Igor Serebryany

Hello! I’m Igor.

I make things. I love humans, nature, our planet, science, ideas, and anything else that gets people talking. I am always curious!

Software

My typical medium, and most of my professional experience, is in software. At Airbnb, I was an early engineer on the SRE team, and helped scale both the team and the infrastructure through hypergrowth. Since then, I’ve focused on leveraging software to solve problems in the climate space.

A screenshot of my coding environment
Giving a talk at GitHub Universe

Tools

I am fascinated by how people and groups use, and are shaped by, their tools. At Airbnb, I founded and lead the Developer Happiness team, which focused on internal infrastructure. I have also built tools for data scientists at Aclima and for non-techinical users at Recoolit.

Open-source

I care passionately about the community of practice that is software development. Open-sourcing my work is one way to contribute back to this community. At Airbnb, I open-sourced SmartStack, a pioneering approach to distributed inter-service communication which has since been widely adopted in tools like Consul and Envoy.

Giving a talk about monitoring
A bay in the Komodo sea

Climate

I am deeply concerned about the climate crisis, and focus most of my energy here. I work in the space as an angel investor, philanthropist, advisor, and technical contributor. I would love to talk to you about your high-leverage climate idea!

Atoms, not (just) bits

I love getting off my computer and building stuff in the real world. I enjoy electronics, hardware hacking, woodworking, carpentry, and welding. I also love to experience the world, and am frequently at sea on a sailboat, in the woods camping, or on the slopes with my board.

My messy workbench
Founding of a co-housing project

Community

I am embedded in, and a product of, a social context. I invest a lot of energy into maintaining this context. Besides my professional networks, I have organized burning man camps, campouts, large-scale art projects, and co-housing communities. A small group of dedicated individuals is the only thing which has ever changed the world. I hope to be part of this group.

A final photo of me with electronic wings
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