Every year I try to write one of these. Not for the likes. Mostly to force myself to look back honestly, at the decisions made, the habits formed, the ones I broke, and what actually mattered.
2025 was a quiet year in the best possible way.
The Year in Work
I spent most of 2025 deep in backend work at a company in the healthcare space. Kotlin Spring Boot microservices, RabbitMQ for async messaging, everything containerized with Docker, AWS deployments. The kind of work where the reward isn't a finished feature but a system that keeps running, even at 2 AM on a public holiday.
There's a particular satisfaction in operational work that I didn't expect when I started. Tracing a queue backlog to a missing configuration for a dead letter exchange and fixing it in production felt more like detective work than engineering. I liked it.
The things I got right:
- Invested time in understanding the domain, not just the code. Healthcare data has its own language. Learning it made me a better engineer on the project.
- Wrote more documentation than I thought necessary. Future me said thank you.
- Started keeping a weekly "WTF log": every weird bug, every confusing decision I encountered, with a note about what I eventually figured out. 30+ entries by the end of the year. Invaluable.
The things I got wrong:
- Overestimated how much I could context switch between onsite work and side projects. Remote me and office me are two different people with different batteries.
- Said yes to too many things in Q1. By Q3 I had a full course correction to make.
On Remote Work
I'm based in Jakarta (GMT+7) and targeting Singapore remote full time. Same working day as SG teams; I work well asynchronously. This isn't a vague wish; it's the goal I've been preparing for since 2023.
What "ready" looks like for me:
- A portfolio that signals craftsmanship suited to remote work, not just a list of projects.
- Writing. This blog. The habit of articulating what I think.
- Side projects and production systems with real users and real stakes.
2025 was the year I took (1) seriously. You're reading part of that effort.
Reading
A few books that shaped how I think this year:
"An Elegant Puzzle" by Will Larson. Read it for the systems thinking chapter. Stayed for the entire thing. If you're a senior IC who sometimes wonders about the engineering management path, this book will clarify things.
"The Staff Engineer's Path" by Tanya Reilly. Validated a bunch of instincts I had about what "being impactful" actually means beyond just writing good code.
"The Art of Doing Science and Engineering" by Richard Hamming. Older, denser, absolutely worth it. The chapter on "You and Your Research" is one I'll reread every year.
What 2026 Looks Like
- Ship this portfolio redesign I've been planning for three months.
- Write more. At minimum 12 posts this year, one per month.
- Land Singapore remote full time, or high impact freelance / contract work that proves the fit.
- Build one side project that I actually finish and ship to real users.
That's it. Four things. Small enough to be honest with myself about.
If you're reading this, hello. I write slowly and occasionally. The goal isn't volume; it's that each post earns its place. I hope some of what I put down here is useful to you too.
Alfa
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