Recently, myself and my colleague Umay Jones had the fabulous opportunity to spend a few days inside the Yandex headquarters in Moscow.
We were very surprised by the weather! Moscow can get very cold during the winter (dropping as low as -25 degrees) but we were welcomed by tropical weather which lasted almost a full week.
The Yandex headquarters covers almost 63,000 square feet and is situated on Lva Tolstogo street, around a 20 minute walk from Kremlin and the Red Square. The campus consists of several buildings connected to each other and is wrapped around a wide, open space area.
When you arrive at the offices from Leo Tolstoy Street (there is also an entrance to the campus from al. Timura Frunze) you are greeted by a horse – a reminder of the charity work done by Ilya Segalovich – the late founder of Yandex who was also a philanthropist. Ilya, together with his wife Maria, founded a charity called Maria’s Children, which uses art therapy to provide physical, psychological and social rehabilitation to orphans and children with special needs. The horse itself was painted by Ilya’s pupils.
Once you are in the building, the best way to describe its interior is bright, spacious, modern and international!
It is very easy to find your way around the campus thanks to the maps which are in both English and Russian. (The last time I was here, everything was in Russian – which made it a slightly different story for me since, at that point, it took me 5 minutes to read each word!)
Inside, each floor is in a different colour – and has some interesting toilet signs…
Everywhere you go, you are greeted with plenty of calming, live greenery (and it is real)!
The whole office is full of Yandex branding which we could not help taking a picture in front of! 😉
On several balconies, Yandex employees can relax – by playing a gigantic version of chess…
Or have a little nap on this fancy thing…
The coffee is not bad either, providing you speak Russian…
If you do not, the place has several canteens, bars and coffee shops which can write your name in Cyrillic, just in case you are not sure how it would look 😉
Everywhere around the office, there are multiple places where you can have a quick meeting or work away from your desk. My favourite one was this one!
If you want to discover another place to visit in Moscow, you can do it by having a close look at it from the Yandex roof. Of course, I had to have a go…
During the summer, this space is a very vibrant area where you get a real sense of the culture and size of the company.
To summarise, Yandex’s offices, with its well-designed, colourful and vibrant working space, resembles very much the offices of other big search engines – making it a fun and interesting place to work!
Justyna Wilner
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Hi there,
Thank you for your comment. During my visit to Yandex I spent most of my time at the international sales team department whose employees I have known very well for the last couple of years. I have always been impressed how quickly and effectively the information has been shared by the team in order to answer my queries, therefore you can definitely feel that they all work together towards the same goal which is customer satisfaction!
Hope this helps!
In your observations, did the people in the working organization work in teams? Did these teams conduct themselves amiably and work together with good conversational skills: listening to understand and on all sides were questions and answers employed to arrive at clarity in understanding the requirements to resolve problems?
How were the interrelationships among Yandex members of the team(s)?