The year was 2011. I was 23 years old, behind on my college studies, and my family was going through financial difficulties. I was desperate for a job.
I landed my first role as a Junior Developer at a small company in Mexico. Part merit, part luck. I struggled at first.
My first task? Build a report. Tabular data, charts, date filters. Classic enterprise stuff. What you learn in school is very different from what you do in real-world software development. My early pain points were complex SQL queries and wrestling with enterprise libraries (yes, Telerik — I’m looking at you).
Over time, I fell in love with software development. Solving problems. Shipping features. Seeing something come alive from nothing.
But I slowly started to dislike the environment around it.
Not coding itself — the ecosystem.
Poor project management. No clear roadmap. No vision. Unrealistic deadlines. Constant scope changes. Weak QA. Communication gaps. Teams running fast but not necessarily running forward.
And yes — let’s say it plainly — too many PMs who don’t understand what they’re managing but still dictate timelines.
Across more than 30 projects I worked on, only a fraction truly reached a polished, market-ready state. Entire months of work were sometimes scrapped due to last-minute decisions. That takes a toll.
Then there’s the industry expectation machine.
You’re often locked into a stack someone chose years ago. That’s fine — until it’s the only thing you’re allowed to touch. Meanwhile, recruiters filter you out because you don’t have experience in the trendy framework of the month.
I firmly believe strong engineers can learn any language if they understand fundamentals. But hiring processes don’t always reflect that belief.
And don’t get me started on algorithm-heavy interviews disconnected from day-to-day engineering reality.
Despite all that, I was fortunate enough to interview with companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. I progressed. I grew. I stayed in software development for 10 years.
But something shifted.
The AI landscape changed everything. Large Language Models, copilots, automation tooling — the way software is built today is radically different from when I started. Development is becoming more augmented, more abstracted, more strategic.
For me, coding gradually moved from being a full-time profession to becoming something closer to a hobby. I still build. I still learn. I still experiment with React, Node, Python, and even indie game development.
But what truly energizes me now is software sales and solutions engineering.
I love understanding complex business problems. I love designing architectures. I love translating technical depth into strategic value. I love the intersection between engineering and revenue. I love being in the room where decisions are made.
Software development gave me my foundation. Sales engineering gave me leverage.
This post is not about quitting technology. It’s about evolving within it.
I spent 10 years in software development. I’m proud of that. It shaped how I think.
But today, I’m building differently.
And I’m still learning.