Our program for today: Deutsche Bank and Yandex. DB was a nice surprise, and we’d been looking forward to Yandex all week, so the day was promising. The late breakfast also helped.
Deutsche Bank had their office at three middle floors of one of the lesser skyscrapers of the city, but the view was still amazing. They also understood very well what our visit was about: after a short introductory presentation, we got enough time to interview some employees for our research. We got a small tour of the work floor and took some nice birds eye view pictures of the city, followed by a late lunch in the company canteen.
There we got some bad news. Yandex had a scheduling problem. They were unsure if they could still accommodate us. We decided to just go back to the hotel and wait for updates.
Back at the hotel, we changed into some more comfortable clothes, and suddenly received a text from Simone: “Get downstairs ASAP.” We hastily put on some good clothes again, and hurried to the metro. A wet and rainy trip later, we finally arrived at Yandex.
We’re pretty sure they use agile, because they can sprint like pros. The woman that came speeding down the stairs to give us a tour, could hardly catch her breath. We held stand-up meetings throughout the company, hearing a few comments somewhere in the distance about some interesting facts and figurines, we and got shown out again not even half an hour later.
Gasping for breath, most of us went to get some buckets and beer at the KFC while some of us were having fun at the hotel.