Sergey Tsvetkov

March 27, 2025

There will be only two

Since we already discussed the problem of innovation stagnation in the automobile industry and the reason for the problem to exist, there is only one thing left for us to clarify - the future. I’m no prophet, so whatever I say below is based on my observations of the past and some rational forward looking thinking. I see no issue with ...

March 18, 2025

Why car companies stopped innovating and what we can do about it?

What makes a company die? There is a book called “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail” by Clayton M. Christensen, published in 1997. It describes the challenge successful companies face when they ignore or underinvest in doing new things. And what happens when companies keep doing this mistake for l...

February 2, 2025

Our vehicles are a few generations behind our phones

Let me emphasize this point for you. New vehicles are not only closing generational gap which was widening over last 20 years. They are actually leap frogging other means of computation we have. It is safe to bet that if you own Tesla or Rivian most likely they are the most expensive and powerful computers you have in your possession. ...

September 25, 2024

Avoid paid advice at all costs

There are many things others do which I don’t believe at all. One of them is paying for advice. Probability of any success with a consulting is so low that it is almost neglectable, in my opinion. You’ll be better off spending money on Netflix or an ice cream. From what I’ve seen and done, there are only two types of advice actually wo...

September 22, 2024

Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton

Just finished “Hatching Twitter” by Nick Bilton. That is a good story full of twists, emotions and interesting conclusions one can draw from reading. The last pages left me unsettled though. You see, as Twitter was progressing from an early stage start-up to a multi billion corporation many contradictory decisions have been made by the...

September 3, 2024

Pareto principle in software development

In my opinion, the Pareto Principle, - also known as the “80-20 rule” - could be by far the most misunderstood and abused thing in software development. You can often see how people apply this rule in the following way: “Only 20% of our efforts brings 80% of the results, so let’s drop the rest”. Well, fair enough, sometimes it may work...

September 2, 2024

Paul Graham, The Founder Mode, September 2024

At a YC event last week Brian Chesky gave a talk that everyone who was there will remember. Most founders I talked to afterward said it was the best they'd ever heard. Ron Conway, for the first time in his life, forgot to take notes. I'm not going to try to reproduce it here. Instead I want to talk about a question it raised. One theme...

September 1, 2024

Survive long enough to see another shore and catch a golden fleece

Most of my writings are not addressed to the people I know or any people at all whatsoever. It often happens that I get into trouble because someone reads something and considers it to be a result of our interaction specifically. The truth is that whatever I write is almost never an outcome of any immediate experience. Yes, there can b...

September 1, 2024

Writing is cheap, because it saves you money

Among many other skills I praise writing the most. In my opinion, people around are not spending nearly enough time writing down their thoughts. Doing that is hard. And it takes quite some time if you are not used to it. As a result, writing seems like something you can’t really afford. Which is all wrong, of course, because laying out...

August 30, 2024

Linus Torvalds at the yearly Open Source Summit

It often happens that people who have to say the most are talking the least. Which makes their every public appearance valuable. Especially, if that is a prolonged conversation with another smart and funny human being. That is what I love about the keynotes of Linus Torvalds at the yearly Open Source Summit: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

August 27, 2024

Where is a new frontier?

As time goes by I keep my eyes on this story with Pavel Durov being imprisoned in France and discussions around that matter. There is not that much factual progress on the topic though. It seems like after yesterday's post there is nothing French government has to say or would like to say. No further details, explanations or any new ev...

August 26, 2024

Guilty in provisioning of cryptographic services aimed at ensuring confidentiality functions

At the end of the day, the list of charges against Pavel Durov, - which has been finally published today by French authorities, - contains a lot of things to think about. And the main punch there is, obviously, alleged "complicity" in child exploitation and drug trafficking. Whatever it means to "comply" with such things when you run a...

August 25, 2024

Sunday when Pavel Durov got locked up

I go about my Sundays in a pretty casual way. We wake up late. Most of the time, my youngest kid is the one who breaks into our sleepy world by saying that she has had enough of waiting. Then we usually cook crêpes together. After that we eat them while enjoying some animated movies. Once we are done and the movie is over, we go on abo...

