It started with games
I started all of this in elementary school by hacking offline games and building mods. I just wanted to know why the game behaved the way it did, and whether I could make it behave differently. I don't really have a career plan back then. I just wanted to go back from school to get back to my computer!
That question never really went away. The games just became software and systems.
Some places along the way
Tech Lead | Senior Software Engineer
Unit4
I joined this European enterprise software company as a software engineer and was rapidly promoted to senior engineer, then tech lead. Working on products serving roughly 1% of the global ERP market (yes, global) taught me about taking responsibility for larger problems and helping others solve them well.
Software Engineer
Shopee
I worked at Southeast Asia's largest e-commerce company, with a 53% market share. At that scale, even a small technical decision can become a very large decision.
Software Engineer
tiket.com
Before that, I worked at Indonesia's second-largest online travel agency, with a 21% market share. Travel looks simple to a user. The systems behind it rarely are.
Chief Technology Officer
Inspix Technologies
Before AI was trending, we built an AI mask-recognition startup and received funding. I learned that building the technology is only one part of building a company.
Then there are the people
Software engineering taught me how to reason about systems. Leadership taught me that people are not systems, no matter how tempting it is to draw a diagram and pretend otherwise.
I have led an organization of 48 people, and a team of 10 engineers in a company. Different scale and similar problems: create clarity, earn trust, and help good people do work they are proud of.
Do I always get that right? Of course not. But every difficult project, disagreement, and mistake has made me a more patient engineer and, I hope, a better leader.