sslotin's blog

Unordinary post-ICPC careers
By sslotin, history, 7 years ago, In English

Most of ICPC veterans I know joined companies like Google, Facebook, Yandex or some younger tech startups (1, 2, 3) or stayed at university, getting their scientific degrees and training some high school / university students in the process. That's all quite boring. I recently found out about some unusual careers of former olympians. By "unusual" I mean something like this:

Nikolai Durov — won ICPCs of 2000 & 2001 and also performed really well at some IOIs and IMOs. He co-founded VK and Telegram. (I don't think I really needed to introduce him)

Jakub Pachocki — 2nd place at ICPC '12 and 1st at GCJ of the same year. Last month I saw him at The International presenting a Dota 2 bot by a really cool ML project

Leonid Volkov — 14th place (bronze) at ICPC '01. He went into politics and now he is the chief of staff of Alexei Navalny's campaign (he is quite a trending oppositioner in Russia)

Just for fun, what other examples do you know of?

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7 years ago, # |
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The future looks black for Leonid. Nobody mess with Vladimir or ends up in Syberia.

Edit: But you're right. That's definitely not boring ;)

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7 years ago, # |
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_D%27Angelo — silver on ICPC in 2004, former CTO of Facebook, founder of Quora

By the way, you said you think you didn't have to introduce Nikolai Durov. I would say that people outside of Russia probably had no idea who he is (because we do not use VK or Telegram)

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    7 years ago, # ^ |
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    russians don't pay shit if you don't understand russian stuff

    (this is my second month in russia and I don't think I will survive more)

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      7 years ago, # ^ |
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      Hah, that is going off-topic, but I have to agree in majority of cases. When I was in Russia on Petrozavodsk camp it was a miracle if someone not connected to camp spoke English and people like saleswomen were pretty proud that they do not understand basic English and were talking in Russian to me knowing well that I do not understand a word and laughing after every sentence at my stupid grin :P.

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        7 years ago, # ^ |
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        You should've responded with "cheeki breeki".

        There's this joke: CIA trains a top agent for a super secret mission in Russia. They spend several months on top training to ensure he'll indistinguishable from a regular Russian citizen, then send him to a Siberian town.
        He enters a pub and orders vodka. Some old man keeps staring at him and says after a while: "You're not Russian."
        The agent tries to convince him otherwise: "What do you mean? Look, I drink vodka just like in Russia!" — drinks a glass of vodka in one shot, orders another and drinks that too. But the old man still says: "No, you're not Russian." The agent says again with perfect accent: "Look, I can dance like all Russians!" — takes off his coat and dances several traditional Russian dances. But the old man still isn't convinced. And so it goes.
        After several tries, the agent gives up, goes back to USA and reports about his failure to his boss, who rages: "I knew we couldn't trust you blacks with anything!"

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        7 years ago, # ^ |
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        Actually I meant everything not only language

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    7 years ago, # ^ |
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    Well, Telegram is quite popular not only in Russia (according to founders).

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7 years ago, # |
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Tony Hsieh — CEO of Zappos, ICPC World Champion (1993). He also lives in trailer and has pet alpaca — if you want something unordinary.

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7 years ago, # |
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Not "unordinary," I think it should be "extraordinary": http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/extraordinary

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7 years ago, # |
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Wow, I didn't know about Leonid.

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