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About ABBYY department at MIPT. My personal experience

Hello! My name is Alexei, this year I am finishing my studies at the ABBYY bachelor's program at Fiztekh. And I’m writing a diploma, working and doing all this on a remote site. In this post, I will describe my experience of entering ABBYY undergraduate studies: this was a couple of years ago, in 2018, when the world was safer (actually not) and people could touch their faces more often.

I will talk about how I chose the base department and did not lose my mind on whether it was easy for me to do it, share my impressions of the training process and internship with you and admit how it feels to combine study with work. I hope my post will be useful to students who are thinking about which base department at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and what to look for. After all, the choice of the department is very important, the sphere of development for the next few years depends on it.

About yourself and admission to MIPT


I am from Omsk, I entered MIPT four years ago. Actually, I didn’t want to do physics, but programming. But it so happened that when choosing a faculty I talked a lot with my friends, senior students, and found out where they study, what they like. One of the guys advised me to go to the Faculty of Innovation and High Technology (FIVT, later he became a member of the PhysTech School of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, i.e. FPMI ). He did not tell me about the basic departments, but he mentioned the development prospects and tasks that can be solved at the faculty. And it interested me.


And the physics that I strove to study was with us in full. Initially, I thought that there are proger departments, where physics is taught through the sleeves, and faculties with a more serious attitude. It turned out that the physics course at all faculties is generally the same. And if you wish, you could attend additional classes at other faculties.

How I chose the base department and what influenced my decision


In the third year, in the spring semester, I had to choose the base department, that is, the direction that I will be engaged in for the next year and a half. It was a difficult task: I thought about her course in the second or even the first. Of course, I considered almost all departments. I drew attention to the teachers at our faculty: I listened to their lectures and analyzed who I like best, who tells more interesting and understandable. They also teach in the departments.

Communicated with senior students from my faculty. Among them were those who studied at the department of ABBYY. I learned the basic information just from them. He corresponded with the guys from my city and asked how they study. But now, after a while, I understand: it was possible not to ask. How many people, so many opinions. I may have one opinion, one of the students is completely different.

Honestly, the presentation of the departments did not seem to me very informative. We were invited to ask speakers questions, but until you tried to study in this area, it is not clear to you what to ask. I don’t know what to do at these presentations so that students have questions.

There are areas where learning is not very difficult, but there are those where you have to work hard. Generally many seekto the department of Yandex, it’s fashionable and stylish, and they are also serious about studying there. The ABBYY department is also considered strict : you need to devote a lot of time to classes and seriously prepare for exams.

I liked that ABBYY has infrastructure industrial programming - .Net, C #. I wanted to try it myself . Before entering the department, I did simple sites on php. Did I know for sure that I wanted to do this in the future? No. I just intuitively decided to enter the ABBYY undergraduate program.

How to qualify for the department


You will be surprised, but just come to him. Although many are trying to learn in advance about how to prepare and whether there are any additional conditions. For example, every year the department asks students to optionally take a small online survey to roughly estimate the number of participants. In addition, the guys write a motivation letter in advance, where they talk about themselves, their skills and experience. But again, you can just come without a letter of motivation and participation in the survey.

This year, the presentation of the departments and the selection for them will be held on April 6 in online mode. You can watch the program and register here . When I arrived, the presentation and interview were also held on the same day. It was not difficult for me, but rather exciting, since much depended on this in the future.

Two departments were opened at ABBYY at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology - Image Recognition and Processing (RIOT) and Computer Linguistics (CL). The set of them is common, that is, you go through one interview, and then choose where you want to study.

Entrance tests


In 2018, the selection for the department took a whole day. A team of ABBYY employees came to our university. Everyone was gathered in a large stream audience.


There were three stages to go. First you solve programming, math, logic and computer science problems. The tasks are adequate, I think. They give about two hours. Then a break. Then for about half an hour you discuss solutions with an ABBYY employee: if you misunderstood something from the conditions, you can clarify. You get points for the correct answers. Probably, this year the verification of tasks will be held remotely.

Then you talk with an HR representative for about 15 minutes. They asked questions about the professional interests of the student, his achievements and development plans. I was also asked about what I want to know about the department and training. I was wondering if I could get a job at ABBYY. I was told that yes, and explained how this can be done.

The selection results are announced later. In a couple of weeks, a letter with an invitation comes to the mail to everyone who has successfully completed all three stages.

Typically, about 20 people are enrolled in the department, and those wishing to study at RIOT and KL are approximately equally divided.

Training at the department. Items


Study lasts 1.5 years. It begins in spring at the 3rd year and continues until the end of the 4th year. I have now the last semester of the undergraduate department of RIOT.

Pairs are held at the ABBYY office , and their number depends on the semester. Last year, in the 3rd year (spring semester) , there were fewer cathedral days - only one per week. I attended common subjects:

  • WinApi Basics + C # Programming
  • Programming Language Concepts

And one profile - "The main tasks of automatic processing of documents." Those who entered KL had the subject “Linguistic Foundations of Automatic Text Processing”.

Tuesday was a tough day in the fall semester. In the morning - the first and second pairs, then lunch, the third and fourth pairs, then I had time to work (yes, in the 4th year I started working, I will talk about it below), and in the evening - two more pairs on Android. But on the other day there was only one pair on .Net, and I could take the time to work. Another cathedral day was dedicated to the diploma. In the 4th year (fall semester) , we also had common subjects:

  • Compilation theory
  • One of three to choose from: ASP.NET Programming / Mobile iOS Development. Programming language / Mobile development for Android. Programming language

This year, the list of general courses has changed. In the next stream of students, compilation theory is no longer a required subject in the second semester. They can choose either it or multi-threaded programming.

