Recap 2025
As has become tradition in my developer bubble, a recap on my 2025.
Work #
I start with the work section, as there was a huge change this year: I left 2media/CLARK after 12 years (!) of working there.
A lot happened at this company in the past 16 months that are worthy of a book, but in short: I couldn’t take management seriously anymore and I got bored. I felt like trapped in a cage. Or like rare Pokémon-card you keep wrapped in plastic in your drawer.
Every single feature or code change was discussed to death. Meetings to prepare other meetings. I lost all interest and the momentum faded.
On the day the “You have to leave” thought was locked in, a new job opening was announced for Laravel Forge. I thought “this is your chance” and put everything down, wrote my application and publicly shared that I applied.
Unfortunately I never heard anything back besides the “we received your application email”.
Sandro from Trenda saw my social media comment and reached out and mentioned, that they are looking for an additional developer to join the team and if I would be interested to rejoin the team.
After a quick meeting, I’ve signed the contract and handed in my resignation at CLARK and since October 1st I’m back at Trenda.
I’m grateful, that Sascha and Sandro took me back. The current economic situation is tough for many and there are layoffs happening everywhere. Grateful that this transition was short and that I’m back at Trenda.
The first three months are now over and I can sincerely say this was one of the best decision I’ve made in 2025. We as a team work well together and I was able to ship great new features to the platform already.
Something I dearly missed from the last few years at the previous company.
Personal #
The changes in the work life bleeds in my personal life. Only now I’ve noticed, that I was severely stressed out for many months. Being the sole developer and sole technical person for an entire business unit isn’t great.
The change of employer and being in a relationship did wonders. I have a positive outlook for my life again, am in a good mood way more and sleep much better.
I would also say I’m more fit. Not necessarily on a cardio-fitness level (46 VO2 max) or on a strength level (I lift the same weights as a year before), but in an overall way.
I gained 10 kg of mass over the course of the last 12 months and I feel and look much better now.
Having a partner now to – whom I can talk about anything and everything – helped my mental health a lot. His smile always calms me down and let’s me forget the stress of the current day.
Speaking of mental health; my addiction to social media still plagues me. I check the networks way too much without any benefit.
In the middle of the year I’ve started blocking the most time consuming networks through Little Snitch. Now anytime I visit the webpages in my browser, I get a blank page.
I think I just miss old Twitter and the whole vibe that came with it. Or I’m still disappointed how Twitter turned out to be after the owner change.
2026 is the year where I would like to be “less online”. I think do less will become my general theme for 2026.
Do less doom scrolling. Do less scattered work. Spend more quality time with friends and family and do more things that bring joy.
Open Source #
Speaking of doing less: Open Source work. My contribution to my own open source projects stagnated this year.
After 2 years, I released a new major version of git-auto-commit this summer. I needed the time to get the courage to release the changes. I always had the thought in my head, that I need more time to think about it. Test the change. Make sure nothing breaks. But still, I broke workflows of others and that wasn’t a great feeling.
My PHP packages didn’t get as much love either. There are many open issues that nag at me.
Over the holiday break I worked on laravel-backup-restore, but that was not enough. I will soon go through all those projects and decide, which project I’m going to put my focus on the next year and which will be put on the backburner or be archived.
I still love working on these projects, but I need to find a good workflow for myself to give me dedicated time to work on them. Like “every second Tuesday evening you work 2 hours on this repository”.
Swiss Laravel Association #
Another big thing in my life right now is the Swiss Laravel Association and the Laravel Switzerland meetups.
This was the first year where we took over from Ruslan and organised 12 meetups (with 2 speakers each) and 1 PHPverse watch party.
The first few months were rough, until we figured out a good workflow how we should organise us. Like who should look for locations, who should look for speakers.
Now after a year, I think we have found an okay workflow, that keeps the show running.
I’m especially proud that many new faces showed up to the meetups. This shows us, that there are lot of Laravel devs out there in Switzerland that are looking for a community.
Lots to come in 2026. New locations. A redesigned website. More collaboration with other international meetups.
Epilogue #
As I wrote last year, I have a good outlook on my life. My partner and I celebrated our first anniversary this year and plan to move into a new apartment together next year. Fingers-cross that we find something affordable in the greater Zürich area.
Work fulfills me again and I see much potential in my work at Trenda.
In 2026 I would like to read, write and publish more. Scrolling through my RSS reader and reading blog posts from other developers or creatives brings me a lot of joy.
I would like to contribute my part here and share more of my thoughts on work or on life.
Health wise I wish that the tremblings settle in my family. In addition to the health scare of 2023, we battled with a cancer diagnosis this year. Thankfully, the person went to an early screening and the tumor was discovered early on. Removal and treatment went swiftly and there’s nothing left in the body.
But man. This diagnosis was devastating when I heard about it. Many evenings I was curled up in bed thoughts racing about potentially losing this person or that they had to suffer for a long time.
So please, tell your loved ones to go do a mammography screening or prostate exam or a general check up, even if it’s not the most comfortable procedure. It can save lives.
Let me bring this back to a positive note. 2025 was a great year for me. I love life and have a great positive outlook for the years to come. See you all again in 2026.
If you like these recap-posts, you can find others from Duncan, Dennis, Paweł, Will, Rathes or Justin.