Hello World – once again

Chapter 1 – How it started

This started early, really early.

Being a kid at the end of the millenium was a true gift, especially for a kid obsessed with math and machines. There was so much innovation happening and all of it was tangible – phones, cameras, players, gaming consoles, computers – so much stuff to explore, so much stuff to play with.

First obsession were phones as they were most common – I’d “confiscate” phones from all the family friends who’d come by and dig through them – do all the fun stuff: create and change ringtones, “wallpapers”, go through settings, see what I could break, finding games was the cherry on top – though not a lot of phones had them at the time – bummer.

Young boy sitting at a desk in school

This went on until I went to primary school and saw my first computer at my English class – absolutely stunning – you could play music, you could draw, you could even create cool looking words in a document (wordart) – an absolute banger! I was hooked. I wanted in. So my brother and I agreed we’d get one, no matter what it took.

For the best part of the the next year, we did our best to save up and at the end of summer, we got our first computer – a Pentium 4 with 32MB video card and 128MB of Ram – a true beast.

“Broke” it on the first day – it went really easy – started digging through all items in the “start” menu, switching wallpapers, playing minesweeper, going through program files, running and deleting things to see what would happen, including in the windows folder…… oops.

It wasn’t fun telling our parents – but end of the day – it was good. When you know how to break things, it makes you better at knowing how NOT to break them – so knowing the “disaster” I had caused was easily resolved with reinstalling windows – gave me confidence in trying other things.

I’d say I was a natural, but I feel with the number of hours I spent in front of the screen, you could turn a shy squirrel into the next Steve Jobs – so let’s say it was just practice.

I quickly became “the computer guy” at my school – teachers need help with excel? got your back. Need a new computer set up? no problem. Someone needs to setup a small stage for the visit of the US ambassador and a presentation? say no more [yes, I actually did that – trying to find pictures somewhere now].

Chapter 2 – The internet

There’s only so much you can learn and do on windows 98, without having no place to go for information. So my knowledge stagnated a little until I finally got access to the internet. This was already at Windows XP times.

It was mind blowing, there was so much information. At the time I really enjoyed gaming and wanted to know how the games were made. I always found myself enjoying the creative process in anything I did – more then the results, something that I hold true even today – I sternly believe the only true satisfaction comes from creation and not consumption.

First complex things I tried to create were maps in Counter Strike, it was fun but got boring quickly, as I couldn’t get anyone to play them.

Next up – I came across some tutorials on Java, so I built couple of cool calculators with a twist – they were in Georgian – which I considered a complete win as at the time almost no software was available in Georgian.

This was around the same time Piczo was getting popular – this is were I first meddled with “web development”. It was fun, easy and intuitive, I was hooked once again, though piczo was pretty limiting so got boring pretty quickly as well.

Piracy was big at this time and I’d read on forums that “warez” websites were making good money with ad placements – and it clicked – I was going to be a software piracy tycoon – spoiler alert – I’m not Kim Dotcom.

I briefed 3 of my best friends about the master plan – I’d build the website – they’d help me with content uploads – it was a no brainer – they were in.

Mekvle.com – was born [link goes to wayback machine] – and don’t ask me how and why we chose this absolutely hilarious name (in Georgian). We cheeped in couple dollars each, bought the domain, some shared hosting and we were ready to roll.

Long story short – we made 10 USD in about 6 months of working part time and when it was time to cash out – turned out the ad platform was a scam. Not funny, but lesson learned. So we ended up with colossal net loss of about 30 USD and hundreds of hours we could have spent playing football. Obviously, this couldn’t be further from truth – we learned a lot.

This was the first time I developed something with actual users and managed an actual team. By no means a technological marvel – using DataLifeEngine(CutePHP), deployed on some shared hosting. Nor was the team an exemplary institution. Regardless, we were serving up to 1000 users per day and getting cool guy points at school. I still hold pride for this project. I was 14 at the time.

Chapter 3 – Education & Freelancing

From that point on the life path seemed very straightforward – I loved computers, I was REALLY good at math (got a perfect 100% score at the Georgian equivalent of SATs) – so I had to study engineering – right? no.

Even though I really wanted to pursue computer science – there was only one good school in Georgia – and it was expensive. No way me/my family could afford it. So I had to choose something else – wasn’t happy about this but had no choice. I chose to study economics – I was the numbers guy – “you’ll enjoy economics” – right? no.

