It’s wild how fast you can build something with Claude + Cursor in just a day. I started putting up a frontend for the above app, and in just one hour, I felt like I had an MVP.

At the same time, I don’t see it being used in my day-to-day work, especially at Amazon. It’s suitable for building something quick from scratch, but once you start to add more complex features and make sure you cover all sorts of edge cases – AI begins to make everything worse, adding unnecessary lines of code and slipping out on simple bugs.

I've been experiencing a deep nostalgia for Hawaii lately, and it's led me to an interesting realization: vacationing as an adult hits differently. There's this profound awareness that you could completely transform your life with a single decision. It's a feeling I never had as a student, when life seemed more structured and tied to specific places and timeframes.

The beauty of adulthood lies in its flexibility – the freedom to switch careers, relocate for work, or completely reinvent yourself. While watching the sunset over the Pacific, I found myself contemplating the digital nomad lifestyle. The idea of working remotely, free to travel anywhere without time constraints, felt particularly appealing in that moment.

When I shared these thoughts with my girlfriend, she made an insightful observation that gave me pause. She suggested that I probably wouldn't have felt the same deep relaxation and comfort during my Hawaiian vacation if I had been working remotely. It's a valid point – traveling for vacation versus work creates fundamentally different experiences. Speaking from personal experience, the mental shift between work mode and vacation mode isn't instantaneous; it requires time and intentional effort to truly disconnect.

Yet, what works for one person might not work for another. Some people take it to the extreme. My skydiving instructor turned out to be Russian-speaking, and we got to chat during the session. He told me he'd been a skydiving instructor for 23 years, but before that worked as an investment banker. He realized he wasn't enjoying his life doing that job, so he decided to move to Hawaii and become a skydiving instructor instead.

For now, I'm back to my regular routine, but that dream of becoming a digital nomad hasn't quite faded away. Maybe one day I'll figure out how to make it work in my own way.

Those who joined the waitlist are now allowlisted for the app: https://gift-genius-app.vercel.app/

Google auth is just for permissions management for now. Only simple stuff is implemented and no backend involved, i.e. don’t expect sync through different devices cause I did not use database yet.

Treat it as v.0.1

Sneak peek

Cursor + Claude 3.5 Sonnet rocks. Pretty good result in <1 day

Btw even if it did work well in the workplace, that would be a huge productivity boost but a career suicide.

It’s like using alcohol to fall asleep. You probably will fall asleep much better, but do that for a couple of years, and you will be fucked up.

Spending a weekend in Upstate New York reminded me how overpriced NYC is.

Сейчас в Амазоне работаю над новым продуктом. Получаю огромный кайф от того, что нужно всё строить с нуля, и чувствую что мне очень повезло с этим.

Обычно когда приходишь в команду с уже готовым продуктом, становится тяжело догонять людей по знаниям системы. Вне зависимости от того сколько документации прочёл, сложно дойти до экспертизы человека который был на пороге всех решений для продукта.

Сейчас создавая что-то с нуля, я чувствую что у меня есть agency, и я могу влиять на design choices. Ну и к тому же, за всего лишь неделю я узнал больше чем за последние 6-7 месяцев.

Ещё в последнее время работаю с 9 утра до 7 вечера в офисе. Иду домой и вместо отдыха (или в качестве) читаю документацию (не официальную, а просто статьи и видео на чилле). В основном изучаю networking: NLB, ALB, TLS, VPC, subnets, private links, etc. Довольно интересная вещь.

Эта неделя была моим первым primary on-call shift. Довольно стрессово, но уже привык к звуку сирены 🚨, и не так страшно.

Кстати, у меня недавно взяли интервью:

https://limon.kg/ru/news:83494

This is the next big thing:
https://labs.amazon.science/blog/nova-act

Somehow already got access to it. Really cool stuff – it was able to order Whole Foods order based on my past purchases with me just describing how to do it.

Finally some intern at Robinhood made a feature to hide your balance

Осталось совсем немного до релиза нашего продукта. Команда работает на все 200%.

Сам каждый день наверное работаю по 12 часов. И даже не потому что надо или заставляют, а просто хочется работать над продуктом, дорабатывать, любым способом сделать вклад в его основание.

И так с каждым членом команды. Захожу в Slack, и даже в пятницу вечером люди пушат код, менеджеры сидят онлайн до полуночи.

Вообще нет ощущения что работаешь в big tech, вайб больше как у стартапа. И по идее это кайф. Если бы был выбор между «break things, and move fast» и медленным, скоординированным и наперед запланированным software development, я бы выбрал первое.

Wow, this quote is powerful.

Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959