Altay Sabyrbay

He is 27, from Saran, near Karaganda. He studied for a Master’s degree at the Beijing Institute of Technology and participated in the Shakhmardan Yessenov Foundation competition, which he won and went on a six-month internship in the US. Altay participated in the creation of WebTotem. What else fascinates him, and where will we see him soon?

How did you know you wanted to do computer development?
When I was still studying in China, I realized I was not so into being a thermal power engineer that I could devote myself to it after school. So I began to learn programming on my own.

Winning the competition was not a walk in the park, but what I know is it is sometimes more difficult to find a start-up whose interests completely match those of the intern…
I found my start-up on angel.co. This is a kind of start-up database where you can find a place to work, an internship, or a company to invest in and a product that your company could use. The main search criteria for me were its scope of activities and the applied technologies. Decentralized Finance Labs eventually agreed to invite me for an internship. The start-up is developing a product combining a cryptocurrency and a platform for launching its applications

What did you do during your internship?
I took part in the development of the server side of the application, developing the application programming interface (API) and its related documentation. Well, I also tested the platform that we were developing. I was tasked with determining the maximum operations processing speed (number of transactions per second). I did troubleshooting. I also participated in daily discussions of current problems and ways to solve them.

What can you say were your main achievements?
I independently developed a block-chain testing app; more precisely, an app for determining the maximum transaction processing speed. I grew professionally, attended conferences and meetups dedicated to both block-chain and programming and the IT sphere in general. I thoroughly studied block-chain technologies and their application in the financial and technical sphere, particularly in the field of cryptocurrency, and learned how to use block-chain on a virtual computer. I understood how Silicon Valley start-ups operate, and got to visit the offices of giant IT companies.

What’s next, Altay?
I have been based in Kazakhstan since November, continuing to work as a back-end developer of the WebTotem product at TSARKA (CAICA), and in my free time developing my personal projects. I cannot divulge much about them yet, but my idea is to establish a start-up using block-chain as a guarantee of data immutability. In this project, I am using what I learned while working in America: the success of a start-up strongly depends on the quality and depth of the employee-employee interaction. My internship experience overseas will help me find good colleagues and customers abroad.

What are you interested in besides programming and development?
Sports, no doubt. I have been into it since childhood: Greco-Roman wrestling, football, boxing, volleyball, and chess. I am also into cyber sports. And during my internship in Silicon Valley I visited Yosemite National Park and I took an interest in rock climbing, since there are plenty of rock-climbing walls around Palo Alto.