2025 in review

As 2025 came to a close, I found myself in a pretty reflective mood. It seemed like a good time to sit down and take a look at what I had planned for the year and see how things went, as well as to make some predictions and plans for 2026.

2025 was really about Doing Lots Of Things. I knew I wanted to get more plugged in to the developer community and to make more things that I enjoy making. Overall I think I did a decent job at that!

2025 Goals Recap

Here are the goals I wrote in my 2024 in review blog post and how they went:

• Read at least 5 technical books and post summaries of them: I did a pretty poor job of keeping track of books that I read in 2025. Part of which is because I spent a lot more time reading bloxg posts than actual books. I think I ended up with 5 tech-adjacent books and 0 written summaries:
  • 100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them: No summary, but my Gophercon EU talk included some great highlights from this book!
  • Looks Good To Me: Also no written summary, but we did do a summary of it with the author Adrienne Braganza on the Overcommitted podcast!
  • This is for Everyone: No written summary here either, but this was an excellent book!
  • Enshittification: Another great book, no summary, but I recommend checking it out.
  • Writing for Developers: I finished this one just before the end of the year, and it’s now the book club selection for the Overcommitted book club if you’re interested in joining us!
• Speak at more conferences: I definitely accomplished this one! In 2024 I only spoke at BoiseCodeCamp, whereas in 2025 I spoke at BoiseCodeCamp, GopherconEU, CascadiaJS, GitHub Universe, and Microsoft Ignite! I also did a few virtual speaking engagements for groups like The Tech Academy, Gophercon South Africa, and GitKon. It was a big year for speaking and really solidified how much I enjoy public speaking.
• Write more: I definitely accomplished this one. While I didn’t write nearly as many blog posts as I would have liked, I did keep my newsletter going the entire year, wrote three articles for the GitHub Blog (here, here, and here), and wrote a few blog posts for my own blog!
• Do a race: I also finished this one! I did the Spartan Beast-length race in Seattle in September 2025 (21k obstacle course race). It was… uh. Challenging 😅 but I did finish it so I’m counting it as a win!

Some things I did in 2025

GitHub

I’ve been at GitHub for nearly four years and was on the billing team for the entirety of 2025. I’m at a point where I feel like the work I’m doing is efficient and I’m comfortable in the codebase. This is the first time I’ve gotten to this point in my career and didn’t want to immediately move on to a new codebase and new set of problems.

I think I get bored easily when things get familiar, and I need the intellectual stimulation that comes from a challenge. Much like my dog needs this sometimes or else he will get bored and tear up the garbage.

Instead of tearing up the garbage, or jumping to a new team or company, I decided that I want to stick around to see some bigger projects through. That means I need something to keep my brain busy on new challenges.

Listening

I didn’t spend quite as much time listening to podcasts in 2025 as I have in previous years, in part because I didn’t go for nearly enough walks! Some of my favorites I stuck with, though, are:

• The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast: Lots of really interesting folks interviewed, my most recent favorite being this one with Martin Fowler!
• Soft Skills Engineering: Still a big favorite of mine!
• Maintainable: The Art of Improving Existing Software: This is a new one I discovered after the host reached out to me. I really love the idea of an entire podcast around maintainability of software. One of my favorite episodes is this one with Chris Salvato!

Reading

Other than the books listed above, I made a conscious effort to subscribe to a bunch of RSS feeds and get as much diversity as possible in the blog posts I read. I’m now using the Readwise Reader app regularly for RSS, and also have this Developers Who Write feed/starter pack on Bluesky that I’ve been regularly updating! I post new articles in my newsletter each month, but a few standouts from 2025 are:

• Big O by Sam Rose
• Vibe Engineering by Simon Willison
• How to Review Code Effectively by Sarah Vessels
• Why Women in Tech Isn’t Enough by Salma Alam-Naylor
• Expert Generalists by Unmesh Joshi, Gitanjali Venkatraman, and Martin Fowler

Speaking

As I mentioned, I did a ton of speaking in 2025. It was so much fun. Every time I tell someone that I enjoy public speaking I feel like I’m a little bit broken, because that does not seem to be the typical experience 😂

But I do genuinely love it. It makes events way more fun and gives you an instant thing to connect with other folks about. “Oh, you’re at this event? I’ll be talking at it!”

Plus how many opportunities are you given in this world to have a microphone and people’s attention for 20-30 minutes? Very few, my friends! So you have to take advantage when you get the opportunity.

I have a recording here from Gophercon EU as well as this recording from GitHub Universe. I plan to apply to a few more conferences in 2026 as well. If you need someone to chat about practical applications of AI for developers, I’m your gal!

Overcommitted

In addition to speaking at actual events, some friends of mine and I at GitHub started a podcast in 2025! It’s called Overcommitted and is one of my favorite side projects. We’re exploring ways that developers learn, build, and generally do the things that they are passionate about. Here are a few of our top episodes that I’d recommend starting with:

• Being Unreasonable with Jason Lengstorf
• Lifting as you Climb with Cassidy Williams
• ATProto, MCP, and Open Source with Nick Gerakines

YouTube Videos

I also got connected with Jason Lengstorf in 2025 and got to be on not one but TWO of his CodeTV productions! I almost instantly became a CodeTV supporter when that became an option and I LOVE what Jason is doing there. I highly recommend checking these and other CodeTV videos out! He makes excellent entertainment for software developers and watching how CodeTV evolved throughout 2025 was a highlight of the year.

Writing

I also tried to do more writing in 2025, but of course didn’t get to do nearly as much as I would have liked. “You’re not writing enough” is a big theme from the book Writing for Developers, and it’s one I’m thinking about a lot right now!

