Fired at 19

Getting fired was the best thing that happened to my career. Not because it felt good. Because it forced me to find out what I actually was.

At 19, I got fired.

The reason wasn't politics. It wasn't bad luck. It wasn't a mean boss.

I got fired because I didn't know enough. Not enough about development. Not enough about project management.

That's a hard sentence to write. It's easier to say "it didn't work out" or "we parted ways." But that's the truth, and the truth is the only useful part of this story.

How I got the job

The job itself came out of a failure.

At 17, I was building Hoosling, a crypto fundraising platform for Latin America. We got interest from VCs, around $60K to $80K. It never closed, and the project died.

But one of the investors who had been interested in Hoosling offered me something else: a job as a developer in his startup, GoLabs.

So my first startup failed, and it gave me my first real job.

I worked there for almost two years.

Comfortable

Here's what nobody tells you about your first stable job: it feels amazing.

A paycheck every month. No more chasing clients. No more wondering if the project would survive.

But somewhere in those two years, something changed. I wrote down a thought at the time that I still remember:

I was becoming a traditional person. Stable, but without wealth.

And there's something worse I only admitted later. I wasn't learning. I was doing the work, getting paid, and staying the same.

Looking back, I say it like this: I lost two years being an employee without learning.

The company noticed before I did. My knowledge didn't grow with the job. And at 19, they let me go.

First lesson: a stable job doesn't protect you if you stop growing. The comfort is exactly what makes you fall behind.

$2,000 and a plane ticket

So there I was. 19. Fired. No college degree. Living in Costa Rica.

Most people would have started applying to jobs the same day. I understand that. I had the fear too.

Instead, I took $2,000 and traveled to Chile. Alone.

I saw snow. I went snowboarding. I walked around Viña del Mar and Valparaíso.

I know how that sounds. Fired, and the first thing you do is go on a trip?

But I wasn't running away. I needed perspective. When you're inside the problem, everything looks like the problem. I needed to get far enough to see it from the outside.

And that's what happened. Somewhere in Chile, I came to a conclusion that changed how I saw myself:

I might not be the best developer. But I know how to build good products.

That's not an excuse. It's a diagnosis. I got fired for not being a good enough developer. Fine. But the things I was actually good at, validating ideas, designing, prototyping, understanding users, turning an idea into something people could use, those weren't the things the job measured.

I had been trying to win at a game I wasn't built for.

Second lesson: getting fired tells you what you're not. Your job is to find out what you are.

The board with 30 startups

I came back to Costa Rica with something I didn't have before: a plan.

Not a vague one. A concrete, measurable one.

I made a list of 30 startups and put it on a board.

Then I wrote to them. One by one. 29 emails.

The 30th didn't have an email.

So I did the only thing I could think of: I visited the founder's LinkedIn profile.

That's it. I didn't even message him. I just looked at his profile.

He saw the notification. And the next day, he contacted me.

I went through the technical tests. I passed. But the tests weren't what got me the job. I knew how to sell myself. I didn't present myself as "a developer who got fired." I presented myself as someone who builds products.

I got the job.

And I tripled my previous salary.

Third lesson: when you're lost, make the plan small enough to measure. 30 startups is a number. "I'll look for a job" is not.

Why the plan worked

I've thought a lot about why that worked when I was at my lowest point.

Part of it was persistence. 29 emails is a lot of rejection to sign up for. Most of them never answered.

But the bigger part was clarity. Before Chile, I didn't know what I was selling. After Chile, I did.

And there's one more thing. I didn't wait for the perfect channel. When email didn't work for #30, I found another door. A LinkedIn visit. Something that small.

That's become a pattern in my life. A lot of my best opportunities came from "a contact who has a contact," or a small action at the right time.

Fourth lesson: if a door doesn't have a handle, find a window. The 30th startup didn't have an email. It had a founder who checked LinkedIn.

What came after

That job was the start of everything that came next.

After that, I went freelance. I worked on products with more than 500K users, backed by Sequoia. I worked with Stefan Rust, former CEO of bitcoin.com, on Index Fun. With Fleming Shi, CTO of Nitel, on a telecom migration for Comcast Business. With a former NASA employee on AI trading systems.

At 20, I was making around $120,000 a year.

One year after getting fired.

I paid my mom's debts. I took her to Switzerland, her biggest dream. I built an Airbnb so she could retire.

None of that would have happened if I had stayed comfortable at my first job.

What I'd tell someone who just got fired

I'm not going to tell you everything happens for a reason. I don't believe that. Things happen, and then you decide what they mean.

But here's what I'd tell you, from my own experience:

Be honest about why. If you got fired because you didn't know enough, say it. To yourself, at least. I could have blamed the company. I would have learned nothing.

Get perspective before you get busy. It doesn't have to be Chile. It doesn't have to cost $2,000. But take enough distance to see the problem from the outside. For me, travel has always been a tool for making decisions.

Find out what you are, not just what you're not. "Not a good enough developer" was true. "Good at building products" was also true. The second sentence is the one that got me hired.

Make a plan you can count. A list. A number. A board. 30 startups. Something you can cross off.

Compensate fear with knowledge. I was scared. Of course I was. But fear is usually a sign that you don't know something yet. Learn it, and the fear gets smaller.

Fifth lesson: failing is part of progressing. Fail fast and cheap, but don't waste the failure.

Looking back

It's been a few years now.

I'm 22. I co-founded a company. I'm learning robotics. I left a $120K income to build something of my own.

And when I think about where all of it started, it's not the first client, or Hoosling, or the trip.

It's the day I got fired.

Because that was the day I stopped trying to be the best developer in the room.

And started becoming the person who builds the product.