JetBrains CEO on How Developers Become Leaders

JetBrains CEO Kirill Skrygan, 38, was all in on tennis — he played and was one of the best in the city of St. Petersburg. But at the ripe age of 10, his parents realized that the funnel of tennis professional begins very wide but quickly narrows for people who want to become professionals. So they took him to a Russian mathematical school, where he learned how to program. He went on to attend St. Petersburg State University, where he became a software engineer.

The Netherlands native began as a junior developer working for American health…