I started coding at 25. Late by Silicon Valley standards — but I brought with me a degree in automation engineering and a stubborn belief: software should actually make businesses run better, not just look impressive in a pitch deck.
My early career wasn't spent building flashy apps. It was in the trenches of e-commerce and warehouse management — architecting systems that tracked real inventory, processed live orders, and simply couldn't afford to be wrong. Later, I built a CRM for a multi-company enterprise that is still running flawlessly a decade later, and engineered government platforms serving over 1.5 million citizens. In those environments, downtime isn't an option and security is non-negotiable.
But as I grew in the industry, I saw the dark side of software development. I worked alongside agencies that charged by the hour and delivered by the excuse. Teams that overpromised and underbuilt. Projects where the budget doubled and the timeline tripled — and somehow, clients were expected to accept that as “normal.”