2025 Year in Review

2025 was a lot. Professionally I experienced a career change an intense job search which sparked an exciting side project, and and unexpected acquisition. Personally we had a few family trips and some hard stuff mixed in with the good.

I have never done a year-in-review post before but this year had enough going on that it felt worth documenting. So here's the rundown.

Career Changes

At the end of 2024 I switched teams at Atlassian. So the first chunk of this year was just getting used to that. New codebase and tech stack, new people, new way of doing things. It was ok but I was no longer enjoying work.

I kept thinking about the Halp days. Halp was the team I joined when I was hired at Atlassian. They had been acquired about one year before I joined and were still very autonomous. They still had that scrappy energy where you could just build stuff and ship it. Atlassian is a great company, but it's big. Lots of process. Lots of meetings about meetings. I missed moving fast.

That feeling didn't go away. So I started looking.

The Job Search

I applied to a bunch of places and ended up making it to final rounds at Cloudflare. It went well! But I also found Replicate—a small team (~40 people) working on AI model infrastructure. The kind of place where you wear a lot of hats.

I ended up choosing Replicate. Something about the size and the problem space just clicked.

I joined as a software engineer on the customer team. It's an interesting role, building internal tools and collaborating with customers to build on our platform. Exactly the kind of role that fits my background.

Plot Twist: I End Up at Cloudflare Anyways

To be honest it ate at me that I turned down Cloudflare. Had I missed out on an exciting opportunity to join an amazing team and product? Well it turns out it didn't matter. They acquired Replicate in November. Only 4 months after I joined Replicate, I'm a part of Cloudflare.

I'm incredibly excited about what the future holds here. I know Replicate is in good hands and I'll be a part of building a brand new team doing consulting software engineering for the Cloudflare Dev Platform. 2026 is going to be big.

Building at Replicate

I'm glad I was able to hit the ground running here. Quickly making updates to admin tools and looking for any way we can automate processes. For example, I built internal tooling using MCP (Model Context Protocol) for admin functions. Think user lookups, organization management, audit logging—all the stuff you need when you're managing a platform with a lot of users. I got to design the permission system from scratch, which was fun.

I also spent time thinking through how we could improve our support infrastructure. Better routing, smarter automation, that kind of thing. Some of it shipped, some of it is still in the works.

Side Projects

AppTrack.ing

During my job search I got tired of tracking applications in a spreadsheet. And I was heavily leaning into AI to help me custom tailor my resume and cover letter. Doing this led to two job offers and that final round interview with Cloudflare I turned down.

I realized there was an opportunity to make this an all-in-one tool and came up with AppTrack.ing, an AI-assisted job tracking app. You can log your applications, and it'll help you analyze job fit, generate cover letters, and prep for interviews. I added Google SSO, guest access to the AI features, and auto-save because losing form data is the worst.

The engineering was the easy part. What I have really been learning from this is lessons in marketing, SEO and conversion. I definitely have a ways to go in this realm.

It started as a tool for myself but is now open to the public. If you're job hunting, check it out.

AI-rtic Phone

This one was just for fun. When I was at Halp/Atlassian we used to play GarticPhone all the time as a team building exercise. Basically, you draw something, someone else describes it, someone else draws that description, and it gets weirder and weirder as it goes.

I decided it would be fun to see how different AI models do at performing this same task. One model generates an image from a prompt, another model describes that image, another model generates from that description, and so on.

I open-sourced it on GitHub and deployed it on Cloudflare Workers with D1 for the database and R2 for storage. Vibe-coded the whole thing. Check it out at https://airticphone.jlmx.dev

Family & Personal Highlights

This was a good year for family stuff. We made a lot of memories.

Adventures with the Kids

In January I took Elias (he's 3) to the Hot Wheels Monster Truck show. His first big event like that. He immediately picked 5 Alarm as his favorite and was thrilled when that was the truck to win the competition.

Eisley (5) got really into skateboarding this year. Like, really into it. We became regulars at the skate park. It's been cool watching her get more confident on the board.

In May she had her dance recital—"Singin' in the Rain." She was amazing. Proud dad moment.

This fall, Elias and I got fishing gear and started hitting our neighborhood pond. It's stocked, so we actually catch stuff. We also did a camping trip to Canyon of the Eagles in November which was great.

We took both kids to Alamo Drafthouse for their first movie theater experience. We saw the Gabby's Dollhouse movie because Eisley is obsessed with that show. They did great.

We had a lot of backyard fires this year. Nothing fancy, just hanging out by the fire pit. Those nights are some of my favorites.

Eisley also started first grade. We're homeschooling, and she's the kind of kid who always wants to do more than the day's lesson. That's been fun to see.

Travel

After I left Atlassian, I took some time off before starting at Replicate. We spent a week at the beach on Mustang Island in Texas. It was good to decompress.

In the fall I went to Alaska to see family. I grew up there but hadn't been back in 10 years, as my immediate family has all moved out of the state. I got to see my grandparents (my grandfather has Parkinson's) and reconnect with my cousin's family. She and I grew up together and are really close, but I'd only met her oldest son in person. So I finally got to meet the other two boys.

The Hard Stuff

Not everything was easy this year.

My wife has been working through anxiety and PTSD. It's been a journey, but this year was huge that 1) she was able to finally identify what she has been dealing with for years and 2) she found treatment that's been working well. The last couple of months she's been doing a lot better. I'm proud of her.

We also got some hard news about my cousin's youngest son. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor a couple of weeks ago. It's benign, but the location of it (in the center around the brain stem) adds some complexity to it. He'll be beginning chemotherapy soon. That Alaska trip took on extra meaning and we're already planning to go back and visit them soon. They do have a GoFundMe if you are in a position to donate and feel inclined to so do.

Lessons & Reflections

A few things I'm taking with me into next year:

On career paths: You never know who you may cross paths with again. A "no" today doesn't mean a "no" forever. This works both ways.

On startup energy: If you're missing it, that's a signal worth listening to. I spent the a while feeling restless at Atlassian and I should've paid attention to that sooner.

On building things: Side projects can turn into real products. AppTrack started as a tool for myself and now other people are using it.

On family: This may be the most important take away. Make time to be with ones who matter. No one knows what tomorrow will bring. So make the most of the time we have.

Looking Ahead to 2026

I'm so excited about what's next.

On the work side, I'm curious to see what the Cloudflare + Replicate integration unlocks. There's a lot of potential there and being a part of a team starting from 0 (literally, it's me and the director) is thrilling.

On the personal side, more fishing with Elias, more skate park with Eisley, more backyard fires and definitely another trip to Alaska.

I'm also excited to keep growing AppTrack.ing. It scratched my own itch during the job search, but I think it can help a lot of other people too. We'll see where it goes.

Oh and I just redesigned jlmx.dev. Let me know what you think!

See ya in 2026! ✌️