

3. Tell us about the things you make / write / manage / build.

I like sharing knowledge:

• Giving presentations
• Talking on podcasts
• Writing blogposts
• Writing books
• Sharing code
  

4. What are you most excited about right now?

MLOps - for machine learning, infrastructure-related topics are quite challenging. MLOps tools aim at solving these problems.

I also like product management and always try to first think about the customer (but it's quite difficult sometimes!)

5. What are you worried about right now?

Nothing particular

6. What's the most useful advice you've ever given somebody?

Focus on the problem, not on the solution

7. How has the pandemic changed your life and/or career?

• More time with family
• Easier to take part in meetups and conferences (but the engagement is lower)

8. If we gave you $10 million to invest in one thing right now, where would you put it?

Educational companies

9. What's an opinion you have that most people don't agree with?

"Make it work, make it right, make it fast". Often software engineers don't agree with this: "when you made it work, there's no time to make it right, so there's a lot of tech debt"

10. Which apps can't you live without?

VS Code, Google Docs

11. What are you currently learning?

Communication skills: public speaking and writing

For much the same reasons Hacker Noon decided not to put good ideas behind pop-ups or paywalls — nor abuse your personal data to target you with creepy ads — we also decided that you don’t have to be a #thinkfluencer or have 50k followers on Twitter to earn the recognition that comes with a 2020 Noonie Nomination.

Make somebody’s day and nominate them to be recognized in the internet’s most independent and community-driven awards: NOONIES.TECH.