AI-Powered Test Data Generation: From Concept to Production-Ready Load Testing Scenarios

AI-Powered Test Data Generation: From Concept to Production-Ready Load Testing Scenarios

Remember those days when QA engineers would spend half their time manually crafting test data? You know, the excruciating process of copying production data, anonymizing it (badly), and hoping no one notices that your test database contains John Smith’s entire purchase history? Yeah, those days are numbered. AI-powered test data generation is quietly revolutionizing how we approach testing, and frankly, it’s about time. The reality is sobering: manual test data creation consumes up to 50% of testers’ time, and relying on production data is a compliance nightmare waiting to happen....

January 21, 2026 · 14 min · 2853 words · Maxim Zhirnov
The Myth of the 10x Engineer: Why Teams Chase Unicorns Instead of Fixing Processes

The Myth of the 10x Engineer: Why Teams Chase Unicorns Instead of Fixing Processes

Every software company has that person. You know the one. They finish tickets in a day that would take normal developers a week. They know the codebase like the back of their hand. They can debug production incidents that confound entire teams. Management treats them like a unicorn. The engineers avoid sitting next to them because they make everyone else look bad. And deep down, you’re wondering: am I not cut out for this?...

January 21, 2026 · 10 min · 2044 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Measuring and Improving MTTR in Your Engineering Team: From Chaos to Predictability

Measuring and Improving MTTR in Your Engineering Team: From Chaos to Predictability

There’s a moment every engineer dreads—that 3 AM alert when something critical goes down, and suddenly your team is in full firefighting mode. The real question isn’t if systems will fail (they will), but how quickly you can get them back online. That’s where Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) comes in, and it’s honestly one of the most underrated metrics in engineering. Not because it’s complex, but because most teams measure it wrong or worse—not at all....

January 20, 2026 · 15 min · 3188 words · Maxim Zhirnov
Feature Flags as Permanent Architecture, Not Temporary Switches

Feature Flags as Permanent Architecture, Not Temporary Switches

Most developers treat feature flags like they’re on a temporary visa—useful for a sprint or two, then discarded once the feature ships. That’s like buying a sports car for your commute and selling it the moment you reach the office. You’re missing the entire point. Feature flags aren’t shortcuts. They’re a fundamental architectural pattern that should be woven into how your system thinks about itself. Let me explain why the industry has gotten this mostly wrong, and what actually happens when you treat flags as permanent infrastructure....

January 20, 2026 · 8 min · 1645 words · Maxim Zhirnov
The Art of Saying No to Shiny Tech: A Practical Guide to Conservative Stack Choices Without Missing Innovation

The Art of Saying No to Shiny Tech: A Practical Guide to Conservative Stack Choices Without Missing Innovation

If you’ve been in tech for more than five minutes, you’ve probably experienced the siren song of a new framework. Someone tweets about it, GitHub stars climb faster than a SpaceX rocket, and suddenly your Slack #engineering channel erupts with “We need to migrate to this!” By Thursday, half your team is convinced your current stack is basically a Commodore 64 running on floppy disks. The truth? Most of those frameworks will be forgotten by 2027....

January 19, 2026 · 11 min · 2343 words · Maxim Zhirnov