Reflection on 2025

Before writing this reflection, I’d like to share two recent thought-provoking articles that caught my attention.

• Your Career Needs A Breaking Change - Translation: Your Career Needs a Breaking Change
• The Emptiness at Year-End Is Not Due to a Lack of Achievements, But a Lack of Recording.

I found them insightful and recommend giving them a read.

Also, I wrote a reflection titled Reflecting on Six Months as a New Developer back in July, so I won’t be diving deep into my career and development reflections now. Instead, this will focus on an overview of life.

Let’s go through a KPT for both the non-developer and developer sides of my life.

KPT: A reflection methodology that summarizes what to Keep, what Problems were encountered, and what to Try.
I’ve defined it as:
K: What I achieved, P: What I found lacking, T: What to try next
for this reflection.

Non-Development

What I Achieved

Trip to Chiang Mai

I wanted to travel abroad after landing a job.
I heard many people around me regretted not traveling after getting jobs.

So, I booked a flight to Chiang Mai a week in advance and went.
Why Chiang Mai? Because:

• It’s the best city for a month-long stay
• A city with many temples
• A small city you can walk around

I think I toured almost all the temples in the city, walking about 25,000 steps a day for three days straight.
In Chiang Mai, every five-minute walk in the downtown area leads to another temple.

There wasn’t a huge difference, but it was fun exploring each one.

During my stay, an earthquake also occurred nearby LOL

I felt it with an elderly foreigner beside me, and we both ran out of the temple.

I also found a very nice swimming pool online and visited it.

Could it be described as the ultimate resort feeling?
I was so satisfied that I’d like to visit again someday.

The food there wasn’t quite my style, overall a bit too greasy…

330km of Biking

I biked quite a lot.

• Commuting to work
• Going for a ride on weekends
• Traveling nearby locations

While I didn’t necessarily feel healthier, I enjoyed the scenery and the breeze.

Relaxed Han River Triple Festival

This was a triathlon event held at Han River Park by the Seoul city government.
I participated in:

• Running 10km
• Cycling 20km
• Indoor swimming 300m

I took the advanced course for running and cycling, but unfortunately, my swimming skills were not adequate for the Han River, so I couldn’t participate. This year, I really want to attempt outdoor swimming.

What I Found Lacking

Lack of Hobbies (Exercise)

Although I biked diligently, I felt a lack of consistent exercise.
I didn’t regularly go to the gym or exercise consistently.

Of course, there’s the excuse of coming home late from work, leaving no time, but I feel my stamina deteriorating, highlighting the need for it.

Lack of Life Outside of Development

Did I live diligently as a developer as well? That’s debatable, but

• Development study
• Company development work
• Commuting

was a repetitive cycle, making me feel I invested little time in what I genuinely wanted for my life.

Detaching from Short Content

I should detox from short content.
I feel my ability to focus, think, and reason is deteriorating.

No solution comes to mind; I think staying away from my phone as much as possible is a start. Towards the end of the year, I started reading books on my subway commutes.

It’s a book called Contradiction.

What to Try

Participate in a Half Marathon

I occasionally participated in 10km marathons.
I’ve run twice in the Daegu International Marathon and sometimes ran on weekends when I felt like it.

Your Career Needs A Breaking Change

Could this be the feeling? I’d like to take on a new challenge.
While I still feel I don’t have the stamina, once I sign up, I tend to do it thanks to the pressure—haha.

Attempt Swimming in the Han River

This year, I want to try participating in the outdoor swimming segment of the Han River Triathlon.
I plan to participate by purchasing a life jacket, but I aspire to reach a skill level where I can appropriately take part.

I’ll try to swim at Olympic Park at 9 AM.

Travel Abroad

In truth, I thought about traveling abroad even after getting a job last year.
However, adapting to the company and lacking time prevented me.

Australia, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and more—there are endless places I wish to visit.
I believe one should act according to their age.
Personally, I feel this is the age to energetically seek many experiences.

I wish to go on a trip once with my parents and another personally.

Reading and Recording

Not necessarily technical books, but I think I need to read books occasionally.
As the age of AI approaches, I feel the era of the humanities is coming, rather than technical and specialized areas.

