Look back 2025

This was my first year as an IC after deciding to switch roles from management—where I spent 7 years—to an IC in early December 2024. It feels like I rolled back the clock a few years! I switched to an IC role because I wanted to be closer to the ground on the latest AI, and it has been a wild ride. I spent time doing AI evaluation and building systems based on AI for insights. As Karpathy recently mentioned, the developer workflow is changing so fast that it can be dizzying at moments to find the right way to approach a problem. We are still caught between the past and the future; things like prototyping are easier, but shipping changes is harder as older codebases have not adapted to the agentic way of working. I am hopeful this will change this year. Overall, I feel it was the right decision, and I am feeling excited and challenged these days.

One of the goals I have had over the last few years was to go back and learn to swim. I say ‘go back’ because I had learned some swimming when I was young, but I never learned breathing well, and over time it got worse. An incident while snorkeling in Mexico in 2024 freaked me out, and I decided I needed to get back to lessons to improve my breathing before going back into the sea. I can say I improved towards the end of the year. At least I can finish laps without stopping. In 2026, I want to develop and improve my stamina, as I am starting to see that swimming helps my running by improving my lung capacity and VO2 max.

2025 was a challenging year for my father, who developed chikungunya, needed hospitalization, and had a long recovery path. Spending the holidays with my parents was a blessing; it was good to see him recovering and doing what he likes to do—spending time at his business.