Timeline

Having an online presence was very important; if I wanted to become a developer, I knew I needed to be where the community was.

Codecademy helped me in the beginning to learn the basics of web programming in a fun and engaging way.

Learning by doing was always my motto, and trying new technologies was the best way to keep me motivated.

At the end of the year, I quit my job to go all-in and pursue my dream of becoming a software engineer.

The beginnings were always hard, and being completely new to this sector meant finding clients wasn’t easy. But I had a clear goal and vision, so I kept pushing forward.

I started building most of my freelance projects in WordPress because of its approachability and because it fit well within my clients’ requirements.

Almost by accident, I came across Gatsby, which led me to React. The declarative nature and the component-based approach got my attention, so I went back into learning mode.

With my limited experience, the few projects I received were not enough to support me financially, so I started a new part-time job.

Until this point, all the projects I had developed were basic WordPress sites or simple experiments. This was my first product launch of a React app used by thousands of users.

If I wanted to be successful, I needed a place to showcase what I could do and the work I had already done for others. That’s why I rebranded my freelance work and launched a brand-new site.

This challenge consisted of designing, developing, and deploying a web application each month for six months. It started in December but only lasted until January 2019 because I got hired!

At the beginning of the year, I started applying for full-time front-end positions in Barcelona. Surprisingly, after just a month I received my first offers, and in April I started working.

I had always worked by myself, so working within a team at a fast-paced tech company was a challenge. Every week brought a new concept to learn: Agile methodologies, pull requests, code reviews, retrospective meetings, user stories, production, sprints, staging environments, and DevOps.

Before Covid-19 I almost never worked remotely but now we had to learn how to keep working together as a fully distributed team.

Apart from working remotely we also launched the new application for xceed.me during the lockdown.

At the end of the year, I started looking for a new chapter in my career. A different path to keep growing and trying different roles, and also new challenges to never stop learning.

At Immfly I worked remotely from the beginning, which was a challenge for me as I work better when connecting with my teammates. I learned the importance of seeing each other, the informal conversations and meeting IRL.

Because my team was working in an external product, we had very little to say in its development. Also, the particularities of the industry made it really difficult to see the result of our work in the hands of the users. I felt very disconnected from them and far from being a product engineer.

After just seven months, I decided to leave Immfly. I enjoy when being in a product-centric team where I can participate in its development end to end. I am not just a developer who codes some predefined tasks, this was not for me.

I reflect a lot when I need to take big decisions, and seeing that my last one career one was a fail hit hard on me. I needed time to think what should be my next path.

After the summer I started working at Gigapipe an early stage start-up in the big data field. There were a lot of challenges ahead, new concepts and technologies to learn about, and a small founding team to growth alongside. This could be my path to becoming a senior engineer.

With the clock ticking and no MVP into production, I learned the importance to deliver fast and with short iteration cycles. Also, how a key factor is to have metrics to understand what your users do and want.

As a developer in an early stage start-up, your job is not just to write code. You need to assume new roles: helping in the team building process, defining a work system and implementing agile methodologies, leading technical decisions thinking in the DX and speed for now and the scalability in the future, etc.

During the summer, the company decided to pivot, and we basically throw away the MVP we have just finished. It was time to refine a new product, design it, architect it and start building it fast.

The work during the latest months, and the job mentoring and leading the team, helped me realize that I was ready to step-up. I could consider myself a senior engineer.

I learned the hard way that it is not possible to change everything at once. If you encompass too much, you will fail, just focus on the battles with the biggest rewards and save your forces for later.

Being part of an early stage start-up in the current economical context had a risk. This became evident before summer when everyone in the team was laid-off. I took this as an opportunity to learn on what we did wrong, what decisions leaded us to this moment and what could I have contributed to avoid it.

This time I didn’t feel I failed by deciding to join Gigapipe as the causes of this situation were outside my control. Despite that, I decided to take the opportunity to recharge and give me time to choose my next path.

After a brutal process to find my next job, you can read about it here. I decided to join Toddl, a small and early-stage startup with an all female founding team. Here I will have plenty of space to showcase my seniority skills while working with new technologies, entering the vueverse!

Working with complex, outdated codebases is challenging, especially when working with new frameworks. I quickly adapted to Vue and Nuxt, transforming legacy systems and strategically positioning our tech baseline for future growth.

In an early-stage startup pre-Product Market Fit, I took the lead on Product Development. I focused on user-centric design, exploring product discovery techniques, and identifying critical user pains. I learned how to align behind business objectives and following relentlessly our north star.

Technical decisions must always be measured by the value they deliver to users. While thinking in the future is crucial, premature optimization is a pitfall of any engineering culture. In a word where AI-enabled coding tools are becoming ubiquitous, it’s crucial we understand what’s our job about.

This year, I led the development of a new product from inception to launch. Working within a small, cross-functional team, I expanded my technological toolbox by adding Laravel and its ecosystem. My role transcended traditional front-end boundaries, encompassing full-stack development and strategic product design.

Let’s see what the future brings…

In February I became a father. Welcoming Kaia into the world was (and still is) the biggest shift in my life. I spent the first two months fully immersed in learning how to care for her, supporting our new family routine, and enjoying a kind of presence I had never experienced before.

Fatherhood also made me reflect deeply on what I wanted for the next stage of my career: impact, strong engineering culture, and a team I could grow with. In April, I joined Genesy, and it instantly felt like the right place to build.

At Genesy I focused on helping the team keep delivery speed without sacrificing quality. That meant strengthening the fundamentals: clarifying standards, improving reviews and ownership, and nudging decisions towards simple, maintainable solutions that we could iterate on confidently.

I also started taking on engineering manager responsibilities: having direct reports, conducting 1-to-1s, giving feedback, and participating in performance reviews. It pushed me to be more intentional about communication, expectations, and helping others grow while keeping our direction clear.

As the year progressed, I took more leadership responsibilities: contributing to hiring and becoming the tech lead of one of the squads. I loved the mix of deep technical work and the human side of building an effective team that ships.

By the end of the year I fully embraced an AI-native way of working, leveraging the tools available to move faster and still raise the bar on quality. It’s changed how I write, review, and ship code. It also made me excited again about just how much we can build.