DEV Community: Chris Nowicki

2024-2025 Retrospective

Chris Nowicki — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 21:12:17 +0000

I'm writing this from my home office, our new puppy Theo zooming around like a maniac in the background. It's been almost two years since I wrote about burnout and breaking into tech, and yeah yeah, I probably should've posted an update sooner. But here we are.

Spoiler: I'm still in tech, still occasionally burned out, and I've switched jobs twice. Let's get into it.

Wins

2024

2 years of being married to my wonderful supportive wife, Leah (she's been my biggest cheerleader through all of this)
I gave my first conference talk at THAT Conference (RIP). Terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure
Met some amazing new people
Landed my first job in Software Development at This Dot Labs 🎉

2025

3 years of being married to my wonderful supportive wife, Leah
Leah and I got our first puppy, Theo 🐶
Landed my second job in Software Development at Commerce 🎉
Attended Render ATL
Attended my first conference as a sponsor running a booth at Commit Your Code in Dallas, TX.
Built some fun legos
Traveled to one of my dream destinations I've been wanting to visit, Banff Canada 🇨🇦

Let's Talk About Jobs

Who would have thought breaking into tech would lead to switching jobs twice in the same year!? Like, what!?

I'm not going to get into all the details, but here's the honest version: I was genuinely happy at This Dot Labs. Great team, interesting work, and definitely wasn't looking to leave. But then Commerce reached out with an opportunity that checked boxes I didn't even know I had. More hands-on coding and a chance to get into Developer Experience work.

Making that decision was harder than I expected. Leaving a good thing for something potentially better is scary. But I took the leap, and so far? No regrets.

The lesson here: sometimes opportunities find you when you're not looking. Stay open.

Burnout (Again, But Different)

A few years ago, I was burned out from the endless apply-reject-repeat cycle. This time? It was different.

I pulled back from posting on social media. Obviously, no blog posts happened. I wasn't showing up in the tech community like I used to. But here's the thing: I gave myself permission to do that.

After fighting so hard to break into tech, I needed to actually be in tech. To focus on my new roles, learn the ropes, and not feel guilty about going quiet. That break wasn't failure; it was necessary.

But now I'm back. Rested-ish. Ready to write, post, and reconnect with the community that helped me get here.

The Future

I'm beyond stoked for what's to come in 2026. I'm ready to get back to writing more technical posts, and would love to make a video or two. I want to dive more into my creative side along with software development. So I'm stoked to explore all of that!

Goals for 2026:

Write more blog posts
Start a monthly newsletter
Make a video or two and post to YouTube
Speak at more conferences
Go to at least one conference
Build more side projects
Learn as much as I can about AI, LLMs, and the craziness that is happening in the tech world

Final Thoughts

If you're in that quiet season right now — the one where you're not posting, not building side projects, maybe just surviving — that's okay. Sometimes progress looks like showing up to your job and doing your best. That counts.

Catch you in the next post.

Moments From the Journey

2024

2025

The Reality of Burnout and Breaking Into Tech

Chris Nowicki — Wed, 01 May 2024 17:52:27 +0000

I recently got back from a 10 day vacation with my wife and family. It was a much needed break from the daily grind of work, coding, and life in general. I removed social media, discord, and slack from my phone and focused on quality time with the family and recovering
from burnout.

I wanted to take some time to reflect on my journey into tech, the burnout I experienced, and how I'm recovering from it. I hope that by sharing my story I can help others who are going through the same thing.

My Journey

I started my journey into tech in May of 2022. I enrolled in a boot camp with Coding Dojo specializing in the MERN and Python stacks. It was an expensive way to get out of tutorial hell, but it was exactly what I needed. I was motivated, driven, and stoked to be learning something new.

Fast forward to present time and I'm burned out. Since graduating from boot camp in November of 2022 I have been applying for jobs, getting rejection emails, getting involved in the tech community, building projects, and learning new technologies. I've been doing all of this while maintaining my day job of 50+ hours a week.

