Igor Bulyga started his career as an iOS developer in a small Russian startup, and today he works at Reddit. In the interview, he talks about the differences between working in Russian and international companies, how to prepare for interviews, and why not only technical skills but also the ability to build communication within a team are important for career growth.
— How did your career in development begin?
— I started working at a small startup while I was still studying at university. It was a company that developed educational apps for children—for learning math, words, and developing logic. Most of the project was built by an external studio, and I joined the company as the first iOS developer and was responsible for support: refining features and developing the application. They paid 15–20 thousand—not bad money for a student back then. At that time, Russia didn't have as large a pool of iOS specialists or as many training materials as it does now. I studied from books, rare videos, had to do a lot of Googling and gather information.
I worked at a startup for a year until it was shut down, then I joined Redmadrobot, then Aloha Browser, Pure, and Ozon. I gradually learned, took on more challenging tasks, and went where I could learn more.
— What has changed in your approach to development during this time?
The approach has changed in two key ways. The first is the scale and context of the tasks: at the beginning, I was writing features and fixing bugs, but in large international teams, you need to think about the impact of changes on metrics, on users, and on compatibility with other teams. In large companies, questions of architecture, testing, and processes are approached differently.
The second is attitude toward oneself and communication. I used to think that simply writing good code was enough. Over time, it became clear that it's important to be able to communicate the results of your work, explain trade-offs, and interact with people. Technically, I started looking deeper into architecture, testing, and reliability, but the skill of explaining why this is needed for the business and the team became equally important.
— Why did you decide to work for international companies? What hindered development in the Russian environment?
— In many ways, it was a feeling of being in a "bubble"—a shared cultural environment within the CIS, a limited number of large projects that are rarely aimed at the international market. I wanted to work with people from different countries on more complex products. In an international environment, you need to be able to talk about your achievements, demonstrate the impact of your work, plus language skills and soft skills are critically important.
Another important point is the culture of "not sticking out." Many of us are inclined not to talk about our achievements: "Sit down, don't stand out, everything will be fine." That doesn't work in the international arena. If you want to grow, you need to be able to talk about what you've done: show results, explain the impact—otherwise, no one will know about your achievements, and that will hinder your growth.
— What does "being able to talk about yourself" look like in practice? Social media, speeches, or something else?
— We need to distinguish between two scenarios. If the idea is to leave corporations, it's important to build a personal brand: maintain social media, participate in conferences, and meetups. It's a way to build connections in the industry and find new clients.
If the goal is to build a career within the company, the approach is different. It's important to use internal channels here: speak at company meetups, share the team's results, send emails throughout the company, and even to the directors, so your name is visible. It all works like a cumulative effect: by the time of the review, you have dozens of people who can confirm your contribution.
Another key point is communicating with related teams and helping colleagues. When you know the context of other projects and share your experience, you gain a network of people who are willing to confirm your contribution. At the performance review stage, these reviews become decisive. Therefore, it's important to be open not only externally but also within the company—this provides a direct career benefit.
— How did you prepare for the interview at Booking?
— When I was preparing for the interview at Booking, the company sent a general guide with the stages and recommendations. I studied what the team does, looked at public materials, and the social media of the managers to understand their priorities. At the same time, I was reading about the company itself, its business model, and its values. Additionally, I followed Amazon's classic interview guides—they help structure behavioral responses. I also studied the company's business model: how it makes money and what's important to it. The more you're in context, the easier it is to answer questions and show that you understand where your work can lead. And yes, there are classic interview guides (for example, the principles popularized by Amazon)—they help you prepare behavioral answers and structure stories about past achievements.
— What was the most challenging part of the interview, and what conclusion did you draw?
The most difficult thing for me was System Design because I had almost no experience with it in Russian practice. Here, they expect the developer to break down the product architecture, explain the choice of patterns and trade-offs—it's a completely different level of preparation.
The technical aspects are generally similar to those of Russian companies. However, it's precisely at the cultural fit and soft skills assessment stage that many people stumble—for developers from the CIS, this is the most challenging part. For international companies, being just a good engineer isn't enough: you need to be able to design a system, explain your choices, and work with people. The preparation has to be built completely differently—not just learning algorithms, but also developing soft skills.
— After Booking, you went to Reddit. What kind of tasks do you work on there?
— I'm responsible for iOS development for several key products. This is Collectible Avatars, a blockchain platform with digital avatars, Reddit Awards, where users have a virtual economy with rewards, and Reddit Answers, a large language model-based service that helps generate high-quality answers based on the conversations in Reddit communities.
Formally, I remain a Senior iOS Developer. But in fact, I'm acting as a team lead: my colleagues come to me for advice and solutions on iOS, even though I'm not formally in charge of anyone. In foreign companies, leadership among technical specialists often manifests in this way—without an official title.
— So, you became a leader without a formal title?
— Yes, formally I'm not a manager, but I often have to take on a leadership role. This involves team coordination, decision-making, working with priorities, and communication with key stakeholders (EM and Product Manager). In large companies, this "informal" leadership role is very important: you show that you can lead people while still remaining an engineer.
— If we go back to the topic of growth, what ultimately proved to be more important: technical knowledge or soft skills?
— A technical level is needed as a foundation; you can't get anywhere without it. But for internal development, soft skills become crucial. You need to be able to properly present your work, show its impact on the product and the business. Internal presentations, helping other teams, and documentation—all of this creates a network of people around you who know what you're doing and are willing to vouch for it.
In international companies, this directly impacts performance reviews. They always consider not just your code but also how you interact with colleagues, how you improve processes, and how you share your experience. If you stay silent, no one will know what exactly you did—and that hinders growth.
I was selected for the Key-Talent Program on Reddit—around 250 employees are chosen for it based on their annual performance review. Participants are given access to additional courses, mainly in soft skills. Together with my manager, we identify areas that need improvement to close gaps and continue growing. This benefits both the employee and the company: skills are immediately applied in the work and impact their career.
— What trends are you seeing in the industry right now?
— The main trends for iOS right now are the gradual transition to SwiftUI, which Apple introduced about 6–7 years ago and is finally becoming suitable for large projects. While there are still questions about the performance of some components, it's already quite convenient for simple static screens.
The second major trend is the implementation of Swift Concurrency. This technology is relatively new, only a couple of years old, but it's built into the Swift compiler, so it's available to all developers regardless of their iOS version. True, the adaptation is being done cautiously—we need to gradually remove old callbacks and reactive frameworks without breaking existing functionality.
Large corporations have a specific characteristic—we support two or three iOS versions back because the user base is spread across different versions. You can't just drop support for old versions—you'll lose users. Therefore, large companies create entire teams that develop internal tools and frameworks so that core developers can seamlessly transition to new technologies.
At the same time, AI tools are being actively implemented—many iOS developers are switching to VSCode with Copilot or using Cursor with their models. The problem is that Xcode works slowly and unstably on large projects—compiling a project from scratch takes tens of minutes, and indexing the entire project takes even longer. Therefore, developers are looking for alternatives: third-party editors with built-in AI allow them to write code faster and not waste time waiting. Apple promises the integration of AI models into the new Xcode with the new Xcode release, but expectations are low given the tool's issues in recent years.
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