I finished my BS-IT in four years, but I realized quickly: this degree won’t help me until I get real experience. That’s when I asked a friend if there was any software house that could actually teach us how the world works.

The Pizza Meeting: A Reality Check

My friend took me to meet an experienced developer working for an international firm. I was nervous. He treated us to pizza, and all the senior friends were sitting there talking about technical stuff. To be honest, it was too complex for me. That was the moment I realized: I have so much to learn.

That senior gave us an opportunity to learn at Hash Enterprises. That was my first experience in a real company solving real problems. It was unpaid, so it was tough to go and come back every day only earning “knowledge” instead of money.

When WordPress Felt Like a Trap

Most people think WordPress is just a CMS—drag and drop plugins, install a theme, and you have a website. That is exactly what I did at that time. I was just following steps to build a functional site.

To me, WordPress back then was like what AI is for kids today. You just tell the tool what to do (or install a plugin), and the website works. As someone who loved the “Raw Logic” of the asterisk rectangle and GW-BASIC, I hated it. My perception of WordPress was bad because I wanted to write code, not just install stuff.

The Hard Lesson: Knowledge Isn’t Fed to You

That journey at Hash Enterprise wasn’t the most “technical” for me, but it taught me a hard lesson: Nobody is going to feed you. You have to earn knowledge by pushing yourself. It doesn’t come easy.

After 3 months, I left. I loved to write code too much to stay as a “plugin installer.” I didn’t know then that I would eventually become a Senior Developer who builds custom engines inside WordPress, but at that moment, I just knew I needed more than a “drag and drop” career.