one year in.

a year ago today i joined miva as the only AI backend engineer on the research and development team.

i remember thinking i’d figure it out in a few weeks. cute.

the first few months were genuinely humbling. i was architecting systems i had never built before, making calls i wasn’t sure were right, and living with the anxiety of knowing that if something broke, it was mine to fix. no senior to escalate to. no “let me check with the team.” just me, the codebase, and whatever i could figure out before the next standup.

there were nights i stared at a problem for hours and went to bed without solving it. mornings i woke up and the answer was just… there. that cycle became oddly sacred.

i also underestimated how much i’d grow in ways that have nothing to do with code. learning how to communicate ambiguity upward. how to push back on scope without being difficult. how to protect your energy when you’re the only one holding a thing together and nobody fully sees how heavy it is.

but here’s the thing i keep coming back to: i built something real. not a demo. not a proof of concept. something running in production, touching actual learners, doing things that didn’t exist in this form before i made them exist. that doesn’t get old.

i’m still here. still building. and honestly, the most interesting parts are still ahead.

year one done. let’s see what year two does to me.

it’s only just day one.