Building Resilient Systems Without the Kubernetes Zoo

Building Resilient Systems Without the Kubernetes Zoo

We’ve all been there. Your team decides that Kubernetes is the solution to all infrastructure problems, and suddenly you’re managing 47 different CRDs, debugging networking issues that seem to violate the laws of physics, and spending more time troubleshooting your orchestrator than actually deploying applications. The irony? You just needed a simple, resilient system. Let me be clear: Kubernetes is powerful. It’s also complex. And complexity is the enemy of resilience....

January 18, 2026 · 11 min · 2340 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Why Zero Trust Often Means Zero Productivity: The Implementation Paradox Nobody Talks About

Why Zero Trust Often Means Zero Productivity: The Implementation Paradox Nobody Talks About

The Great Security Paradox of Our Time Picture this: Your organization has just greenlit a shiny new zero-trust security initiative. The C-suite is thrilled. The security team is cautiously optimistic. Your development team? They’re about to spend the next six months discovering that “security best practice” and “getting actual work done” don’t always play nicely together. Here’s the uncomfortable truth that nobody at the enterprise security conference wants to admit: [zero trust can theoretically improve productivity], but in practice, many implementations create such Byzantine access control nightmares that employees spend more time fighting security theater than shipping features....

January 18, 2026 · 12 min · 2398 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Ditching Story Points: How to Estimate Work Without the Ritual

Ditching Story Points: How to Estimate Work Without the Ritual

The Estimation Theater Nobody Asked For Let’s be honest: planning poker is basically ritual theater that nobody actually enjoys. You know the scene. Someone calls out “planning poker!” and suddenly everyone goes silent, frantically trying to divine whether this particular login feature is a 5 or an 8 (or both, depending on the developer’s coffee intake that morning). The irony? After years of teams obsessing over story points, velocity calculations, and Fibonacci sequences, the real question remains unanswered: how long will this actually take?...

January 17, 2026 · 11 min · 2132 words · Maxim Zhirnov
The Case for Embracing Technical Debt: When It's a Strategic Advantage

The Case for Embracing Technical Debt: When It's a Strategic Advantage

In the startup world, there’s a famous mantra: “Move fast and break things.” But somewhere between the move-fast era and enterprise maturity, we collectively decided that all technical debt was a villain waiting to destroy us. We built entire careers around debt elimination, created JIRA tickets with apocalyptic descriptions, and treated every shortcut like it was code arson. The irony? Some of the most successful companies in the world wouldn’t exist if they hadn’t taken on strategic technical debt at precisely the right moment....

January 17, 2026 · 14 min · 2854 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Preparing Your Project for Sudden Viral Traffic: A Survival Guide

Preparing Your Project for Sudden Viral Traffic: A Survival Guide

You know that feeling when you refresh your analytics and suddenly your servers are screaming louder than a cat at a vet appointment? That’s the moment you realize your carefully crafted side project is about to either become legendary or spectacularly explode in everyone’s faces. I’ve lived through this scenario twice—once successfully, and once… let’s just say I learned what “503 Service Unavailable” really means at scale. If you’re reading this, you’re probably experiencing either pre-viral anxiety or the thrilling aftermath of unexpected internet fame....

January 16, 2026 · 13 min · 2568 words · Maxim Zhirnov