My daughter recently told me that she wants to publish a manga book. She has all of the characters, story, world description and bunch of drawings. I love that for her a book is just something that you “make” and none of the technicalities bother her (other than I have to buy her Apple Pencil Pro & iPad).

Back in 2012 I published e-book on design patters with unique coding examples (download page in Ukrainian). Maybe it wasn’t a perfect creation of mine, but many people loved it and I found that multiple Ukrainian universities used it as recommended literature for their computer science courses. Before I had it out I told a friend that I want to make it and he was skeptical, I then spent 20 weeks regularly on Tuesday rigorously writing posts and transforming them into chapters of the book.

400 Posts. 17 Years. 4 Countries. 6 Companies. ONE Story.

This blog has about 400 posts written throughout 2009-2026 on software engineering, career, AI, opinions, book reviews, and so much more in between. This blog is my voice and my story of borderless ever-immigrant and career navigator. A story of an engineer who left Ukraine, moved through Austria and Canada to USA, landed jobs at IAEA, Amazon, Google, and Meta, and other companies and wrote technical posts all along. A concept I have in mind is a practical guide for international/immigrating software engineers navigating tech careers, built from 17 years of doing exactly that. This is not a textbook or a self-help book, but rather something in between. Going over career transitions, promotion mechanics, immigration reality, the AI shift, and the mental frameworks that helped me navigate it all.

Why now?

In the age of AI the cost of producing text (or code) is extremely low, at the same time truly unique stories and genuinely authentic thoughts are becoming more rare.

I already have all of the raw material, stories, thoughts and so on, all the AI has to do is to help me with mechanical work, in fact I’m having Claude Co-work grinding through entire blog, cataloging it, proposing draft table of contents, identifying gaps, etc.

Burning lots of tokens, but I think it is worth it. All of the material is mine, all of the creative decisions are mine. I hate AI generated slop, so you can be sure no AI text would go into it without my own style or voice. Below is a working title and table of contents (AI generated):

Working title: The Borderless Engineer

Part I: The Foundation

  • Where It Starts — Your First Job and Why You’ll Leave It
  • Transplanting Yourself — Immigration as Career Strategy
  • The Learning Machine — How to Absorb Faster Than Everyone Around You

Part II: Navigating Big Tech

  • Getting In — Interviews, Preparation, and the Mental Game
  • The Promotion Formula
  • Finding Your Voice
  • The Generalist’s Advantage
  • When to Leave — Career Transitions at the Top

Part III: The Engineer’s Toolkit

  • Frameworks for Thinking
  • The Athlete-Engineer
  • Mentorship — Both Sides
  • Financial Independence for the Immigrant Engineer

Part IV: The AI Transformation

  • From Skeptic to Believer — My AI Journey
  • The Asteroid Has Landed
  • Don’t Outsource Your Thinking

Part V: The Philosophy

  • Design Your Own Path

What do you think? Drop a comment or reach out directly. If you are reading this via e-mail subscription you can simply reply. This is early enough that your feedback can actually shape the book.