Rohan Sharma

Posted on Dec 31

2025 in Review: Growth, Grief, and the Cost of Momentum

#programming #ai #career #devrel

Hey there,

I know, I know it's been a long time since I last posted or wrote anything. It might be possible that you are either pissed off at me or have literally forgotten me. In both cases, I apologize.

So, why was I dead? Possible reasons:

being very very very busy at work
being depressed
lost willingness to write
lose interest in everything
no reasons, just trying to coverup myself with lies

Before you go ahead and read the rest of the blog, please select an option from above and write it down in the comment section. Let's see what you think!

Let's start this blog by justifying myself.
The actual reason for me being dead was -- several. I will write my 2025 wrap-up and then wind up the reasons if you still didn't get it while reading it.

Starting with January 2025. The year began with a big change. I joined LLMWare as a devRel Engineer and am still serving to Quira as Community Moderator. February was already on my mind because of the GATE exam (a national exam in India for PG admissions). So, I also started to prepare for that. The weather stayed kind, which helped more than I realized at the time. Oh btw, I forgot, I went to college every day just to reach the 75% attendance milestone/.

February 2025. This was the month things started to feel real. I had the GATE exam in the first week, and once it was over, I shifted fully back to work. I had taken quite a few days off earlier and did not want to slow things down further. On February 8, 2025, I consciously decided to make llmware my P0 and commit to it properly. A few days later, my university exams began. It was work during the day and exams around it. I managed. In the middle of all that, I lost something I can never get back - a friend. It was 16th Feb, 2025.

After a rough start, 2025 rolled into March. Things began to move with more seriousness. I started giving more of my time to work. College was sucking, as usual. Staying busy became a way to escape the matrix of overthinking. Along the way, I missed a few family moments, and by the end of the month, my brothers left home for work. For the first time, the house was quiet. Not for a day, but for DAYS. Professionally, things were on track. Personally, I was starting to fall behind.

April 2025 started. llmware started gaining real momentum on GitHub. Work became my default state. I began keeping my distance from people and spending more time alone. During the month, I met the Founder & CEO of devEco. We had a few meaningful conversations, and I decided to take on part-time work with them.

It's May 2025 now. Things accelerated at llmware. I was putting in more hours than ever. Alongside that, I officially joined devEco as well. Suddenly, my days were split between college, llmware, quira, and devEco. Even then, most of the conversations were still with myself. With still some time left to spare, I pushed myself to participate in a DEV Challenge, the authorization challenge.

Now, it's June 2025, the biggest month for me. I pushed past every limit and worked relentlessly. On non-college days, I was putting in 14 to 15 hours. On college days, around 8 to 9. I led the documentation for llmware’s major product announcement, Model HQ. The work spanned two months, but most of it came together in June. I also won the DEV Challenge I had participated in the previous month.

Professionally, I was at my peak. And it was at that peak that I started forgetting everything else. I barely ate because I simply did not think about it. The intensity was self-imposed. There was no pressure from either company. In fact, I was repeatedly asked to slow down and rest. I did not listen. During this stretch, I also wrote five blogs and scheduled them through early July.

Sadness followed me through it all. When the Founder & CEO of Quira told me the company was winding down, it shook me deeply. Quira was my first job, and the place where I learned how to build and belong.

July 2025 started with university exams. I slowed down at work, not because of the exams, but because I was quietly losing interest, even though I kept showing up and delivering. Exams themselves never bothered me much. What weighed heavier was going to college every day. I am a one nighter. I usually study for three to four hours and then sit for the exam. Somehow, I cleared everything with zero backlogs.

Quira was officially closed now. I gifted the Founder & CEO with this. He loved it.

Around the same time, one of my brothers decided to resign from his job. He was struggling with the food and climate of the region, and it had finally caught up with him.

August 2025. Happiness began to return, slowly. My brothers came back. One for good, to prepare for what was next, and the other just for the holidays. I was still hoping for a comeback from that friend, but it never happened. The hardest part was seeing each other every day in college, like strangers.

