Our second guest recently became an Accenture project Regional Lead and is well known outside of Accenture as well, by previously participating in DevClub.lv with a presentation on Ansible, titled Automate everything with Ansible, and just recently, taking part in LatCraft.lv organized Cloud platform panel, and gave a speech about Docker at Ventspils ICT Cluster Meetup. He is also one of the main guys behind ADOP, so please welcome Anton Kaspiarovich

We know that you are from Belarus. Could you please tell us about your life in Belarus?

I moved about 5 years ago. Life in Belarus was good, actually. There were a lot of great people, companies, etc. But it’s not Europe to be honest, right? We have our own dictator (laughs). So it is really hard to do business and find work, I would say, because of salary issues and other problems. But I still love Belarus and I really enjoying going home and meeting my family and my friends.

What do you see as the main difference between Belarus and Latvia?

I would say Latvia is a more European country. People are more polite I would say. A bit happier, more of a smile on their faces, etc. But I wouldn’t say that Latvia is 100% better than Belarus or vice versa. There are different pros and cons for both sides.

How did you start working in Latvia? And why exactly Latvia?

Yeah, it is a different topic (smiling). Actually I didn’t choose Latvia because it is Latvia. I just pointed on the map where at least someone spoke Russian, because I didn’t have any friends or contacts here. So I just packed my stuff, sat in bus and went to a country where I had never been before. Basically I was pushed to leave my country because I needed to find some studies, official studies, where I can actually just take exams without any problems. So Latvia was a great place for that (smiling). And as I already was an experienced PHP developer, I found studies here and I just took the exams and I passed them on the first try. And that’s how I got here…

How did you decide to study IT and if you wouldn’t be working in IT where would you work?

I can’t even image where I would be without IT because I started studying IT when I was 14 years old. I never kinda really attended any official studies except for PHP, right? (smiling) So I’ve learned mostly through just self-teaching and reading articles, etc. I started from PHP and it is only because of one popular game – Counter-Strike (smiling). So in scope of this game there was a computer club. The reason why I started learning PHP was that I wanted to provide statistics – who killed whom, how many times, and so on (smiling). There were frameworks for it already and I really enjoyed to learn more and more about it.

What are your hobbies?

They mostly are related to IT honestly. But I also like to travel. So if I have a chance to travel somewhere I will do it for sure.

What is your biggest dream?

Hmm, I don’t know… Maybe a second child, my own house. Just a regular one. I would say nothing special.

Do you still playing Counter-Strike?

(Laughs) No, no. Actually the reason why is only because now I have an 8 years old son. So it is hard to explain to your son that you should play, I don’t know, only 30 minutes per day. Kids don’t understand limitations. So I’ve removed all games from my PC (smiling).

What do you like and dislike about Accenture?

I would say that Accenture is different for everyone. It kinda depends on the country, it depends on the department and it depends on the project. So even, I don’t know, a SAP person can have a very different opinion than what I have about Accenture. This is what I’d say I dislike. But at the same time I really like how our projects are running in DevOps. I was really surprised that I can do basically whatever I like and use different tools, work with different people in different locations, travel to those locations, get bonuses, etc. There are many opportunities that I really like in Accenture.

What do you think about your colleagues?

Of course I like my colleagues. We have a main goal, I hope so (laughs). And I like that most people like to share their knowledge’s. I like to share my knowledge as well, contribute to our tools, etc.

Why DevOps? How you started work in this area?

Actually I think it’s because of Dagnija (note: ex Accenture HR employee) and Uldis. (smiling) So previously I worked as a pure PHP developer. But at that time I was doing the same thing as I am doing right now as DevOps, but as a team lead for PHP people. I provided continuous integration, we used Docker, etc. To reduce time for feedback we supported Agile deliveries. But I never thought about myself as a DevOps person. Obviously, I was a bit tired of the same projects; we used the same frameworks over and over again. We were good with it, we develop bundles for reusable components. But I was getting tired of the same tasks so I started to look to different tools like Ansible to improve basically daily tasks for me and for my team members. Then I gave a speech at the DevClub about Ansible. And to be honest I’m not very sure if that was the reason why Accenture contacted me and asked me to come and talk about opportunities in DevOps. I even asked Dagnija if maybe I will fit better in a PHP developer as I had a great background in PHP but she told me: “No, we see you as a DevOps”. And I hope that I haven’t fail that expectations. (smiling)

If you know someone who has contributed to DevOps culture in Latvia and should deserve to have an interview, drop a line in the comments, and we will try to arrange one.