Interview with Resulkary Saparov who did not give up no matter how many times he failed and got to Meta, formerly Facebook

12 min readJul 31, 2022

Motivation to interview Resulkary:

Resulkary is from a small city in Turkmenistan. He studied Computer Education and Instructional Technologies at Yıldız Technical University for two years before dropping out and pursuing a degree at Bilkent University. His former degree was not related to Software Engineering and he knew that Bilkent could provide better opportunities. This was a risky move because Resulkary would be discarding two years of studying at Yıldız Technical University. Then he started to study Information Systems and Technologies Bilkent. During his university years aside from studying and doing side projects, Resulkary mentored numerable Turkmens who did not know any programming to get internships or jobs in Software Engineering. After graduation, Resulkary worked one year in Amsterdam, and now he is working as a Software Engineer at Meta, in London.

Interview:

What is an unusual habit that you have?

Sometimes I do nothing. Especially if the weather is good, I might just go out and sit. A quiet time helps me, in a way, take back control. Because usually my mind is occupied with tasks to work on. These tasks could be things to do to get closer to my goals or everyday things like cooking or cleaning. Thus, when I don’t think about anything, in particular, my mind can start wandering and see the bigger picture of my life. I might come up with an interesting idea I could work on or fine-tune my goals if my values are shifting in a different direction.

What is the book you suggested the most to other people?

“Thinking Fast and Slow” is the book I suggest the most. The book is difficult to read; thus, when I was reading it, I had to give breaks between chapters to let my mind process the information and think about it. With all breaks, I took around a year to finish it. The book gives a good idea of how our minds work and goes into a great deal to prove that our instincts and senses are flawed. Understanding those concepts can make one a more objective person.

Why did you start Asman?

I started Asman, initially called Makalam, at the end of my sophomore year in 2019. Back then, I was doing my first internship at a startup. There I was mainly working on Natural Language Processing. I would collect tweets in Turkish and try to deduce their main ideas and emotions based on what was written in them. While working on that, I thought if it would be possible to do the same thing in the Turkmen language. However, I quickly noticed that it was hard to find written content in Turkmen because Google did not index Turkmen text very well and also because it was very scattered. Few Turkmen authors were writing on Medium, their blogs and Twitter, but there was not one place where you could find a lot of good writing in Turkmen. To solve this problem, I thought why should I not create a website similar to Medium, in terms of functionality, to make Turkmen content more accessible to people. Because Medium is a place where you can find a lot of content in English. This website is called Makalam now, and hopefully, it will be up and running this year.

To create Makalam, I tweeted asking if anyone was interested in helping me to build it. A few people replied saying they would love to help me to build this website; however, they didn’t know anything about programming. Since I wanted some workforce, and these few were the only ones who replied, I thought why don’t I try to guide them to learn to program. I told them that we would start from HTML, CSS and JavaScript and within a year or so you should be able to contribute to Makalam. While they were learning web development from scratch, I was building Makalam on my own. We decided to meet twice a week because I wanted them to progress as fast as possible and join me in developing Makalam. Finding time to work on the project is hard when you are doing your internship or when you are studying at the university because both of them require a lot of attention.

Over time, mentees, who were learning web development for Makalam, invited their friends to learn programming and our group grew. Also, given that now we have quite a few graduates of this program who are doing programming as a job or as an internship, we realised that this mentorship could be treated as a separate project. Now this mentorship and Makalam projects are under a larger non-profit organization called Asman.

How is the development of Makalam going now?

At this point I am not actively developing Makalam, mostly mentees are working on it. After the Turkmen language was introduced in Google Translate, I slowed down my efforts in building Makalam, because now I knew that Turkmen will be more accessible than before. The main goal of Asman switched from building a Turkmen publishing platform, to preparing Turkmen Software Engineers with a focus on web development.

How has something you considered a failure turned out to be a success?

I don’t usually treat failures as failures; I see them as lessons. Because whenever they happen, I try to figure out why they happened and learn from them. For example, when I could not get to the university or department I wanted to attend, I blamed myself for that because I knew I did not study enough to get to the university/department I was interested in. Or when I could not get to any of my dream companies whether for an internship or after graduation, I did not just give up. I realised that I was not prepared enough for these companies, so I kept working on myself until eventually, I got in. My approach toward “failure” is not unique to these 2 examples. Whenever I can’t get what I want, I try to first figure out what went wrong in my last attempt and then use that knowledge to improve.

Let’s go a little deeper into your first example. You studied at Yıldız Technical University for two years and then you moved to Bilkent University. Did you not think that if you change your university after two years, it would mean that your two years at the university were wasted?

Well, my parents and relatives thought it was not a good idea to drop out after two years and asked me to just finish university and then do whatever I wanted. But, I thought if I studied for two more years at the university, then I would have to waste two more years at university studying degree I did not want. That’s why I decided that I should cut my loss there and move on. Also, I knew that Bilkent University was much more promising in terms of curriculum and education than Yıldız Technical University which also played a big role in my decision to switch.

On a related note to failures, did you have fear of failure while applying to Bilkent or Meta and if so, how did you overcome it?

I am not sure why but I don’t think I have a fear of failure. I believe that as long as you keep trying and learning from your mistakes, you can be successful at whatever you set your mind to, except, of course, for goals that are impossible to achieve for legal or other reasons like becoming a President of US without having a US citizenship.

