KICKICO CTO: “I made my first money with coding at school”
Dear all,
On today’s Medium story agenda is the interview with KICK ECOSYSTEM CTO — Eugene Zykov. While we are developing KICK ECOSYSTEM, it is time to introduce you to the team’s core members that will give you an idea of who they are, what they do, and a little bit more.
Q: Tell us about your professional journey. What led you to join KICK ECOSYSTEM?
Eugene Zykov (E.Z.): I began my professional career during my time at university. I was always interested in everything related to IT and I even made my first money from software development while being a schoolboy. The first serious work experience I had was at a finance company, which greatly influenced my further career. For more than 14 years I have been working in the banking industry and have grown from an ordinary developer to a CIO of a large credit institution. I was attracted to KICK ECOSYSTEM because of the two key components: an ambitious product and how the project is linked to the finance sector. Before KICK I have worked with digital assets and blockchain technologies, therefore, as an experienced professional, I am certain that the future of finance lies within this field.
Q: When it comes to complex product development what qualities are you looking for in a programmer?
E.Z.: Being a successful software developer nowadays requires more than just writing code. Having professional IT knowledge is absolutely crucial, however, involvement in the process and willingness to participate in product development are equally important. In our company, each team member on an equal footing can participate in the process of creating a product, generate and propose new ideas. Therefore, the key factors we look for in new people are professional IT “Hard skills”, involvement and the desire to make the best product.
Q: Which product of KICK ECOSYSTEM is scheduled to be released first?
E.Z.: A large number of services are planned in our Ecosystem. At this moment we have directed the main efforts to develop complex financial services, such as KICKEX and KICKWALLET. We are planning to launch these services first. Next month, we plan to get another comprehensive build and test the end-to-end business processes: funds deposit to the exchange, trades check, funds withdrawal to the wallet.
Q: What is the most challenging part in developing such a product? Tell us about the most difficult task you had to solve so far
E.Z.: There are a couple of tasks our team is currently working on:
Launch and integration testing of KICKWALLET and KICKEX financial services. Key components of the system are developed in C++ and Golang, we use high-performance in-memory database management systems, along with high-performance equipment hardware. Preliminary load tests have shown the high performance of individual components, more than 1 MLN transactions per second, however, we do not stop at these metrics and keep progressing.
We have launched our own data center and we are preparing it for deployment. In fact, we are using a mix of cloud solutions and our own hardware, but we are planning to keep all our finances under our full control.
Moreover, we are exploring the launch of our own blockchain network and are preparing a “secret sauce” which we will announce when the time for commercial launch comes :)
Q: How would you describe your management style?
E.Z.: My management experience was influenced by both relatively strict financial structures and start-up type of projects. At KICK ECOSYSTEM, we stick to a flexible management methodology. All project teams work on the agile principle, which gives a certain degree of freedom to specialists and, in fact, overall the operational instructions come not from a manager, but from employees themselves. As I wrote above, this is the approach that motivates employees to offer many ideas for product development. In this way, we can always adjust to possible changes in the market and turn the development in the right perspective direction. Nevertheless, there is a clear control: every work sprint is carefully monitored both daily and weekly. The results are then discussed with the team, furthermore, we publish a developers progress report in the KICKICO Official Medium account approximately every 2 weeks. Any flops in planning and execution occur quite rarely, it is a pleasure to work in a team of professionals who perform their tasks efficiently and on time. :)
Q: Do you have any favourite books or authors?
E.Z.: I am inspired by the authors and researchers, who know how to accumulate their experience and present it well in a book, in addition to professional IT literature. One of such authors is Jim Collins, his book “From Good to Great” is an example of the most interesting research in the field of management. In my free time, I prefer books on scientific subjects.
Well, that is it for today. We thank Eugeny and let him get back to building top-notch KICK products.
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