🔻 👨🏼‍🎓 😕 The path from June to executive director at Sberbank. Interview with Alexey Levanov 🌊 🌨️ 🏇🏿

On September 7, we spoke live with Alexei Levanov, chief executive at Sberbank. Lesha joined Sberbank in 2014 as a Junior developer. Now he is the Executive Director: Product and Team Lead of the Sberbank Investor platform team and is in charge of Sberbank Investor and Sberbank Development Schools. Lesha used the example of his path: how to grow and develop in a large company, what mistakes should be avoided and how to initiate changes. We talked about challenges and opportunities, about work-life balance, about how not to burn out and return if it does burn out. We share with you the transcript of the broadcast.

My name is Alexey Levanov. We will talk about how, in the IT field, it seems to me, it is worth building their careers for those who are at the beginning of the path. I'll share what I found out and highlight the mistakes I made. Maybe through such a prism it will be perceived a little brighter. I would like our communication to help you grow in a big company, not burn out and move into a brighter tomorrow.

There are three main qualities that I believe are essential if you want to pursue a career in an IT company. The first and most hackneyed one is what you have most likely met more than once; let's call it conditionally "stress resistance". I know that everyone already puts it on their resume, but it's still a cornerstone - if it's not just a line on the resume, but really your quality. Although I would call this quality differently: "acceptance of changes." By it, I mean the ability not only to work in a stressful situation and accept changes, but to accept them easily enough so that they are not a constant source of torment for you.

The modern world is tough, it is constantly changing: new challenges, new processes. It's not necessarily good or bad - it just changes. New development tools and business requirements are emerging, everything is constantly new. If you are stressed every time about this, then working in IT and generally building a career will be quite difficult. Especially considering that IT is always at the forefront of change.

The second important thing is this: it is not enough to accept changes, you also need to create them. Of course, we don't create change just for the sake of change, because we can; we change something because we are experts. We see the imperfection of processes, technologies, customer path. After that, we take and change the imperfect part. We drive change.

The third story is the most important of all: we get things done. It is not enough to be stress-resistant and drive change: if we do not bring this drive to the end or do not fulfill our tasks, we are worthless.

These are the three cornerstones. If you noticed, I haven't said a word about hard skills - although this is a fundamentally important thing.

Let's make a remark. Everyone talks about hard / soft skills, and there are many different opinions on this. I think this: if you are at the beginning of your career (your story is just beginning as a software developer or in general as an IT specialist), focus on hard skills. The above principles will work if you are a good person. You can be a good person, have empathy and a developed mind, even try to get things done and be stress-resistant; but if you don’t do what you have to do with your hands, you are also worthless as a specialist. In the future, with development, the more pumped you become, the more role soft skills begin to play - it's true. At some point, they can become just as important, or more important, than hard skills. But, if we are talking about the beginning of building a career, focus on hard skills, without them anywhere.

Initially, I wanted to build our discussion around my life story, but I realized that this would hardly be of interest to anyone other than my parents. Therefore, I will try to tell, using the prism of personal stories, about the changes that are taking place - which we are making, about how to work with it, and about what can hinder us. But first, a couple of questions.

Are you a CEO or product-owner (PO)?

These are different things: one is the position, and the other is the role. I am an executive director by position, and a product-owner and team lead by role. That is, one thing is conditionally written in the labor book, and the second is what I do.

So did you figure out how to hide the connection of fast payments in the Sberbank application?

Nice, cool question, but no, not me. I will pass the question on to our experts, I myself have not studied where the fast payment system is.

How long do you spend in development now?

Good question - I wanted to get to this gradually through history. In short, I devote about 3 hours a day to development (code, checking pull requests, and so on). It is clear that there are work meetings that take time, there is a conditional backlog or cutting of tasks, but, in general, no one canceled the hardcore development, which is great.

How to take responsibility for the product-owner and get a job?

To be honest, I don't really understand what it means to "take responsibility of PO". And to get a position, you have to work. You work hard, you work hard, you solve problems, if you successfully solve them, you grow. This is a basic story, it is the same everywhere plus or minus. In fact, PO is just a development area that you might be interested in. I was interested not only in hardcore development, but also in the impact on the product, the ability to manage it - so I developed towards PO. That is, you need a desire, a job and the three foundations that we talked about - from this the history of obtaining a position is formed.