To achieve a goal, you should first pick it. It should be hard and meaningful to you so that it provides both opportunities for growth and motivation. Then this goal should be divided into smaller goals. Since these smaller goals will be easier, they will also be less scary which might help you if you have a fear of failure. To keep working towards your goals, you should become your mentor who will push you to ensure you are always progressing and on the right track.

In the last 5 years what belief, habit or behaviour has improved your life?

In the last 5 years, I realised that if there is a problem that is important to me and I don’t do anything to solve the problem, then I should not complain about it. Expecting that someone will come and solve my problem usually does not lead anywhere. Instead, I should come up with a plan to fix the problem and start fixing it. This realisation pushed me to be more proactive and put seed into projects like Asman and Makalam.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed?

It depends on why I get overwhelmed. For example, if I worked on something for a long time and got tired, then I would stop working on that task and then return later that day or the next day. On the other hand, if it is bigger than that, where I don’t have any motivation left to keep working on it, then I try take 2–3 days off to refresh, and then come back to it. If whatever you are working on is important for you, you have to come back to it after this short break because if you keep running from important tasks that are hard or boring, then you will never get anything significant done.

What is the best investment you have done so far?

During my first two years of university, I spent a lot of time working on pet projects to get a feel for Android, Machine Learning Backend Development. I would take free courses from websites like Udacity and then try to implement apps or web pages with the technology I have learned. These projects helped me to find my areas of interest. Once I found my interest, which is Backend Development, I decided that it was time for me to focus on that. As I worked on projects that were interesting to me I learned more about backend development and got better, and as I got better I wanted to work even more on it. This cycle of working, learning and working improved me a lot during my time at the university.

Comment from the interviewer:

There is a book called “So Good They Can’t Ignore” that goes deeper into what Resulkary observed while focusing on backend development. It explains that if you want to develop a passion for some field, you need to become so good at it that you can’t be ignored. Let’s assume that this field is playing the guitar. The book shows that if you want to become passionate about playing the guitar, then the best thing you can do is to keep improving at playing because the better you will get at it, the more you will enjoy it.

Now, let’s dive into Software Engineering. What would be your advice to a smart, driven Software Engineering student who wants to get an internship?

From my experience and observations, there are two things they should focus on. First, they should find a branch in Software Engineering like Mobile Development, Web Development or AI that is interesting to them and start building projects. Because let’s say that the Student is a second-year student at the university. Since they most likely did not have any experience related to Software Engineering on their CV before, they will need to show something on top of the courses they took when applying because every CS student takes those courses. Showing projects is a good way to catch the attention of companies because by reading your code, employers can learn a lot more about you than just seeing your grades from courses. Second, they should proactively look for companies that care about their interns. Because, if they find a company just because it looks good on their CV and don’t learn anything during internship, then it was a waste of time.

Regarding the first piece of advice you gave to students, how should a student find a project to work on?

Before going into how to pick a project, I would like to touch on how anyone can start getting familiar with technology from scratch.
A good starting point is to learn what technology can and can’t do. For this, you could skim the documentation without going too deep into details. You don’t need to be an expert in SQL to be able to start using it. However, this does not mean that a general understanding of SQL will always be enough for you. If at some point when you are building a project, you need to dive deeper into some parts of SQL to solve a problem, you should go for it.

Now let’s get back to the question. One of the great things to do for anyone who does not have a lot of experience in a field, they want to explore, is to copy existing products. Initially, you don’t want to get distracted about small details of the project you are working on like a font size or what colours to use. Since you already know the design and functionality of products like Facebook or Twitter, you won’t need to worry much about anything other than implementation when you are copying them. Learning how to build things with a limited and defined scope is the first step to becoming good in some field of programming. Also, you don’t have to copy the whole product, you could focus only on the parts that are related to what you want to improve on like the Front end, the Backend or the Mobile version of the product. Once you get good at implementing projects, the second step is to get creative. You can start adding new features to the product you copied or build projects from scratch.

What is a myth you hear a lot about becoming a Software Engineer?

Software Engineering and Coding are not the same. For example, I think that one can’t become a Software Engineer by just going through a Bootcamp. I think Bootcamps are good for learning something specific like Web Development or Mobile Development but not Software Engineering in general. Because the scope of Software Engineering is much bigger than implementation. Good Software Engineers also should know about system design, testing, good collaboration with peers and writing documentation. Therefore, I think people should not expect to be good Software Engineers once they are out of Bootcamps. However, they can expect to become good coders who could evolve into Software Engineers as they get better in other skills essential for Software Engineers.

Where can people find out about you?

You can find me at:

This interview is part of a series that is targeted to help people who are inspired to become Software Engineers or to take their careers to the next level regardless of their nationality or background.

Huge thanks to Selbi Ereshova and Shahabat Jorayeva for helping with editing this article!

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Resources you might find useful that touch on what Resulkary has suggested:

“Steal Like An Artist” is a great book that goes into detail about why it is a good idea to copy existing products for learning.
“So good they can’t ignore” is a good book about becoming passionate about something through mastery.
“Build” is a great book that gives a recipe of how to become a good Software Engineer.

Notes:

If there is any grammatical error found in the writing of this interview or error in meaning, it is likely an error done by the author while writing this post and not by the interviewee.
This interview was done on July 3rd, 2022.
If you have any feedback or suggestions for how to improve interviews in the future, feel free to let me know.