Meet the Writer: HackerNoon's Contributor Victor Semin, Product Owner

If you’re seeing this interview draft, it means you’ve recently published on HackerNoon a story that the community found interesting and/or valuable. For this reason, we would like to help the community get to know you better as well as find out some writing tips from you.

While this template is automatic, our interest in the answers below is genuine and our human editors (and some cyborg wannabes) will review it before publishing.

So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests.

My name’s Victor (just like that tough guy from one of Luc Besson’s movies).

About 6 months ago I moved to London with my wife. Currently, I am working at one of the largest UK FinTech unicorns as a Product Owner.

My hobbies include: mainly tennis, cooking, and responsible drinking (or tasting)

Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about?

So far it’s only one, about setting up an environment for experimenting with your product. I am currently working on a new article with a related topic. Hope to publish it soon!

Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about?

My main interests are about how to achieve 0 to 1 growth, and being a product owner. The beauty of this stage is that one has to find a proper balance between:

• Breaking some rules, finding shortcuts, and compromising, on one hand
• Making sure that product is scaleable on the other hand

Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?)

Write drunk, edit sober!

Just kidding.

My routine is usually like this: I come up with the idea of writing something and can create 80% of the content within 1 day. The rest 2-3 weeks I will be spending on reviewing. While as quoted above is usually attributed to Ernest Hemingway by mistake, the one below is genuine. And I like it:

Every day go back to the beginning and rewrite the whole thing and when it gets too long, read at least two or three chapters before you start to write and at least once a week go back to the start. That way you make it one piece. And when you go over it, cut out everything you can.

Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing?

Definitely finding time to work on the article. My schedule can be pretty tough.

What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career?

I have a couple of exciting projects going on right now. Not sure I can share all results, but these are integrations of my product with large players on the market. Once it’s done, I will surely share it on my LinkedIn

Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice?

Every Sunday I watch Bargain Hunt. I can’t even explain to myself why I am doing it

Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it?

Definitely cooking - I started not so long time ago, but apparently, I am doing well (assuming my wife is telling the truth). For me, it’s not as much about the result, as it is about enjoying the process.

What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next?

The next article will be covering the topic of event tracking, a more advanced approach compared to the one I described in my first article. After that, I think I will keep contributing to the ‘Growing 0 to 1’ topic.

What’s your opinion on HackerNoon as a platform for writers?

As a newbie writer really liked it. Most importantly, there are no complicated rules or requirements that I should meet to start. Just write stuff and publish it - as simple as this.

Thanks for taking time to join our “Meet the writer” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words?

Many thanks to the Hackernoon team for giving me an opportunity to make a first step as a writer. Before this experience, I had no idea that sharing my own thoughts could be an enjoyable and satisfying experience.