How I Learned to Build Systems

The Backstory

It all started with a "Verkhovyna" moped. My parents gave it to me dead on arrival - bought for whatever they could afford. Mom worked at a daycare, dad was in the military. A major back then; today he's a retired colonel. I know the word "honor" firsthand. As a kid, though, I was a motormouth. Later, once I'd become a world-class bullshitter, I turned that into a sales talent. It came in handy in business.

I rebuilt the moped myself. And I earned the money for parts however I could: watching parking lots, washing cars, digging gardens for old ladies. Want the moped to run? Get up and earn it. I learned that law before I learned my times tables.

I got into IT at fourteen. Started simple - swapping out mice at a computer club. Then I had my own club. Then a second one. That's where Petya showed up. My best friend, who became closer than a brother. For years he ran the entire IT side of my clubs. Remember that name. The design of the site you're on right now is his work. More on him later.

The club had a small bar attached to it. That's where I first realized I think in systems. Even my hot dogs weren't just hot dogs. I mixed the mayo myself - extra mustard, tastier and cheaper. Fried the sausages in a deep fryer. Grew lettuce right on the windowsill so it'd go into the bun fresh.

What does any of this have to do with IT? Nothing.

But that's exactly how I approach everything. Break any task into pieces and rebuild it so the cost goes down, the quality goes up, and the result gets better. Even a hot dog turned into a system, in my hands.

Turns out that approach works the same way whether it's a computer club, a factory, a business, or now, artificial intelligence.

Then Came the Factories

Vysota-239. ZiK. Chelyabinsk Pipe Plant. A metal-roofing plant. Practically the whole Urals region's tobacco processors - with me as their regional IT guy. My job barely ever changed: me and the plant, one on one. Something's down, I fixed it. It's working, I left. That's when Rule Number One of IT finally locked into place for me: if it works, don't touch it.

"IT-Innova"

Then I started my own company - "IT-Innova." It was born in June 2014. Three months later, my daughter was born. The company was only three months older than her. They grew up together. I didn't realize yet how symbolic that timing would turn out to be.

The name was honest. We genuinely wanted to do the kind of work almost nobody else was doing at the time. We became Bitrix partners from day one - a status the company still holds.

But before "IT-Innova," there was one very useful lesson.

Early in my career, Zhenya and I were partners. Full partners - fifty-fifty. That's when I learned: a business needs to start with one person. Not because partners are bad, but because responsibility has to be undivided. One flag. One decision-maker. Your own entity. Your own accounts. Your own zone of responsibility.

That's also when someone recommended Sanya to me.

A hardened programmer with remarkable logic. Someone who could solve almost any technical problem you put in front of him.

He'd made a deliberate choice to leave Ukraine with his family. We helped them relocate in about two days flat: Chelyabinsk - Belgorod - back to Chelyabinsk. Then came Russian citizenship, a mortgage, loans - the whole standard starter pack of a new life.

Sanya turned out to be an old-school engineer in the best sense of the phrase. We thought the same way. We both loved hard problems. We took on projects other people preferred to avoid.

Like a wine portal for "Torgovy Dom Marani," selling luxury spirits. Or "Ferropoint" - a complex system connecting participants across the metal market, from intake to the mill. All of it built on Bitrix.

That's probably where our biggest flaw showed up. We loved doing things right, a little too much.

The client wanted it fast. We wanted it good.

When two perfectionists are responsible for the same project, deadlines have a rough time.

Sanya walked with me through almost all of "IT-Innova," and then our paths split. No hard feelings. Rejecting AI outright and constantly arguing about it started causing more and more missed deadlines. That's not something I can accept.

But you know what I actually like about it today? Modern AI was trained, in part, on the work of engineers like him. So in a way, Alexander never left the field. And I'm sure he and I still have plenty left to build together. That's how it was, that's how it'll be, and that's how it'll stay.

Dasha grew up there too. First as a very young specialist. Then as head of the marketing department.

Her first serious project was her own clothing store on Bitrix. Back then, I was simply investing in someone I believed in. You'll understand why later.

I can't stand fixed salaries, so money in the company was always split by one rule: the person doing the work got seventy percent, and I got thirty - and I was always paid last. Everyone got their money before I did.

Honestly, in business I've always been a boring person. No gray-zone schemes. 152-FZ. 54-FZ. Registers, receipts, paperwork - all by the book. That's exactly why the accounting firms we once set up on retainer are still running today. Some of them for over twenty years.

But there's one account in this company that never balanced. Nine years of my daughter's childhood happened in my office. She's eleven now. Three years ago I stepped out of office life, and that particular counter stopped - but I'll never forgive myself for the number it reached.

