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Comment by salimmadjd | Hacker News Reader

Yandex has some of the best programmers in the world. This was a surprise to me, but in the past 5 years, I've been spending few months a year in Belarus with various engineering team and have been learning a lot about this region.

Yandex has it's own school within the universities where they recruit the best minds early on and train them. I've heard from programmers who now work at FB. That they could pass google's interview tests, but could not pass the Yandex test at all.

Add to that, Yandex Taxi is currently the second most popular on demand Taxi service in Russia. They might also be able to easily bypass many regulations we face here in US and get to a lot more driving data than google/uber/apple/lyft might have.

What does that mean? I think, the self driving car might finally give Yandex team something to do with all the talent they've been recruiting. So I would not dismiss their efforts at all. They could become a real force very quickly.

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Most of the Yandex developers are not that good or not loyal to a company. This classes in universities is a scam: instead of teaching people of real world things, they teach how to work with yandex tech stack.

Yandex lost almost all good developers and it is continue even further. Companies rent offices near yandex and find yandex developers in the restaurants around this buildings and convince them to leave. This is very easy to make a decision to leave yandex for them.

Once i came to talk to yandex and ask - why they don't make good experience for mobile apps in their search results? Why they are not indexing anything related to apps? Answer was simple - user then will use this apps instead of yandex.

And such toxic ideas are pretty common in the company.

Talking about maps - they pushed out of the market one of the most awesome maps application in the russia. It had crappy UI, but it always make correct estimates and was able to learn your behaviour (more than 5 years ago!). While their app doesn't work at all but it couldn't because they need real drivers to make sane navigation. Then they pushed it to a taxis with a very simple trick - for taxis they made routes LONGER than it should be. This got them big fleet of a taxis. (sorry no proofs, but they are on russian and you won't understand it anyway)

I hope they won't be that successful with their crappy product on the roads (they failed in almost everything in last years) and it will be much harder to compete for smaller teams as everyone will say "huh, but there are yandex guys already!".

This video is a too dumb for a year of work. Voyage are better already, but they are a small team unlike yandex. Geohotz was even faster.

I agree with you regarding their maps and products. I stopped using google maps here in these area because of all the inaccuracies, but at the same time the UI/UX of Yandex is horrible. I do not understand why they could not create better product with better UX. It's so frustrating to use their product and it's such a shame how they manage their team based on what you're telling me. I've been told by current CS/infomratic students here that, Yandex school teaches their student a lot about heavy math CS concepts instead of a specific language.

> This classes in universities is a scam

Wow, calling Yandex classes scam is bold accusation. Are you saying that the tech stack the Yandex is using is not from real world?

> Answer was simple - user then will use this apps instead of yandex.

Yandex is a business, not charity. It is the same reason why google will never use encryption in their email. Because they will not be able to scan for email content to display relevant advertisement.

Overall i find your reply very negative and zero value. You didn't pass yandex test, right? :)

> Overall i find your reply very negative and zero value. You didn't pass yandex test, right? :)

That cuts both ways - you don't see a problem with the needy practices of pretty much all major and many minor tech players, right? You don't get sick with all this mediocrity adorned with euphemisms, all this crap called awesome and all the greatness in life belittled? Do you honestly know not a single person that does quality work they can be honest about for a fair price that you would assume it's either "business" or "charity"?

> Overall i find your reply very negative and zero value.

The "argument" that "it's a business so hey" could justify anything, including robbing people, as long as you don't get caught. You know that providing value for society is one of the reasons societies let corporations operate at all, right? Modern business seems to think now that the bath tub is filled nicely (for them), there's no need for the plug anymore.

> This classes in universities is a scam: instead of teaching people of real world things, they teach how to work with yandex tech stack.

Is that true? The sample curriculum [0] doesn't seem to support that.

[0] https://yandexdataschool.com/edu-process/program/data-analys...

Machine learning lectures with Konstantin Vorontsov are one of the most brilliant course I ever seen. Konstantin is super smart, every topic explained in in-depth and with proper mathematical background. Video lectures of Yandex Data School - real thing, world class CS theory

Why add apps content into web search results? Using a website is much more comfortable than installing an app, checking its permissions, registering an account etc.

