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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.
Designing a Modular Monolith Architecture That Survives Microservice Hype in 2026

Designing a Modular Monolith Architecture That Survives Microservice Hype in 2026

If you’ve been scrolling through tech Twitter lately, you’ve probably encountered the modern engineer’s equivalent of a religious war: microservices versus monoliths. One camp insists that monoliths are dinosaurs headed for extinction. The other swears by the simplicity of a single codebase. Meanwhile, neither side is talking about the architecture that’s quietly winning in production environments across the industry: the modular monolith. Here’s the thing about hype cycles: they’re excellent at obscuring practical truth....

February 4, 2026 · 14 min · 2960 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Why You Should Delete Half Your Jira Tickets Right Now

Why You Should Delete Half Your Jira Tickets Right Now

There’s a metaphorical graveyard living in your Jira instance right now. Somewhere between the “In Progress” column and the depths of your backlog, there’s probably a ticket created three years ago about “Investigate potential performance improvements” that nobody’s looked at since the Great Refactoring of 2023. Maybe there are fifty like it. Maybe there are five hundred. I’m going to make a controversial statement, and I’m ready for the angry comments: you should probably delete most of them....

February 4, 2026 · 10 min · 2043 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Tiny Automation Scripts That Save Weeks of Work Per Year

Tiny Automation Scripts That Save Weeks of Work Per Year

Remember that mundane task you did yesterday? The one that took fifteen minutes and made you want to scream into the void? What if I told you that a five-minute script could eliminate it forever? Not metaphorically—literally every single day for the rest of your life. The beautiful irony of automation is that we often spend more time complaining about repetitive tasks than it would take to automate them. But here’s the thing: the payoff isn’t just about reclaiming those fifteen minutes today....

February 3, 2026 · 11 min · 2175 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Why Full-Stack Developers Don't Really Exist (and Why We Pretend They Do)

Why Full-Stack Developers Don't Really Exist (and Why We Pretend They Do)

The Job Posting That Started It All You’ve seen it a thousand times. A company posts a job listing with the following requirements: “We’re looking for an experienced Full-Stack Developer! You should be proficient in React, Vue, Angular, Node.js, Python, Java, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, GraphQL, REST APIs, microservices architecture, DevOps practices, and ideally have some experience with machine learning. Must be comfortable working independently and leading a team....

February 3, 2026 · 9 min · 1742 words · Maxim Zhirnov
The Art of Boring Logging: How Your Most Tedious Code Prevents Production Disasters

The Art of Boring Logging: How Your Most Tedious Code Prevents Production Disasters

The Unglamorous Hero Nobody Talks About You know what’s not exciting? Logging. It’s the equivalent of maintaining dental floss habits—nobody throws parties about it, but your future self will thank you when everything hits the fan at 3 AM on a Sunday. Yet here’s the paradox: the most successful engineering teams I’ve encountered obsess over something most developers treat as a afterthought. They’ve discovered that meticulous, structured logging isn’t a chore—it’s your production system’s black box flight recorder....

February 2, 2026 · 8 min · 1623 words · Maxim Zhirnov