Four years ago, I was living with my parents, working as an assistant at an optometry office, with zero clue what I was going to do for the rest of my life. This year, I have designed websites for large medical practices serving 40,000+ patients daily, led an architecture transformation that reduced system failures from 1000+ per week to less than 10, and spoken at two conferences.
Here is what happened in between:
Dreams Fall Apart
When I graduated from high school in 2021, I had two clear paths forward that I was eager to jump into: professional baseball. I had been playing baseball since I was in elementary school. My family was filled with healthcare professionals; my mom, aunts, uncles, cousins, and many more. It was clear to me that one of these two options, if not both, was the only way forward.
One semester later, I was driving back home with a trunk loaded with all my belongings, brand-new scars from my knee surgery, and a fresh "F" in Biology on my transcript. In the time that I thought would kick off the life-changing journey towards my goals, all paths forward vanished from thin air. Once I settled back home, I did what I could with my current situation: I got a job at an optometry office, enrolled in general classes at a community college, and spent my nights wondering what I was supposed to do with my future.
Then, one afternoon in December, my stepdad sent me a text: a link to a Reddit post. I opened it and saw a developer offering a free web development bootcamp starting in January 2022. I had never written a single line of code; the most technical thing I had done was install mods to Minecraft. But I read through the entire post. Free, self-paced, online, community-driven. Two more roads opened up in front of me, keep going through the motions until I figured out what to do or dive into something completely new.
After a lot of thinking, I signed up. Little did I know that one decision would change everything.
Breakthrough
In the new year, I started quickly with the basics: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I was bouncing between struggling and confused, to having the most fun I had in a long time, being able to type words into a code editor and make something real pop up in my browser was life-changing.
As the months went along, I got more comfortable with building websites, and it became my lifestyle. I was recreating some of the biggest websites and building side projects around my daily life; I would even bring my laptop with me to work and code during my lunch breaks. The more comfortable I grew, the more I tried to put my name out there. I would deeply research jobs in my area, along with the companies and their missions. After 20 highly-targeted, thought-out applications and weeks of hearing nothing, I finally got my first message back. Two rounds of interviews and a coding assessment later, I officially had my first role in tech!
The role was technical support, making small design changes and updates across a suite of healthcare websites. The first week was a shellshock: brand new languages I had never heard of, an enterprise codebase that was larger than anything I had ever seen, and a wave of tickets with a deadline. I was nervous, scared, and wondered if I should even be here. But I put my head down and started building.
Within four months, I was leading support for our enterprise clients. Organizations serving 40,000+ patients daily. The kinds of sites where an issue meant thousands of patients couldn’t get scheduled. Four months after that, I was promoted to Frontend Designer. Now I wasn’t just maintaining sites, I was designing and building them from scratch. Taking clients from concept to launch, handling everything from brand strategy to custom components.
My workload exploded, but I kept saying yes to every new opportunity that pinged in my Slack channel.
In 2023, I led design for 130 projects; 40% of all site launches company-wide that year. The highest individual output on the entire product team. I was resolving major enterprise tickets the same day. I was pushing the boundaries when it came to designing new sites.
What I didn’t see was the wildfire that was soon to start in my career.
The Wildfire
May 2024, on a usual Monday morning, I got an unexpected call. “Sorry, but your position is no longer needed.” I was being laid off. Just over two years since I started in my first role in tech, I was quickly thrust into the challenge of finding a new job. The bigger stressor? My wedding date was set five months from then. So, I wasted no time.
I would wake up at 8:00 in the morning, get on my computer, and start scrambling. Apply to thousands of jobs that popped up on my job board, throw as many keywords into my resume as I could, and cold messaged as many people on my LinkedIn from previous interactions. I wouldn’t stop until 11:00 at night. The truth was, I was starting from scratch. I had put all my focus into my current role, so I neglected everything else: networking, building in public, posting, and keeping up to date with the latest tech. For months, the scramble continued. From being ghosted by recruiters to losing in the last round of interviews to an internal referral, I couldn’t win. I was picking up side jobs to manage the time it was taking, worried that I wouldn’t be able to find a tech job in time. Then, a month before my wedding, I was offered my old position back.
I came in on my first day, got my old laptop back, caught up with the progress from my old clients, picked up some tickets, and headed back to my car. As I was walking across the parking lot, one thing was clear in my head: “I am never going to let that happen again.”
The Comeback
I got married in September 2024, and finally felt the tension of the past couple of months go away. After coming back from our honeymoon (that was abruptly interrupted by a hurricane), I came back to work, producing as I had been before, but I wasn’t going to forget my promise to myself.
I would spend my weekends and nights pushing myself further than before, being deliberate in how I approached my identity as a developer:
- Joined developer communities
- Making more of an effort to post on LinkedIn
- Starting to speak at local meetups
- Started helping junior devs break into tech
- Expanded my knowledge into backend development, databases, and system design
- Drastically built my network up
In March 2025, my work paid off. I was offered a full-stack development role at a new company. New tech stack. New challenge. New opportunity to prove to myself who I was. I took it.
