You just entered the Butsky family home page.
Our family consists of four members: Marina, Vlad, Ira and Vika.
Also we have a cat, Moorchick, and fish.
We were all (except pets:)) born in a charming city in Ukraine by the name of Poltava.
In December 1999 we moved to the USA and now we live in San Jose,
California - one of the best places in the world.
We are quite big enthusiasts of making photos and home movies.
We also love traveling and camping. California gave us a chance
to explore gorgeous mountains, beautiful caves, deep green forests
and the mighty Pacific Ocean. So when we have a free day or two we always
try to spend it outdoors. And we always carry with us our Sony camcorder
and faithful Canon digital cameras (D60, S40, S70, A75, 30D, ...).
We have taken a lot of photos and some of them even look good
(or at least we hope so).
You can see a few samples of our best photos taken recently. There are a lot more in our
database. And currently all these pictures are in process of
being uploaded to the
Flickr.
Our family started in December 1990 when Marina and I (Vlad) got married.
It was a quite warm day for December in Ukraine: about to 0C (32F).
We both were quite too young and a lot of people could not understand why we are
doing this. Though we did not mind - we were mature enough (as we thought) and we
did not care what they said. We already new each other for almost 4 years and
we spent a lot of time together even before we started to date.
In the next four years our two daughters were born.
In 1995 Marina and I graduated from Poltava State Technical University.
In August 1998 we lived in Poltava City, Ukraine. I was working with small workgroup
for the US Company where my friend, Igor, worked at that time.
It was an interesting job. I learned a lot of new technologies there and
got a relatively good salary.
Life was beautiful!
One thing that disturbed me was that it was very unstable and a bit dangerous
to work in Ukraine. The other thing I thought about was
"why am I working for the US Company and still sitting here?"
I knew that I if I worked in the US, I would have a more stable, and more importantly,
a much more interesting and challenging job. Because we had my good job,
our home and our friends in Ukraine, we didn�t do anything to move to another country just yet.
Suddenly the crisis in Russia happened. Even though Ukraine is not a part of Russia,
their economies are still very tightly integrated.
The exchange rate of Ukrainian currency had dropped down about two hundred percent.
It became the last straw for us, so we decided to start searching for a job in the US.
It was time to move!
First, I tried to create a resume. It was hard at that time because nobody in our
country used a "resume" to find a job. The other problem was that my English skills
weren�t all that good.
The first version of my resume was a disaster because I hesitated to write
about my skills. It might sound strange, but in ex-USSR it is
considered rude to say: "I am the best". People were taught to assume that they
are part of the big team and individual skills are less important than team skills.
With help from my friend Igor, who lived in California, and after reviewing a bunch
of resume examples, the first "good enough" version of my resume was created.
This resume was much better but it sill wasn�t perfect. After several attempts I got
my resume in good shape. The next step was to find a company that would provide me
with an H1B visa. Unfortunately, I didn�t knot where and how to search.
Nobody among my friends knew how to do that.
The only way I knew was www.yahoo.com, so I started to search there for software
development companies. I couldn�t ask anyone questions, so I did it all by myself and
learned my lessons the hard way. I started to send emails to every
company I found in the Internet. This meant that every day I sent about 15 to 20 emails
with my resume inside. After several months of such hunting I sent more than 1000
letters. Because of my poor experience of selecting "right" companies a lot of
letters were addressed to the companies that did not use H1B workers.
I posted my resume to several job servers and subscribed for several hot job lists.
In December 1998 I got my first several phone interviews with different companies.
Soon, I got my first contract with a US company. Because of the large amount of sent
resume letters in a few days I got another contract. I now had to choose one of them.
The both contracts were very similar in benefits and working conditions.
I chose the first one and denied the second company�s request. It was the first step
which lead to my moving.
The company I had signed with promised to make an H1B visa for me in six to eight weeks.
These were hard weeks for me. I could not work on long-term projects anymore.
I stopped my "job hunting" and started to wait. After 8 weeks I still did not have
any result. I tried to ask the company about my visa, but they told me that my documents
are filed with the INS and all I should do is wait. In late April I realized that my
visa for FY1999 could not be processed due to the limited number of H1B visas available.
I sent multiple letters to the company that filed my documents with INS but did not
get any answer. They just stopped responding to me. It was over.
I started to hunt for my new job again. Fortunately my previous experience of 2000
letters and multiple phone interviews brought some good results pretty soon.
I got a lot of contacts and in May 1999 I started to work for another US company:
SiberLink. I led a small software developing team in Ukraine.
It was a very good opportunity to make some money for the future move.
After one month of the resume sending process, I received another contract
with Metamor, which later became Comsys. My experience in internet job hunting really
helped me get a better contract.
In October 1999 I got my H1B visa documents from INS and got the visa.
In December 1999 I took a flight to the US. My family shared this amazing and
adventurous trip with me. I started working for a Comsys (former Metamor).
We moved to the Portland, Oregon and started experiencing a new life style.
It was very good, even though I didn�t yet know how to do the shopping or
even use a pay phone. ;)
After completing my first assignment in late April 2000 I got a new "contract-to-hire"
from Comsys to Informatica. I had to go to Silicon Valley, California!
This is a place every Software Engineer wants to go (I know, it is a bold statement ;)
because it is the world center of the IT industry.
California is great! Especially the weather, ocean and mountains.
It�s also very exciting to see huge world leading companies like Sun, IBM or Intel
that I read about a long time ago when I was back in Ukraine.
I started working for Informatica as a Software Engineer, and in five and a half years
advanced to Architect, leading 20+ people teams developing complex projects that
last up to 18 months. Informatica was an interesting place and I learned a
lot while working there.
In November 2005 I joined a small but proud company MetaIntegration.
It was my long time dream to work for a small company where my experience and energy
could make a real difference and where my career can grow further. Will my dream pay off?
Only time will tell. ;)
