DEV Community: Yaroslav Zhmayev

Klarna just raised $1.37B — and proved why AI still needs humans

Yaroslav Zhmayev — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 08:37:01 +0000

Klarna just raised $1.37B — and proved why AI still needs humans

Big moment for European tech: Klarna finally went public in the US. Shares jumped 30% on the first day, giving the company a $17B market cap. Investors are clearly betting big on its future. But here’s the irony: while the IPO is a success story, Klarna’s AI experiment tells a different one. Not long ago, the company shifted hundreds of engineers, marketers, and even lawyers out of their roles, betting that AI could replace 700 customer support agents.

Experiment backfired fast.
Customers didn’t leave because of the tech itself — they left because service lost quality, empathy, and trust.
We break down what went wrong, and what companies should do instead

Multi-Cloud resilience anchored by Private cloud

Yaroslav Zhmayev — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 08:53:35 +0000

On June 12, 2025, Google Cloud global outage sent shockwaves through the digital economy, disrupting services across continents for nearly eight hours.

This incident wasn’t merely a technical hiccup; it was a stark revelation of systemic vulnerability in single-cloud dependency. As enterprises scrambled to restore operations, a paradigm shift accelerated: the migration toward private cloud-anchored multi-cloud architectures.

This approach transforms cloud strategy from a vendor-dependent gamble into a resilient, sovereign capability — where your private cloud acts as the command center orchestrating a diversified public cloud portfolio.

Downdetector yesterday was reporting issues with all Google services (YouTube, Google Docs), but also Spotify, Discord, DHL and many others non-Google services

The evolving cloud landscape: beyond single-cloud fragility

Google Cloud’s failure crippled businesses reliant solely on its infrastructure. Applications froze, data pipelines halted, and customer transactions failed. This event exposed the perils of monolithic cloud dependence — where a single point of failure cascades into enterprise-wide paralysis.
My post-outage takeoff if that enterprises shall embrace multi-cloud withdrawal plans. The core mandate? Distribute critical workloads across environments, with private clouds as the linchpin.

Not-so-obvious advantages of Private clouds

Regulatory & security imperatives: in sectors like finance or healthcare, regulations (GDPR, HIPAA) demand data residency and auditable controls. A private cloud — whether on-premises or hosted — grants absolute authority over data location, encryption standards, and access policies. Unlike public clouds’ shared responsibility model, the private cloud eliminates “noisy neighbor” risks and provides a hardened security enclave.
Case in Point: Airbus uses its private cloud to house sensitive aerospace design data, while leveraging AWS/Azure for simulation workloads. This segregation ensures IP protection without sacrificing innovation agility.

Your Private Cloud is not only a liability — it’s a strategic asset

5 years ago, a private cloud was on-premises legacy, but modern tools like Proxmox allow companies to build production grade infastructures, while leveraging Kubernetes, infrastructure-as-code (IaC), and API-driven automation.
Long-term economic advantages: while requiring an upfront investment, private clouds reduce lifetime costs for high-uptime workloads. Here’s an example: 37signals saved $1.5M/year repatriating from public clouds, demonstrating the cost crossover point for mature workloads.

Conclusion: back to Sovereign Cloud

Google Cloud outage wasn’t an anomaly — it was a stress test for modern cloud strategy. Enterprises treating cloud providers as interchangeable commodities suffered profoundly. Those anchoring operations in a private cloud command center, augmented by tactical public cloud integrations, transformed risk into opportunity. They maintained operations because their architecture embodied the core tenets of digital resilience: control where indispensable, flexibility where advantageous, and diversification always.

As hybrid multi-cloud evolves from luxury to necessity, the question shifts from “Why private cloud in multi-cloud?” to “Can we afford not to have it?” The future belongs to enterprises that wield their private cloud not as a relic, but as a sovereign engine of stability in an unpredictable digital ecosystem.

Are you exploring a multi-cloud strategy or thinking about migrating critical infrastructure to a private cloud? I can help! With over 15 years of experience in both private and public cloud environments, I specialize in DevOps and Solution Architecture. Let’s work together to design and implement a solution that fits your needs.

Using both Twingate and Wireguard on a Windows PC

Yaroslav Zhmayev — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 21:54:26 +0000

Twingate is a fantastic alternative to traditional VPNs like WireGuard because it offers superior security with Zero Trust principles and is incredibly easy to deploy, ensuring seamless and secure access to your resources without the hassle of complex configurations.

However, in order to use Twingate only you must own the infrastructure behind it (I’m talking about Twingate connectors here).

What if one of your customers is using Wireguard to access the company’s cloud-based servers and databases?

You can’t use both solutions at the same time: if your Twingate client is active and you try to open a Wireguard tunnel connection your Windows PC will freak out. Most likely, you are going to completely lose your Internet connection.

So how can you use both? Is it even possible? Yes, it is!

There is a secret feature in Wireguard, it allows Windows clients to execute commands before or right after establishing a Wireguard connection or closing one.

You could even spice up your script a little bit more, by using WIREGUARD_TUNNEL_NAME variable to conditionally execute or not execute certain statements, based on which Wireguard connection is being established.

The only caveat is that these commands will be executed under SYSTEM user,which is a big deal, because it might make you an easy target for malware.

But we know what we are up to, don't we?

You can activate this PreUp-PostDown magic by running enabling it via registry

reg add HKLM\Software\WireGuard /v DangerousScriptExecution /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Then you can start adding the PreUp, PostUp, PreDown, and PostDown options to your tunnel configurations.

I will add

PreUp = net stop Twingate.Service
PostDown = net start Twingate.Service

to the [Interface] section in all my tunnel configs.

Now, every time I activate Wireguard it stops Twingate and re-starts the service, when I close my Wireguard connection. It’s super convenient!

You are welcome!

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