I’m Dmitry Kudryavtsev

I currently live in The Netherlands

I write code from the age of 14, and do it professionally for almost 14 years. In May 2023—I burnt out. Therefore, I quit my job, sold most of my belongings, and what’s left—I packed into a suitcase and a backpack—and bought a one-way ticket to Costa Rica together with my wife and our dog. After travelling for 6 months in Central America (Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico), by the end of 2023, I have relocated to The Netherlands. I realized that the current tech industry is unsustainable, and instead I want to focus on building a sustainable business, as well as help people and companies in the tech industry.

If you are interested in hiring me for freelance, consulting or mentoring, please checking my consulting page.

Professional experience

I started my first development job in October 2009, where I’ve been a PHP developer. It took me 5 years to become a Tech Lead, and assume leadership of a crucial project. During that period I was a developer, a team lead of two people (one of them was remote), and a tech lead that was responsible for providing technical feedback to managers, as well as meeting with potential customers. Like any other junior, inexperienced developer—I had a tough journey to land my first development job. Through dedication, and perseverance—I was able to accomplish my dream of becoming a software engineer.

After more than 6 years, when I mainly stayed in one company, I decided to try my luck in a different field, and a different type of company. I switched to a small, hardware startup where I became the third backend engineer. I learned a lot in this company, including building a proper CI/CD pipeline, and working with modern cloud architecture, such as AWS. Unfortunately, after 6 months, the company ran out of money, and had to lay off 90% of their staff—including me. I negotiated some terms with the founders, and they agreed to leave me as consultant for a few days a week, due to my sheer knowledge in the system. For the next 3 months, I helped the company to transition their legacy system to a newer technology stack, as well as optimize for high load.

Being a self-employed, I decided to try my luck with a bigger company, and I landed a contractor job in an American corporate—Autodesk. I stayed there for 4 and a half years, made a career change from PHP to NodeJS, and had one of the best times. I had a chance to work with amazing people, in a very supportive environment. Likewise, I mentored, on-boarded, interviewed junior, and senior developers. I presented one of the best design-reviews to this day. I was a Tech Lead during a beginning of the pandemic in 2020—a challenging period where I had to mentor developers in remote, using Zoom, when remote work was not a thing yet. However, when came the need, I decided to step down from Tech Lead position to lead one of the most important projects at that time. And after completing my part in it, I decided to move on.

In February 2022, I found myself at Forter. Forter is one of the leading fraud detection, and payment optimization platforms out there. I had a chance to work with amazing people, on a green-field product which took Forter from being a fraud detection leader, to becoming a payment optimization leader as well. After one year and four months, I burnt out, and decided to pursue personal goals.

Throughout my 14 years of experience, I never stopped exploring and perfecting myself and my skills. I’ve touched nearly every programming language (except for the functional ones). Worked with every cloud solution.

I had a chance to work with the biggest companies out there: Booking.com, Amadeus, Visa, MasterCard, CapitalOne, Salesforce, T-Mobile, Adyen, and more. People who worked with me, describe me as: pedantic, accountable, talented and professional, having deep technical expertise, able to tackle complex problems. I had the chance, and pleasure, to go over more than two hundred CVs; interview more than 150 candidates; and I hold a very positive score in candidate experience (in terms of personal and professional communication).

I spoke at international conferences (Conf42 - Rustlang, JSNation 2022). I write a professional blog.

If you are interested in the boring, buzz-wordy, corporate-like experience—connect with me on LinkedIn.

Entrepreneurship

After quitting Forter, I decided to travel for indefinite time and pursue my entrepreneurship endeavors. Throughout the years, I’ve built multiple projects in an attempt to establish a successful business. To this day, I continue pursuing entrepreneurship and I share my knowledge in my blog: The Solopreneur Blog.

Personal touch

Programming is a big part of my life. But I believe that life should be more than just one thing. I’m very interested in psychology and philosophy. I started my self development journey after reading the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini. This book kick-started my interest in psychology, and cognitive biases that we, humans, have. I embarked on a journey to find the best way to live life at its full potential.

I like to observe people (but not in a creepy way). Travelling is a part of my life, and I like to immerse myself in local culture. I enjoy nature, and especially green forests, mountains, and volcanoes. I practice, and preach minimalism and stoicism. Sport is an important part of my life, and I try to train regularly. I enjoy boxing in particular. I believe that life is a constant journey to perfection (which is unreachable), therefore my life philosophy is built upon constant self-improvement and self-development. Nietzsche once said: “Life without music, would be a mistake”, and I totally agree with him. When I have too much free time, I compose electronic music under the stage name of Cyber Ronin 89. I’m married to an amazing wife.

I write, occasionally, yet another blog about all life stuff - Jiko Kaizen.

Contact me

I’m old school, so I always prefer email. If you don’t like email, you can try your luck via LinkedIn, Twitter or Mastodon. Consider following me on all of them, as I share a lot about #solopreneurship, #softwareengineering, #softwaredevelopment, #remotework, #philosophy, #selfimprovement, and #selfdevelopment.