So, I talked about what to focus on (remember: on hard skills, if you are a beginner, then - in the process of pumping soft skills), and about the three main qualities that you need to cultivate in yourself - acceptance of changes, drive of changes and bringing cases to the end. Let's move on to more specific stories.

About the changes. I started developing back in 2011, and got help on various topics. At first I wrote for Android. I came into development like this: my friend and I saw that articles on Habré periodically appear about how another person developed a Tetris clone and earned billions; in fact, to lure a student, nothing else is needed. I read them and thought - I'm in business. A friend got the MacBook, so at first I wrote on Android; I went through several freelances and several places in other companies, and in 2014 I came to Sberbank. At that moment, I already had applications in the AppStore, some were quite successful, they wrote about them on Iphones.ru, AppleInsider; I made some money and thought it was the pinnacle of skill and career, and I didn't need other developers. Of course, when I joined the development team,I was the weakest in it, although it took a couple of days to realize it.

It was a wonderful time. All communication with the business and other professionals went through our project manager, but the environment was great for growing. When you write the code alone, at some point you decide that everything is fine; and then you will find out that there are correct approaches to development, patterns that you never even thought about. In the midst of cool professionals, you grow much faster.

At some point, our team began not only to grow, but to move to agile. Before that, all developers were on the same team. It was great - everyone is working on a different part of the application; today - this one, tomorrow - another. It was difficult, but interesting. I remember that it was my graduation year, I had to do a diploma, practice practice and somehow go to classes outside of a full working day. It was difficult, I then got hooked on coffee - the glaze in front of the office became a morning ritual. However, it was an incredible experience, it was very cool. The very opportunity to work on such a product was wonderful. Then we began to move to agile, and from a platform team focused only on developers, we moved to a team that included specialists from all industries - that is, a cross-functional team. One side,this is very cool and interesting: you have colleagues from related areas, analysts, designers, testers, developers of other platforms and mobile operating systems. But from the concept of "you make the whole application" you go to the concept of "you are responsible for the direction in the application, for some part." The further, the more such parts: the application grows, the functionality is fragmented.

And here we come to understand that more people are needed. In order to get into our team, a person had to possess a certain set of qualities, mainly hard skills, because we have a certain technology stack, approaches to development, and we expected all this from the applicant. We realized that we had already hunted everyone we could; and everyone who else could come up to us is already sitting in warm places, and everything suits them. At that moment, an initiative of development schools was born - not my personal idea, but came from below. This was my favorite story, and I spent some time studying them.

We'll come back to cross-functional teams a bit later, but first I'll pause and talk about the problems that can arise when you decide to build your career in IT. In fact, if you have developed three basic qualities, then your only actual work problem is the very emotional burnout that has already formed the socio-cultural layer. This is a serious problem: while it won't kill you, it poses a serious threat to your productivity (and work, team, product, company).

There are many definitions of burnout, but I stick to this: it is a state in which those tasks that you previously solved with ease, suddenly become unbearably difficult. You hardly force yourself to do them, you constantly have to make incredible efforts in order to concentrate and work. The frustration is growing. It does not go away by itself, but it can appear for a number of reasons; I singled them out three - I passed all three myself.

The simplest reason is product fatigue. Let's say you've always liked pattern recognition; you love this direction. You came to a team that recognizes road signs or license plates, for example. And so you started working on the product, learned OpenCV. We realized that it didn’t fit, and switched to neural networks. We began to train our network, read everything we could about the mathematics of neural networks; maybe even wrote a scientific article. We released a great product. Several years have passed, and you understand - that's it, you don't want to do this anymore. The love for license plates has passed. This is normal, this is a natural path, it comes sooner or later for everyone. We all get tired.

We need to move on, and we need to understand exactly how. Of course, it is better not to allow this situation: as soon as you understand that the topic is no longer enthusiastic, it is best to talk to the management and transfer to another direction. If it doesn't work out, maybe you can create a new direction yourself. Maybe you still like recognition as such, and you can recognize something else. Or perhaps the whole sphere is not the same, and it is necessary to change it. In an amicable way, you need to prepare a successor to your place and calmly move. Nice, beautiful story.

There is such a story that you would like to stay in the same team. You like the product, your team, you have a great product manager - everything is fine, but you just don't want to write any more license plate recognition code. The great thing about cross-functional teams is that you have the opportunity to switch and become that T-shaped specialist that has been talked about a lot. This is good for you because you are learning new things. You continue to develop in your field - albeit at a slightly slower pace - you explore related fields and increase your value as a professional. For the employer - by reducing the bus factor.