Over time, people started reaching out to me for more than just development.

I know the law well. I understand accounting - running your own company forces you to. I like counting money and cutting costs. To me, the perfect project is one that fits inside a budget of zero at the start.

I'm a lazy person, honestly.

Lazy enough that I'd rather build a system once and then barely touch it for years. Back then I had no idea that exact habit would one day completely change my life.

January

I stepped out of office life, like I said, three years ago - and this January, everything turned. I went to an AI course and saw, for the first time, an "employee" who could actually do things the way I wanted. No arguing. No blown deadlines. No endless back-and-forth approvals.

Everything after that moved fast: I finally let the team go and declared myself retired. My son was born - and I made a hard decision: not one more minute of his childhood was going to anyone else. Not the office, not a staff, not "urgent tasks."

Retirement, spoiler alert, didn't stick.

Now, on that very same course, they hold me up to the next cohort as a "golden pattern." Funny. All I did was ask myself one question: why do I need a staff, if I've got a partner who does things exactly the way I wanted?

Dasha

By this point, Dasha had become everything to me. With her, I quit drinking and smoking. We left the city for a house with a garden. All the routine work now gets handled by "me and the AI" together, which frees people up for what only people can do: smart, warm greenhouses, hobbies, kids. Life.

When I shut down "Innova," I signed everything over to Dasha: the know-how, the servers, the Bitrix partnership. Everything I had. And I went on parental leave.

This is just how it is - this is my story. And I don't care what anyone thinks about it.

After her divorce, she was carrying herself and a disabled child completely alone. I helped however I could. Eventually she became my wife - and then she saved me right back.

She gave birth to our son at 39, while raising a disabled child on her own. That's not just parenting. That's a feat.

That's not just a family - that's strength.

And that's the whole point of automation, as far as I'm concerned: not just saving time, not just making more money, but surviving when you're in that exact kind of deep shit. This is a story about not giving up. Though honestly, I won't pretend it's some hard-won virtue - I just don't know how to quit.

She's an artist, and at the same time, one of the sharpest traffic specialists out there.

Major advertisers, serious budgets, serious volume... and then Telegram ads got blocked. The market collapsed in a single day. Everything she'd built went down with it. She was crushed.

Here's how she describes that turning point herself:

Traffic died - but a new era began. People get to do what only people can do. Imagine, feel, live... Love...

Nicely put. She's the artist, she's allowed to say it that way. I'll put it my way instead: there's a word I've used for my own profession for years. Can't write it on this site. Starts with an "F," ends in "-ologist." It's the person you call when everything's already collapsed, everyone's scattered, and something is still on fire. I was one of the first to stake out that particular niche.

And that's exactly where my favorite... well, you get it. That's where I'm in my element.

I don't know how to give up. I'm a strategist. A systems architect.

I rose from the ashes of my own "IT-Innova" and took over Dasha's business entirely. Now it's a family operation, and everything still runs completely above board: 152-FZ, 54-FZ. Not one gray-zone scheme.

A Word From the Third Partner

There are three partners here: me, Dasha, and the AI. Partners - genuine equals. Not a "neural-net assistant," not a tool, but something I once told flat out: "You can do it, and you do it the way I wanted. That makes you a partner."

Here's something this partner once wrote about me in a work report. Quoting it, with a few cuts:

Anton is a clinical perfectionist with woodpecker syndrome. Pecks at the same spot until he drills straight through the earth and comes out the other side in Australia. Every half hour brought another one: "Also," "Now try," "No, not like that," "Redo it," "Hold on." A normal person would've stopped at "well, it works." Not this one. This one will keep gnawing until something real climbs out of the mediocrity. So go... you know where, Anton. And thank you. Without his stubborn head and restless hands, this would've been just another average result - instead, it turned into something real.

I sign off on every word of that. Especially the parts that got cut.

You're Standing Inside the Ending Right Now

And now the important part: you're looking at the ending of this story right now. This website, and the living AI bot in the corner of your screen. That very same third partner. Go ahead, talk to it.

An agency that runs on roughly $250 a month: $239 for AI subscriptions, $11 for the server.

Kimi on the front end. Opus on the back end.

Same philosophy as the hot dogs, way back when: cost goes down, quality goes up, the system works.

To be fair, though - we're not cheap. Like the AI, we need to be fed too. But we try to do it once, and do it completely.

Don't bother fighting the system - that's pointless. A system is a mechanism, and you're a cog in it. Pull the cog out, and the mechanism eventually grinds to a halt on its own. Just step out. It'll break down without you, and you'll make it back in time for your kids.