Awards for a tattoo with a logo, nicknames from Counter-Strike and suspicions from intelligence: Artem Borodatyuk about the "sectarian" chips Netpeak and Fractal

In the IT community, the Fractal holding (ex-Netpeak Group) has long had a reputation for its special, sometimes strange, and even "sectarian" rules. The group’s founder, Artem Borodatyuk, admitted in a long video interview for dev.ua that they not only know about these rumors, but have also been "provoking" them for years.

We’ve collected the most interesting stories about how gaming habits and unusual corporate culture turned into legends.

1. Premiums for tattoos with company logos

Nowadays, in the era of remote work, it’s harder to build a culture, but during the days of office life, the company had a whole system of strange financial incentives.

In addition to the classic bonuses for quitting smoking, the holding company had an official tattoo bonus. If an employee got a tattoo of the Netpeak logo or one of the group’s products, the company financially encouraged it.

There was also some "abuse" of the system:

"We had a bonus for a tattoo. And one person broke the algorithm — she drew six logos of different companies of the group at once! Because we had a bonus for each logo, and we didn’t think that someone could draw them all at once," Borodatyuk said.

According to Artem, people did it not only for the money, because the bonus itself was small and usually just covered the cost of the tattoo artist’s work. It was a story about finding "your pack."

2. Instead of names, they use nicknames from Counter-Strike

All employees of the holding — from junior specialists to Borodatyuk himself — have internal nicknames. Artem himself is signed as Ice Scream (or Ice for short).

The story arose over 20 years ago due to banal practicality:

"When we first started, the first two employees were Andriys. They both sat in the office, and I didn’t understand how to call "Andriy" so that they wouldn’t both come back at once. And we were all playing Counter-Strike on a local network back then. So we decided to call ourselves nicknames."

This culture is still preserved in the company, because when dozens of Alexanders, Sergeys, and Andreis work in the holding, nicknames help to quickly identify a person.

3. Intelligence questions

However, such a closed culture with nicknames played a funny joke on the company during a full-scale war. Due to the specific slang and the lack of real names, the holding company attracted the attention of security forces.

"We are a completely white company that has never stirred anything up. But during the war it turned out that we, like many "office workers" or gamblers, all have nicknames. I remember when the GUR asked: "Why do you all have nicknames?" Because they all have call signs and nicknames! And everyone immediately thinks: "Well, you’re definitely stirring something up!" And I with my naive stories: "But we played Counter-Strike with the guys 20 years ago…" Of course, no one believed us at first," Borodatyuk laughs.

Despite this, Fractal does not plan to abandon its "sectarian" features, as they believe that it is precisely this unique culture that creates a sense of "one’s own pack" where people work for years.