The T-shaped Specialist is an evolution of the I-shaped Specialist with deep knowledge of one specific area. Let's say a person went to school and decided to become a programmer; he likes to write in C # or in Unity, for example. He didn't go to university, but he became an expert in his field, and makes games. He is an I-shaped-specialist; he will most likely be hired already. If the same person studies the integration with the backend, is able to connect to various questions at least analytically, and understands testing (probably in the basic basics of auto-testing and writing test cases), then he will be a T-shaped specialist. That is, this is a person who can help in related competencies within a cross-functional team.

The bus factor is a fictitious metric that shows the number of people who can ... be sent somewhere far away by bus, but the team will continue to work somehow. For an ideal T-shaped team, it is equal to N-1 (N is the size of the team): even if one person remains from such a team, he will be able to move the work forward, albeit very slowly. Of course, this is an extreme example, this almost never happens in life; however, creating such a team is good practice.

Having become a T-shaped specialist, you stay in the product and with those people with whom you are comfortable, you continue to develop, and this is in your employer's hands, because you close the bottlenecks of the project.

The situation is even worse when you burn out without calculating your strength. Let's say you really like the project, you are burning with it. It's very interesting. Instead of realizing that this story is long, you try to run it at a sprint pace. You have enough for a while. Maybe you will burn out after the finish, but rather in the middle; both are bad. In my case, I really liked the product I was working on; I was very driven to create it and see the result, but I couldn't rest. I kind of heard about work-life balance, but it didn't work. Even if in the evening I left the unfinished task and went with the girl to the cinema or with friends to the bar, in my thoughts I still remained in the task; he seemed to have had a good time, but he didn’t really rest and didn’t do the task.So I decided to give a damn about work-life-balance and just started working - I worked, worked, worked, and then something clicked. It was very fortunate that the “click” phenomenon itself happened after the completion of the project and before my vacation. I went on vacation, thought a lot, and when I returned, I talked to the manager - he said that I couldn't write this code now. I had a wonderful leader; he asked what I would be interested in doing.

So I switched to the development of that very project of development schools. As I said, we had a moment when it turned out that there was nowhere else to take developers, and it was decided to train them on our own. The first schools were launched successfully, some of the trained people were successfully hired. The project itself was a bottom-up initiative. The head of the mobile development department started this idea, and we, as a community, determined: what would be in the training program, how to select people, how to validate them on the way out, whom to take - in general, an idea to close a need. And when I burned out, they told me: if this project is interesting to you, do it. It turned out to be terribly interesting.

Standard burnout stories tell you to lie on the beach and look up at the sky until you move away. In my case, switching the field of activity helped. On the one hand, I realized that “work-life balance” still works; Returning from vacation, I realized that the tasks I was sitting on, I can do faster - on the one hand. On the other hand, this new area turned out to be incredibly interesting, and we did a lot. Launched new areas of the program, hired new people, launched partnerships with universities, started issuing certificates of completion - a successful big relaunch. After that I managed to get back into development, but this whole story is about not going to extremes. If you feel that something is going wrong, that you are working more than you can, this is not good for you or the employer. You are alone,and for the employer this is a difficult predictable story, it is not clear when you will not be able to go further.

The third type of burnout is the simplest, in part. Let's say you follow all three basic rules. Accept changes easily, drive them. The drive of change is about creating opportunities. If time remains, I will tell you about my year-long working trip to Stanford, how I got to the MBA program at Sberbank, and more details about the development school. All this was either due to the fact that I missed the opportunity, or due to the drive for change, the creation of opportunities.

But when you create or seize too many opportunities - despite the fact that you are used to finishing everything - it can snowball. At this moment, you understand that there are simply too many things to do, and you have chosen them for yourself: these are your main and additional projects, some pet-projects, training. And there is no recipe for such a situation; you just have to go through a few of these snowballs to determine for yourself what the maximum amount of tasks you can take.

This is not a very scary story. Worse - both for you and for the employer - there is a story when you work for a long time, and then you cannot return abruptly, and only return through vacation and change of activity. In general, I realized that rest is an equally important part of work, although I used to think it was great to just work, work and work. You will simply be more productive.

