The year’s coming to an end. As is tradition at this point I’m looking back at what happened and what I’m taking away from it. Let’s do this.
Work
Work’s been a wild ride this year. I had started at Gigs in the second half of 2024 and decided to leave towards the end of 2025. I’m not one to job-hop that frequently but I decided that I was better off finding a new gig (pun intended) after a little more than a year of putting in a ton of effort to do the best job I could. Unfortunately I learned that my personal values and beliefs clashed too often with a good portion of the leadership team, causing friction and frustration on both ends. I ended up grinding myself down and was far less effective than I wanted to be, so I decided to make room for someone else. I am grateful for the connections I build, the amazing engineers I got to work with, and the experience I got to make. The folks at Gigs trusted me to run the entire engineering crew as their interim Head of Engineering which was a new chapter on my leadership journey and I can’t thank them enough for that trust. Still, good things come to and end and I’m excited to start the new year with a new opportunity.
My journey keeps pulling me in the technical leadership direction, and after managing managers at Gigs for a while, I’m going back to leading a team of engineers over at Pliant.
Leisure
This year’s been full of connecting with family and old and new friends and living life at its best. I cherished that in a blog post earlier this year and am still grateful to look back at a year full of celebrating friends’ and family’s milestones — the birth of a child, getting married, retirement, anniversaries, you name it.
As always, I had one or two things going on around the house. I’m certain I moved about 500x my bodyweight in soil and roots over the course of the summer. I wanted to create new space to store my firewood to make room for a small outdoor kitchen where I can put my smoker, pizza oven, some storage and counters. I’m not finished yet but I ended the year moving all the firewood to the new place, giving me room to lay out the new outdoor kitchen in spring.
The lads and I did our annual camping trip where we hung out near the woods for a weekend, had drinks, cooked together, played games and enjoyed late summer. Unlike last year, this year’s weather was fairly steady and gave us a few beautiful sunsets.
I managed to get around quite a bit this year. I didn’t venture far but as someone who tends to be travel-shy I managed to see quite a few places this year.
In April, we had our biannual get-together at Gigs. They sure know how to pick amazing locations. This year they invited us to this gorgeous castle near Paris, France that we had all for ourselves. We spend a full week there to socialize, talk strategy, plan and collaborate. Somehow I managed to never visit France before and I’m glad I got to get such a lovely impression of the country.
Talking about first times: I saw my first Bundesliga football match this year. My brother was fortunate enough to score tickets to FC Bayern München and so we traveled to Munich with 3 friends to spend the weekend there, visit Biergärten and Brauhäuser and watch the game in the huge stadium. I’ve never been deep into football but this certainly was a trip to remember.
In early summer I went to the Netherlands with two good friends to visit Jera on Air, a punk, hardcore and metalcore festival. It’s been a few years since my last festival and we collectively decided to go back to our roots and do the full-weekend campground, beer and partying experience — to the dismay of our aging backs. It’s been a fantastic weekend though. I’ve seen so many cool bands I had on my bucket list, discovered a few new ones and learned to love a few I had known before that just hadn’t clicked for me yet (looking at you, Turnstile). Somehow I managed to forget taking good photos, so here’s a piss-poor shot from one of my favorite bands on stage, Driveways:
Lastly, my wife and I did a short trip to southern Germany and Switzerland in late summer, enjoying some beautiful sunsets and scenic nature together.
As much as work was a roller coaster, my private life was packed with highlights great memories, and I’m so grateful for all the people in my life who keep things steady, join me for meaningful moments and make life so sweet.
Learning
Usually I’m someone who’s structured about the things I want to learn. I tend to have a list (sometimes it’s written down, at least there’s a mental list somewhere) of things I want to learn next that I’m slowly but steadily working through.
This year has been different. I don’t know if this has got anything to do with me being less hands-on, less technical, and therefore no longer having useful programming languages, tools, frameworks to learn that immediately pay off in my day-to-day job. Maybe it’s me growing older and becoming more comfortable just going with the flow and learning whatever lessons life throws at me. Maybe it’s me balancing the stress work’s throwing at me. Or maybe it’s me becoming increasingly disappointed with the tech industry trying to escape and learn things that don’t have much to do with software development. Dunno.
If I had to recap the bigger things I’ve learned this year it’d probably be:
- Intricacies of German tax law
- Supporting parents as they get older
- Pacing myself and disconnecting from work
Pet Projects
Oh yeah, here’s a big one! I happened to have some free time at hand after quitting my job at Gigs and I decided to immerse myself in building something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now: I took my old Doppelkopf pet project and completely rewrote and extended it to become what’s probably the best online resource to learn and practice this amazing German card game. I’m obviously biased, but I think you should check it out over at doppelkopf.club.
I wrote more on this in a recent blog post. It’s been a while since I’ve been so engaged and enthusiastic about something I’ve built. I spend countless days (and nights) and completely lost track of time building this thing — and I hope I can keep the momentum in the new year.