And there are specialized subjects:

  • Convolutional Networks in Computer Vision (RIOT)
  • Introduction to Computer Models of Natural Language (CL)

This semester (4th year, spring semester) we have three days of classes at the department: two of them - lectures and seminars, and one day - to work on the diploma. This semester, we have two general courses:

  • Software Engineering
  • The concept of programming languages

And there are four subjects from which you need to choose the two most interesting to you:

  • Frontend development
  • Mobile development for iOS. Platform and projects
  • Mobile development for Android. Platform and projects
  • Compilation theory. Additional chapters

I go couples on Frontend and mobile development for Android.

What I like in the learning process


It's cool that they update the curriculum: they remove the superfluous and leave the really necessary. For example, I did not attend a separate WinAPI course. Senior students told me that he was not very useful unlike others. I knew that with us this subject would be more dedicated to C #, so I did not worry much. The WinAPI part was compressed, since the topics related to window applications are no longer relevant. But there are tasks on WinAPI that show how dynamic libraries work, their connection with Windows, and with the device of operating systems in general, which is good to know. In practice, it is hardly useful, but this is necessary for understanding.

Since this year, compilation theory has become the subject of choice in the second semester of study. Those who want to go deeper can study it for a whole year. If this is not about you, then you can limit yourself to one semester and choose a different course for yourself.

Since the fall of 2019, a mobile development course has appeared. Those who are a year older than me did not have this. As far as I know, there is a mobile phone in FPMI only at our department. This course is a good opportunity to try myself in a new area and another area of ​​my self-development. It seems to me that this is the right step for the department. Perhaps subjects in such areas as big data and analytics will be useful. Again, we had a similar course at the faculty, but at the department it may have a deeper immersion in the topic.

Speaking about the faculty as a whole, I’m missing some course for general development, for example, bioinformatics. Why not? The industry is interesting, application too. In fact, there are many subjects that I would like to study, but this does not apply to the department.

About study


Lectures and seminars are conducted by ABBYY employees. In principle, there may not be many homework, but they are voluminous. I could not make them in one evening - I did them on the weekend.

For example, recently it was necessary to choose one of several recent articles on computer vision and implement a neural network module from it. The task was to insert a module written in the article instead of the standard block from one neuron (ResNet) (I chose Octave convolution). The article, of course, has already told you what improvements should be made. But the essence of the homework is that you need to do everything yourself and write your own small article as a result: compare the results, understand what has changed, and draw a conclusion from this. Such a research task is obtained.

Or compilation theory. This is more of a team subject, and the homework on it is common. For example, we implemented the compiler part (Building an AST tree) in commands. It was not difficult, but we were worried that we might not be in time. As the teacher explained, the goal of the course is to understand the team development process. There is one big complex project, and you do it together with other participants.

How are the exams at the department


The tests are held in the format of the exam, but we pass them to the test session. This is not easy: study has not yet ended and there is no time exclusively for preparing for the exam.

But exams are easy to take. The secret is to attend lectures. I like that during the preparation, reading additional materials and on delivery, when talking with teachers, I learn something new.

About diploma


In the summer I will have a diploma defense. When choosing a department, I largely wondered what I would write my graduation work about. I was interested not only in my studies, but also in the result, and touched on the future.

My diploma is not related to my current job at ABBYY. This choice is deliberate in order to develop in many areas and broaden one's horizons. The topic is handwriting recognition using capsular networks. The task is related to the recognition of characters (hieroglyphs). The bottom line is that the capsular network perceives the relative position of objects. In Chinese and Japanese characters, there are many simple elements that can be positioned differently and designate different meanings. Capsule networks can improve the recognition quality of such characters, and I am testing this hypothesis.

When you try one thing in work, and another in your diploma, it’s easier to understand what you like best. For me, the main thing is a diverse experience. If you have not found yourself in one area, then you will try in another.

Internship and work


In the summer, after 3 courses, we were offered to go on an internship at ABBYY. I was curious, I went through a competitive selection. From July to August I had practice, and at the beginning of the 4th year I started working. In many respects, this happened thanks to the .Net subject, which I was interested in during the internship.

A month after the start of work, he passed internal exams in C #, .Net and SQL. By the way, here the knowledge gained at the department came in handy. For example, I was asked a question about creating an adapter for the database. To do this, you need to turn the code into a tree structure. The knowledge of compilers helped me answer: there, too, a tree is built from code.

How to combine study and work


Many classmates already work in IT companies. There are guys who, because of this, have difficulties with their studies. I didn’t want me to have the same. I admit, at first it was not clear to me how I would combine my studies and work.


In the office, most developers, including me, sit in such cubes, and not in open spaces. This helps to focus on tasks and not be distracted by others.

Now I work in the department that deals with the cloud direction. My work takes 32 hours a week, that is, four days for 8 hours.

But still, studying is the main thing for me. It is very convenient that couples pass right in the office. I try to keep up with everything, and discipline helps me with this: you don’t score for pairs, you don’t score for work. I correctly distribute time and resources, plan all the important things in advance. In the evenings, I most often complete my studies.

About ABBYY


I like that here I learn something new and apply knowledge in practice, gain experience, develop useful services. My colleagues help me, and I also share my experience with them. Nice to participate in the workflow.

The guys are all friendly, I have my own circle of friends. I know almost everyone on the floor, I greet everyone. It's cool that you can always discuss with the guys something other than work.

Instead of a conclusion


After graduating, I will go to ABBYY Master's program. I want to continue development in this area, while I see for myself just such a path.

I recommend choosing ABBYY to those who

  • I’m ready to invest a lot in my knowledge, to study a lot,
  • wants to be able to learn and develop a lot in several directions, and not have a narrow specialization,
  • ( , ),
  • IT-.

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