I was/am putting a lot of pressure on myself to be more involved on twitter and in the communities I am involved with. I had a fear that if I didn't engage with all the tweets, post, and be active in the community that I would be forgotten about and miss out on an opportunity.

Acting out of fear is never a good thing and drains you of your energy and motivation.

I'm sure most of you reading this are aware of what burnout out is but lets go over it just in case:

What is Burnout?

Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress, typically related to work or caregiving responsibilities. It's characterized by feelings of being overwhelmed, drained, and unable to meet constant demands. Burnout can lead to decreased productivity, cynicism, detachment from responsibilities, and even physical symptoms like headaches, insomnia, depression, and anxiety.

I was experiencing all of these symptoms and more. I was constantly tired, irritable, and unmotivated. I was having trouble focusing on tasks and was constantly feeling overwhelmed to the point where I truly just wanted to give up.

I was so tired of trying and feeling like I wasn't getting anywhere. This was a lie that I was believing and it was causing me to spiral more and more into burnout.

How I'm recovering

I'm still in the process of recovering from burnout but I wanted to share some of the things that have helped me along the way.

Taking a break: I took a 10 day vacation with my family and it was exactly what I needed. I removed all social media, discord, and slack from my phone and focused on quality time with my family. I was able to relax, recharge, and come back feeling refreshed and motivated.

I am not saying that everyone should go and take a 10 day vacation! BUT I am saying that you should take a break when you need it. Take a weekend to disconnect and recharge because I think you will find yourself even more productive when you come back.

Taking care of the basics:

Sleep: I made sure to get at least 8 hours of sleep every night. Sleep is so important for your physical and mental health and can have a huge impact on your mood and energy levels.
Exercise: I started going for walks every day and it has made a huge difference in my mood and energy levels. Exercise is a great way to reduce stress and improve your overall well-being.
Eating & Staying Hydrated: I made sure to eat healthy, balanced meals and drink plenty of water. Eating well can have a huge impact on your mood and energy levels.

Setting boundaries: I was putting too much pressure on myself to be active on social media and in the tech community.

When i engage with social media I want it to be intentional and not just to be active
Only choose projects that I truly have time for and don't over commit
Make sure to prioritize self care so I can have the energy and focus to be productive when working on side projects.

Final Thoughts

If you resonate with any of this please reach out as I would love to encourage you. We are all in this daily grind together as we pursue new jobs and/or new careers in tech. Remember to take care of yourself!

You got this!

How to Secure Vercel Cron Job routes in NextJS 13

Chris Nowicki — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 18:02:04 +0000

Lee Robinson from Vercel recently responded to a question I had about securing cron job routes:

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Use Case

Secure your cron job routes so that they can't be run by just anyone with the known route. We want to make sure that ONLY Vercel can run the cron job from their servers. We do this by adding CRON_SECRET to our env variables. If present, vercel will automatically send this as a bearer token in the header, as Lee mentioned in his response to me:

"If present, the HTTP request to the cron endpoint will contain an authorization header with it as a value, like this: "Authorization: Bearer $CRON_SECRET".

At the end of this tutorial I will show you how to configure Postman so that you can test your route with the Bearer Token.

Assumptions

You are familiar with nextJS 13/React Frameworks
You are familiar with Vercel and where to find the Environmental Variables in your project settings
If you do not know how to setup a cron job then read my tutorial here first and the return to this article to learn how to secure it.

Let's Secure a Cron Job! 🔒

Create a Secret Key
- In your terminal type openssl rand -hex 32
- You should have an output of something like this:
Add the CRON_SECRET variable to your local .env file with the value that is displayed in your terminal from step 1 above.

