I was a very active child and was fond of literally everything: sports, drawing, music, mathematics, and, of course, video games. And although the first of them were loaded from film audio cassettes for a long time and did not cause any special emotions, the following 8-, 16- and 32-bit game consoles began a real gaming fever.
For some reason, university programming in C++ seemed rather boring to me, and I decided to delve into hardware. To do this, immediately after the second year, I transferred to correspondence studies. I was one of the first in my city to open a business for computer repair and maintenance and installation of video surveillance systems. Of course, games had to be put on the back burner in order to focus on making money.
Meanwhile, my hobbies did not go away, and I managed to record an album written about in the republican music newspaper and perform a couple of times. And also, having discovered a poet in myself, I even, to my amazement, won a literary festival, after which I performed a lot at various poetry nights
Once my hometown became too small for my business, I decided to conquer the capital – and moved to Minsk. There, among other things, I launched the e-commerce direction, quickly took the top of the search results, and then brought my second company, created specifically for this, to neighboring positions.
When the business began to operate autonomously, there was time for new projects: organizing tours on my minibus to music festivals and concerts in Europe, both for music lovers and musicians, and shopping tours to neighboring Poland and Lithuania. It was not a business but rather a hobby, bringing a small but pleasant benefit.
Confidence in the future and myself allowed, so to speak, to put down roots and then start a family.
But after a very short time, an accident happened to me that should have crossed out five years of my life, every minute of which counts. Then I tried to do everything so that I did not waste this time: I’ve been reading and doing sports; learning and then teaching English; I started writing a book and also wrote a play dedicated to my wife; and most importantly, I became the father of a beautiful boy.
Returning to life again, I began to prepare it for a complete restart. The 2020 Belarusian events served as the last trigger for this and showed me a direction outside Belarus through IT.
My wife and I became IT specialists in different directions. I consciously chose game dev for myself, finally seeing in it an excellent opportunity to realize all my creative and other ambitions.
I want to end with a miracle that happened to me. While looking for my first job in IT, I saw a Globant vacancy on LinkedIn. After reading the description of the company, I realized that I already dreamed of working in it. Still, while waiting for an answer, I tried other chances and managed to work for two months in a company developing hyper-casual games.
However, at the next Talent Day at Globant, I received an invitation to interview, after which I became the happy owner of the offer. And the miracle here is that my first real job in my new life was a huge project for the Gaming Studio!
Yes, yes, you were not mistaken. I said “first” because I cheated a little and worked in my friend’s company for the previous two months (by his goodwill). And now I have the happiness to grow and develop together with Globant while contributing my value. That’s the real power of desire!
After Russia started a war in Ukraine, my little family, my wife, my son, and I decided, like many people in Belarus, to leave the country as fast as we could. Fortunately, Globant helped us a lot with transportation to and accommodation in Argentina, which was preferable due to the unpredictability of the situation in our region. And it took about five days to get from point A to point B and obtain happiness and calm.
A couple of days ago, I was assigned to another massive project for the a Game company. And only one year ago, I had just started my career in IT, who could imagine that I’ll be working on such great projects in the company of my dream?!
P.S.: I don’t know if there is a universal recipe for success for everyone. However,I’d say that you must always love and believe in what you do, because the process itself is happiness, sometimes even more than a result!
And if someone asked me where to get energy for achieving my goals, I’d say: whatever happens to me during my life, I wake up every morning with the only thought: “And now my real adventure begins!”
