Ilyas Mustafin
CTO / Enterprise Architect
Notes on architecture, DevOps and building products
.env Wide Open
A security audit of my own product. Three holes I knew about but never fixed. Three lines in a config.
Remote vs Office
The IT market is getting tougher on work formats. Companies want control, talent wants freedom. Who blinks first?
The One Question Nobody Asks
I built ADKAR into a project management tool. Planning without accounting for people is a schedule made for robots.
A Financial Cushion Isn't About Money
Your financial position shapes the quality of your career decisions. With a runway, you choose. Without one, someone else chooses for you.
Startup Infrastructure for 6 Euros a Month
VPS, domain, CI/CD - cheaper than dinner for two. And a Claude subscription costs 16x more than the entire infrastructure.
What Actually Breaks IT Transformations
IT transformations rarely fail because of technology. More often, they fail because of what nobody said out loud.
From Idea to Mobile App in an Evening
A Flutter prototype for iPhone, Android, and Apple Watch in a couple of days. The watch turned out to be the most honest mirror of execution.
Jira Doesn't Work: Building an MVP in One Evening
Built my own project management tool in one evening. Kanban, timeline, forecasts - all on a single screen.
Claude Code vs Cursor: My Take
Claude Code is AI for thinking, Cursor is AI for getting things done. Different approach, different cost, different use cases.