The switch
From writing code to starting conversations.
This is not a story with a lesson at the end yet. It is the sequence of things that happened, with the uncomfortable parts left in.
2022
On site
Managing projects in construction. Execution and operations: contractors, schedules, materials, the client, the money.
Keeping a dozen people with different interests moving in the same direction, every day. Not a line of code in sight.
Everything I now ask an operator on a call, I learned by being one. How a business actually runs, who decides, where the money goes, and what it takes to get a busy person to say yes.
2024
Building
ReUnion: a social network for five hundred alumni of my own college.
The first software I made that people I knew used in front of me. Badly, sometimes. That was the education.
Pursuing an MCA and working on the other half: speaking in public, being present, being someone people came to. Not just the person who could build the thing, the person who could stand up and explain it.
2025
Engineering
CodeForge: a SaaS with a payment gateway in it, shipped end to end.
The moment a stranger could pay for it, the questions changed from “does it work” to “who is this for”.
Teachers sent problems my way and put my name forward for competitions. On campus I was the guy. That is the feeling I went looking for again when I started calling businesses.
2026
Questioning
Developer on a booking and payments platform for a 15-outlet chain. Good at making one number mean the same thing everywhere.
Then I booked a haircut through another chain’s app to see how it worked from the outside.
Paid for a Graduate Stylist, then got a list of ten names with no way to tell which of them was one. Picked “Any”. That single screen was the first time I understood that the gap between a brand and its software is a business problem, not a design one.
2026
Selling
Sent a cold email with that observation in it, to someone whose job included owning that app.
Three reps in three weeks. A call, a discovery conversation, a proposal. Badly at first. Documented anyway.
He took the call. Then he said he’d bring a second decision maker.
Now
Learning
Documenting the reps in public. The misses count as much as the hits.
Still an engineer. Just asking different questions.