I started working again like a normal human being, and for the first time in months, I had some spare time. Around then, a former DevRel from Quira reached out and asked if I could help at his current company. He was someone who had taught me a lot. I knew he did not really need help. He was trying to help me instead. I did not say no.

That is how I joined Tessl as a part-time DevEx Engineer. Once again, I was working with three companies. This time, the work was different, harder, and more demanding in its own way. I stopped thinking too much about myself and kept moving forward.

My birthday month, September 2025. I was born on September 1. Fun fact, World War II also officially began on that day. Strange coincidence. Overall, it was a good month. I enjoyed working at my new company, even though it was more demanding than anything I had done before. I had never worked with so many people at once. The team at Tessl is filled with well-known names, and I genuinely loved being part of it. Life felt steady again.

October 2025. This was the first month when I didn't work at llmware at all. Things were moving internally, and we were all waiting. I ended up with a break, but I did not really stop. I started working on something else, still under wraps (yes, a secret). I also updated one of my projects, Radhika, and launched version 2.0. By the way, version 3.0 is coming in a few days as well. The month was also filled with festivals, and for once, I celebrated them properly.

And it's November 2025, another exam month. I slowly resumed work with llmware, tessl, and devEco continued as usual. But somewhere along the way, I lost interest in work itself. It started to feel boring. I had my 3rd university exam this month. Around this time, something shifted in me. I stopped feeling much of anything. No excitement, no fear. Just a quiet numbness. My circle became smaller than it had ever been. But overall, it was good.

Lastly, December 2025. I was fully back at work, almost like before. This time, though, I had more holidays than usual. I am still on break until January 1, 2026. The time off did something unexpected. It forced me to notice what I had lost this year, what I wanted but never paused to ask for. Loneliness showed up quietly. Real FOMO too. Feelings I had avoided all year finally caught up.

At this point, I cannot clearly say whether I am happy, sad, exhausted, lost, or simply alone. Maybe it is a mix of everything.

Have you ever gone through a phase like this?

Now's let me write what you're most interested in reading

Leaving personal life in a corner, let's talk about the professional growth I've achieved this year.

Building Community and Trust at Quira:

Engaged in activity and participation in Quests
Handled the community in hard times.
Helped many members get started and ship their first projects on Quira through one-on-one sessions.
Proposed ideas that significantly improved community participation, communication, and retention.
Built a warm and approachable community space where members felt comfortable reaching out. I was never seen as a distant or formal figure, but as a trusted colleague, which I truly valued.
Demonstrated strong developer advocacy by supporting both the product and the people using it.

What I Built and Shipped at LLMWare:

Elevated LLMWare's GitHub activity. (6,500+ Stars and 2,000+ Forks Organic Farming in 6 months)
Increased the awareness of SLMs.
Created a whole new website. (A newer version is coming soon)
Wrote documentation for Model HQ (a llmware's product) and hosted it. (got great feedback from senior developers)
Involved in QA and testing of Model HQ.
Delivered over 15 high-quality contents.
Contributed to the social presence of llmware.

Growing devEco's Developer Presence:

Managed socials across multiple platforms for devEco, devEco products, and devEco clients.
Achieved a great percentage of increase in activities like reactions, comments, reposts, and impressions.
Sparked active conversations through thoughtful content, up from almost none.

Strengthening the Developer Ecosystem at Tessl:

Strengthened the AIND ecosystem by improving the Landscape platform, fixing major bugs, refining categories, and adding new tools consistently.
Enhanced content operations through automation projects and streamlined publishing workflows.
Delivered high-quality research, carousels, and weekly trending tool updates that improved visibility and engagement across developer channels.
Provided cross-functional support to improve UX, data quality, scraping workflows, and overall product reliability.

I am sure I have not captured everything here, and that is okay. What matters is that I know how much I worked, and that I gave my best to everything I was part of. I do not know if I will continue on the same path, but for now, I am not worried about it.

Things I loved the most!!!

There were a lot of moments this year that I loved a lot. Let's start!

At Quira, I did not just meet people. I made a real friend circle. And I believe this deeply: when someone reaches out to you as a friend and shares their feelings and pain points, it means you have occupied a special place in their heart. That feeling is rare, and I will always value it.

