My Year in Review

And Why I’m Not Chasing a CTO Role

Hey there!

I’ve been writing weekly issues of this newsletter every single week for two years now.

While most of my pieces focus on the practicalities of engineering leadership, this one is slightly different.

If you’re looking for another piece of practical advice, feel free to skip it and save your time.

This is just my personal story.
With some facts from my life not directly related to software engineering.

I’m writing this mainly for myself.
To reflect on where I am, professionally and personally.
And to assess the direction I’ve been driving myself toward.

This Year Was a Blast for My Engineering Career

When I look back on the past months, it’s been a ride.

I learned multiple aspects of AI.
I wrote a few production apps in fully agentic mode.
I drove the adoption of these practices in the organization I’ve been leading.

I manage an engineering site in Poland.
The office. The people. The processes. Hiring. And more.

I also took the lead over full platform engineering
DevOps, Backend, and Frontend
serving Infrastructure and DevEx practices for over a hundred engineers across the company.

I did some open source work and, thanks to AI, came back to almost everyday coding after years of stagnation.

I wrote a book.
I create this newsletter.
And I had my talk at the Infoshare conference.

I came back to public speaking. Here, at Infoshare, talking about building software in AI agentic mode.

I genuinely love software engineering. I’m also very excited about connecting this world with product and business, and about building solutions people actually love.

I Could Have Been a CTO, But I’ve Chosen Not To

At some point in their career, almost every engineer thinks about becoming a CTO.

I did too.
Especially in my early days.

Looking only at my experiences from this year, I’m pretty sure I could already be one.

In fact, I’ve rejected a few such propositions.

Worldwide impact.
Stock options.
Raw power.

Plus the fact that I genuinely love what I do professionally.

Am I dumb to reject such a life
or the life that might come after an IPO?

Maybe.
Who knows.

But today, I’m choosing not to dedicate 100% of my life to my profession.

I don’t even work full-time at my job.

Instead of traveling the world, visiting the biggest tech conferences overseas, and being fully immersed in the tech bubble, I choose to be a 9–5 part-time worker.

And to play other personas for the rest of my time.

I Am a Runner

This year, I started a coached program with up to six trainings a week. For a few years now, I’ve been doing Obstacle Course Racing mixed with trail running. I love it and I’m curious how far I can go.

I won’t lie: the program was hard. My baseline in January was challenging, as I was coming back to sport after a foot fracture that had healed just a month earlier.

Over the year, I did almost 300 trainings: strength, endurance, obstacle/ninja, and a lot of running.

For the first time in my life, my training was so well structured. Intervals on flats and ascents, fartlek runs in terrain, and my first experiences on an athletic track. My favorite runs are 10–15 km in hilly terrain, ideally with moody conditions: early morning, fog, maybe a bit of rain.

I raced Spartan Race, Barbarian Race, and Runmageddon, as well as trail races like Tatra Trail. Distances ranged from 6 km to 25 km, on hills and flats, in forests, in 30-degree heat, and in -1°C frost. I also tried sprint-like races with 400 meters and 10+ obstacles.

My races over the year

At my peak, I was the 29th Elite Racer in Poland and 15th in my age group. I think I can do slightly better; there’s still some margin. But even this performance is extremely satisfying, especially for someone who does software engineering for a living.

But running wasn’t only about racing.

I ran through many magical places: city runs through Bern, uphill runs in the Alps above Innsbruck, trail runs through Swiss villages, and countless dawn runs through silent, empty, foggy forests near my home. And one bucket list item: uphill running on Copenhagen’s Copenhill.

Running through cities, forests and mountains

I Am a Photographer

I love photography. I keep learning composition and light. I shoot with my phone, GoPro, my small Sony RX100, and a larger OMD EM-5. I enjoy shooting vibrant cities, landscapes, golden hour light, sunsets, and sunrises.

But my ultimate project is this: I take my camera, usually the RX100, sometimes a GoPro, and I shoot during my runs.

I shoot from a runner’s perspective.

Photos taken during my runs.

The mood I love most comes from early morning fog in forests, but I also enjoy sleepy cities just after sunrise or colorful sunsets.

The rule is simple. I stop for a few seconds, don’t even pause my Garmin watch, point, shoot, and keep running.

This project is about showing how beautiful running can be. Literally.

This year, I printed my photos and framed them for the first time. Since then, I’ve known that one day I want my own gallery dedicated to photography through a runner’s eyes.

I Am a Ninja

I already do quite a lot of sport, yet there’s another derivative of my training: ninja.

If you’ve watched Ninja Warrior, that’s exactly it.

