The news that Kirill passed is crazy to me. It doesn't feel real.

I haven't seen him in years—since Square went fully remote and we both left San Francisco. So in my head, he still feels just one Slack message away. But his account is deactivated now. And I can't message him anymore.

Now I'm scrolling through our Slack history, back to late 2021. It's just real, fun, candid conversation—for no reason. Not about work. Not polite. Not efficient. Just two people talking because we wanted to. We didn't even work together after 2021, but we kept chatting on and off, even up until the other month. I don't have any other conversations like that on Slack.

It's kind of funny we stayed in touch on Slack, because he didn't use social media. I don't know why we never moved to Messages or anything given how we were always so candid—gossiping, joking, talking shit. There was this constant suspense that HR might read it one day, which somehow made it better. Like, "even if someone sees this, I'm fine with it. It's the truth".

Kirill was a great engineer. Passionate in a way that feels rare—not tied to job titles or career climbing. He really just loved engineering. At the same time, he had this wonderfully lazy energy that made him even better. He didn't waste time on ceremony. He just found the shortest, cleanest path through things. He loved Rust, and his blog (https://github.com/pretzelham…) became a go-to resource in the community. The fact that he just hosted it on GitHub instead of a website was so him. It got translated into four languages and had a ton of contributors—which says a lot about how respected he was. But every time I asked what he'd built with Rust, he'd laugh and say “nothing yet.” That always cracked me up.

We also shared a really specific sense of humor—dark, dry, a little chaotic. Back at Weebly, even when we didn't work together, we used to prank each other for no reason. That eventually carried into our work. One time we got pulled onto another team to help meet a deadline, and they were super strict about PR reviews. Normally I'd be the one enforcing those rules, but with Kirill's contagious IDGAF energy, we ended up creating a bunch of fake PRs, pre-approving them for each other, and using them to merge real code after hours. It worked. The other team's manager was furious. We thought it was hilarious.

Right now I'm listening to your Spotify Wrapped playlist. We swapped playlists every December. I never did that with anyone else. But Kirill would always message me, excited to share his, excited to see mine. I always thought that was wholesome and sweet.

I miss you so much, @pretzelhammer.

I've been working Kirill since he started out as an intern with Weebly. He was an extremely talented engineer that was trusted with many challenging problems that few could exceed at. He was patient and his thoughts were always respected.

I will always remember his comedic timing and ability to bring light and laughter. Rest in peace my friend you will be missed 

Kirill and I worked on adjacent teams since I joined Square six years ago, but we first got to know each other in 2021 when our friend Cindy made a small Slack channel to gather some of her work friends to socialize and break up the monotony of our new work-from-home environment. There were only four of us but we got on well and it became a lively space for joking around, discussing work, and -- one of Kirill's favorites -- playing DrawBattle.io. It was the first place I turned to chat about music, ask for advice, or just celebrate the approach of the weekend. Between his sense of humor and his no-nonsense attitude, Kirill was always making us laugh or making us think. One day he shared a playlist he had made called "songs kia might like", and I thought, we may never interact in person but we are friends :) Needless to say, the music was great. 

I'm really gonna miss you Kirill. I'm so grateful I got to know you and experience the world with you in it <3 

I worked with Kirill. He was foundational to so many things, all of those things revolving around giving back and helping others. For nearly a decade at Square, he was always striving to help our sellers run their businesses, helping us out with any task no matter how large or small, and was always giving back with open source software such as Maker or his Rust blog. 

I am so sorry to hear the news and wish his family only the absolute best. He was kind and an exceptional person, the whole team will miss him deeply.