Now begins my random musings.

In the past, if one wanted to slightly modify or create a design, it was too difficult for regular users. Therefore, a designer or outsourcing company had to be hired, incurring costs.

Now, whether it's Banana Nano or GPT, asking them provides results of a certain quality.

Unless you are aiming for the highest quality and results, a time has come where you can adequately compromise and achieve results on your own.

Consequently, many jobs are disappearing.
Of course, people with expert skills will not disappear yet.

Yet, I believe new areas are opening up where one can utilize their abilities.
One of these, I felt watching the YouTube channel ‘Anxious Kim Hamji.’

Even though others can use the same AI technology,
it combined cute hamster videos with the life of an office worker,
creating many subscribers and views.

In an era where one can produce results based not on professional skills but on sense and ideas.
Thus, I feel the humanities are necessary.

Additionally, I’d like to record such contents, trivial as they may be.
Memory is fleeting. I need to strive to record even lightly.

The importance of recording will be more elaborately discussed in the developer reflection below.

Development

Until the first half and around September, I was adapting to the company and couldn’t engage significantly in external activities.

What I Achieved

Conference Participation

• WACON (WooAhKon)

• A light networking with WooTechCo 1st generation Loopy

• DevChat

• USCON

I attended these.

I got a ticket from a WooTechCo friend for WACON, and a WooTechCo coach, Daerisa, kindly invited me to DevChat.
Thanks 😎

Honestly, I think I attend more so for ideas and energy than to gain immense technical knowledge now.

When only working on company development, thoughts like ‘could my scope of thinking narrow?’ sometimes arise.
It feels like I can acquire perspectives beyond those constraints as well.

I’ll talk more about USCON below.

Presentation ⭐️

I gave a presentation at USCON!

How can I describe it?
In December, while lightly reflecting with ‘What did I really do this year..?’ I realized there was hardly anything, so I spontaneously applied to become a presenter at USCON while they were recruiting.

Details about the presentation and reflection are

After My Presentation at USCON (1) - Timeline and Feelings
After My Presentation at USCON (2) - Tips for Better Presentations

I have detailed notes there, so let’s skip it here.

I feel like I gained a lot.
This opportunity also led me to start LinkedIn and apply as a writer on Brunch.
I met good connections and mentors.

Furthermore, the biggest gain was ‘Just Do It.’

In the articles mentioned above,
When applying to present, when preparing for it, during the rehearsal, when showing the feedback version to my mentor, until the presentation,
I was frequently worried and afraid.

There were many reasons:

• It felt unfinished…
• I was embarrassed to show it…
• What if they think it’s bad…

All these worries turned out to be unfounded as I exceeded my self-imposed pass line and succeeded in the presentation.
Instead of fearing, let’s just do it. If it doesn’t work, adjust and try again.

Company Development

To some extent, I think I’ve adapted.

Perhaps not in the eyes of my team members…?

Our team handles most of the back-end codes for the service, so the domain is quite extensive.

Authentication, coupon domain, credit domain, developing new features, SDK, etc.,
resulting in an overflow of knowledge…

RabbitMQ, Kafka, Redis, S3, DynamoDB …

Tasks I worked on in the latter half include

• Adding new credit policies
• Clearing technical debts related to Presigned URL issues
• Security measures in response to ISMS-P
• New feature (redesign) development - though not yet deployed 🥲

I think these might have been roughly it.
I’m trying to build trust by handling minor issues first instead of tackling major issues immediately.
Next year, I should strive to contribute even more to the team and company.

What I Found Lacking

Incomplete Side Project

I attempted a personal side project but failed.
The rough functionalities planned were:

• A Chrome extension sending Gemini and GPT web search data to my local server for prompt analysis, request, and response logging
• Wrapping request and response from CLI to send to the local server for prompt analysis, request, and response logging
• Searching and rendering these stored prompts

Ultimately, I failed spectacularly—haha.
The time was lacking, and I lost interest midway, leading to failure.

