HEITS in 2025: the year of becoming

HEITS in 2025: the year of becoming

2025 didn’t feel like “just another year” at HEITS. It felt like a year we grew into ourselves.

A year of trying new things, reinventing familiar ones, and saying yes to ideas that required a little courage, and a lot of teamwork. Some of these ideas took us outside our comfort zones, others pushed us to rethink how we show up as a company. All of them shaped who we became.

So instead of calling it a year in review, we’re calling it what it was: our year of becoming.

Let’s walk through it together.

turning 5 and kicking-off the year

We started 2025 with the same promise we repeat often but mean every single time: we’re going to make this a good year together.

January still carried the glow of the winter festivities:

• cookie bake-offs and full tables in both Iași and Cluj,
• HEITSkids decorating the Christmas trees and basically stealing the show,
• and an epic Christmas party.

At the same time, we were already looking forward, not backward. 2025 marked the big 5, our 5 year anniversary. We cut the cake, but we also tackled a simple question: “What does HEITS mean to you?”

In one video, colleagues shared their answers in a single word. The result was a collage of emotions that summed up the last 5 years.

new partnerships

In 2025, we welcomed three new client partnerships, each bringing complex data, product, and AI challenges to the table.

Our engineering teams designed and implemented Snowflake data warehouse architectures, built scalable ETL/ELT pipelines to unify multi-source data, optimized cloud infrastructure and performance, and delivered AI-driven capabilities that strengthened our clients’ products and internal systems.

These projects pushed us to raise the bar, not just in how we build, but in how we think about long-term, scalable engineering.

sheesh hack

Sheesh Hack quickly became one of our favourite rituals this year. A tiny, one-hour technical challenge that drops without warning, pushes everyone into focus mode, and somehow turns Slack into a competitive arena. The rules are simple: solve it fast, solve it well, earn sheeshi, climb the leaderboard, and maybe walk away with a legendary title like Sheeshionus Prime.

HEITShowto: the way we learn, in the spotlight

We brought HEITShowto into 2025. An event dear to us, that sums up HEITS spirit completely, technical, honest, and deeply focused on people actually learning.

This edition was anchored by two talks:

• Doru took DevOps and turned it into something more than CI/CD pipelines – a reflection on collaboration, ownership and how teams can actually work better together.
• Vidi held a dense but accessible session on TypeScript, reminding everyone that great engineering content can be both practical and thought-provoking.
• Adi brought a sharp, practical take on how generative AI tools are reshaping everyday engineering work. His talk cut through the hype and focused on what actually helps developers move faster and think better.

HEITS 5 year anniversary: a night for the people who make it all work

At the end of June, we stepped away from screens and sprint boards and headed to the party for a night that felt like the natural continuation of our 5-year anniversary: HEITS 5 Gala Night.

We introduced several award categories reflecting our values and culture, each coming with a whopping 5000 sheeshi in recognition:

• Slack Entertainer – Ana Statie
• Tech Guru – Adrian Apostol
• MVP – Cristina Cozar & Septimiu Tuns
• Master of Transitions – Andreea Ioniță
• Growth Champion – Iustin Pisticiuc

We also celebrated colleagues who have been with HEITS since the very early days, with a special-edition t-shirt as a small thank you for five years of trust.

Photos, inside jokes and “remember when…” moments from that night are still popping up in conversations. It was one of those events that quietly anchored our team.

two big launches: our new website & our first whitepaper

We launched a completely refreshed HEITS website, with:

• a cleaner structure and updated service lines,
• a more mature, confident visual language,
• and an AI-powered chatbot ready to answer questions and showcase what we can do.

It’s the online version of how we see ourselves now: a focused tech & AI partner.

We also shipped our first whitepaper, a collaborative effort that brought together: Adrian , Dan, Doru , Florian, Iulian, Septi, Vlad, Zsolt & Marius.

Read our our whitepaper here.

Last, but not least, HEIMS grew up a little

Our internal platform, HEIMS, got a visual and functional refresh early in the year:

• a redesigned dashboard, including a clear summary of Baksheesh and a better view of the internal Library,

• a cleaner calendar with a simplified flow for booking time off,

• and an updated office space section later in spring, making it easier to see how HEITS looks and feels across locations.

HEITS & sports

We joined the CBC Cup and played five intense matches that got the whole company refreshing chat channels for live updates. Our football team showed a lot of determination and fair play, and reminded us that collaboration and strategy look surprisingly similar whether you’re on a pitch or in a product team.

HEITS.racing

We also cheered for HEITS.racing, our team at the Endurance Karting Masters, where Boti pushed through eight hours of racing and brought home an impressive 5th place out of 18 teams. A reminder that endurance, teamwork, and a bit of adrenaline look just as good off the pitch as they do in product teams.

