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How I Got Here

I never planned to be a developer. For six years, I worked in call centers—starting as an agent, eventually moving up to the training department at Concentrix. It was stable. It paid the bills. But somewhere in the back of my mind, there was always this itch.

Back in college, I studied Information Systems at Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan. For my capstone, I built an e-commerce site for a local shop using WordPress. No AI, no fancy tools—just me, Google, and a lot of trial and error. I didn't think much of it at the time. It was just a school project.

Then COVID happened. Stuck at home like everyone else, I started tinkering with Visual Basic in Excel. I automated a few things at work, generated some reports faster than before, and felt this strange rush—I made the computer do something useful. But life got busy, and I shelved it.

In 2022, something shifted. I started freeCodeCamp—HTML, CSS, JavaScript, all the fundamentals. No AI assistants yet, just documentation and Stack Overflow. I was working two jobs at the time: my full-time role at Concentrix and a part-time gig at a visa processing agency. For the visa agency, I built a simple invoice generator. Just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Nothing fancy. But people used it. Actually used it. That feeling was different from the capstone project. This wasn't for a grade—it was solving a real problem. That's when I knew I wanted more.

I discovered React. The idea that you could build interfaces from reusable components felt like magic. I set up my first Vite project, followed tutorial after tutorial, and felt like I was learning so much while building absolutely nothing real. I was in tutorial hell for almost a year.

Then Next.js 13 came out with the App Router, and I decided to just try it. The folder-based routing clicked for me immediately. Something about it felt intuitive. But more importantly, I made a decision: stop following tutorials, start building something.

My fiancée's best friend was getting married. I thought, what if I built them an RSVP site? Something simple—guests enter their name, confirm attendance, done. So I built it. And then I kept building. Budget tracking. Task management. Guest lists. It evolved from a weekend project into a full wedding planning tool. That app became my playground, my portfolio piece, and eventually, the thing I'd use for my own wedding. My stack crystallized: Next.js App Router, Supabase, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui, React Query. I stopped second-guessing and started shipping. You can actually see it live at steven.printrail.com—that's the version we're using now.

In 2023, I resigned from Concentrix. I joined ClickUp as a Customer Support agent and later promoted as Technical Support Specialist . It might seem unrelated to coding, but it wasn't. ClickUp offered a professional development stipend, and I used every peso of it to fund courses, tools, and resources for web development. I was learning on the job and after hours. Tracking my projects in ClickUp at first, now in Linear. Using every tool I could to keep momentum.

One day, I was coding at a coffee shop when an Australian developer noticed what I was working on. We got to talking, and he offered me some freelance work. That experience broke me and built me at the same time. He showed me how much I didn't know—client communication, attention to detail, reading data and actually understanding what it meant. I made mistakes. A lot of them. After a month, he let me go. It stung. But looking back, that one month taught me more than a year of tutorials ever did. I learned what it actually meant to work with someone, to be accountable, to perform. And I learned that if you don't step up, you get stepped over.

I'm still at ClickUp, doing Technical Support work—and honestly, I'm grateful for it. The role funds the life I'm building. On the side, I've worked with clients who use my exact stack. I've built internal tools for my current client. I've shipped things that matter. And I'm getting married soon. The RSVP app I built for someone else's wedding? We're using it for ours.

If you ask me what keeps me going, it's simple: my fiancée. She's been there through all of it—the late nights debugging, the imposter syndrome, the moments I wanted to quit. She helped me find part-time work to fund our wedding while I was still figuring out how to make this coding thing sustainable.

If you're thinking about career shifting into tech, here's what I'd tell you: it takes time. There's no shortcut through tutorial hell. You'll feel lost. You'll wonder if you're wasting your time. But if you keep building, keep showing up, keep being patient—it happens. Not overnight. Not in a straight line. But it happens.

Patience is a virtue. And so is having someone who believes in you when you're not sure you believe in yourself.

Cheers!

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Writing

How I Got Here