Nothing Shared, Everything Gained: What It Cost to Finish

This is the post I wasn't sure I'd write.

At the end of 2024 I left the start-up and scale-up world. Not because I failed — Frontastic had a successful exit to commercetools. Because I realized I'd optimized for the wrong metric.

I'd spent years building systems that scaled. Meanwhile, I was the system that wasn't scaling. I was present at work and absent at home.

Leaving gave me back two things: the headspace to finish a book I'd started a decade ago, and the time to actually be there for my wife and child. I now work as a researcher and software architect at FernUniversität Hagen, in e-learning. It's a different pace. A better one.

I also want to remember Alexandra Ionescu. I hired her as Head of Engineering at Frontastic, and she did an excellent job — managing teams so I could stay focused on technical work. Alexandra passed away from cancer, far too young, only months after I left commercetools.

This book isn't about engineering management, but her work enabled the space in which technical thinking like this can thrive. Some contributions don't make it into architecture diagrams.

"Nothing Shared, Everything Gained" is available now at codethatships.com. It's the sum of twenty years of building things. But finishing it required stopping.