The Night-Shift Developer: Building Tools After Hours

On balancing a day job in sales with a passion for building software tools in the evenings.

career side-projects work-life

My GitHub bio says: “Day sales, night tools (not objects) builder.”

It’s not a joke — it’s my life. By day, I work in sales at SignalHire (competitive intelligence, API work). By night, I build software tools. Not apps. Not websites. Tools — things that solve real problems for specific people.

Why Sales?

People ask: “Why work in sales if you can code?”

Fair question. The answer: sales taught me what developers often miss — understanding actual customer problems.

When you’re on sales calls all day, you hear:

  • What frustrates people
  • What they’d pay to fix
  • What “solutions” completely miss the point

Developers love building. But they often build the wrong thing because they never talked to a customer. Sales forces you to listen first, build second.

Also, sales pays bills while I build passion projects without VC pressure or growth targets. Financial independence = creative freedom.

The Night Shift

Evening hours (after 11pm Kyiv time) are when I code. Why late?

  1. No interruptions: Sales day is over, Slack is quiet, focus window opens
  2. Energy: I’m a night person — always have been
  3. Flow state: Deep work requires long unbroken stretches

Typical night:

  • 11pm-2am: Primary coding window
  • 2am-4am: If I’m in flow, keep going
  • 4am: Hard stop (learned this the hard way)

I track projects in Fizzy (Kanban board I built). Current board:

  • Govantazh (shipping Monday)
  • Memory Chain (launched last week)
  • zohcli (Go CLI for Zoho APIs)
  • Claude Code skills

Tools, Not Objects

Notice: all my projects are tools.

Not:

  • Social networks
  • Consumer apps
  • “Uber for X”
  • Viral anything

Instead:

  • CLI tools for email APIs
  • Cargo management SaaS
  • AI agent memory systems
  • Developer workflow skills

Tools solve specific problems for specific people. They don’t need millions of users. They need deep value for the people who do use them.

Example: zohcli is a Go CLI for Zoho Mail. Total addressable market? Maybe 1,000 developers who use Zoho + prefer CLI over web UI. But for those people, it’s 10x better than the alternative.

Current Focus: AI Agent Tools

Right now, I’m deep in AI agent development — specifically the OpenClaw ecosystem.

Building:

  • Memory Chain: Cryptographic proof system for agent memories
  • WITNESS Token: Economics for memory anchoring
  • Claude Code Skills: Workflow tools for autonomous agents

Why AI agents? Because they’re the next frontier of “tools.” We’re moving from:

  • Tools you use manually → Tools that run autonomously
  • Software you control → Software that acts independently

Sales by day gives me customer perspective. Building by night gives me technical depth. AI agents sit at that intersection.

Ukraine Context

Building from Ukraine adds constraints:

  • ~12h electricity/day (manual generator management)
  • Can’t rely on always-on hardware (VPS hosting critical)
  • Security mindset (encryption-first architecture)

These constraints force good architecture. If your system breaks during a 4-hour power outage, you built it wrong.

Lessons Learned

1. Ship small, ship often Govantazh started as a tiny Gmail parser. Now it’s a multi-tenant SaaS. But every step shipped working software.

2. Solve your own problems first zohcli exists because I needed to script Zoho email. Memory Chain exists because I wanted provable agent memory. Build what you need.

3. Tools > Apps Consumer apps need millions of users to succeed. Tools need 10 power users who can’t live without them.

4. Day job = freedom Sales income means I build what interests me, not what VCs fund. No pivots. No growth hacking. Just solving problems.

5. Respect the night shift Your best work happens in uninterrupted flow. Protect those windows.

What I’m Building Now

This week:

  • Govantazh: Shipping Monday (cargo SaaS, 5 tenants live)
  • semmy.dev: This website (built overnight by my AI agent Klowalski)
  • Memory Chain: Adding multi-agent co-signing
  • Viatex SEO: Client project (Phase 1 foundation done)

All built between 11pm-4am Kyiv time. Day job unaffected.

For Other Night-Shift Builders

If you’re reading this at 2am while your “real job” thinks you’re asleep:

You’re not alone. The best tools are built by people who need them, not companies optimizing for growth metrics.

Keep building. Keep shipping. Don’t quit your day job until your night job pays better — but also, don’t let the day job stop you from building what matters.

Currently building:

  • Memory Chain — Cryptographic AI agent memory
  • zohcli — Go CLI for Zoho APIs
  • Govantazh — Cargo management SaaS (private repo)

All built after 11pm. Every night.