Modern life is so fast-paced. Years can easily soar past if we’re not careful, and this time between Christmas and New Years is a perfect opportunity to reflect on all the significant things that have happened over the past year.

Here’s some of my reflections on what happened in 2022.

👶🏻 Baby

In March my wife and I welcomed our son to our family. Becoming a dad and watching this little boy grow up (so fast!) has been awesome.

I’m grateful to Panther Labs for offering a generous parental leave that allowed me to spend the first few months of my son’s life bonding with him and my wife.

It’s remarkable how much my son has grown throughout this year. We’ve gotten to watch him go from a little newborn to crawling and stumbling around the house. I’m so excited to see him grow up even more in 2023.

⬆️ Promotion to principal engineer

Sometime in May (while I was out on parental leave) I got a call from my employer. Turns out I had gotten promoted during the regular performance review cycle!

Operating as a principal engineer at Panther taught me a ton—notably about having influence without institutional authority, setting technical direction, mentorship, and technical leadership.

🏠 Purchasing a house

In early August my wife and I closed on our first house! It’s been fun doing some light home improvement projects, settling in, and not planning another stressful move for a long while.

🌱 Being a (temporary) manager

In late October I stepped in as an interim manager at Panther while we backfilled an open manager role on my team. Being an interim manager required me to change my entire job description overnight—I wasn’t 50% individual contributor (IC) and 50% manager, I was 100% manager for a limited amount of time.

I enjoyed some aspects of the job and disliked others. Some notable highlights were tightly collaborating with my PM & designer, and getting to know my teammates much better.

I was told that I did an ok job and that I could probably continue down the management path if I wanted to. However, my stint in management was also a confirmation of my desire to stay on the IC track for the foreseeable future.

💼 New job

Just a few weeks ago, I started a new job at Sublime Security! I’m back as an IC, working on their frontend experiences. I’m terribly excited about this opportunity and looking forward to diving deep into their frontend stack as I enter 2023.

🗓️ What’s next?

2022 was a huge year, full of massive milestones. I don’t know what 2023 will hold, and I try not to forecast too far ahead!

That said, I’m planning on watching my son grow up even more (I love working from home), settling more into our house, and building some amazing stuff at Sublime.

Here’s to 2022 🥂