I got into the business and economics university as the top rated student in the whole country – met with the president of Georgia, did a newspaper interview – that kind of a thing.

Try to guess my GPA at the end of the first year – 4? 3.5? nope. 1.3 – turns out, just because you like math, doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy economics – I hated it, so decided early on, that I’d instead find work and do the bare minimum to pass the classes, so I wouldn’t “waste my time”. Looking back, after I’ve actually learned what I was “learning” during my bachelors – I realise, economics itself is very interesting – it was just the course that I was in was really outdated, and I honestly don’t regret not spending more time there.

End of day – I did go back to university after my bachelors and got an MBA, where I actually dedicated myself to studying well, as the professors and courses themselves were much more interesting.

During the studies, I worked multiple jobs and started a small business – https://kartvelitours.com – which I built with 0 capital. Used my tech skills to build a nice website with GREAT seo, which didn’t really have much competition at the time, so Kartveli Tours quickly became one of the most well known travel agencies in Georgia for the time. For couple years, we were in top 3 on TripAdvisor – proud of it still. It was at this point that I decided that this business had to be an actual business and work without my involvement, so I started stepping away and got a temporary digital marketing job – SMM/SMM/SEO in finance.

At the same time, I was taking on freelancing projects, mostly doing wordpress websites for small businesses in and out of Georgia.

Chapter 4 – Covid & After

Then covid hit, and most everything, my life got turned upside down – travel business died overnight. Which meant I had to come up with something to do full time. So I decided to find a job, I panicked a little, and started applying to any job that was remotely close to my skills – for couple months, I was working as a graphic designer, to keep things rolling, until I’d land a better job. I also started applying to development jobs – something I thought I’d never do, as I never considered myself a good developer, it went surprisingly fast and I landed my first full time job as a developer – it was chaotic.

I worked at a small company as the only developer – keeping multiple e-commerce websites alive, automating price changes, stocks, at the same time creating websites for new businesses the company was trying to pursue. Eventually hiring couple more developers, so I went from developer 1 to somewhat of a lead developer / product owner – deciding what to work on and when, as well as actually getting my hands dirty. This was a great opportunity as it forced me to work on across multiple frameworks, languages and business domains, forming a framework agnostic problem solving approach in me.

Next, I move to a big startup – the move was really unorthodox – having all this experience, I had still never worked at a big tech company – but I knew this was an opportunity to improve my growth trajectory, I had to get more foot in the door – I applied for a JUNIOR developer position, I thought I failed the interview – I couldn’t find the right words for anything, even though I solved all the challenges, I had a hard time communicating my solutions – as “I didn’t speak the lingo” of big tech. Turns out the interview was a success – I got the job, and an improved rating of IC2.

Didn’t last long though – in a month, as I settled in the team and gained my confidence, I was promoted to a team lead. Project was very interesting, working with a team of almost 100 people comes with unique set of challenges.

After spending a year at the startup, I was approached with an opportunity I couldn’t resist. A completely new business domain, an opportunity to build a product from ground up, as well as the opportunity to build the team.

Fast forward to now – still at the company – went from 0 to millions of users (in double digits 😉), multiple mobile apps, one of them in top 100 in US, millions of downloads, billions of requests, scale like I had never seen before now being the daily routine – has pushed me to learn and grow at an exponential rate.

Chapter 5 – 2025 & trying new things

It’s January 1st and the yearly reminder to do something new pops up on my phone, this time – I’m ready. 2025 is the year I start pursuing another one of my passions – writing & interacting with people. This marks the start line for ThinkScale – the blog you’re reading this on – starting here and now. It’s time to say “Hello World!” again – now in completely different context.

This is where I’ll share my mistakes, lessons learned, and thoughts on topics like:

  • Career advice for the newcomers in the industry
  • Designing systems that scale efficiently and reliably
  • Leading engineering teams through growth
  • Applying business strategy to technical decision-making
  • Making hard decisions, weighing dilemmas

I don’t promise frequent updates, but when I do put out something – I promise it will be worthwhile.

To stay up to date, add/follow me on Linkedin.

And last but not least – if you read through this whole thing – thank you, hope you have a happy new year!

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