Google, Meta, OpenAI, Jane Street, Citadel.
The best programmers at every top tech company trained on his platform.
One Russian engineer built it mostly alone in 2010. 🤯
Meet Mikhail Mirzayanov 🇷🇺
> Russian software engineer and competitive programmer.
> Born 1984 in Moscow. Graduated from Moscow State University.
> Competed in programming contests during the early internet era.
> Worked at
Mail.Ru as a software engineer.
> 2009 ~ got frustrated with the poor quality of existing contest platforms.
> Decided to build his own competitive programming site from scratch.
> 2010 ~ launched Codeforces. Mostly as a side project.
> Servers crashed constantly in the early days.
> He manually monitored contests late into the night to keep them alive.
> Built the entire ecosystem himself ~ contests, ratings, problemsets, hacking system, blogs, gyms, teams.
> Introduced Elo-style rating systems that became the industry standard in CP culture.
> Added “hacks” where users could break incorrect solutions live during contests.
> The platform turned programming contests into a spectator sport.
> Today Codeforces hosts millions of users from nearly every country on Earth.
> Most ICPC finalists, IOI medalists, and top FAANG candidates trained there.
> Competitive programming legends like tourist, Benq, and ecnerwala became global icons on his platform.
> Google, Meta, DeepMind, Jane Street, and OpenAI recruiters actively value strong Codeforces profiles.
> Thousands of university students changed their careers through one rating number beside their username.
> During major contests, hundreds of thousands compete simultaneously on infrastructure he designed.
> Never built it for hype. Never optimized for profit.
> Just obsessed with algorithms, fairness, and beautiful contests.
> Still personally involved in rounds, platform decisions, and community discussions today.
One man turned coding interviews into an esport.
An entire generation of programmers grew up refreshing his website at 8:30 PM before contests.
His platform quietly shaped modern tech hiring.
Competitive Programming GOAT. 🐐