As a former employee of Yandex I totally disagree with what you said about 'not that good' developers and their loyalty.

It seems to me that the most common reason for leaving the company is immigration, which has nothing to do with Yandex itself. All my ex colleagues who left Yandex work abroad at Google, Facebook, MS and etc. Also I've seen many very good developers who cared a lot about their products. So my impression is somewhat opposite to what you described.

The OP doesn't seem to work there and seems like an outsider who thinks he knows how to run a company better than the people on the inside. This obviously misses a lot of moving parts and internal incentives (which yes may ultimately created a bad product). But I'd personally rather hear the experiences of people directly involved with the company.

I don't see anything wrong with training people on their tech stack either. That's not a scam, that's a highly valuable skillset if it gets you a job and experience. You can always learn other languages on your own, which is 10x easier after you know one.

Ugh, so much hate... It is okay to criticize the company and its products (nobody is perfect). But calling yandex data analysis school (I assume that is what you mean by "classes in universities") a "scam" is just disingenuous.

It is not a scam, it is basically a charity. First, it is free, no strings attached. You are even under no obligation to work for them afterwards (not even a moral one). The only price the students pay is that yandex becomes kind of an obvious place for internship, so many of the students apply (only then will they learn how to work with the "yandex tech stack", but that's the point of internship, no?) Allowing students to work with the yandex tech stack would be a hassle anyway - students would need to get access to the intranet, sign the nda etc... So these evil scammers teach them fundamental CS and machine learning concepts instead.

I guess the rest of the comment is similarly disingenuous and inaccurate.

What's the first most popular Taxi service? I haven't seen anyone using something different than Yandex.

Probably Gett.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gett

Yandex is the most popular taxi service in Russia https://www.ft.com/content/3fce1422-8fd0-11e6-a72e-b428cb934...

They have most popular mobile app, but there are other taxi aggregators that still heavily used and competitive on price.

Uber. You don't see it because most of the cars are unmarked.

Uber is definitely less popular than either Gett or Yandex.Taxi.

There is local service called RuТaxi that had 1 million rides daily and recently merged with least one other service. I suppose it's could be less popular in Moscow, but according to RBC it's larger than Yandex, Uber and Gett together. Source in Russian:

http://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/03/05/2017/5908a5de9a...

Paywalled English version:

http://www.unquote.com/cee/official-record/3004782/ufg-backs...

It's actually better then Ya.Taxi in Moscow, yet less well-known. They have had fixed-price rides long before yandex did (they have for a couple of months).

And then there are some people who use Uber, and them I really don't understand. AFAIU Uber has solved a problem nonexistent in many countries, and now tries to push its brand where there were better options long before Uber started in US.

BTW, yesterday I've seen an Uber Eats-branded byciclist, now that might be competitive.

> They have had fixed-price rides long before yandex did

As far as I remember RuTaxi had it even 4 years ago, but I not sure when they got mobile app since I only ever used website.

> AFAIU Uber has solved a problem nonexistent in many countries, and now tries to push its brand where there were better options long before Uber started in US.

As person who lived in both Russian and UK / London I understand why it's makes sense. Uber model works in countries that have one of the problems: bad public transportation (like in Russia) or very expensive taxi (like in London). Also they solve usual tourist problems that local services can't solve because you have to invest time to know what local service in $countryname is good or bad.

I have no idea about other countries, but service provided by same RuTaxi for instance was worse: old dirty cars, sometimes even drunk and just scary drivers. Thanks for competition all my rides become much more pleasant in last couple of years.

Also in Russia rides was more expensive: rides that cost $8 (~250RUB) back in 2012 now cost $3-4 (~150RUB). Recently I used Yandex taxi for ~5 minutes ride and paid $0.7 (30RUB).

The number 1 (is in process) is combination of two taxi aggregator services (RuTaxi + Fasten) banding together [0]

However, on self-driving car aspect, they would not have major technical debt compared to Yandex who has the best mapping data in Russia as well as the technical expertise.

[0] http://freenews-en.tk/2017/05/03/on-the-russian-market-of-ta...

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