I’m too cautious to go all-in; the risk of injury in this discipline is already too high for me. But I’ve learned a lot: jumping between bars, salmon ladders, rope variations, and other ninja obstacles.

Shots from some ninja competitions

After each of my trainings, I spend another 15–20 minutes practicing ninja skills. This year, I felt confident enough to take part in local ninja competitions, which I did. And I absolutely loved it.

Here’s just my regular after-training fun:

I Am a Present Dad

Running, photography, coding. That’s already a lot about me.
Yet there’s still plenty of space in my heart for family.

It doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m a lone wolf, a thinker, a dreamer. I was also raised in a classic family model, where women handled childcare and home, and men focused on work.

Still, I’m proud of being a present dad to my five-year-old daughter. From changing diapers, to doctor visits, to feeding, to simply growing up together, I put a lot of effort into splitting these responsibilities equally with my wife.

But it’s more than logistics.

My daughter and I train ninja together. We’ve done kids’ OCR races like Spartan Kids. We listen to vinyls from Linkin Park, Trolls, AC/DC, and Eminem. We have a bucket list of all science centers in Poland. When my wife is away for a weekend, we build Hot Wheels tracks across the entire apartment.

We laugh a lot. We argue a lot. We respect each other’s boundaries, moods, and emotions.

We also took our first solo trip together. No car, no mom. Just a backpack and hundreds of kilometers of travel.

Yes, my daughter still defaults to my wife. She shows her more emotions, prefers hugging her, and complains about me to her. But I know I have a place in my child’s heart too.

Being a present dad is hard.
But it’s also extremely rewarding.
Like nothing else.

I Love Science, Design, and Art

I was fortunate to travel a lot this year: Bern, Copenhagen, London, and multiple smaller cities and towns. When I look back, these are some of my core memories 👇

Reading Carlo Rovelli’s White Holes and Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace and Quantum Supremacy, and visiting Einstein’s home in Bern. That trip also reminded me of visiting CERN during its open days in 2019.

A few months later, I visited London and randomly stumbled upon IBM’s quantum computer. I wasn’t aware it was there; I literally noticed it while wandering the city.

London brought even more. Passing by Orwell’s home awakened memories of 1984, a book that deeply moved me a few years ago. Then the Wright brothers’ Flyer replica, the Greenwich Observatory, Da Vinci’s notes in the British Museum, Raphael’s paintings, and Michelangelo’s sculptures. All revisited after a few years away from London.

There is a special place in my heart for London

And the absolute cherry on top: Maman, Louise Bourgeois’ spider, returned to Tate Modern. Another bucket list item checked, after seeing her spiders in Tokyo, Amsterdam, and San Francisco.

I already mentioned Copenhagen’s Copenhill, but that trip was much more. I’m fascinated by Scandinavian design, so seeing the city and visiting the Danish Architecture Center were unforgettable experiences.

Danish Architecture Center

I Love Life

On one of my return trips, I took out my notebook and wrote random words and memories from this year. In this summary, I’ve probably covered only 20–30%.

My Nuuna notebook holds much more:

• Seeing a huge moose during a solo early-morning run in an empty forest

• Blausee, the blue lake in Switzerland

• Running at 5 a.m., before sunrise

• My first OCR race: 21 km in sub-zero temperatures

• Personalizing my office with printed photos, plants (and first blooms!), and bookshelves full of inspiring books

• Swimming in a lake for the first time in my life

• Driving thousands of kilometers across the Alps

• Taking 4th place in a ninja competition

• Writing more code in the last months than in several previous years combined

• Returning to trail running after my foot fracture

• Chocolate factories in Poland (Wedel) and Switzerland (Läderach)

• Traveling across Poland for OCR races

• The sound of birds in an empty forest at 6 a.m. during a run

• Spending an entire weekend, from morning till night, with my daughter at the Ninja European Championships

And much, much more.

End Words

So what’s the point of this summary?

I’m someone who tends to fully immerse myself in things. I deeply buy into company missions and visions. I believe in changing the world. I always wanted to be better, more impactful.

But over time, a few things changed. The birth of my daughter. Then, moving to part-time work. These initial cracks slowly became doorways to new paths in my life.

I believe I’m still very impactful as an engineering leader and that I still do good for the world and the people around me. But today, I’m more than that.

I’m a runner.
A dad.
A photographer.
A husband.
A ninja.

I’m sensitive to art, science, and the world around me.

Titles and impact are no longer the only measures of my life. They’re just part of a much richer whole.

I’m leaving this here as a message to myself.
To my past self and my future self.

If you made it to the end, thank you for reading.
I hope you found a bit of inspiration for yourself.

All the best,
Mirek