As for whether it is necessary to go into mobile development now - I hear this question often. What I am talking about is relevant for IT in general, but for mobile development in particular. You can say that there are too many developers now, the market is saturated and new devices are not being bought. I will say that in the medium term, this direction will definitely remain relevant. While the number of smartphones is approaching saturation, wearables are ahead; smart watches are already carried by many - me too, by the way. I'm pretty sure big companies will be releasing something new soon. We are limited by the capacity of the batteries, but it has been slowly growing for the last N years. Having once tried not to sit in one place to solve problems and solve them with the help of wearable devices, cell phones and other means, it is unlikely that they will return to this pattern of behavior.The number of devices will increase and more developers will be required. If you feel that mobile development is yours, then it is worth going into it. If you are an already established developer, then you can come to us; we always need established developers. And if you want, but still do not know how, our schools are open for you. We are not looking at your knowledge of Objective C / Swift / Kotlin / Javascript; we look at basic things, like knowledge of algorithms and data structures, understanding the principles of OOP, the ability to write algorithms such as sorting and explain their complexity - that is, at simple things that are studied at the university. This is the 'T' hat - all you have to do is get good knowledge.If you are an already established developer, then you can come to us; we always need established developers. And if you want, but still do not know how, our schools are open for you. We are not looking at your knowledge of Objective C / Swift / Kotlin / Javascript; we look at basic things, like knowledge of algorithms and data structures, understanding the principles of OOP, the ability to write algorithms such as sorting and explain their complexity - that is, at simple things that are studied at the university. This is the 'T' hat - all you have to do is get good knowledge.If you are an already established developer, then you can come to us; we always need established developers. And if you want, but still do not know how, our schools are open for you. We are not looking at your knowledge of Objective C / Swift / Kotlin / Javascript; we look at basic things, like knowledge of algorithms and data structures, understanding the principles of OOP, the ability to write algorithms such as sorting and explain their complexity - that is, at simple things that are studied at the university. This is the 'T' hat - all you have to do is get good knowledge.understanding the principles of OOP, the ability to write algorithms such as sorting and explain their complexity - that is, on simple things that are studied at the university. This is the 'T' hat - all you have to do is get good knowledge.understanding the principles of OOP, the ability to write algorithms such as sorting and explain their complexity - that is, on simple things that are studied at the university. This is the 'T' hat - all you have to do is get good knowledge.

I will add about universities. Recognizing and accepting the problems of higher education - I still studied for 6 years and taught for 5 years, being in graduate school - I believe that a university, although not required, is very desirable. Although the university will not provide specific knowledge - that is, if you want to be a cool DevOps specialist or a mobile application developer, then you will have to acquire the necessary knowledge yourself - you can get, in addition to basic things (such as stress resistance and the desire to acquire new knowledge) broad knowledge what's going on in IT. You will be left by that T-shaped specialist.

At the end of September or October we will start a new recruitment. Come to us, write to me; I will be very happy to answer your questions.

In theory, the project should be changed every year or two, otherwise it will stagnate.

In general, I do not argue, although the situations are different. It also depends on the person - on what is your priority. If the priority is the interest of the project, then yes. Or maybe your priority is the team you worked with and you don't want to switch (although you understand that you will not develop further on this project); I had this too. In general, the project needs to be changed, but all situations are unique.

How common is it for product managers to install competitor apps and take ideas for new features from there?

This is not done directly, but we cannot say that banks and other IT players do not look at each other at all. It is clear that they are watching; but before you copy something, you need to do some research. At least to understand: did the competitor do it, thinking, or just rolled it out? And conduct your own research, of course. Before a product is developed, there are several stages - from design thinking and building CJM. It is necessary to understand whether the user needs this product, what problems it solves. And just copy - this story is more about indie developers, when they decide that they can copy and make something successful for cheaper. Large companies still go their own way, although they look at each other.

Perhaps the future lies with augmented reality?

Maybe. I myself think so too - for the last few years, the same Apple at its developer conferences (WWDC) has been focusing on AR Kit / Reality Kit, engines for working with augmented reality. And it all looks like a transition from a simple MVP to adding add-ons to it. It's inconvenient to use this in phones, and you should wait for more convenient form factors.

How does Sberbank transfer an employee to a higher level?

