Many novice specialists have a very unclear vision of ​​what development prospects open up at a more advanced level of their career and what direction they can continue to grow.

Pavel Anokhin is a pioneer in the development of Idle Games, former CEO, and the leading programmer of Cosmigo. Pavel is also a member of Leaders Excellence, which is an exclusive leadership club that accepts people with outstanding achievements exclusively.

The developer shared his thoughts about the main three spheres of his activity and how he succeeded to achieve such outstanding results.

Game Development: From the First Steps in Idle to Cooperation with Disney

One of the most popular ways to achieve complete self-realization of a programmer is to master the art of developing games. Many developers enter this industry thanks to their hobbies and passion for games. For example, it happened exactly like this for Pavel, who started creating his first games during school times.

At that time, Cosmigo, the German company, had noticed him and offered him a job after finishing school. Here Pavel has been working from 1999 till 2008 and went through a career path from being the only programmer on the project to the CEO of the main office in Russia.

From the very beginning, he has participated in the development process of many popular and well-known games: GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, and Nintendo DualScreen. One of the most exciting and significant projects was the work on the game known as Monsters Inc. ordered by Disney.

As Lead Programmer, programming the general and the most complex parts of the project and coordinating the entire work of other programmers, Pavel was busy working on Ultimate Card Games, Ultimate Brain Games, and Solitaire Overload for GameBoy Advance and Nintendo Dual Screen. The last three games achieved the biggest success and brought the biggest popularity and profit to the company.

Starting from 2015-2017, Pavel has been leading his own projects: he used to create websites and filled them with new online games. He saw the birth of the game genre known as "Clicker" or Idle Games and the speed they became popular. Their attention retention rate is much higher compared to other games despite the simple operation mechanism.

After believing in their huge potential and making some adjustments to make the games more challenging and interesting to play, Pavel implemented several of his own Idle projects. Even now, the developers are still working on the game mechanics that he succeeded to implement.

Participating in Bugs Bounty and Other International Competitions

Pavel has started to show interest in cryptocurrencies, which led him to participate in Bug Bounty programs. These programs are designed to help specialists search for bugs in various cryptocurrency projects for a special prize.

Developers from all around the world participate in these programs. Therefore, those specialists who manage to identify the most serious bugs in projects receive not only monetary rewards but also recognition in their professional environment.

Thanks to his experience in programming and ability to analyze code quickly, Pavel managed to find three bugs in three crypto projects within a short time frame: one serious bug and two critical ones.

So, Perpetual Protocol paid Pavel $10K for finding a serious bug. His achievement prevented the company's loss of more than $10M in client funds.

Pavel also likes to challenge his strength at various open competitions for crypto-project auditors in finding bugs on the code4rena platform. The main difference from the Bug Bounty project is that here the search for bugs takes place in financial applications on the blockchain, which have not been released yet.

Help with Training Young Professionals

After gaining years of experience, some professionals start sharing their knowledge with young people. This is essential for a particular novice programmer, as well as for the entire industry in general. A young specialist has more opportunities, which accelerates his progress, and provides breakthroughs and significant achievements within the industry.

Pavel dedicates part of his spare time to the olympiad programming classes for school children. He devoted a lot of time at school to the olympiads, and in his opinion, this is an excellent opportunity to master the subject much deeper and instill the ability to work in a highly competitive environment.

The Department of Education Development of the Orlovsky Region asked Pavel to conduct classes in olympiad programming many times thanks to his success in the olympiads. During the last few years, he had olympiad programming classes on a weekly basis.

According to Pavel, these classes not only allowed him to help the younger generation but also to stay up to date with all modern trends and keep his skills at the highest level.