Today, we are announcing Anton Koldaev as the newest member of our operations team! Anton hails from Moscow and recently worked at the first Russian-based cloud hosting company.
In David’s recent post on remote working, there were a number of comments about investing in more junior or less experienced individuals. Anton is 24 and a great example of that and quickly won us over during his 30 day trial as a junior member of our team.
How we hired Anton
Anton saw our job board post via an old colleague’s tweet and responded with a well-written email to us. We reviewed his resume and gave a traditional operations task to complete: Deploy Redmine to EC2 using Chef, and document the process.
Anton not only did an excellent job from the operational side of things, he was the only applicant to use the Redmine instance to document his work. In addition, he was the only applicant to take a page from tally and build a little Campfire integration for code pushes, deployment notifications, etc.
Impressed with Anton’s work on the trial project, each member of the team had a chat with him on Skype. (We also talked to his references who all had great things to say.) As a team we agreed that Anton would be a good contractor, and offered him a 30 day trial.
Anton started with documentation, and worked his way through projects such as upgrading our Chef server, deploying new hardware for Basecamp and rebuilding our staging database servers. Near the end of his trial, Anton was able to get a visa to visit Will in the UK for a week of co-working and in depth learning about our operations.
Welcome Anton!
Taylor wrote this on Jan 03 2012 There are 22 comments.
NL 03 Jan 12
Welcome, Anton!
Alex Anglin 03 Jan 12
Sounds like a case of hiring done right. Congratulations Anton!
Nina Stawski 03 Jan 12
Congratulations Anton! (and 37signals team for sure :))
Stacy 03 Jan 12
This is truly amazing! I guess the world really is flat.
I’m giving a LOT of thought to ONLY hire remote workers. No offices. Then we meetup once a quarter at a very posh hotel, or at a conference, somewhere around the world. What a lifestyle!
Anonymous Coward 03 Jan 12
A Russian will now have access to my credit card data.
Historically, that has not been good.
Just say’n.
meze 04 Jan 12
@Anonymous Coward: will? They always had your credit card data ;)
Good job, Anton!
Eponymous Coward 04 Jan 12
Is Redmine better than Basecamp?
Dave Hoover 04 Jan 12
Thanks for the response to my question to David. This is great info. Congrats to you and Anton both!
Dan 04 Jan 12
@37signals
Are you up to “37” employees yet?
You must be close
Gaurish Sharma 04 Jan 12
Do you allow access to source code & client data ? it can be potential risk .
If yes, then how you manage the risk? If not, then what useful work can be given to these applicants that proves their competence without giving access ?
This is the concern that stopping many from hiring remote works who can’t be trusted.
Peter 04 Jan 12
So, Anton was WAY better than all the rest, you ALL talked with him and with ALL of his references. You ALL were impressed, but still didn’t trust Anton enough and offered TRIAL . Just out of curiosity – what was your plan B in the case if Anton had rejected trial?
Taylor 04 Jan 12
Hey @Peter,
We offered the trial with the expectation that since he was applying, and understood the trial was a gateway to a non limited offer, he would accept. Had he not accepted, we would have been patient and identified a candidate who was equally qualified.
Vadim 04 Jan 12
My congratulations to Anton! :)
David Andersen 04 Jan 12
Dear Peter,
Done a lot of hiring?
I mean everyone knows all you need to be sure someone is a good fit is to read their resume and spend the day interviewing them.
Don Schenck 04 Jan 12
Best thing about this?
It’s completely transparent to those of us who use your products.
BradM 04 Jan 12
@Anonymous Coward: No one has access to your credit card data. 37S uses Braintree.com. I can’t think of many software companies who track their own CC data. If there were, they’re not in business any longer.
@David Andersen: Are you serious?? At first I laughed, then realized that you might not be sarcastic. Which I found even funnier.
Andrew 04 Jan 12
Anton is the first Russian in 37signals isn’t he?
Anonymous 04 Jan 12
Did he come to the US so Jason or David could meet him?
Tata Donets 04 Jan 12
Congratulations to Anton!
David Andersen 05 Jan 12
@BradM – definitely sarcastic.
Dylan 05 Jan 12
Who is Taylor? If he’s a system admin like the applicant, can I commend 37signals on the depth of your company’s writing ability!
cbmeeks 05 Jan 12
I’ve been to Moscow. Interesting little town. lol
Congrats to Anton. But stay away from me. Seriously, every time I meet a Russian I wind up turd-faced drunk. Good times.
This discussion is closed.