It depends on what is meant by this. If we take a simple promotion, then, probably, the same as in other companies. Before that I worked in two places (and three more as an intern), and everywhere it was approximately the same. A good case - you discuss in advance the global goals, after which you can talk about the next step. A worse case - neither you nor the leaders talked about it initially; you just worked, and then, after a year, you suddenly realized: you deserve more. Then you go and initiate a conversation; also a normal story. Sometimes it happens that a person is madly in love with his environment (project-product-team); there was such a person in my memory: people came to him and said that they were going to raise him. He grew up, and well, but did not start the conversation himself. In general, the target story is the preparation of individual development plans,and their implementation is a request for discussion of the increase.

How often do you take training and courses?

It is necessary to make a remark: I started developing at a time when, unfortunately, there were almost no normal courses. That is, I see two ways of learning development: mine and the correct one.

The correct one is through courses, development schools (it would be nice - ours, but there can be any school with a mentor who ate a pood of salt in this technology). But my option is to just bang my head about this topic, make mistakes, look at options on Stackoverflow. This is also a working option, you will receive ready-made products, but porridge will remain in your head, which you then have to deal with.

I still don't like courses very much. This came from school - from general education I moved to the lyceum of information technology, where it was cool, but I did not reach the level. We didn't have programming at school, but at the lyceum it was already implied. Under the threat of a deuce, I surrounded myself with books and began to understand; this pattern, in fact, remained with me. I gravitate no longer to courses, but to a set of books. I can attach it later in the comments.

Now I am going through the MBA program from Sberbank, it includes many courses: full-time, part-time, virtual. But all these courses are combined into a single product; to independently choose some direction and study in it - this has not happened for a long time. Although I watch educational sessions from WWDC, I have more emphasis on literature and articles.

Any thoughts on Dart / Flutter, is it worth the time?

I don’t like to take the position of a prosecutor, but in this case I will say: probably not worth it. I do not believe in the prospects of this technology (although this is not really my specialty). A couple of years ago, everyone was talking about it, but things are still there. But, if you are very interested, you can take some time and decide for yourself if you like it (and see if the market is in demand). No need to look at trends - try to do what you like.

MBA from Sberbank - what is it like? Full-time education within Sberbank or an external university?

There are various courses and directions. Some I find very interesting - those related to product management. As a technical specialist, I am used to the fact that there is a problem and it needs to be solved qualitatively; As an independent developer, I tried to work with users and their desires-problems - but I didn't have a map in my head of how to do it. In general, some of the courses are very interesting; some are less interesting than they might be. Overall, the program is good. I would go to her again.

Sber has a Corporate University - in fact, it is a subsidiary. We began to interact with him when we relaunched schools: now KU issues certificates to those who have successfully completed their studies. It is located in the Moscow region - it is a large campus of buildings, students can live on the territory.

Are Sberbank's internal rates sufficient, or are external ones also necessary?

It depends on what you want. If you need to maintain your level in what you do (in development, for example), then, firstly, you need to successfully solve work tasks; secondly, the community is arranged in such a way that you will maintain your level a priori and develop if you want. This is one of the advantages of a large company: it is a large community. Now I cannot name another company in Russia, where there are 200 developers on iOS and Android; such a community creates its own culture - mentoring, training. In general, this may be enough: you need to reach out to those who are ahead.

I have already said what my pattern is: I am not against courses as such, but I am convinced that books are better. You can study books at the pace that suits you.

Again, the corporate university has many courses, both face-to-face and online.

Is it convenient to travel to the center to work and also to KU in the Moscow region?

Well, now I'm on a remote location - just like the rest of the team. There are no problems with leaving the center yet; when we leave the remote area, I will go to the center from Moscow. And we do not go to KU so often: as part of the MBA program, I go there about three times a week.

How much time do you spend now on development, in which languages?

I myself am a developer of mobile applications for iOS (initially - only iPhone and iPad, then watches appeared). We originally wrote in Objective C - old, with a 1.0 mixin, using MRC). Now we have a separate new project, within which we are writing in pure Swift; that is, MVVM with coordinators and services, no reactivity - we bind everything through delegates. As for the time, I have already said: I try to spend more, but there are a certain number of important work meetings - especially at the stage of the product launch, so it turns out 3-4 hours a day. I still like the development, I try to cut it out as best I can.

Tell us about Stanford.

