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August 8, 2023
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19:00
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Online
From Founding Engineer to Director: A Journey with a Unicorn Company
2025
Ukraine
🎯 What does it mean not just to be the first engineer at a startup — but to grow into a director role at a company valued at over $1 billion?
This meetup was an open conversation about real-life experiences at People.ai:
- How it all started: the first lines of code written the day before a vacation, and sleepless nights in a three-story house in San Francisco
- Why a startup isn’t a role but a mindset: rapid changes, tech debt, no QA, and total autonomy
- How processes evolved: from chaos to CI/CD, certifications, and stable development
- How the team scaled: new structure, emergence of managers, tech leads, and company culture
💡 We also talked about how to recognize a company with unicorn potential, how to find strong leaders, spot large markets — and not lose yourself along the way.
Meetup speakers
Director of Engineering @ People.ai
In 2016, Vova joined People.ai as the first engineer and helped build the business from its first steps to a billion-dollar company. People.ai helps customers win more revenue by making decisions based on data and AI insights.
Director of Engineering @ Turnitin
The moderator is Yana Mykhailenko, CTO of Turnitin, an international company that ensures the integrity of education and is a leader in anti-plagiarism solutions. She is a judge and mentor at international competitions and hackathons.
Upcoming events
Transforming QA Practice in the AI Era
On the first Thursday of November, we will discuss how technical leaders are transforming QA practices — from a routine function to a strategic engineering catalyst in the era of artificial intelligence.
Meetup #22
Full information about the meetup will appear here soon.
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