Earlier this month my time at Agoda came to an end. I’ve been reflecting on how much I learned there, and on the remarkable people I worked alongside.
At Agoda I worked on Kubernetes resource management and deployment anomaly detection, and spent a lot of time learning their internal tools. Along the way I got to go deep on Rust, Go, Kubernetes internals, Python APIs, and the kind of systems design you can only really learn at scale.
A special mention for Idan Zalzberg, Agoda’s CTO. I’m not close to him — a handful of conversations and some Slack threads — but from a distance he set my mental bar for what a tech CTO should be: stays deeply technical, still writes code, runs workshops to teach others, holds the strategic picture, and shows up in technical discussions across the org.
I’m grateful to Avishalom Shauer for teaching me about API design, Go, and what it takes to be a good lead engineer.
Johan Tiesinga showed me how exciting side projects can be, how deep Kubernetes and networking go at scale, and got me started on Rust.
Ji-Haw Foo showed me what real dedication to work looks like — and he’s one of the people I most enjoyed working alongside.
More broadly, I’m grateful for the many talented engineers I met, worked with, and learned from at Agoda.