Cluj Bike Fest: putting Cluj’s MTB scene on the map

One of the boldest things we did in 2025 was step outside our usual world of screens and platforms to help create something entirely different: Cluj Bike Fest. What started as a simple idea turned into a full MTB festival shaped by our team’s creativity, design, logistics, trail-building and on-the-ground volunteering.

On race day, the energy was unmatched: 460+ riders from four countries, 18 pro teams, 5 elite athletes, nearly 200 kids and families, and participants ranging from 3 to 63 years old. Together with RaceHub, Wonderland Resort, partners, and dozens of volunteers, we built a festival that felt inclusive, local, and alive.

For us, Cluj Bike Fest became proof that HEITS can take an idea, nurture it, and turn it into something real, meaningful, and full of heart.

Read more about our project here or watch the official aftermovie.

mentoring the next generation

In April, we continued our long-standing presence at FiiCode, where Adi joined as both mentor and jury member for this year’s edition. The finals brought together passionate students, clever projects, and the kind of energy that reminds us why supporting young talent matters. A small contribution from our side, but one that always feels meaningful.

In November, we joined CodeRun, where Alex Rus, Iulian Bogdan, Bogdan Bentea, and Ana Statie mentored over 100 students while they hacked away on their projects.

It was a full day of questions, debugging, architecture advice and “have you tried turning it off and on again?” – exactly the kind of interaction that reminds us why tech education and community events matter.

Children’s Day brought one of the sweetest moments of the year. Our little HEITS explorers filled the space with color, laughter, and an impressive amount of energy.

Kid's Christmas

December started the way we like it best: with kids in the office.

Both Cluj and Iași locations became small winter stories for Kids Christmas @ HEITS. The kids decorated the Christmas tree, played around the office, received their gifts, and…had the best of times (we’re not biased) during the magic shows in both Cluj and Iasi offices.

but what about Baksheesh

Some companies have formal recognition programs. We have Baksheesh, our very own way of saying “hey, I saw what you did, and it mattered.” It works simply: every month, everyone gets a small allowance of “sheesh” to send to colleagues on Slack whenever they help, support, teach, fix, unblock, or simply show up with kindness. It’s our daily gratitude loop, tiny sparks of appreciation that make the work feel lighter.

Beyond the day-to-day praises, people also earn sheesh through things that reflect who we are as a team: learning something new, writing articles, sharing knowledge, mentoring, logging kilometers outdoors, or contributing to internal projects.

And yes, the sheesh you collect turns into real rewards. Books, gadgets, HEITSmaterial that comes in various forms, little joys you choose for yourself.

Let’s take a look at some 2025 numbers:

• We shared around 2,700 praisings with one another.
• That adds up to roughly 79,680 praising points sent in appreciation.
• 95 people stepped into the role of “praiser”.
• 109 colleagues received praisings – essentially, almost everyone felt seen at some point.
  

On the achievements side:

• We claimed 621 achievements, worth a total of 114,300 achievement points.
• Some of the most popular badges were things like the Kilometozarus - for the ones that make us wonder how, when, and where do they walk so much,, Tech Interviewer - for the ones interviewing our new potential colleagues, Tech Contributor - achievement for working on the internal projects of HEITS, proof that performance, learning, health, curiosity and connection all matter here.

And when it came time to spend those hard-earned sheesh:

• We redeemed 88 rewards, worth about 124,000 points.
• The favorites? Check them out

Behind each number there’s a moment: someone taking the time to say “thank you,” someone choosing a reward that fits their life, someone smiling when a parcel shows up at the office.

Baksheesh is not a store. It’s our way of saying thank you and our way of giving back. Read more about it here.

let’s zoom out

When you zoom out, 2025 at HEITS looks like this:

• We celebrated 5 years of building this company together.
• We welcomed 3 new partnerships.
• We launched a new website, a first whitepaper and an AI chatbot.
• We reinforced our internal tools and culture with HEIMS improvements and Baksheesh in full swing.
• We showed up in our community – through Cluj Bike Fest, CodeRun, HEITShowto and more.
• We cheered for each other on football fields, Slack channels, stages and dance floors.
• We welcomed new partnerships and grew our AI ambitions.

Most importantly, we did all of this while keeping our core intact: a grounded, curious, values-driven team that prefers real conversations over buzzwords and long-term relationships over quick wins.

A year like this needed a proper ending, and we found it the only way that made sense, together. We wrapped up 2025 with one last gathering in our two homes, Cluj and Iași, celebrating everything we built, learned, and shared along the way.