2025 Year in Review

Happy New Year! (あけましておめでとう！)

My wish for myself in 2024 was to avoid returning to a corporate job in 2025 while still being able to support myself. Although I didn’t achieve that goal, I consider 2025 to be one of the biggest years of growth in my life.

Looking back at this report card, I failed. Because during this year, not only did I return to corporate life, but I also stepped up as VP of Engineering, plunging into an intensely busy development schedule.

This was the year of fastest growth and broadest horizons in my career, and I’d like to share this unexpected, twist-filled 2025 with you.

When I left the traditional workplace early in the year to start freelancing, I felt uneasy. Although the first half of the year was manageable, it was always accompanied by lingering worries about the future. That was until I published a post on LinkedIn about wanting to explore different working styles.

That post unexpectedly gained a lot of traction, leading to conversations and collaboration discussions with about a dozen companies. It made me realize that beyond the conventional route of landing a full-time salaried job, there might be far more exciting paths waiting for me.

I took on two freelance projects:

1. Acting as an assistant project manager: helping track development progress, brainstorming new features, and writing automation scripts. The project was eventually shelved, but it was a great experience for me.
2. Feature development for a manufacturing SaaS: learning the industry’s domain know-how and pain points.

In July, I took on the role of VP of Engineering.

The title sounds prestigious, but in reality, the team had fewer than ten people. That meant I couldn’t just manage; I also had to spend a significant amount of time coding. This turned out to be the period of my fastest growth in recent years. Leading a team, interviewing, and project management—these skills were forcibly maxed out in just a few months.

In September, racing to launch new features, I entered the dark side of “flow.” It was a stretch of days with virtually no personal life or exercise—from the moment I opened my eyes, it was nonstop coding until quitting time.

My experience working here taught me so much. Beyond understanding the various nuances of manufacturing, it was my first time being deeply involved in things outside engineering: answering support inquiries, resolving issues, communicating with clients via my personal LINE account, joining client meetings, writing articles to boost brand exposure, and attending manufacturing trade expos.

It was a completely different playbook from my previous career. I’ll write another post later to share that story in detail.

Also in September, I attended a Yorushika (ヨルシカ) concert for the first time.

Winning the ticket lottery was pure luck! After the concert, I started reading n-buna’s columns in Atogaki (後書き) and listening to the podcast hosted by him and suis. I really love n-buna’s writing style and ideas, as well as his lyrics and compositions.

At the end of October, I attended a friend’s wedding. This was the first wedding I had ever attended since entering society. I missed earlier ones due to military service, and then missed others because COVID-19 broke out right after I moved to Japan. Finally, I got the chance. I loved the atmosphere—I could attend one every day.

This friend was my mentor when I first entered the workforce, and later we had the chance to become colleagues (though on different projects). While we don’t interact constantly, he has always been a role model I greatly look up to.

Personally, I’m the type of person who has zero desire to hold a wedding of my own, unless I completely lose my mind one day.

In December, I developed a new habit: running.

Honestly, I hate running. I don’t like exhausting myself, nor do I feel the joy of running that Haruki Murakami writes about.

So why run? Because the Apple Watch drains battery way too fast. Having to recharge it before a single day was even through infuriated me, so I rage-bought a Garmin Forerunner 265. The battery life on this watch is so incredible that it doesn’t need to be charged for two weeks.

After buying it, I realized that if I didn’t run, 90% of its features would go completely to waste. To justify the money spent, I started forcing myself to run. To my surprise, even though running is exhausting, watching the numbers improve bit by bit gave me a genuine sense of accomplishment.

This taught me an interesting lesson: sometimes we don’t need immense willpower to change a habit; we just need an environment where we have “no choice” (or a Garmin watch).

2025 wasn’t just about work and exercise; it was also full of stories about people.

I traveled outside Japan for the first time—to Busan. What left the deepest impression was how good the coffee was, the sheer abundance of cafes, and the delicious food. For someone like me who believes portion size is everything, all-you-can-eat side dishes (banchan) were amazing.

I really enjoyed the bossam (보쌈) and ginseng chicken soup, though surprisingly I didn’t come across any great Korean fried chicken or tteokbokki while there. Rather than high-end ingredients, I much prefer this kind of humble, unpretentious everyday comfort food.

In October, I took part in Colive Fukuoka 2025. It’s a program that lets you experience local life in Fukuoka, and most participants were digital nomads.

