The path from a young startup to a technology company that makes highly loaded real estate projects

Pavel Zykov , STO DomClick.ru answered questions ,

DomKlik is about 5 years old. Let's remember a little history and at the same time get to know each other. The company was founded in 2015. Do you remember the day from which it all began?

Even as I remember. I was one of the founders, so I remember everything in the smallest details - how the first people interviewed, how in August 2015 they rented the first office on Rabochaya Street, which suit us for the price, despite the fact that the window sills of the offices were always dusted by people passing by trains. Now, sitting in the most comfortable Agile Home 2 minutes from the station. Kutuzovskaya metro station, we recall with warmth the times when two Internet providers in the building were considered our unique advantage.



How did you start development ?

Five years ago it was difficult to make a flexible development structure, as there were practically no working examples in Russia, and we had no experience, so we invented the production management model ourselves. And by the way, they came up with. In 2016, we began to measure T2M by teams. Then they quit, because Why measure what you always do not exceed 2 weeks. This is now scrum with various improvements - this is the standard, in 2015 it was not at all like that. Almost everywhere there were “waterfalls” with varying degrees of ossification of processes.

Regarding the choice of technology. We started writing a backend in Java, because we grew out of a bank, and everyone knows that banks simply adore this language. In 2016, they began to purposefully form expertise in Python, as They understood that on the one hand we didn’t have a highload, and on the other hand, we didn’t want to queue with other corporate monsters in the javists. When we decided to add a little more performance, we added Go to the backend. A year later, they studied the American mortgage crowdfunding project, the solution of which was on Ruby. I had to take one rubist, who later assembled a full-fledged large team. In total, we currently have in the backend Python, Kotlin / Java, Go, Ruby. At the front end, we have React dominant. We also use Angular and Vue.js for projects that we understand.


Schedule of the trend of languages ​​in DomKlik

Tell us about the main activities of the company, what are they about?


Our work is the entire client journey from the moment when the client thought to purchase a house before moving to it. We try to close it all, including creating products for realtors and developers.

Now we have 7 main areas:



Classified real estate is our showcase of ads. By the way, before the company was opened, our business plan was focused on classified, but literally right after the start it dawned on us that we need to start with a mortgage.


Omnichannel mortgage, which is based on the principle "in any channel convenient for you, apply for a mortgage or get service on a valid mortgage." This is a key and difficult area in which many talented people work. The mortgage process is really very complicated and you realize the scale of problems and limitations only when you work inside, especially with our volumes of issues.


Non-mortgage transaction - a turnkey real estate purchase and sale transaction, if the client does not need borrowed funds (mortgage).


Safe settlements is essentially a virtual cell for a transaction between a buyer and a seller. A very convenient way of cashless settlement for an object without additional visits to the bank.


Registration of the transaction.The service allows customers to register the transfer of ownership of a finished property without visiting the Rosreestr or the Multifunctional Center for the provision of state and municipal services (MFC).


Property valuation. We cooperate with appraisal companies throughout Russia on the uber model. Those. We prepare and transmit the assessment report to the bank quickly and conveniently. Both for the client and for the valuation company itself.


We also check transaction documents and evaluate risks. This product is called a "transaction guarantee . "


Surely over the five years there have been a number of turning points that made Domclick the way he is now. Will you share the details?

In the first year of existence, we have a lot of products in the product. We really walked a very wide front. In 2016, there was already an online mortgage, an electronic registration service, a secure settlement service and an assessment. Also at the end of 2016, we launched a showcase with ads for the sale / purchase of real estate. In the same year, we were one of the first in Russia to deploy a Kubernetes cluster and began to use it in a real prod and with a real load.

In 2017, we set about improving the efficiency of product development and focused on changing the structure of teams. Removed the roles of QA, PM, analysts, scrum - masters, left the roles of RO, CJE, Engineers - only those that create added value. In my philosophy, a product cannot be made without 2 people - the owner of the product (RO), who knows what to do, and the engineer, who, in fact, creates it. Other roles exist due to the imperfection of the development process and insufficient automation.

By the way, when the guys from the IT sphere find out that there are no testers in DomKlik, they are surprised. Tell me, what made the decision to remove this role from the process?

