And with that the 2025 season comes to an end...
2025 has been a year of extreme contrasts, very low lows and incredibly high highs. For me, it has been nothing short of life-changing. I began the year feeling lost and uncertain about my direction in life. I had goals, yes, but I was weighed down by doubt, disappointment, and the lingering effects of rejection from the previous year. Looking back now, I can confidently say that this year reshaped not just my career, but my perspective on timing, preparation, and faith.
I remember doing my 2.1 examinations in January, this is after I had sworn that I will never job-hunt again until I am done with my university studies in 2027 because of the unfortunate rejection I got towards the end of 2024, reason being I was not yet done with school.
Then everything changed. On January 18th, I received an unexpected call from the HR team of the company I now work for. I was informed that I had an interview scheduled for the following week(I remember i picked the call at the school’s gate, going to sit for my last paper).
On January 28th, I met the man who would go on to redefine my entire career in tech, Chief Scientist, Dr. Ngure Nyaga. The interview was intense, and lasted about an hour. Thirty minutes later, while I was in Roysambu on my way to Juja, my phone rang. It was HR, with an offer.
I reported to work on 3rd February as a full-time software engineer, which was my career goal and surprisingly enough, I was going to work directly under my recruiter, who happens to be one of the founding directors within the company.
From jobless in January to employed in February, without submitting any job application within that duration was a true testament of God’s favor over my life, and a true reflection of what happens when opportunity meets preparation.
My team. Lovely Shared Infra🥹
I count myself lucky to have been placed in the team I am currently in. I am not sure if I would be the engineer I am today if not for the problems the team solves. I remember vividly when joining the company, everyone told me that this is the team that solves the most challenging problems within the company, and being a member here is not a walk in the park.
To be honest, they were never wrong. Some of the problems I have worked on this year have made me gain me 3 years of experience within a single year.
From stabilizing the SHA system to other national-scale systems we are currently on, I’ve gained tons of experience working with distributed systems (micro-services in this case) at scale.
What shocked people the most about me this year
One thing that seemed to shock people the most about me this year was my age. I was only 19 when I joined the company in February. I’ve gotten older and now I am 20 years old, happy I’m no longer a teen 😂. Back then, my biggest fear wasn’t the work itself, but what people would think or say when they realized how young I was. Because of the fear, I developed insecurities around sharing both my academic status and my age.
When I eventually turned 20 and my age became known to many within the company, I realized that my fears had been misplaced all along. Instead of judgement, I was met with encouragement and admiration. Many people embraced me(Latasha, Wilson, Sala, Nela, Sifuna you guys are amazing), with some expressing how fortunate I was to be where I am at such a young age. At our company’s end-of-year event, I learned that I was the youngest employee in the entire organization, a title I’ll likely carry into the better part of next year.
What once felt like a weakness slowly revealed itself as one of my greatest points of growth and confidence.
Being young really makes your work harder because you have to prove to yourself that you are just as capable as your peers who are years ahead of you.
Top achievements this year
I feel like I’ve done a lot this year, but of all those, some of the things that stood out are.
Co-authored my first ever internal RFC on Domain-Driven Design for a national-scale project. This was my first real personal achievement, and where my passion for software architecture and software design kicked off. I’m really grateful to Salaton, a really resourceful colleague and good friend of mine whom we worked with together to deliver that amazing piece of art.
Delivered the Mwalimu Medical Cover Scheme for SHA. This was a successful migration of the teachers’ medical cover from their previous insurer to SHA insurance cover. Again, lots of credit goes to part of the team members we were working together with on this, led by out CTO.
Crowned bookworm of the year award😂. This honestly came as a shocker to me, I really love reading technical books, research papers and articles but never expected the award.
There are others I would really like to share, but I really can’t because some might disclose the company’s confidential information to the public.
Everything else
I’ve had a really amazing year to be honest. I’ve met new people, made new friends, met friends whom we share the same interest in cars, reading tech books, contributing to open source and so forth. All these people have shaped me into becoming someone better, a better software engineer, a better person, and generally better at everything I did this year.
I’ve developed more interest in challenging areas of computer science like distributed systems, databases, networking, operating systems, software architecture, and honestly, these are the things I want to pursue in life, whether I will get to finish school or not.
Special shout-out
This goes out to Anne Wanjiku, my destiny connector. I’m sure she’ll read this.
Before joining Savannah Informatics, I didn’t even know Anne personally, yet she chose to speak on my behalf. After a rejection I received in December last year, she put in a good word to the director and helped secure for me a second-chance, final interview, an opportunity that ultimately changed everything.
I am deeply grateful Anne. May God bless you abundantly for believing in me and opening a door I could not open for myself.
With 2026 here…
There is a lot to be achieved in the next year that is just 1 day away(at the time of writing).
More impactful projects to be accomplished, more books to be read, more places to be visited, more people to be met and many more.
My goal for the new year is to get done with at least 3 to 4 books from my all-time reading list:
A Philosophy of software design by John Ousterhout
SRE at Google
Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppman
Domain Driven Design: Tackling Complexity In the Heart of Software by Eric Evans
Release It by Michael T. Nygard
Designing Distributed Systems: Patterns and Paradigms for Scalable, Reliable Services by Brendan Burns
Head First Design Patterns by The Gang of Four
The practice of programming by Rob Pike and Brian Kerningan
Refactoring by Martin Fowler
Refactoring To patterns by Joshua Kerievsky
Design Patterns Elements of Reusable Object Oriented Software - Erich Gamma
Patterns of Enterprise Application architecture - Martin Fowler
Working Effectively With Legacy Code - Michael Feathers
Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach by Mark Richards
The Software Engineer’s Guidebook: Navigating senior, tech lead, and staff engineer positions at tech companies and startups by Gergely Orosz
Database Internals: A Deep Dive Into How Distributed Data Systems Work by Alex Petrov
Computer systems : A programmer’s perspective by Randal E. Bryant
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Gerald Jay Sussman, Hal Abelson, and Julie Sussman
Whichever my picks will be, I will document my reviews of each of them.
Overall, 2025 was a good year, and 2026 is going to be even be a better year.
I hope this post inspires more people like me out there to be daring, courageous and passionate in whatever they do. If it inspired you, cheers🥂. Wishing you all a happy new year.