Blog
On architecture, AI, management, and fair work models.
Cooperative vs Employment: A Conversation the Community Was Ready to Have
Notes from conversations with RAD-KOP, a Russian cooperative IT community. Not 'here's my pitch' but 'here's where the dialogue took us': a comparison of models, real-world examples, and an honest look at the downsides.
AI in Development: 30-60% Acceleration — Reality or Hype?
Hands-on experience with AI tools and LLM agents in enterprise development and pet projects. Where AI actually speeds things up, where it creates an illusion, and how to build it into your process.
The Value We Create — and Almost Never Keep for Ourselves
In IT we create value every single day: we fix prod, cut risk, clear out the chaos. Yet almost none of us actually owns the result. A look at an uncomfortable paradox — without the drama.
Red Flags in Hiring, Through a Lead's Eyes
Behavioral patterns in candidates I've learned to spot over years of hiring. Not an HR checklist, but the view of a manager who builds teams.
The Shoemaker With No Shoes: How I Rebuilt My Own Resume
For two years I've been fixing other people's resumes — then I opened my own and got depressed. Five things I changed, and why it matters to anyone who has outgrown their old role.
DPUPP on a Weekend: The Kremlin, a Family Release, and Sunday Alerts
A Sunday walk through central Moscow seen through the eyes of an engineer who spent too long working from home. Family as a distributed system, the Kremlin as production, and a quiet thought about why you should step away from the monitor at all.
Copying Is Cheap. Running the Copy Is Expensive
Why "we built our own analog" and "we localized it" isn't innovation but a deferred invoice. A breakdown of what it costs to live on someone else's architecture and why sovereignty can't be bought on a Marketplace.
FAANG the Russian Way: The Cult of Canon and Antipatterns Born of Good Intentions
Why "we want architecture like FAANG" so often turns out to be the beginning of the end. On the cult of canon, antipatterns born of good intentions, and one short word that saves projects more reliably than any pattern.
Toxicity in Tech: How Not to Shrivel Up and Stay in the Game
Toxic teams kill your career faster than a stale résumé ever will. Here is what not to do and what actually works — for both engineers and managers.
Event Storming Without the Hype: Pros, Cons, and a Sticky Note on Your Forehead
A personal take on Event Storming after more than one "event storm": where it genuinely saves a team, where it turns into pointless sticker-therapy, and what it takes to keep a session from going down the drain.
"Retros Are a Waste of Time." Let's Unpack Why They're Not
A retro is easy to turn into a ritual everyone quietly hates. Let's dig into what it's actually for, how to get honesty out of your team, and why without action items the whole thing is just idle chatter.
How to Take a Banking Product Real-Time
Building a real-time pre-approved offers system inside a banking enterprise. Apache Flink, Tarantool, Kafka — and the lessons you won't find in the docs.
The More Detailed the Spec, the Weaker the Developers — A Paradox I Keep Seeing on Projects
Why overly detailed requirements erode developer expertise over time, where the real pros and cons of a high-level spec lie, and how to strike a balance between predictability and team growth.
Classic Mistakes Systems Analysts Make on IT Projects
Typical missteps systems analysts make on large enterprise projects in banking and fintech: vague requirements, legacy integrations, regulation, negative scenarios and early validation — and how to cut the risk ahead of time.
Does a Software Engineer Need a Degree If Everything Is Already Online
People call a diploma a fancy coaster: take a couple of courses, learn a language, and you have conquered the peaks. Here is why a solid academic foundation still wins — systems thinking, math, and the skill of digging up knowledge where no guide has been written yet.
Data Exchange Formats: From JSON to Protobuf
A deep dive into data exchange formats: where JSON lives, why XML still matters, what makes YAML great, and when it is time to switch to binary Protobuf, Avro, and MessagePack — tied to APIs and message brokers.
Architecture on Easy Mode
When a monolith pays off and when it is time to move to microservices — I break down the architecture choice through the cost of a single line of code, without the usual droning about "scalability" and "fault tolerance".