Modify the code in your cron job route to look for the bearer token. If it doesn't exist then return an unauthorized response with 401 status code:

import { NextRequest, NextResponse } from 'next/server'

export async function GET(req: NextRequest) {
  // get the bearer token from the header
  const authToken = (req.headers.get('authorization') || '')
    .split('Bearer ')
    .at(1)

  // if not found OR the bearer token does NOT equal the CRON_SECRET
  if (!authToken || authToken != process.env.CRON_SECRET {
    return NextResponse.json({ error: 'Unauthorized' }, { 
    status: 401 })
  }
  // if token exists then move on with the cron job
  ...
}

Test to make sure it worked by going to the route in your browser. You should receive a json error message, "Unauthorized":
Add the CRON_SECRET variable to the vercel project settings Environment Variables as seen below:
Deploy your project to Vercel and test on your live site. You should receive a json error message "Unauthorized":

CONGRATULATIONS! 🎉, Your cron job route is now secured! Now, let's setup Postman so you can test your cron job with the bearer token.

Setup POSTMAN

NOTE: This is not a tutorial on how to install postman, setup a workspace, etc.. There are lots of resources out there. Here is a good one on YouTube.

Select the plus icon to add a GET request:
Add in your route and select Send. You should see the same unauthorized response in the response as you did from when we tested in the browser:
Select Auth, Select the drop down arrow under Type and select Bearer Token. Enter the value of the CRON_KEY in the Token Field.
Once all the info is entered select Send to test the route with the Bearer token and you will get the expected return value of the cron job:

Conclusion

I hope you found this helpful! Please let me know if you have any questions and I will do my best to respond!

How to setup Vercel Postgres Serverless SQL Storage using NextJS

Chris Nowicki — Mon, 22 May 2023 15:21:22 +0000

Vercel recently announced their new Vercel Storage solutions:

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I have been using planetscale to store tweet count and github metrics to display on my portfolio and it took me about 30min to switch it all over.

Here's how I did it!

Assumptions

You have a free or pro/enterprise account with Vercel.
You have a project already setup and working in Vercel OR you are familiar with how to get your project linked using Vercel's CLI or linking your GitHub Repository.
You are familiar with nextJS 13/React Frameworks.

Dependencies needed

kysely: (pronounce “Key-Seh-Lee”) is a type-safe and autocompletion-friendly typescript SQL query builder.

npm i kysely

@vercel/postgres-kysely: A @vercel/postgres wrapper for the Kysely query builder.

npm i @vercel/postgres-kysely

Vercel CLI (optional) - See step 4 below; Retrieve latest ENV variables for your development environment.

npm i -g vercel

Documentation

Vercel Docs

1 - Create a Database

a. Log into your vercel dashboard and select Settings from the navigation menu:

b. Select Create Database

c. Ensure Postgres Serverless SQL is selected and click Continue

d. Accept the Vercel Postgres Beta terms and conditions

e. In the Database Name field type in the desired name of your new database. In the Region field select the region where your database reads and writes will take place. Select Create

2 - Connect your database to a project

a. Select Connect Project

b. In the Select Project drop down choose an existing project and select Connect. This will create all the ENV variables for you in the vercel project you chose.

NOTE: If you don't have a project then you'll need to select cancel and create a new vercel project and come back to this step.

When you select connect vercel will automatically add the env variables to your project in Vercel.

Next we will create the tables

3 - Create your tables

I have two tables setup in my database. One to store my tweet counts and the other to store my github metrics:

In the Vercel Database Menu select Data
Select Query
In the black console window input your table you'd like to create (examples of my tables below)
Select Run Query

Table Examples:

githubmetrics:

CREATE TABLE githubmetrics (
  id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
  commits INTEGER,
  repos INTEGER,
  updated_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT NOW()
);

tweetcount:

CREATE TABLE tweetcount (
  id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
  count INTEGER,
  updated_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT NOW()
);

Next we will get the ENV variables for your development environment.

4 - Retrieve latest ENV variables for your development environment

There are two ways to get your env variables: 1) From the Vercel Database Dashboard. 2) From the Vercel CLI.

1) Vercel Dashboard

From the Vercel Storage Dashboard, in your Database, Select .env.local
Select Copy Snippet and paste the env variables to your local .env file

2) Vercel CLI

a. If you do not have your project linked follow the steps here.
b. From the root of your project you just linked, in the command line, run vercel env pull .env.development.local
c. If needed you can copy any ENV variables starting with POSTGRES_ to your .env file.

