Ahoy

I am Robin Pokorny, a socio-technical software architect based in Berlin.

Sr Staff Engineer at Ataccama, with focus on Domain Driven Design and socio-technical change facilitation. I have extensive experience with full-stack of technologies such as React, federated GraphQL, and Kotlin.

Over the 12+ years in the industry, I’ve worked in fintech and large-scale SaaS companies, leading cross-functional teams and fostering alignment between engineering, product, and business.

As a tech lead, I specialise in education, coördination, and ensuring system coherence through communication. I also organise several meetups — I co-founded Frontendisti.cz, and run React Berlin.

Latest posts

  • 8 min read

The Array Modeling Problem Every JSON Merge Patch API Eventually Hits

We use RFC 7396 JSON Merge Patch across our public API. It’s simple, it’s well specified, and clients like it. JSON Merge Patch acts like a simple ‘diff’. The patch document mirrors the structure of the document you want to change. To add or update a field, you send the new value. To delete a field, you set the value to null. The rest stays as it was. Simple. Then we hit arrays.

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  • 3 min read

You hired them to speak up on day one

The newest person often sees the red flags first and says the least. I joined a team that called itself empowered. Very quickly, I saw that almost every meaningful step still needed stakeholder approval, and each approval could turn into a veto later. I noticed the pattern early, but because I was new, I assumed I was missing context. That everyone else understood something I did not.

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  • 2 min read

Supermarket Meeting: The Secret to Cutting Down Useless Meetings

A Supermarket Meeting is a consolidated approach to recurring meetings, where diverse topics are discussed in one weekly session, similar to how you’d buy various items in one trip to the supermarket. Instead of creating multiple specialized meetings for different subjects, a supermarket meeting gathers all related discussions into a single, regular time slot. This maximizes productivity, ensures efficient use of time, and keeps meetings engaging and relevant.

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