Fintech Development: 7 Circles of Hell
An honest guide to what awaits your team when shipping a product to production at a major bank. From hiring to support — every stage is a challenge of its own.
UML: what kind of beast is it, and why analysts steer clear
UML can visualize, specify and document a system — yet you almost never see it used on real teams. Let’s figure out what it’s for, why analysts avoid it, and where it actually pays off.
Microservices or Monolith?
A cheat sheet for choosing an architecture: the pros and cons of monoliths and microservices, what works better for a small company, what level of engineers you need, and a checklist to help you pick an approach.
User Stories: The Most Underrated Thing on Teams
What a user story actually is, how to write one using the "who — what — why" formula, why acceptance criteria matter, and the traps teams fall into most often.
Saint HighLoad++ 2024: Moving a Banking Product to Real-Time
A talk from Saint HighLoad++ 2024 — how we built a real-time trigger system for banking customers on Apache Flink, Tarantool, and Kafka, and what did not go according to plan.
Building an IT Team Fast: The Risks and the Upside
Assembling a core team in a month and closing all your hiring in two sounds like a flex — but you pay for every week you save. From my own experience: where speed wins, and where the bill lands.
Tech Lead: A New Challenge for the Analyst
A career path from analyst to head of an IT cluster. How to build a team from scratch, which skills you will have to level up, and why knowing how to say "no" matters more than knowing how to say "yes." Based on a proposal for Analyst Days 2024.
IT Conferences for Analysts: A Practitioner's Guide
Why analysts should go to conferences, how to squeeze the most out of them, and which venues are worth your time and money. A rundown of 20+ conferences from the experience of a speaker and the lead of a 2,000+ member community.
How a Software Development Team Actually Works
How a software development team is structured, from gathering requirements to release: six phases and the roles — BA, PO, Systems Analyst, Scrum Master, Tech Lead, developers, DevOps, QA — and who owns what.
SQL in Practice: Installing PostgreSQL and Writing Your First Queries
A hands-on SQL guide for analysts and IT specialists: install PostgreSQL locally and write your first queries — from CRUD and JOINs to aggregates and transactions.
Message Brokers — the Nuances
What a message broker actually is, and how the three classic solutions — RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ and Kafka — differ: protocols, message models, delivery guarantees and partitions.
A Career in IT (my two cents)
What a career in IT really looks like once you take off the rose-tinted glasses: the drivers of growth, a checklist for picking a direction, and an algorithm for choosing between moving up and moving sideways.
Impulse 2023: Community Synergy — Boosting the Output of IT Teams
A talk from the Impulse 2023 conference: how horizontal links, tech guilds, and mentoring boost the output of IT teams and save millions of rubles.
API From A to Z: Theory and Practice
API horror stories from banking development, a protocol comparison, and the mistakes I've seen in every other specification. Material from a systems analysis course.
Analysts and Their Many Flavors
Who an analyst actually is in IT and what specializations exist: a tour of 18 kinds of analyst — from business and systems to Data Scientist — plus salary ranges and why the field has real upside.
How to Interview a Client When You're the Analyst on an IT Team (a Checklist)
A step-by-step algorithm for interviewing a client when there is no business analyst on the team: preparation, running the interview, analysis, and confirming requirements.
NER Services in Business: From Theory to Practice
How named entity recognition automates business processes inside a bank. Practical Python examples with working code.
Word of the Day — Idempotency
A quick primer on idempotency: what this property of operations is, why it matters for system reliability, and where it shows up — from HTTP methods to databases and blockchain.
Analyst Days 15: Behold the Path of Data, Padawan
A talk from Analyst Days 15 — data as the circulatory system of a business. The three states of data, the patterns for working with it, and why an analyst who does not understand data is not an analyst.
Analyst Days 14 / Impulse 2022: Don't Paint the Grass — Data Risk and Value in a BANI World
A talk from Analyst Days 14 and Impulse 2022 — why ungoverned data turns into a ticking time bomb, and how DAMA, ISO 27000, and plain common sense help you avoid it.