5 - Create a helper file in /lib

The /lib/vercel-storage.ts file will hold the code for the Kysely ORM to connect and query the postgreSQL database. I'll talk through the code and then provide the full code at the end of this step.

import { Generated, ColumnType } from 'kysely'
import { createKysely } from '@vercel/postgres-kysely'

// define types
type Database = {
    tweetcount: TweetCountTable
    githubmetrics: GitHubMetricsTable
}

type TweetCountTable = {
    id: Generated<number>
    count: number
    updated_at: ColumnType<Date, string | undefined>
}

type GitHubMetricsTable = {
    id: Generated<number>
    commits: number
    repos: number
    updated_at: ColumnType<Date, string | undefined>
}

type MetricsType = {
    tweetCount: number
    githubCommits: number
    githubRepos: number
}

const db = createKysely<Database>()

In this first section I setup the types for my tables and database along with what's expected for when I fetch metrics. I then setup db to create an instance connection to my database in vercel.

In this next section I will create the queries to fetch and write data.

// query to fetch tweet count and github metrics
export async function getMetrics(): Promise<MetricsType> {

const res = await db
    .selectFrom(['tweetcount', 'githubmetrics'])
    .select([
        'tweetcount.count as tweetCount',
        'githubmetrics.commits as githubCommits',
        'githubmetrics.repos as githubRepos',
    ])
    .execute()

return res[0]
}

// update tweet count
export const updateTweetCount = (tweetCount: number) => {
    db.updateTable('tweetcount')
        .set({ count: tweetCount })
        .where('tweetcount.id', '=', 1)
        .executeTakeFirst()
}

// update github metrics
export const updateGithubMetrics = (commits: number, repos: number) => {
    db.updateTable('githubmetrics')
        .set({ commits: commits, repos: repos })
        .where('githubmetrics.id', '=', 1)
        .executeTakeFirst()
}

In this last section I have three queries. 1st query is what I use to fetch from the database for both my tweetcount and githubmetrics. I use the MetricsType defined in the first section. The 2nd query is what I use when I write the updated tweetcount to the database and finally the query to update githubmetrics to the database.

Here is the complete code for vercel-storage.ts:

import { Generated, ColumnType } from 'kysely'
import { createKysely } from '@vercel/postgres-kysely'

// define types
type Database = {
    tweetcount: TweetCountTable
    githubmetrics: GitHubMetricsTable
}

type TweetCountTable = {
    id: Generated<number>
    count: number
    updated_at: ColumnType<Date, string | undefined>
}

type GitHubMetricsTable = {
    id: Generated<number>
    commits: number
    repos: number
    updated_at: ColumnType<Date, string | undefined>
}

type MetricsType = {
    tweetCount: number
    githubCommits: number
    githubRepos: number
}

const db = createKysely<Database>()

// query to fetch tweet count and github metrics
export async function getMetrics(): Promise<MetricsType> {

const res = await db
    .selectFrom(['tweetcount', 'githubmetrics'])
    .select([
        'tweetcount.count as tweetCount',
        'githubmetrics.commits as githubCommits',
        'githubmetrics.repos as githubRepos',
    ])
    .execute()

return res[0]
}

// update tweet count
export const updateTweetCount = (tweetCount: number) => {
    db.updateTable('tweetcount')
        .set({ count: tweetCount })
        .where('tweetcount.id', '=', 1)
        .executeTakeFirst()
}

// update github metrics
export const updateGithubMetrics = (commits: number, repos: number) => {
    db.updateTable('githubmetrics')
        .set({ commits: commits, repos: repos })
        .where('githubmetrics.id', '=', 1)
        .executeTakeFirst()
}

I can then call the queries from the components in my application that need the information.

