“I broke up with my boyfriend and didn’t want to spend New Year’s alone.” How tech specialists are finding unique ways to bring joy to others during the holidays

«I’ll keep doing this even when I’m retired. It’s a matter of my personal New Year’s spirit»

Sergei is a developer and IT project manager—and also Santa Claus. Every December, Sergei takes out his snowflake-embroidered fur coat from the closet and sets off to bring holiday joy to people. Now, though, he does it «simply for the love of it» rather than for extra income as he did in the past.

Sergei has been visiting one family since he first started playing Santa Claus—over 20 years ago.

«I tell them: 'Your older daughter has grown up, and so has your younger son, whom I remember as a baby.' But they respond: 'No, come over! There’s no holiday without you.'»

Last year, Sergei also wore his Santa costume and met with people dear to him (and even skated in this outfit at the ice rink near the Sports Palace on Pobediteley Avenue). He’s planning to do the same this year. He’s never missed a year: «No, I love this! I’ll keep doing it even when I’m retired.»

«Some left money, others a couple of tangerines and chocolate. One person left a bottle of champagne»

Developer Alexander Akimov told devby about spending every New Year behind the wheel. On the night of December 31 to January 1, he would drive around Minsk giving free rides to anyone who flagged him down. «It’s my way of celebrating!» the young man said.

Alexander doesn’t do this anymore—he’s moved through several countries and now lives without a car. But Irina* has taken up the tradition. She told us that she was inspired by that very article on devby.

«This was a couple of years ago: I broke up with my boyfriend just before the holidays, didn’t want to visit my parents (they live in the countryside), and it looked like I’d be spending New Year’s alone. I had also just gotten my driver’s license and needed driving practice. I shared all this with a colleague, and he told me about a guy he once worked with who drove random people around on New Year’s Eve.»

He said, «There was even an article about him on devby.» I found it, read it, and thought, «Why not?» I headed out at 9 p.m. on December 31. At first, I just drove around for almost an hour. Then I saw people holding out their hands, so I stopped. It turned out they were trying to flag down a minibus, but I said, «This is free!» They got in.

The guys admitted that if I had been a man, they wouldn’t have risked it, but since I was a woman, they felt safer. I immediately told them I had just gotten my license and needed practice, so I couldn’t drive fast. They even «felt a little sorry for me"—they said they felt like they were helping me rather than the other way around.

I picked up several more people after that. They said they had tried to call taxis, but the apps showed no cars available.

What this gave me was a feeling that there’s a lot of goodness in the world. Strangers made my New Year’s night special and restored my holiday spirit. I don’t regret getting behind the wheel at all and spending the night this way. I did it again the following year. Whether I’ll do it this year—I haven’t decided yet. I have a boyfriend now, and if he agrees, I might.

«To repay my mentor, I must do something meaningful»

Kirill* is taking on one free mentee for the third year in a row. Here’s the story he shared with us.

«In 2020, I quit my job at a state-owned company and completed Java courses—but couldn’t find work right away. At interviews, they kept saying I needed to improve various skills. I studied on my own. Then I saw a post on LinkedIn: a developer was offering free help to a newcomer (due to his workload, he could only take one person). I wrote to him, promised to work day and night—and he chose me.

I’m very grateful to my mentor: he not only improved my hard skills but also helped enhance my resume and referred me to his own company.

The following year, I didn’t even need to post—my mentee brought a friend. Next year’s mentee has already been found through word of mouth as well.»

We asked Kirill what he gets out of this. He said he can’t directly repay his mentor.

«Words and gifts are good, but to fully repay him, I need to do something meaningful. And I decided that means helping someone else. It’s important for me too: it helps me keep learning and growing.»

«Creating 14 lessons that actually teach something—that’s a challenge with an asterisk»

Sofia develops programming learning materials in her free time. Last year, she created a free pre-Christmas marathon—14 lessons on the basics of HTML and JS development.

«I thought it would make sense to create something that would interest people in learning a new technology. I also thought that some people might want to 'achieve closure' toward the end of the year, and maybe someone would check out the marathon afterward—and discover this learning format.»

Sofia says about twenty people joined the marathon, but only four completed it.

What did this give our interviewee? «Quite a bit of stress,» she says (which is why Sofia isn’t repeating the marathon this year—she also had more free time back then).

«But overall, it gave me positive emotions. I liked that the followers who joined were able to do almost everything as intended—and these weren’t lectures or anything like that.»

There’s definitely a sense of completing a challenge, because creating 14 lessons united by one theme that can actually teach something, rather than just «watch what I do and repeat”—that’s a challenge with an asterisk. Toward the end, I was criticizing myself a lot, thinking the format was lacking, but that was really more impostor syndrome.

Sofia says she might repeat her marathon. She «even had a ready concept for this year,» and would like to make a site with the challenge, but she «thought of it too late.»

«It would be great to create some platform for such challenges—and add them there without having to redesign everything each time. I already have the structure for such a project, but, as always, I’m missing the key ingredient: time.»

«When you’re on maternity leave, every day is like the one before it, but this brought variety»

Yulia* is a tester currently on maternity leave. She says last year she tried a game for the first time: she baked cookies with holes for strings, attached ribbons to them—and hung them on trees while walking with her child.

«Initially, the idea was to decorate the Christmas trees we’d encounter along the way, but fir trees aren’t as common as I thought. So we ended up decorating whatever trees we came across.»

Her child enjoyed it so much that he started asking her to hang more things on trees. «So we created our own 'advent calendar': every day we made something and left it in the most unexpected places. We made Christmas ornaments from felt, molded a family of ducks from salt dough, glued houses from cardboard, sewed angels from fabric scraps, wrote notes with good wishes…

What this gave me: I got a change of pace—when you’re on maternity leave, every day is like the one before, but this brought some variety. My child and I immersed ourselves in creativity. Plus, it created a magical pre-Christmas mood, which is really valuable.»

* Names of speakers have been changed at their request.