Once in a working mail there was a message that there is a Stanford US – Russia Forum program, and Sberbank employees can try to apply for it. I moved in, went through 3 or 4 stages of selection, the final interview in English, and ended up in a working group with three more employees of Sberbank. In total, there are 10-15 people there every year from Russia and 10-15 from the States. The program is aimed at improving relations between countries; mixed groups of ours and Americans are being created to work on scientific problems. Our year was the first when specific technical problems appeared: before that there were social and legal things. Our group was “FinTech” (finance and technology). We spent a year doing research, and then defended it at Stanford. We were at dinner with Professor Zimbardo, who conducted a famous experiment (there are questions for him, but the experience is cool).Overall, a wonderful case that allowed me to plunge into another sphere. While staying in the field of fintech, we researched decentralized technologies using blockchain as an example, and met a bunch of outstanding people who are doing this both in Russia and in the States.

Don't you do a backend? Do you interview often?

We interview frequently. I participate in interviews both in Sberbank Online and in the new project Sberbank-Investor. Plus, when it comes to schools, I also try to participate in the hiring and graduation interviews. How many exactly depends on the load: maybe 0 or 10 per week, but usually 1-2. I'm not into the backend, but I'm interested. I would like to try it when the MBA is over and there is more free time.

How do you choose a development stack? Are the requirements formed by the customer?

It depends. If we are talking about a separate module for Sberbank Online, then the stack is limited to the existing product. If the product is new, then the stack is probably not chosen by the business customer, but by the IT specialist, highlighting the pros and cons for the business. For example, if you take one technology - it is convenient, cool, fast, but it will cut off a certain percentage of the audience. The final decision will be made, of course, by the customer's representative, but the stack is formed by IT specialists. In general, we are looking at the stack to be convenient, fairly new, but not hype; so, now it is premature to take Swift UI for an enterprise project - this does not negate the fact that this technology needs to be tested, but it must be stable. That is, it is not necessary to take what has just come out, hype and will obviously change the API in the next few years, as well as what is already half dead.

That is, the stack is chosen based on minimal logical arguments: it must be a proven, but fairly new technology for which it is easy to find a specialist and with which we have experience - or we can easily get it.

What does it take to get into the self-driving car team?

You just need to apply. I saw a vacancy in the self-driving car business on my Facebook. This is not some secret information; if the organizers later pass on this question to me, I will share a link.

What is Sberbank Online, and what is a subproject?

Sberbank Online - for example, on the iOS platform - is a project consisting of subprojects (submodules). A team or group of teams is responsible for each of them. Inside themselves, they can, without deviating much from Sberbank's development guides, determine some things on their own - for example, the architectural approach within this module. It is important that, for example, the API of this module still allows access to it, but otherwise, everything that happens inside it (if it does not contradict the Sberbank Online guides and basic approaches) is at the discretion of its main developers. The final project is assembled from such modules.

That is, all payments and transfers are Sberbank Online?

Yes, everything is SBOL. Both loans and deposits. SBOL is a big house made of different bricks: processes (for example, payment) and products (for example, deposits). And their development can proceed in parallel.

Can I go to Okko from SBOL?

Yes, but you will be taken to another application. Everything inside Sberbank Online is one story, these are parts of Sberbank Online; when you move to another application, you move to another part of the ecosystem. For example, from SBOL you can go to Oko, Parcel delivery, Investments; all these are separate applications from the Sberbank Online ecosystem. That is, although they are independent, normal navigation is carried out between them, they are integrated with SBOL, some of them can be accessed using the universal Sberbank-ID.

How is a new product launched at Sberbank, and how can one become a PO in it? For example, if your idea is not the fact that you will be a PO.

Several approaches are possible here. The first is to initiate changes. That is, not just come and propose an idea for a new product, but provide a development plan for this product. If you have relevant experience and understanding of how to develop products, then it will be much easier to hire you - since it will be obvious that you understand what to do with this product - than to look for another person. It often happens that people who have nothing to do with the idea become PO; For example, when an idea is in the air, or when it should have been implemented long ago, and now a person with experience in product management has become available. There are different patterns.

If you have a great product idea, think it through: see what customer problem the product will solve, how the customer journey will change, what can be optimized, what the expected metrics will be. And present it as a business idea; there shouldn't be any problems. Or you can become a PO for another product with relevant experience; there are now courses on this, you can also learn from the PO on your team. POs usually agree to mentor.

What cool books can you recommend?

A very general question. It depends on what kind of books you are talking about. If about the narrow part of mobile development, then there are a number of series in which the material is given well. Depends on what you are curious about which direction you want.

The path from June to executive director at Sberbank. Interview with Alexey Levanov