Yandex company blog

International Women’s Day 2019: Celebrating Ambitious Women

People across the world tomorrow are celebrating International Women’s Day, honoring the achievements and significance of all women.  Locally in Russia and most other countries in which Yandex operates, the holiday, often referred to as March 8th, is celebrated as a public holiday.  Throughout the week, members of the Yandex community have been celebrating their female colleagues with gifts and acknowledgements of their hard work.

At Yandex, we are honored to work with thousands of ambitious and talented women across our global offices and the entire tech ecosystem.  Today especially we thank you for all you do.  In honor of the holiday, we’re also celebrating the ambitions of the billions of women around the world.  As we take this day to acknowledge all that women have accomplished, we wanted to recognize the drive and determination of women to realize their goals.

One way we can see millions of women striving to reach their ambitions is through the search trends among our female users.  Especially for the formative young adult years, women across Russia are using the internet to advance their professional development.  We’re inspired to see millions of women searching for ways to teach themselves new languages, whether it be English and German or Python and Java.  Women are also using our search engine to solve complex IT problems, entering queries such as “how to parse JSON.”  Women are searching for information related to their studies as well, entering queries such as “phonetic parsing of words,” and many are asking about running a business by searching for resources such as business plan samples.

We admire women across the world who set out to achieve their personal and professional goals.  Today we wanted to highlight this by featuring a profile on Dasha, a young computer programmer in Russia who is just one of these driven women who has used the internet to help realize her ambitions.  

Like millions of other users, Dasha was seeking resources to grow.  “I worked in an office job for a few months before deciding I wanted to do something more engaging and work with like-minded people.  Web development has always fascinated me, so I began looking for ways to start a job in this field.”

Dasha went online to find resources for starting a career in web development.  Through her research, Dasha came across opportunities on Coursera, one of the leading platforms for online education, and began taking programming courses.  She took a class on HTML and Javascript offered by Yandex in partnership with the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Within two months, Dasha taught herself the basics of web development through a course which typically takes around five months to complete.

Following her studies, Dasha started working in web programming, where her ambitions and independence continue to be essential assets.  “This field is growing rapidly, and the profession of a web developer encourages constant independent learning.  Also, front-end development has a creative component, which is a plus for me.  Absolutely everything I learned in the online courses was useful for me in my new profession."

Here at Yandex, we’re inspired by stories like Dasha’s where women are self-motivated to realize their ambitions.  To see young women like Dasha reaching their goals is just one reason Yandex is a strong supporter of education.  We offer many avenues for aspiring learners to follow in her footsteps with both online and offline opportunities:

  • Yandex’s Coursera lessons in data science and programming provide learners with the tools they need to become web development experts.
  • Master’s level students can enroll in the Yandex School of Data Analysis (YSDA), a free program in Computer Science and Data Analysis, with branches located in Russia, Belarus, and Israel.  
  • The Ilya Segalovich Award and Scholarship for students and researchers encourage study in computer science by recognizing academic achievement.
  • Yandex.Practicum (Russian), currently in testing, offers long-term, professional courses on web development for anyone interested in advancing their skills.

We enthusiastically encourage any women or men interested in learning new data science skills to take advantage of these educational resources, along with any others they may find online.  

Happy International Women’s Day from Yandex to the millions of women around the world who are taking the initiative to shape both their future and ours!