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My name is Maksim Zhirnov. I’m a Growth Marketing Expert & MarTech Engineer. I help tech companies scale through data-driven marketing strategies, powered by my engineering background. I love building marketing systems that drive growth and sharing insights on the intersection of technology and customer acquisition.
Stop Learning New Frameworks: Master One Stack and Ignore the Rest

Stop Learning New Frameworks: Master One Stack and Ignore the Rest

The Framework Treadmill Nobody Asked For Let me paint a scenario. It’s Monday morning. You open Twitter. A shiny new JavaScript framework just dropped with 50k GitHub stars. The testimonials are glowing. “10x faster development!” “Finally, a framework that gets it!” By Tuesday, you’ve abandoned your three-year-old codebase to rewrite everything in this miracle worker. By Wednesday, you’ve realized it’s solving a problem you don’t have. Welcome to web development in 2026....

January 28, 2026 · 10 min · 2004 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Observability Stack on a Tight Budget: Where to Invest First

Observability Stack on a Tight Budget: Where to Invest First

If you’ve ever received an observability bill that made you question your life choices, you’re not alone. The funny thing about observability is that it’s the most important thing you’re probably overspending on. Let me explain: observability is non-negotiable for modern systems, but the way most teams buy it? That’s where the financial hemorrhaging begins. The core problem is straightforward: SaaS observability platforms charge per gigabyte ingested, per host monitored, or per high-cardinality metric tracked....

January 27, 2026 · 10 min · 1980 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Linting Rules as a Form of Micro-Management: Finding the Sweet Spot

Linting Rules as a Form of Micro-Management: Finding the Sweet Spot

When you first encounter a linter screaming at you about inconsistent indentation at 3 PM on a Friday, it might feel less like helpful guidance and more like your code has a very pedantic supervisor. And honestly? You’d have a point. Linting rules occupy a peculiar space in software development—somewhere between necessary discipline and overbearing control. The question isn’t whether linters are useful (they clearly are), but rather: at what point does enforcing coding standards cross the line from best practice into oppressive oversight?...

January 27, 2026 · 13 min · 2575 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Evolutionary Architecture: Safely Refactoring Production Systems Without Big Bang Rewrites

Evolutionary Architecture: Safely Refactoring Production Systems Without Big Bang Rewrites

The Case Against the Big Rewrite Let me paint a picture you’ve probably seen before: it’s 2 AM on a Tuesday, your production system is down, and somewhere in a Slack channel, someone’s typing “…should we just rewrite it all?” This is the moment where many engineering teams make a choice that haunts them for years. The big bang rewrite. It sounds appealing—clean slate, new tech stack, lessons learned applied from day one....

January 26, 2026 · 11 min · 2248 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Blue-Green Deployments: Safety Net or Excuse Not to Fix Root Causes?

Blue-Green Deployments: Safety Net or Excuse Not to Fix Root Causes?

Every few years, a deployment strategy comes along that promises to solve all your problems. Remember when everyone said containers would fix everything? Blue-green deployment is this decade’s darling—the deployment equivalent of “have you tried turning it off and on again,” except way more expensive. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to trash-talk blue-green deployments. They’re genuinely useful in certain scenarios. But I’ve watched too many teams implement them as a band-aid, a way to avoid addressing the real issues lurking in their architecture....

January 26, 2026 · 11 min · 2178 words · Maxim Zhirnov