NOTE: I use Vercel Cron Jobs to fetch updated metrics from Twitter and GitHub and write to my database. You can checkout how I did it here

6 - Fetch and Display data on your application

// vercel db query
import { getMetrics } from '@/lib/vercel-storage'

type MetricsType = {
    tweetCount: number
    githubCommits: number
    githubRepos: number
}

export const revalidate = 60 // In seconds

export default async function About() {

    const metrics: Promise<MetricsType> = await getMetrics()

    return (
        ...
    )

Here is a snippet of how you would fetch the metrics. Note how I am revalidating the data every 60 seconds to ensure the latest metrics are shown on my about page.

The ... in my return function is where your application code would be and then you can call the data returned from getMetrics() using the variable metrics.

You can see how I implemented this in my portfolio at my GitHub Repo

Summary

I hope this tutorial was helpful. If you have any questions please feel free to comment below.

How to create a Vercel Cron Job using NextJS 13

Chris Nowicki — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 21:57:22 +0000

As a new developer I am constantly trying new technologies and recently have really enjoyed coding in NextJS 13 using their /app directory experimental feature.

Use Case

I wanted to be able to show total ALL TIME GitHub commits across my repositories on the about me section of my portfolio. Why, because I can lol. As I started working on the code I realized that this was going to be an expensive tasks from a resource perspective.

Assumptions

You are familiar with nextJS 13/React Frameworks
You are familiar with Vercel and getting your project linked using their CLI or gitHub Repository.

Limitations

Vercel has the following limitations based on your plan:

Let's Create a Cron Job!

Create a directory in the /app/api folder called "cron"
Create a folder within cron with the name of the cron job you want to run. example: /app/api/cron/github-metrics-sync
Create a file called route.ts
Your code should look like this:

// /api/cron/github-metrics-sync/route.ts
import { NextResponse } from 'next/server'

export async function GET() {
  ...
}

Where ... you replace with code you want to run when the cron job is executed.

For my use case I am storing the metrics in a PlanetScale database. I then fetch the data from the GitHub API, parse through the data, and then update the database.

Let's see the full code for my route:

import { Octokit } from '@octokit/rest'
import { NextResponse } from 'next/server'
import { updateGithubMetrics } from '../../../../lib/planetscale'

// zod env type checking
import { env } from 'env'

export async function GET() {
  const octokit = new Octokit({
    auth: env.GITHUB_TOKEN,
  })

  // retrieve all repos from my account
  const repos = await octokit.request('GET /user/repos', {
    per_page: 100,
    affiliation: 'owner',
  })

  // count all repos
  const totalRepos = repos.data.length

  // retrieve all commits and count them
  let totalCommits = 0

  for (const repo of repos.data) {
    const commits = await octokit.request(
      'GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/contributors',
      {
        owner: repo.owner.login,
        repo: repo.name,
      }
    )

    // only count commits from my account
    if (commits.data.length > 0) {
      for (const contributor of commits.data) {
        if (contributor.login === 'chris-nowicki') {
          totalCommits += contributor.contributions
        }
      }
    }
  }

  try {
    // update the planetscale database with new metrics
    updateGithubMetrics(totalCommits, totalRepos)
    return NextResponse.json({ totalCommits, totalRepos })
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error)
    return NextResponse.json({ error })
  }
}

I won't go over all the lines of code in this tutorial but if you have any questions please let me know!

FINAL STEP

Add a vercel.json file in the root of your project folder:

{
    "crons": [
        {
            "path": "/api/cron/github-metrics-sync",
            "schedule": "*/10 * * * *"
        }
    ]
}

path is the location of the folder we created in step #2
schedule is telling vercel how often the cron job should run. */10 * * * * is running the cronjob about every 10 minutes. You can play around with different schedules using crontab guru.

Once that is complete deploy your project to vercel and you can check the status of your cron job by going to the settings > crons menu for your project. You should see something like this:

CONCLUSION

I hope this was helpful! I found this to be a nice solution for the server to take on the expensive task so those visiting my site don't have to wait for the fetch/parsing from GitHub API for the /about page to load.