Back then, I pushed code straight to the "master" branch. No PR, no review, no one to review it, no AI. First engineer.
Four years later, the picture completely changed: A team of 7, AWS infrastructure, ISO 27001, and a platform running 2M+ devices
The technical scaling was the part I knew how to do. Scaling myself as a leader was a completely different beast. Here is what caught me off guard:
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I resisted mandatory unit tests because I thought they would slow us down. Now, nothing ships without them. You save so much time debugging and preventing future bugs.
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ISO 27001 wasn't a checkbox. The first audit exposed every shortcut I'd taken as a solo dev.
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Saying "I don't know" in a room full of people I was supposed to lead. Ironically, that's when we started to build real trust.
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Letting a junior spend an hour on what I could finish in ten. Watching. Saying nothing.
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Going a full week without writing production code. The team shipped more than when I did.
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Navigating the 1-on-1 where a team member tells you they want to leave.
Building systems is engineering. Building a team means learning to let go. If you've made this jump, I'd love to hear what caught you off guard.