ICT STORY: Bek Akilov— an uzbek guy working in Amazon

One can accomplish a lot if one works hard and have a strong drive. Bek Akilov, our next guest at ICT story column, is a proof.

Beck is 25 years old. He graduated from School N 50 in Tashkent and Kalamazoo College in Michigan. Now a resident of Seattle, he holds a position as a software engineer.

How did you end up abroad?

In 2016, he went to study in the United States. To do this, he passed the SAT, SAT Subject Test, TOEFL tests at Tashkent International School.

“After high school, I decided that I wanted to study abroad in order to further build my life there, get a job, get to know American culture better. I moved to Michigan where I studied math and computer science at a small college called Kalamazoo. A visa for a 4-year study is given without problems, also for a master's degree. But if you graduated from college majoring in mathematics, computer science, chemistry, physics or biology, then a work permit is also issued for 3 years after graduation. All the other specialties get a 1-year-permission.

Beck currently lives in Seattle. He works as a software engineer at Amazon.com.

“I work in a team of 10 people responsible for all calls and messages to amazon.com support. The work is very stressful, as Amazon is a global company and often have to fix bugs at 3 am if the service breaks, say, in India. But it's worth it. Such work teaches you to do everything on time and properly maintain the system, because even one bug in production can cost millions of dollars and ruin the company's reputation. So you understand the full responsibility of the work and perform your tasks as well as possible, so as not to let the team down.”

Why USA?

In the USA, he says, there are all opportunities for development. There are very good salaries for IT jobs, one of the highest in the world so to speak.

“Convenience is the key here, everything works for the advantage of people. There is a huge cloud infrastructure for creating products. I can register a company from home and create a service on AWS / GCP that can support millions / billions of people. I would like Uzbekistan to have its own branch of the data centers of these companies, so that everyone can keep cloud data close to customers in Uzbekistan.”

Also, Beck continues, IT specialists are in great demand in the USA.

“It is always easy for an IT specialist in the USA to find a job, and for a very good one it is even easier. Everybody needs them, from ordinary small companies to giant corporations. Although a similar trend is observed all over the world, after all, in recent decades there has been a real boom in IT.”

How do you assess the IT sector of Uzbekistan?

According to Beck, the IT sector of Uzbekistan has a huge potential, you just need a little help to open it.

“I see how things are changing in Uzbekistan. This is a big achievement. Uzbekistan has great potential, as the country is a regional center. This means that it can also become a regional center in cloud software. If you establish a modern creation of hosting and cloud services for data storage and backend logic, then this will serve as a convenient opportunity for the development of local startups. All this will come with the advent of Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure data centers.”

These platforms, he continues, will give impetus to local cloud solutions, which, although they will use the same services as a basis, will be able to compete with them, as is the case in all countries. As an example, he cites the Singapore cloud provider Supabase, which uses AWS.

“I note that the IT sector of Uzbekistan and the United States differ significantly. For example, in the US, startups are often overvalued because of their chance to become international. It is difficult to find money in Uzbekistan, but the market is ready for any innovations and there are practically no competitors in many areas.”

Beck worked on the startup Beautify.uz.

“This is a project that I created with other students from Uzbekistan. Beautify.uz is a platform that brings together beauty masters and customers. The project was created for the complete digitalization of the beauty industry and includes the digitalization of transaction chains: suppliers of materials for the beauty industry - beauty artists - consumers. The site allows you to find and book an appointment at a beauty salon.”

When asked if he plans to return to Uzbekistan, Beck replies that he does not deny the possibility.

“If there is a Software Boom, then, of course, I would like to come and create an interesting project. In general, I would like to see more local business solutions that correspond to the international level. I believe that Uzbekistan needs local analogues of Stripe, Godaddy.com, cloudfront, Square, Google Adsense, Easypost (auto-delivery) and much more to enter the market in shortest period of time.”

What wishes do you have for young professionals?

Young professionals who want to relocate abroad are advised to do a lot of studying, notably language learning, according to Beck.

"I'll admit that learning English and local speech was the hardest part of living overseas for me. It takes a very long time, a lot of effort, and practice, I'll say as much straight away. It will be challenging and time-consuming without practice. My recommendation is to make friends with locals so that you may continually hear their opinions, learn about their culture, and comprehend how they think.

I'll also add: if you're still in college, start solving codeforces.com to improve Uzbekistan's ranking. It's also a highly useful tool for learn a language or landing a position at a multinational organization like Google or Meta.”