There, I had the pleasure of meeting KK, President of the Taiwan Digital Nomad Association (TDNA), and was amazed to see how vibrant the digital nomad community is. That said, I couldn’t help but wonder whether these folks actually do any work, since they seemed to be having fun most of the time 🤔.

Early this year, I signed up for electric guitar lessons on AmazingTalker, only to discover that the instructor was actually my junior high classmate, who later went to the US to pursue advanced music studies.

A friend and I also started recording a podcast. We accumulated over 20 episodes of raw material, but I got lazy and only edited a few. To me, the precious part isn’t getting the episodes published, but that dedicated hour each week where we bounce ideas off each other and catch up on life.

In an era flooded with AI slop, these authentic conversations and reconnections are the rarest assets.

In the new year, my goal is no longer to “escape” from something, but to deliberately “move closer” to things—closer to the essence of business, closer to real people, and closer to a rhythm of life I genuinely enjoy.

Reflections on AI Developments

I still remember early 2025 when I bought a one-year subscription to Cursor. Back then, having AI “assist” with coding was already astonishing. By mid-year, when I started using Claude Code, I began to realize it was no longer just an assistant—AI could write most of the code, leaving humans with only review and planning.

With the successive arrivals of GPT-5.1, Gemini 3.0, and Sonnet 4.5, the tools at our disposal have become scarily powerful. Features that once took weeks to develop can now be built into a respectable demo via “Vibe Coding”—without worrying about syntax or understanding the underlying mechanics, as long as you can speak “natural language.”

As mentioned in CS230 —— Career Advice in AI, the bottleneck in future software development will no longer be engineering capacity, but product management decisions.

When the cost of generating code approaches zero, the real challenge becomes: “What problem are we actually trying to solve?” and “How do we write clear specifications?” Both happen to be areas I want to continue learning.

This tremendous power comes with side effects. Social media today is overrun with AI slop—shoddy articles, images, and short videos that continuously numb our senses.

It made me realize that in a world filled with AI slop, genuine human authenticity will become the scarcest resource. As NiceChord (好和弦) frequently emphasizes, blogging is a great way to push back against AI slop.

Wait, what does that have to do with a music channel? In fact, Wiwi (NiceChord) has kept up a blog for a long time, posting almost daily. His thoughts on blogging are well worth a read.

Heading into 2026, I want to focus on these directions:

1. Reduce deep dives into specific technologies: Tools iterate too fast, and chasing fine details is no longer meaningful; instead, I’ll place more weight on foundational abilities.
2. Focus on product thinking and delivery: Train my ability to define and solve problems.
3. People: This was also my original intention when founding the book club in 2024. Touch music a bit more, write more non-technical essays, and share more of authentic, everyday life.

Q&A

I found Yaxuan’s end-of-2025 Q&A quite interesting, so I’ve picked a few questions to answer here:

• How did you spend your downtime/holidays?
  • At the beginning of the year, I’d occasionally bake bread and cook.
  • Lately, it’s coding, reading, and running in the park in the afternoon.
• Is there anyone you dislike this year who you didn’t last year?
  • No one in particular.
• What was your favorite show?
  • The one that left the deepest impression on me this year was The Devil’s Plan 2. I really liked Yoon So-hee, though in the later episodes I wished she wasn’t so lovesick. But I really admired her intelligence and personality.
• What was the best book you read this year?
  • Die with Zero
• What was your favorite movie?
  • Hyakuemu (ひゃくえむ)
  • Zootopia 2
• What was your favorite meal?
  • Zaru soba (cold buckwheat noodles) + katsudon (pork cutlet bowl) near my home.
• What did you want and get?
  • Nothing specific at the moment; I just hope to stay increasingly healthy.
• What did you want but didn’t get?
  • Progress in learning music, though it might simply be that my passion for it wasn’t strong enough.
• What did you do on your birthday?
  • Worked. Ate a small slice of cake.
• What is one thing that, had it happened, would have made your year even better?
  • Finding like-minded partners.
• What kept you sane?
  • 💰
• Who did you miss or think about the most?
  • I was so busy this year that I barely had anyone on my mind. If I had to say, it would be my aging parents.
• Who was the best new friend you made this year?
  • Didn’t really make any new friends.
• What was the most valuable life lesson you learned this year?
  • Trust is the linchpin of whether any collaboration succeeds; once cracked, a foundation of trust is difficult to repair. And when only one side is working hard to earn that trust, the entire process is excruciating.
• Is there a quote that sums up your year?
  • Can’t think of one right now T_T