The Transformation
I started my new job and was instantly introduced to an issue that I didn’t expect: inheriting a messy application. It functioned, but taking a look under the hood unveiled a mess. A tightly coupled mess of systems that broke constantly. Users were reporting 1,000+ failures every week. Automation was stuck at around 30%. An automation system that was adding manual work.
Over the next couple of months, I quickly became an SME and the primary contributor to this application. I became extremely familiar with the codebase, including the bottlenecks. In October of 2024, I had the opportunity to introduce a change that would reduce the manual work of our users by over 30%, and had the potential to remove the massive amount of failures we were seeing weekly.
The results?
- January 2025: 30.5% automation
December 2025: 81.2% automation
Before: 1,000+ failures per week
After: Less than 10 failures per week
But I didn’t stop there; I saw the improvement that this change made and expanded, making a full architecture proposal that would completely revamp how our app functioned and delivered value to the users. From there, my impact continued to grow: as a 22-year old, level 1 developer, I was leading seven major initiatives, while acting as the primary contributor and resource to the application.
Beyond my work, I still didn’t give up on my promise to myself. In October 2025, I spoke at my first conference, speaking on the latest JavaScript frameworks. Later that month, I became the youngest guest to be featured on the freeCodeCamp podcast. In November, I spoke at my second conference, speaking on turning a 900-line, messy React component into a modern, modular system.
Four years ago, I was working with patients in an optometry office with no real path forward.
Today, I'm leading architectural transformations that impact thousands of medical professionals.
What I Learned
During this climb in my first four years, what exactly did I learn?
PROS:
- You Don’t Wait Your Turn.
There was never a rush to go fast, to say yes, to jump into the larger situation at the next rung. But sometimes you just need to jump for it.
Submit that paper for the conference talk, present that architecture concept that has been on your mind for months, don’t wait for the invitation before you try.
- You Build For Your Future.
The issue with my approach before the layoff was that I was content with being the best developer in my current situation. When that situation went away, I didn’t have a foundation to stand on.
Build for your future: write that blog post, show off your projects and your accomplishments, join communities, and build a community around you that knows your impact.
- You Learn By Doing.
Your approach changes when you are thrown into an environment where thousands of individuals rely on the product. A design choice can go from “Does this look good?” to “Will this impact a patient's ability to schedule this treatment?” very quickly. I’m not saying you need to dive into the deep end right away, but don’t be afraid to say yes to the things that will push you.
Put yourself in situations that make you think outside of the box, consider the business impact of what you are doing, and expand your approach from just “resolving a ticket.”
CONS
- Imposter Syndrome Never Goes Away.
The same feeling that I had sitting in my first code review in my first role, seeing a syntax that seemed like a foreign language, I still get that feeling when presenting an architecture proposal today.
This imposter syndrome is something that will tell you that you aren’t living up to your expectations, that you are letting your team down, and that you need to be doing more. That’s why it is so important to ground yourself, look at your accomplishments, and celebrate every win.
- You'll Make Mistakes.
I still remember being called into a meeting in my first role to discuss how upset a client was because of my design and how to resolve the issue.
As a developer, you are going to make mistakes. Accidents happen, code will break, but those lumps turn you into a better developer as long as you allow them to.
- Full Throttle Isn’t Manageable.
My company output was in the 40% to 50% range. I was working nights, weekends, and early mornings, trying to maintain this level of output with my job and my personal brand. Burnout is real, and it is a scary place to be.
While you are pushing, don’t forget to take care of yourself. Stay active, set aside time for your family, and know when it is time to say no.
What I Want You To Know
If you are reading this, facing an impossible goal of breaking into tech or another field, or feel like you are stagnant in your progress, I want you to pause.
Four years ago, I was exactly where you are.
I'd dropped out of college. My knee injury ended my baseball career. I was working at an optometry office with no plan and no idea what I was supposed to do with my life. I had never written a line of code.
Today, I'm a 22-year-old who's:
- Initiated seven initiatives as a Level 1 dev
- Led 130 healthcare projects, including enterprise organizations with 40,000+ patients daily
- Spoken at two conferences
- Become the youngest guest on the freeCodeCamp podcast
This is proof that it's possible.
The fast track isn't about being smarter or more talented than everyone else. It's about being willing to say yes:
- Yes to the bootcamp, despite never coding before.
- Yes to the job after 6 months, despite feeling underqualified.
- Yes to enterprise clients after 4 months, despite the worry.
- Yes to the conference talk, despite the imposter syndrome.
- Yes to leading new initiatives at 22, despite the job title.
It's about being willing to:
- Not wait for permission to push yourself
- Deliberately build for your future self
- Learn by doing the hard things
Is this path right for everyone? No.
The burnout is real. The failures are painful. Impostor syndrome never leaves.
But here's what I know:
You don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to know everything right away. If you're waiting for permission to start, this is it.
Four years ago, a Reddit post gave me permission.
Today, you can give yourself permission to take that next step.
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