Pavel Durov

So as a result, we would not just select the best person and hire this person.

We would also select the best solution to the problem because we would not suggest the contestants to solve trivial problems.

It's something that's valuable.

It saves a lot of time for us in terms of development.

And because I always had this large social media platforms which I could use to promote these competitions.

Right.

Somehow both VK and Telegram were very popular among engineers and designers, other tech people.

I had no issue to find, to promote this contest and find the right people ever.

And

What can be better than for an employee of your company, of somebody who has been a user of it?

If this person has no prior experience of using Telegram, their understanding would be very limited.

Why would I even try to hire somebody from LinkedIn who worked at Google and other companies, is used to receiving salary for nothing?

is used to shift responsibility and being stuck in endless meetings and have very limited understanding of what Telegram stands for.

It's just crazy if you think about it.

We implemented it in 2013 in the secret chats.

The funny thing about it is then when other apps started to copy it, like WhatsApp seven years after, and then Signal and some other of these apps, they initially even copied the exact timestamps.

So, for example, if we had like one, three, and five seconds, they would also have one, three, and five seconds.

They tried not to change it because they were not sure what was the magic sauce behind it.

And ironically, it happens with many of these things.

For example, when we designed how you reply to a message and you have a small snippet showing that you're replying to this message and now you're typing your response.