Health & Exercise
I managed to stay consistent and put in my usual amount of work in the gym. I logged 228 days of working out, that’s slightly down from 231 days in the year before — but I suspect that those numbers don’t fully add up since there have been a few days I managed to work out twice that I didn’t log accordingly. Doesn’t matter, 228 days is a number I’m proud of and I continue making steady progress across the board. My top strength increased after a bulk and I managed to score a new deadlift personal record at 210kg at 94kg bodyweight. I focused on strength and increasing my bodyweight in the first half of the year and cut back in the second half, trying to maintain my strength gains.
I got some new equipment for my garage gym: An axle bar and a rower (the Rogue Echo Rower, a beast of a machine) and I’m super happy with both purchases. The former helps me make lifting logistics a little easier and serves as a nice, no-BS beater bar I can use for anything weird lift without feeling bad about it, and the latter is a great piece of equipment for steady-state cardio and conditioning.
Music
2025 has been a great year for music for me. Going to Jera on Air in summer helped me get excited about a few bands I largely ignored before, mostly in the hardcore scene. Apart from those festival experiences we saw a few exciting releases this year I enjoyed a lot:
- Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power
- Stick To Your Guns - Keep Planting Flowers
- Harakiri for the Sky - Scorched Earth
- Turnstile - NEVER ENOUGH
- Winona Fighter - My Apologies To The Chef
- Hot Mulligan - The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still
- mgk - lost americana (say what you want, it’s catchy AF and I dig it a lot)
- Silverstein - Pink Moon
- Junior Varsity - My Star
- Press Club - To All The Ones That I Love
- PUP - Who Will Look After The Dogs
Books
I finished 11 books in 2025. Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy took a ton of effort to get through but was probably the highlight of my reading year. There has been a ton of science fiction and surprisingly few non-fiction books this year. I picked up a few technical books related to software architecture, systems thinking, management and leadership, but I ended up skimming most of them where I used to read those cover-to-cover in the past. I also got better not finishing books once I discover I’m not enjoying them.
Here’s what I read, in rough chronological order.
- Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. An enjoyable and slightly mysterious story intertwining multiple timelines in intriguing ways.
- Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer. Damn, this was a ride. The the Southern Reach trilogy is a captivating, mysterious, eldritch horror story that makes you feel like you’re stuck in a fever dream. It’s dense and took me a while to get through but I enjoyed taking this one slowly. The first book is my favourite by far. The pacing changes quite drastically for the second one, feeling like an entirely different book, and the third one comes back to tie up a lot of loose ends.
- Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life by Arnold Schwarzenegger. This one sounds like a corny self-help book but I think it’s much better than that. I listened to the audiobook read by Arnold himself on a long train ride and ended up enjoying this one much more than I anticipated. Arnold is an inspiring character with a unique biography. He’s undoubtedly someone who managed to become the best at what he does in multiple disciplines, from shaping the world of strength sports to becoming a Hollywood icon to being governor of California. His messages are refreshingly wholesome and he seems great at leading by example when it comes to lifting up people with actions small and large.
- The Mythical Man Month by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. We read this for a book club at work. I’ve first read this one about 15 years ago and enjoyed diving into these essays again after so many years. Some didn’t age well and provided interesting insights how far our industry has come. Others aged like fine wine and are as relevant as they’ve been back in 1975.
- What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher. After finishing the “Southern Reach” trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer I wanted something light and quick. “What Moves the Dead” was just that. A new spin on a classic by Edgar Allan Poe. A tale of a haunted house and mysterious things unfolding within hit the spot for me in fall when I was looking for something light. I don’t think I’m going to continue with the series as I discovered that I didn’t really find the characters too relatable — but it was still an enjoyable read.
- Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. A classic I had on my reading list for ages. I never felt like digging into a harrowing WW2 story but I’m glad I pulled the trigger here. Vonnegut’s writing is one of a kind and it’s a classic for a good reason.
- Artificial Condition by Martha Wells. Book #2 of the Murderbot Diaries. I finished it, but I shouldn’t have. You see the Murderbot Diaries being recommended a ton when you look for science fiction books to pick up. A while ago I read the first book of the series and found it underwhelming. Looking for something light and quick once more, I decided to give the second book a try — and it was just the same bland storytelling with characters who act like edgy teenagers. I’m certain that this was the last Murderbot for me.
- Pines by Blake Crouch. The last one for the year ended up being a massive page-turner. Blake Crouch has been a bit hit or miss for me in the past but the first book in the “Wayward Pines” series ended up capturing me much more than I expected. Mysterious, dark, fast-paced. Love it.
As a bonus, I got a chance to review Anemari Fiser’s Leveling Up As a Tech Lead this summer. I genuinely think it’s an amazing resource for tech leads and engineering leaders, no matter your experience level. I’ve been looking for a standard recommendation for people who want to take the plunge into technical leadership without going into management all the way and I think this one could be it moving forward.
May 2026 be a year of health and friendship
As always, the year’s been full of ups and downs. Work has been more intense and unsteady than I’d have wished for but my personal life helped counter that. I’m once more grateful for the friends and family I’ve got in my life who help me stay level-headed even when work is taking the best of me. I’m hopeful for what the new year and a new job will bring.
To everyone reading this, I wish you a year full of health, friendship, and meaningful relationships. Take care of yourselves.