Summarizing the reasons for failure, there were just too many unfamiliar knowledge areas.
I tried to use technology not used at the company:

How to create a Chrome web extension, how to wrap CLI commands
What is OpenSearch, OpenTofu
…etc.

Trying to meticulously study these elements delayed development, and study time was insufficient.
Especially, constantly using unfamiliar elements caused my interest to wane.

Next year, I must approach side projects more systematically.

Fragmented Knowledge

This might be the most significant regret.
I feel I’ve been studying bit by bit, but when trying to organize it, there wasn’t much left.
I’d watch YouTube during commutes and study for 30 minutes at home, but even though the records are there, it doesn’t feel like confident knowledge.

Furthermore, content learned to resolve an issue seldomly stays in memory once the issue is resolved due to the rapid and shallow learning approach. Many notes were found unfinished upon later review.

I need to improve this aspect.

Writing Code out of Habit

While writing code, I sometimes thought ‘this should be okay…?’
If I were to make excuses, they’d be endless.

• If I change this, I will have to modify so much code…
• I’m short on time…
• We won’t get a significant traffic anyway…

From code quality like method and variable names to structure,
I sometimes conducted reviews habitually as well, thinking ‘there’s no time…’, ‘the issue is urgent…’

It might not be noticeable now, but I realized accumulating this could come back larger.
I’ve already felt a bit of this… 🫠

Lack of Contribution to the Team

I feel I handled issues diligently, but did I proactively solve problems?
I don’t think so…

I felt hesitant, and I lacked domain knowledge…
Thus, I acted with a passive approach to contribution.

Next year, I hope to handle tasks more proactively.

What to Try

Post More Content on My Blog

I haven’t posted many articles on my blog.
There are many articles in progress intended for the blog.

- Lessons from Presigned URL Work
- Retrospective on Code
- Studied Kafka Concepts

However, thoughts like ‘Blog posts should be decent and neat…’ have been a hindrance.
It’s ironic.

It’s a personal space and a place to post one’s articles, yet I had such thoughts…
This year, I aim to post what I have seen and studied as much as possible, even if they are short and chaotic.

Also, I read many articles,
through GeekNews for example, or through tech blogs like Line…

Instead of just reading them, I’ll lightly organize my thoughts and perspectives and post those too.

Improve Record Keeping

This recording doesn’t solely refer to logging educational content.

Reading this article,

The Emptiness at Year-End Is Not Due to a Lack of Achievements, But a Lack of Recording.

honestly made me question my lack of achievements and realize the absence of records might be true.

The content above wasn’t written by a developer but by a PM.

For example, when addressing the localization issue for Portuguese,
there were constraints to deploy very quickly.
Yet, to ensure deployment integrity and no issues on the production server,
there was a process of ENUM code being deployed first, then SQL deployment, followed by code deployment.
Identifying this and breaking down the code for rapid review allowed for same-day resolution.

If this context disappears,
it becomes a mere simple double PR for an issue.

Regularly, I need to record contexts, trade-offs, and carefully considered decisions regarding issues I resolve, ponder over, and get stressed about, to institutionalize them.

Combining the two aspects above, structuring documentation with a tiered system might be desirable.
EX)
Light, quick notes - 3rd tier - Obsidian
Somewhat organized content - 2nd tier - study-log repository
Well-crafted, meaningful content - 1st tier - Blog
etc..

Complete Side Projects in Small Increments

I believe the main failure of this year’s side project was attempting to learn too many concepts at once.
I must develop side projects in stages, focusing on new knowledge one step at a time.

For example, with a unit test feeling:

• Learning React
• Learning OpenTofu
• Learning Spring Batch
• Learning Spring AI

This way, I can tackle each element, even briefly, but ensure the projects have significant meaning, focusing on deep learning and expanding my knowledge.

Join a Study Group

I don’t know if I will proceed with it, but I do want to.
A technical study group might be excellent, or perhaps a study for strengthening flexibility or similar pursuits.
I’ll start looking for people around me.

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With 2025 marking my employment, I aim for 2026 to create another new Breaking Change as a developer.
I hope this year allows me to grow more as a person.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLy685-iKZI&list=RDHLy685-iKZI&start_radio=1