From Beginner to Full-Stack Developer

TL;DR: I graduated in Computer Engineering in 2018, got my first developer job at Artoon Solutions in 2019, moved into product work with React at Superworks in 2021, joined ProLance IT as a Senior Web Developer in 2022, and became its Web Team Lead in 2023. Today I lead a team of 15+ developers. Looking back, the things that moved my career forward were not frameworks. They were curiosity, solid fundamentals, real projects, and learning to communicate.

Every developer has that moment when a bug, a misaligned div or a stubborn function turns into an obsession. Mine came in 2018, fresh out of college with a Computer Engineering degree, staring at JavaScript like it was an alien language and asking the classic question: why won't this CSS align?

The universe never answered. So I started digging, and I have not stopped since. This is that story, from tinkering with HTML tags to leading a team, and what each step taught me.

Key takeaways

• Fundamentals outlast frameworks. Plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript made every later tool easier to learn.
• Real projects teach what tutorials cannot: deadlines, other people's code, and users.
• Each role added a different kind of skill: building pages, then products, then architecture, then people.
• Leadership is mostly communication, planning and empathy, with code in the background.
• Teaching others is the fastest way to learn something properly.

My career path at a glance

• 2018: Computer Engineering graduate, learning HTML, CSS and vanilla JavaScript on my own.
• June 2019 to December 2020: Front-End Developer at Artoon Solutions. Client websites and the company's own site.
• January 2021 to July 2022: Frontend/React Developer at Superworks. A real product, an HRMS, built with a team.
• August 2022 to March 2023: Senior Web Developer at ProLance IT. TypeScript, Next.js, Node.js and architecture decisions.
• April 2023 to now: Web Team Lead at ProLance IT, leading a team that has grown to 15+ developers.

How did I get started in web development?

With vanilla JavaScript, HTML and CSS, and a lot of searching for alignment fixes. My early projects were tiny, built only to see whether I could make something work.

I quickly wanted more than static pages, so I started exploring frameworks. Vue was a short, lovely fling. React just clicked, and it is still my first choice. Angular and I have what I would call a complicated relationship.

Front-end work was fun, but I wanted to understand the whole picture, so I moved into what I still call backend land: Node.js, Express and MongoDB, and later NestJS and GraphQL. Each new piece felt like levelling up in a game I could not stop playing.

What did my first developer job teach me?

That real projects are messy, and that this is a good thing. At Artoon Solutions I built and maintained client websites and kept the company's own website running.

The work was mostly HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and jQuery, with Bootstrap, React and Angular mixed in, and WordPress for sites that clients needed to edit themselves. It was a daily lesson in cross-browser compatibility and in building interfaces that hold up on every screen size. Nothing about it was glamorous, and it laid the foundation for everything that came after.

How did working on a product change the way I write code?

At Superworks the job was no longer a set of pages but a product, built with 6+ developers and two designers. That changes how you think. Code has to survive the next feature, not just the next deadline.

I built reusable UI components, wrote unit tests, and worked on the HRMS, the part of the product where employees and managers handle attendance, leave and payroll. Those are features that must never give anyone a headache, or a reason to quit. I also helped start the Superworks HRMS from scratch with a team of 10+ developers, designers and QA, and that is where I first did regular code reviews and mentored junior developers.

The same year I built 4+ responsive websites and an admin panel for the Sundance Film Festival in React, with interactive event schedules and real-time search.

The biggest lesson from this stage: shipping something that works for real users is far more satisfying than polishing code nobody sees.

What changed when I became a senior developer?

The job became as much about decisions as about code. In August 2022 I joined ProLance IT as a Senior Web Developer, working across TypeScript, React, Next.js, Angular, Node.js, NestJS and MongoDB on a range of client websites and products.

I made architectural choices, mentored junior developers, and occasionally rescued an application that was struggling. Bad code is like bad coffee: nobody should have to deal with either, and someone has to fix it.

What is it like to lead a team of 15+ developers?

In April 2023 I became Web Team Lead. The role is mostly about making sure projects run smoothly, which in practice means preventing last-minute disasters and untangling the occasional code mess.

I take part in project planning and decision-making, so that what we build lines up with business goals and does not break overnight. I work with developers, clients and management every day. On bigger projects that has meant being project head for du.ae, coordinating an international team and the internal agency while managing 6+ developers, and leading the teams behind an inventory management system for Intelmatix and an HRMS called ProWork.

Coding is now only part of the job. Communication, planning and empathy matter just as much. I wrote about that shift in detail in From Senior Developer to Team Lead: What Actually Changes, and about two habits that help the most: the code review checklist I use with my team and how I estimate web projects.

What lessons would I pass on?

1. Curiosity is your superpower. New frameworks, new languages and new ways to solve old problems all add up over time.
2. Mentorship works both ways. Learning from others, and later guiding juniors, taught me more than any solo project.
3. Mistakes are part of the job. Code will break and deployments will fail. Learn from it and move forward.
4. Technical skill needs communication. A great solution still fails if you cannot explain it to your team or your client.
5. Celebrate small wins. Every shipped feature and every fixed bug counts.

What advice would I give developers starting out?

• Build projects, not just skills. Real applications teach lessons no tutorial covers.
• Break things on purpose. Experiment, then find out what actually happens under the hood.
• Share what you learn. Writing, open source or mentoring someone helps you grow faster than you expect.
• Stay flexible. Tools change every year, and adaptability is worth more than any one stack.
• Master the fundamentals before chasing the shiny stack. Once you understand the core concepts, every new framework feels familiar.

What comes next?

More of the same, done better: designing, building and delivering reliable web products, from idea to launch, and helping the people on my team grow while we do it. Writing is part of that too. This post was the first one on this blog, and the ones after it, such as how to structure a large Next.js app, come straight from the work.

The journey from beginner to full-stack developer is rarely a straight line. There are frustrations, dead ends and late nights wondering why nothing works. There is also real magic in the moment a feature comes together, a team celebrates a release, or a junior developer says your advice helped.

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About the author

I'm Hardik Gohil, a Web Team Lead and Full-Stack Developer at ProLance IT in Surat, India. I have been building for the web since 2019 with React, Next.js, Node.js and NestJS, and I now lead a team of 15+ developers. More about me on the about page, and my full work history.