LLMWare. Ahh. I honestly do not have enough words for this one. I met some incredibly sharp senior developers through LLMWare. Since I am under NDA, I cannot share much, but this experience opened doors to many Silicon Valley giants for me. More importantly, this was the first time I worked on a real product at a very early-stage startup. Working closely with the CEO and CTO felt natural and calm. They are kind, thoughtful, and genuinely great people to work with.

devEco filled me with sessions of laughter, joys, arguments, and whatnot! The founder is insanely cool and welcomes everyone with warmth. Becoming a core devEco member is a different kind of fun. He talks to me, teaches me, appreciates me when I do something right, and corrects me when I make mistakes. Interestingly, I didn't made much mistakes. I have 90% appreciation in my hands. Ehehe. But I must say, meet with this human once and you won't regret it.

Tessl was the biggest surprise. I was honestly hesitant at first. There were a lot of people, and in the past, I had only worked with 3 or 4 at a time. Being a newbie in such an environment hits differently. But guess what. It was smooth. Really smooth. A huge thanks to the DevRel at Tessl. This guy taught me a lot and supported me constantly. He is the person I feel most comfortable with. I can even talk to him about my personal life with ease. He speaks, shares ideas, listens to ideas, has zero ego or arrogance, treats everyone equally, always helps others, travels way too much, and still manages everything.

And not just him. The entire Tessl team is welcoming and amazing. I even got to work with the Father of DevOps himself, and he even appreciated my work(ehehe). That one stays with me.

What I Achieved!!!

Well, I achieved a lot of things. But there are some things beyond work that matter just as much.

I know most of you want to know how much money I made. Of course, I am not going to tell that. But you can assume. Let me know in the comments. I will say this though. I earned a good amount. And now, I want more. I already have plans for 2026. Or maybe not. I am a moody guy. My plans change often.

Apart from money, I gained a lot. We renovated our house. It is still not fully done. Two more months to go. We also bought a lot of furniture, although that part feels less special since we already have a family business around it.

I also got my Aloo (Mr. Potato). See below. Cute, right? Thanks to Cloudinary.

Beyond money and things, I earned something better. Respect. Trust. Value. Most importantly, I unlocked an intense learning mode. Once it switches on, it is hard to turn off.

Seems like I told everything I needed to tell. For those who still want to know the actual reason for my being dead are:

I lost my interest in almost everything.
Doing work is now boring for me.
I was a bit sad.

I do not want to write everything again, and I do not want to summarize it either. But somewhere above, these were the reasons.

Before ending, I want to thank my friends. I will not take names properly, but if you are reading this, you already know who you are.

Thanks to my college friend, SK. Without him, I would never have cleared my college exams or survived college life. We spent almost all our time together. Being single, searching for someone, then running away. He can be brainless, but not brain-rotted. A good guy with intense slang specialization.
Thanks to HG. A person I have never met in real life. But if you are not in a good mood, one single text can turn into World War III. Good, kind-hearted, always listens. Extra thin and weak human. I will not say much, else WW IV will start. But thank you for always being there.
Thanks to Sam for being Same Sam. Ultimate mad and animal human. I do not know what to say about you. Take care, you sick human. And thanks for being there.
Extending my gratitude to Dishu and Piliya. Both are placed. Both are talkative. Both get angry for no reason. Both are kind and always text me for anything. Also, neither is a cute human. Thank you, guys.
Thanks to my elderly sister NG as well. Overaged person with professional traumas. Best in arguments and worst in winning them. LOL. Thank you.
And the last guy, KOS. I worked with him. We talked about work for 1% of the time and movies, series, and heroines for 99%. Thanks for helping me debug bugs that were already fixed.
Thanks to SK as well, whom I lost this year. You've helped me a lot. Those were the happy days. Happy life ahead!

Again, do not take my words too seriously. But if you do, you are already a great person 😂

Thanks for being there.

Before I wrap this up, one last thing.

If you ever feel like knowing more about me, or just want to talk about work, life, random ideas, or nothing in particular, you can reach out to me anywhere below. I am usually around, and I genuinely enjoy conversations more than formal networking.