If you think about it, then we have the whole company - testers. This is a role and responsibility for us, and not a separate specialty. By removing a separate QA department, we solved a simple problem - the whole team bears responsibility for quality, and not specially designated people, which became larger and the release testing process became longer. The guys from QA tried to write autotests, but, as practice has shown, they did not succeed, because There are random people in this profession who do not even have a basic engineering background. With all due respect to the true professionals in their field, of whom there really are few. We did not give up, we started a development training course, as a result of which the conversion in the trained was only about 7%. Most, by the way, simply did not want to study and left the company.Therefore, we carried out the reorganization as follows - the director of the development direction is responsible for everything that happens with his system - for development, testing and maintenance on the prod. And they gave the directors a choice in the development of the team: if you want, take manual testers, if you want, take the developers and teach them how to write autotests. Everyone chose the second. Therefore, now the entire team that is developing a specific system is responsible for quality. As a result, in the company we have only 1 QA Lead, which is responsible for the development of our own UI-testing tool and puts the acceptance process in teams where necessary. I think that somehow I will tell you in detail about the development system in Domklik, I’ll type in a separate article.And they gave the directors a choice in the development of the team: if you want, take manual testers, if you want, take the developers and teach them how to write autotests. Everyone chose the second. Therefore, now the entire team that is developing a specific system is responsible for quality. As a result, in the company we have only 1 QA Lead, which is responsible for the development of our own UI-testing tool and puts the acceptance process in teams where necessary. I think that somehow I will tell you in detail about the development system in Domklik, I’ll type in a separate article.And they gave the directors a choice in the development of the team: if you want, take manual testers, if you want, take the developers and teach them how to write autotests. Everyone chose the second. Therefore, now the entire team that is developing a specific system is responsible for quality. As a result, in the company we have only 1 QA Lead, which is responsible for the development of our own UI-testing tool and puts the acceptance process in teams where necessary. I think that somehow I will tell you in detail about the development system in Domklik, I’ll type in a separate article.which is responsible for the development of its own UI testing tool and puts the acceptance process in teams where necessary. I think that somehow I will tell you in detail about the development system in Domklik, I’ll type in a separate article.which is responsible for the development of its own UI testing tool and puts the acceptance process in teams where necessary. I think that somehow I will tell you in detail about the development system in Domklik, I’ll type in a separate article.

700 . ?

This is a very good and correct question that not everyone thinks about. With the growth of the team, the management model UNCERTAINLY changes. Up to 100 people, she is one, more than 100 people are already different. When a team is up to hundreds, you know everyone by sight, 90% you remember your name, take part in almost all interviews and very often intersect with almost every member of the team. You hold all streams "at your fingertips." Unfortunately, this is already not the case in the second hundred, it is becoming physically impossible. Therefore, we built the correct structure, in my opinion, inside - I have 20 people directly subordinate, and mine have minus 1 as well. With this model, we devote time to each engineer, and the meetings are purely personal, so that there is an opportunity to talk not only about the progress of tasks, but also to discuss any problem face-to-face. And of course,processes, dashboards, KPI's - without fanaticism, but they are.

Let us return to the stages of becoming a company as it is now. What happened after the restructuring of the teams?

2017 - 2018 was the year that our IT team realized that the architecture that we laid down in the previous two years will not allow us to develop further, as a result of which we rewrote absolutely everything. This year was the year of growing the IT team, stabilizing and improving the reliability of the IT landscape. On the one hand, it was the most difficult, but, on the other hand, the most dynamic time. Getting up at night because of the incident was the norm for me as well as for the whole team. Since then, many of us have developed the habit of falling asleep with the phone. The phone is always with me. I woke up a couple of times last year.

Historically, it happened that our team consists of two parts - Sberbank Real Estate Center LLC and Sberbank PJSC subdivisions. After we redesigned our entire architecture, the next extremely important period was the formation of DomKlik and parts of Sberbank that deal with mortgages as a single team with a single management model and unification of many processes. Despite different legal entities, we are one big family.



2020 was a year of interesting engineering solutions for us - we transferred all mobile applications to PWA, except for the main DomClick application. They brought everyone to a single deployment (their deployment), now we fasten the civilized canary. We are experimenting with Ignite, we are making a single cluster for the entire company and other interesting solutions that I can’t talk about for now. Subscribe, like and follow articles on this blog. 


What are the rules that you follow in making decisions.

They say that there are several types of managers - analyst, strategist, motivator, sales master, entrepreneur. In my opinion, you need to be “water”: you must be flexible and combine all types depending on the situation, show more results with fewer resources. Be a strategist at least once a year. If a complex problem arises, become an analyst and, together with the team, look for solutions. In addition, I highlighted a number of rules that I and my team adhere to when making decisions:



1. The decision is on numbers, not on emotions or sympathies for specific people.
2. Each solution should have an added value.
3. Remember who your customer is.
4. Complex problems are not solved easily. The first solution that occurred to you on a complex problem is most likely the wrong one. Take a break and think again.
5. Do not solve the problem in the same way that it arose.

Well, summing up, do you think, on a scale from a young hot start-up to a serious state structure, where is DomKlik now located?

On a 10-point scale, from a young hot start-up to a serious structure, DomKlik is now on the top five in terms of grocery work and IT change. Not 0, because we have a design system, core services, an understandable stack that imposes restrictions. You can’t just take and make on the bootstrap an application with red round buttons and a backend on the co-folder and even bring it all into production. The times when it was possible, fortunately, have already passed.

Now many Russian companies have landed their people on a remote site due to the risk of uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus. How did Covid-19 affect your workflow?

We were born - a digital company, so literally during the day we checked access profiles and went to the remote site under the responsibility of the leaders. They sent first of all those who want to. In such a situation, the social responsibility of the company to each employee is important. Someone, of course, remained in the office and will be until the last, for example, me. But my job is this.