Fail Fast. Move Fast. Impact Fast.

Reflections on my first dev role—and what’s next.

Leaving my previous career to join a coding bootcamp felt like a massive risk. I was betting on myself, chasing what honestly felt like an impossible dream. But as I wrap up my first role as a paid developer at Cuinti, I can confidently say: it was the right move.

Working at a startup has been a crash course in so many things—tech, AI, the startup world — but mostly in myself. I’ve learned what it means to:

1. Fail fast.

I don’t get the luxury of perfection, and I’ve come to love that. I try something, it breaks, I learn, I try again. It reminds me of bootcamp: constant iteration, fast feedback, and always stretching just a little further beyond what I think I can do.

2. Move fast.

At Cuinti, I could start building something on Monday and have it in production by Friday. That kind of speed was both exhilarating and empowering. I didn’t just feel like I was learning—I felt like I was contributing.

3. Impact fast.

There are no layers between you and the difference you’re making. Whether I was coding features, writing training data for our AI, or mapping out UX flows, every contribution mattered. You feel it immediately — and that’s something rare.

Being at a startup also meant wearing a bunch of hats and learning to thrive in uncertainty. But as a junior dev, that actually made things easier. The stress, doubt, and imposter syndrome didn’t feel out of place — they felt like part of the territory. I wasn’t expected to know everything; I was expected to figure things out.

One of the things I’m most grateful for in this role is the flexibility I had to be both a mom and a developer. I could work in a way that supported my family and still show up fully to a job I cared about. That balance is rare, and I’ll never take it for granted.

This role showed me what I’m capable of, what kind of work lights me up, and what kind of team I want to grow with. Wherever the road leads next, I’m bringing all of this with me.