Dobkin Arkady Mikhailovich

Arkady Dobkin - President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of EPAM Systems since 1993. U.S. citizen.

Biography, career

• Born in Minsk (Belarus). He studied at school number 50 with a mathematical bias, and also graduated from an art school in Minsk. He graduated from the Belarusian National Technical University with a degree in electrical engineering. He began his career in Belarus, working in several companies specializing in software development .

• In 1991, immediately after the completion of Gorbachev's perestroika, he emigrated to the United States without knowing English (according to him, he could read relatively tolerably and write a little, since he had experience working with English-language special documentation, but practically did not understand the language by ear) and did not have much money for his livelihood (according to him, the money ran out immediately after buying a used car).

"For

example, for the first four months I washed dishes in a restaurant. But at the same time, he sent out about 400 resumes in search of work, one of which hit the right place. Probably nodding well in the right places during the interview - and I was offered a job in my specialty, although I still did not speak English. "

• In 1992-1993 he worked as a programmer at Prudential.

• In 1993, he founded the outsourcing company Epam Systems, headquartered in New Jersey.

"I made a list of Minsk friends and began to send them faxes with a proposal to organize a company that would be engaged in programming on the orders of American customers. The fifth or sixth on the list was my classmate, who began to respond to my messages regularly. We started with him. "

Arkady Dobkin decided to build an offshore programming business, because, once in the United States, he saw the demand for such a model and because he really wanted to work with his friends again

"I dreamed of such a business,

but I considered this idea somewhat naive, hard to implement. In the early 1990s, groups of Indian programmers began to fulfill orders from American software firms. This gave confidence to try a similar business in Belarus. Of course, in those years it was much more difficult to engage in remote work than today: the Internet practically did not exist, telephone communication was very expensive. And relations between the United States and the republics of the former USSR were not as favorable as business ties between America and India. But the desire to try was great, and the forecasts of Western analysts, who were already talking about the serious prospects of the offshore programming market, were encouraging. "

• From April 1993 to November 1996, he worked as a consultant and leading technical specialist at Colgate Palmolive (in 1995, with a group of Minsk programmers who formed the basis of Epam Systems, he began working on creating a sales support system for Colgate, an analogue of SAP). During this period, Arkady Dobkin met Hasso Plattner, the founder of SAP AG, who entrusted his team with the development of the first prototype SAP product for the sales support system, which was to be presented at the annual SAP conference in 1996.

• In July 1999, he became senior vice president for development at Firepond (a leading developer in Sales Force Automation), and remained in this post until March 2001.

Arkady Dobkin was on the board of directors of the Russoft association, which unites the most influential software companies in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

• In 2004, he was recognized in a special issue of "The Top 25 Executives" of the CRN weekly as one of the three most influential IT executives in the Foreign Relations nomination.

• In 2006, Consulting Magazine recognized Arkady Dobkin as one of the 25 most influential consultants of the year.

• In 2012, Arkady Dobkin planned to earn $8.78 million - $9.88 million from Epam Systems IPO, reducing his share from 14.1% to 12.1%. According to the results of the placement, we can only say that the package that Dobkin had before the IPO at the time of placement cost $65 million^[1].

• In 2022, Arkady Dobkin condemned Russia's military operation in Ukraine, ordered the closure of all EPAM operations in Russia and the establishment of a fund to help Ukraine.

Quotes, interviews

How to work with analysts

"I read the Gartner report, I don't find us. I write directly to the author, send data about the company. You need to establish personal relationships with them. Indeed, in the same Gartner, only 4 people are engaged in all global outsourcing. And therefore, whether Jan Merriot himself knows about your company, and it will depend on whether you get into the next study, or not. " ^[2]

About his role in business

Arkady describes his role in managing Epam Systems as the "last instance" in internal conflicts, since he is not engaged in production and sales, but leads the company's strategy. He believes that everyone can accidentally find a good client, accidentally make a good project, so the repeatability of results is the key to success in business. When hundreds of people work in the company, this is no longer the merit of its leader, but of the entire team.

• Programmed result - interview with BusinessReview magazine
• IT business legend from Belarus - interview with Computer News magazine

Other activities, hobbies

Hobbies - skiing and playing tennis, in the summer - football (mainly at corporate holidays held in Minsk).

Family

Arkady Dobkin has two daughters.

Dobkin Semyon Mikhailovich - brother

Links

• Epam Systems Official Website

Notes