A few things that I really did enjoy writing, though, include:

• A Software Engineer’s Guide to Agentic Software Development
• Build the thing you wish to see in the world
• How GitHub Engineers Learn New Codebases

Drawing

I did quite a bit of silly internet comics in 2025 and really loved it. Here are my three favorites that were shared to TikTok:

@brittanyellich

@brittanyellich

@brittanyellich

I don’t really have much artistic skill, so these are a fun way for me to do something and get a point across in a way that feels good to me!

Projects and Dev Learning

The biggest things I learned about in 2025 were AI, Astro, and ATProto.

AI

I’ve been very fascinated by using GitHub Copilot coding agent and seeing how it can change and improve my workflow. I definitely credit this to a lot of my impact at work in 2025.

I’ve also been exploring different ways that I can build AI tools for myself to keep myself organized. More on that to come in another blog post!

Astro

Astro was one of my favorite finds in late 2024. It is so easy to build with and so snappy! My favorite quote about Astro was from my friend and co-host Bethany, who said “I hate how easy that was” when she finally got started with it.

If you ever have to build landing pages or content heavy websites like blogs, I highly recommend checking it out!

ATProto

Finally, the last thing I dug into in 2025 was ATProto. That’s the distributed protocol that Bluesky is built on, which allows individuals to own their own data. It fights the “Walled Garden” problem from other large apps like Facebook or Twitter, where the apps own all of the data. It makes it difficult to leave the platform, which allows the platform owners to make decisions that might not be in the best interest of users.

I have my own little side project that blossomed into a much bigger side project built on ATProto and located here.

Personal

In addition to having entirely too much going on career-wise, I brought that maximalist attitude to my personal life as well! I have a 4-year-old and 2-year-old twins (all girls), which takes up the vast majority of my time that isn’t spent doing all of the other things I do. We went to Disney World in May and it was an absolute blast!

My husband and I also decided to take on a super ambitious home DIY project to completely change the landscape in our backyard. We actually somehow managed to finish it, and there were definitely parts of it that were even fun!

Here’s a Bluesky post where I documented the project, in case you’re interested in seeing the whole journey!

What I learned

Okay, enough shameless self promotion. Given all these things that happened in 2025, what did I actually LEARN from it all?

Seeing people is good

Between COVID and having kids, from 2020 to 2024 I really didn’t do a whole lot of seeing people. It was hard. And I was tired. And there was that whole virus thing that sort of put a damper on in-person things.

It took me a long while to develop the habit of seeing people again, and it made me realize that it really is a habit. If you don’t do it for a while, it’s hard to start doing it again! It’s not super comfortable and breaking through that initial barrier of developing social skills again is a bit mortifying.

But also, wow, is it great.

I missed people. I missed connecting with folks in person and laughing about things and having shared experiences. I missed having friends (in more places than just on the internet, although I also love my internet friends). I missed learning from other people in person, instead of from things that they put online.

I developed the habit of seeing people again, and I’m planning to keep it around. It was nice!

Doing things begets doing more things

I had a lot of things on my “Gosh wouldn’t this be cool to do one day” list that I got to do in 2025. And while I thought I would walk away with the sweet taste of victory over my to-do list, I also walked away with even more things on it!

As it turns out, doing things begets doing more things. The more things you do, the more opportunities will show up for you. The more blog posts I wrote, the more ideas I generated. The more speaking opportunities I took on, the more folks reached out about other opportunities I might be interested in. The more people I met on the podcast, the more folks I had that wanted to be on it!

I think I’ve figured out that the trick to doing things is to just… start doing them. I know that sounds a bit obvious. But seriously, write that blog. Start that podcast. Make that personal project. You never know what other ideas or opportunities will be generated from your efforts!

Perfect is the enemy of done

This is especially true when it comes to writing and drawings. I previously spent a ton of time working hard on making something perfect before I shared it with the world. But I think I’m now freed from that perfectionism!

As it turns out, to get good at something you have to do more of it. So putting the final 10% polish on something might not net as much learning as you’d get from doing the first 90% of another thing. Yet those two tasks might take the same amount of time!

I’m probably doing too much

I’m pretty exhausted just writing this entire post out. It was a lot of links to go hunt down, and I think I may just keep a running list for 2026 😂

In 2025 the theme was to “Do lots of things”, but in 2026 I’m planning to “Do less but more impactful things”. While I don’t regret any of the things from this past year, and my capacity for doing things is so much larger than I ever thought it could be, I’ve realized that my best ideas come from having space and time to develop them. So I want to see what happens when I get more sustained focus time and preserve my energy for the big things that really matter!

2026 and Beyond

So what’s ahead for 2026?

The truth is, I want to do more of the things that light me up: writing, drawing, speaking, building. But to do that well, I need to do less of other things. I’m planning to do a bit less traveling, which I think will make up for quite a bit of that extra time. I’m also planning to use more AI tools to enable me to be more efficient with my time, so that I can better track ideas and go from idea to execution quicker!

Here are the goals I’ve outlined for 2026:

• Speak at least once per quarter: This feels doable and like a good way to keep my head in the game of developing good spoken content!
• Write at least once per month: Ideally I’d love to get this closer to once per week, but once per month seems doable and like a good starting goal for the year.
• Keep the podcast going each week: I have some good routines built in around this now, so I think this should be very achievable!
• Develop habits and routines that keep me moving, going on adventures, and maintaining friendships: A big theme of 2026 for me is to develop and build routines. Things like regularly planning adventures with the kids, getting more regular exercise, and connecting with old and new friends in-person is very important to me!

If 2025 taught me anything, it’s that the best way to make things happen is to start. Not when you’re ready, not when it’s perfect, but now. So here’s to 2026 - a year of doing fewer things, but doing them with more intention, more focus, and more joy.