DOP 331: Looking Back on Our 2025 Predictions

Episode 331

Show Notes

#331: At the end of 2024, predictions were made about what 2025 would bring to the tech industry. A year later, on New Year’s Eve, it’s time to look back and see what actually happened. The prediction episode from January 1st covered four major topics: rug pulls from companies switching to business source licenses, the rise of WebAssembly adoption, a wave of company acquisitions, and AI becoming embedded in existing tools. Some predictions hit the mark while others missed entirely, but what emerged was something nobody fully anticipated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did the DevOps Paradox 2025 predictions turn out?

Darin Pope scores them on DevOps Paradox episode 331 as roughly a failure, which he notes is the annual tradition. Of four predictions made in episode 296, more license rug pulls largely did not happen, WebAssembly staying niche was correct, small company roll-up acquisitions were about half right, and AI becoming embedded in existing tools rather than bought separately was correct.

What did the hosts miss in their 2025 predictions?

Agentic AI, as both hosts concede on DevOps Paradox episode 331. Viktor Farcic points out the episode was recorded in November 2024, when the word agent was barely being used. He says his mistake was not about the models, which progressed roughly as he expected, but about what turned out to matter: giving models the ability to use tools.

Was Viktor Farcic skeptical about AI?

Yes, and he says so plainly on DevOps Paradox episode 331: “November last year, I was in denial about AI.” He knew it was on a path to becoming useful and was certain he would not be using it constantly a year later. He now uses it for writing code, operating clusters, working in AWS, writing blog posts, and deciding what to watch.

Does it matter which foundation model you use?

Viktor Farcic argues on DevOps Paradox episode 331 that for an existing user of a major model there is little reason to switch, since any lead lasts about a week. Darin Pope adds that the steep improvement curve has moved from the models to how they are used, pointing at the run of additions to Claude Code as where the interesting changes have been happening.

Are more open source license changes coming?

Viktor Farcic expects so on DevOps Paradox episode 331, and plans to repeat the prediction he got wrong. His reasoning is funding rather than ideology: companies that are neither hyperscalers nor built around AI are struggling to raise money, and desperate companies do desperate things. He also notes acquisitions in 2025 concentrated on very young AI companies rather than established ones.

How does the AI hype cycle compare to Kubernetes?

Viktor Farcic draws the parallel directly on DevOps Paradox episode 331. Both went through a period of every month bringing something that appeared to change everything, followed by a slowdown. He places the industry about a year into agentic AI, still discovering what works, with the shift from discovery to making it work still ahead. That framing gave the following episode its title.

What is the DevOps Paradox podcast?

DevOps Paradox is a weekly podcast co-hosted by Darin Pope and Viktor Farcic, covering DevOps, platform engineering, and modern software delivery. Episode 331 is the pair’s annual review of their own predictions, scoring what they got right about 2025 and admitting they did not see agentic AI coming. Every episode page carries the audio, the video, and a full transcript.

Episode Transcript

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Hosts

Darin Pope

Darin Pope

Viktor Farcic

Viktor Farcic

Viktor Farcic is a member of the Google Developer Experts and Docker Captains groups, and published author.

His big passions are DevOps, Containers, Kubernetes, Microservices, Continuous Integration, Delivery and Deployment (CI/CD) and Test-Driven Development (TDD).

He often speaks at community gatherings and conferences.

He has published DevOps Paradox and Test-Driven Java Development.

His random thoughts and tutorials can be found in his blog The DevOps Toolkit.