August 11, 2024

The Netflix book

I loved the Netflix book! But most likely not the one you got excited about just a few years ago. You see, Netflix was founded by a team of two people. Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph. The first one in 2020 published a book called "No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention". It was written in collaboration with Erin Meyer ...

August 10, 2024

VW stops developing it's own software

Well, that decision is wrong in so many ways that it is hard to pick one reason. I struggle to wrap my head around the fact that in 2024 leadership of such a giant company can't recognize a mere fact: software is a king. If you managed to hire a wrong set of people who failed to deliver the right solution it doesn't mean you should cha...

August 9, 2024

I gave up on Rails World 2024

Well, guess, I had to give up at some point. Bureaucracy doesn't care and I have no time to spare for it. It hurts, of course, to void the ticket to the world's best and most wanted Ruby-on-Rails conference, but at very least some damage was saved and someone else will take my place at the conference. My gratitude to the Rails World te...

August 8, 2024

All decisions are subjective

Have you ever noticed that any general principle is useful up until some point and then it breaks? That is a beauty of life. This game requires a player. There is no way to automate it. There are no generic one-size-fits-them-all solutions. All decisions are subjective. Decision maker is a mandatory position. Discuss it. Argue about it...

August 2, 2024

Tuning Rails application structure

Overview This post is quite big because I wanted to cover basic setup of the app in one go, so here is an overview: 1. First, we are going to talk about our needs and goals 2. Second, we will configure reasonable defaults 3. Third, we install some missing libraries 4. And last, we configure nice directory structure What do we want? Wha...

August 2, 2024

Immigration bureaucracy fails. Why?

Over the last couple of years I had a lot of exposure to the world's immigration bureaucracy. First, I went through the relocation process myself. Next, I had to go through it again for my wife and kids but via the family reunion path. In addition, most of our team members are working remotely, but it is frequent that we need some of o...

August 1, 2024

My application for Canadian visa got rejected 🙅‍♂️

Well, no “Rails World” for me in 2024. Apparently, somehow I didn’t manage to convince Canadian government that I have no intention to stay in Toronto once my conference is finished. Probably, I look too desperate for them, I don’t know 😁 All I have to say is that, first, bureaucracy is running the world in a very wrong direction and, ...

May 28, 2023

Hacker's Culture

When someone says "hacker" in front of a common audience people tend to imagine some bad ass Neo of Matrix style people breaking into government's IT systems to reveal some dirty secrets or put a large city into blackout just for fun. But the origin of this word and what it means in programming community is a bit different. The best so...

May 27, 2023

Work as a privilege

We are about to grow our tech team at Urban Connect. But as a person responsible for it I refuse to take it lightly. We could just go out there, post our position description, put some price tag on it and start interviewing people. With reasonable amount of money and clear expectations we would definitely succeeded. However, I think th...

March 30, 2023

How I tried to rent my apartment in Zurich on April 1st

I am about to move into my new apartment, which is a pain in Zurich as in any major city on the planet. Which is why I am not a big fan of cities. But the place is beautiful and I got it absolutely hustle free thanks to some friendly help. It suits my family needs perfectly. At least as far as I can see, because I've never visited it. ...

March 26, 2023

To be the road

In the beginning it was hard. Then it become painful. When I got to the top of a hill I could barely breathe. Finally warmed up I could pick up my pace and try to stick to it. Today is not a day when I can turn home, as I usually do here. Today I'll go farther. It is unknown yet how much time it'll take. Just enough. I have no idea wha...

March 26, 2023

Spring is coming

Let it be. That's a new norm. No rules. No law. No values. No difference. Ideology wins over rational thinking and reasoning for now. Laud is more powerful than correct. As a result world is breaking apart. Embrace it. But it can not be like this forever. Physics still works. What gets high still falls hard. Words are not enough to mov...

March 25, 2023

Does one need a reason to strive?

Recently we had like 7 hours long retrospective meeting organized by the team. Wasn't planned to be that long to be honest and took entire working day away. Can't say I am a big fan of this, but sometimes people need to talk the things through until they are out of energy. Let it be. During this conversation I have been asked why do we...