Intro: Self-taught Principal Engineer (7 years). I do not have a CS degree. I learned via MIT OCW in a hospital hallway to pay for my wife's delivery bills. That night, code became my survival mechanism.
Why I am an Outlier:
The "Revenge" Build (Why I built my own IaC SDK) I applied to Pulumi. They loved my technical manifesto but rejected me due to "Wrong Region." I did not give up. I built reactor-dev from scratch in 2-3 months (Drift detection, K8s reconcile loops).
The Validation: A major EV Tech Giant rejected me (no degree), yet they cloned my private repo 13 times to study the architecture. Engineers validated the code, even if HR rejected the person.
Frugal Engineering (The $5 vs $500 Mindset) I am building a social graph backend (DNA Platform) solo. I have no VC money for Cloud DBs.
Solution: I architected a custom Kvrocks + RAMDisk engine with UUIDv7 sorting.
Result: Reduced infra costs from ~$500/mo to $5/mo (100x reduction). 1000 retries dropped to 0.
Resilience I have been rejected by WorldQuant, Nvidia, and Zalo purely for "No Degree." Yet, I continue to ship production-grade distributed systems.
What I am looking for: I am not looking for a "stable job" to hide in. I am looking for a Founder/CTO who values execution over credentials. If you need an engineer who treats your infrastructure budget like their own grocery money, let's talk.
Thank you gus_massa for the warm welcome and the links. I appreciate the advice from Argentina. sorry I have missing on clicky link. t's not just for DBs, it's a full IaC SDK for AWS/K8s using React-like hooks. I have demo iac here and past work: https://vimeo.com/1141575744. Thanks you
I just followed your advice and posted my profile in the "Who wants to be hired" thread. it seem first new post
I'm shifting focus back to the code now—building the DNA Platform infrastructure in public on Bluesky (I share the deep technical engineering logs there if you're interested: https://bsky.app/profile/thaianhsoft.bsky.social).
I shared this story to leave a mark for other outliers, but now it's time to execute. Thanks for the nudge!
Today, I decided to burn the boats. I cut off a toxic client who played games with my livelihood. I am selling my motorbike and returning my rented laptop to scrape together the last bit of runway.
For the next 14 days—during the Lunar New Year when everyone rests—I will be living in a local internet café. I told my wife and kids I’m on a business trip so they can enjoy the holiday in peace. In reality, I am going into the trenches.
My plan is clear:
Isolate and ship the "Streamer Bot" module from the DNA architecture immediately for revenue.
Execute the final interviews with local tech firms (Monday is D-Day).
Build in public from the net café.
I don't know if I have a high IQ or if I'm just stubborn. I missed the easy paths (Microsoft/Nvidia) years ago. But right now, my mind is dangerously calm. Hunger clarifies things.
This is my graduation exam. If I fail, I fail trying. But I intend to "cross the mountain ranges"
Portfolio:
IaC SDK Source: https://github.com/reactor-cor/reactor-dev
Live Demo (Vimeo): https://vimeo.com/1141575744
Build-in-public (DNA social platform - current): https://bsky.app/profile/thaianhsoft.bsky.social (for post technical)
Intro: Self-taught Principal Engineer (7 years). I do not have a CS degree. I learned via MIT OCW in a hospital hallway to pay for my wife's delivery bills. That night, code became my survival mechanism.
Why I am an Outlier:
The "Revenge" Build (Why I built my own IaC SDK) I applied to Pulumi. They loved my technical manifesto but rejected me due to "Wrong Region." I did not give up. I built reactor-dev from scratch in 2-3 months (Drift detection, K8s reconcile loops).
The Validation: A major EV Tech Giant rejected me (no degree), yet they cloned my private repo 13 times to study the architecture. Engineers validated the code, even if HR rejected the person.
Frugal Engineering (The $5 vs $500 Mindset) I am building a social graph backend (DNA Platform) solo. I have no VC money for Cloud DBs.
Solution: I architected a custom Kvrocks + RAMDisk engine with UUIDv7 sorting.
Result: Reduced infra costs from ~$500/mo to $5/mo (100x reduction). 1000 retries dropped to 0.
Resilience I have been rejected by WorldQuant, Nvidia, and Zalo purely for "No Degree." Yet, I continue to ship production-grade distributed systems.
What I am looking for: I am not looking for a "stable job" to hide in. I am looking for a Founder/CTO who values execution over credentials. If you need an engineer who treats your infrastructure budget like their own grocery money, let's talk.