I didn't stumble into software development. I made a deliberate switch from a different career because I wanted to build things that actually mattered to the people using them. I'm a full-stack developer at APAX Software, and a lot of my work touches the unglamorous layer: reservation systems, billing integrations, operational platforms. The stuff that keeps a business running.
This project reminded me why I made that switch.
About a decade ago, a former coworker and I shared an office. Two desks, same room, nothing special about it. He eventually started his own professional services business. I eventually found my way into software. A few years ago he needed to move a core business process off a pile of spreadsheets and off-the-shelf tools onto something built for how his team actually works. We reconnected, and I got to help make that happen.
Before this, their operations ran on manual Excel workflows. Every client engagement meant juggling vendor coordination, approvals, invoices, and QuickBooks entries by hand, across multiple people and systems. The team was good enough to keep it moving, but one missed step could ripple into a billing mistake, a client issue, or a slowdown that was hard to trace. That's a tooling problem, not a people problem.
What we built puts it all in one place. Requests come in through a client portal, vendor coordination and approvals are handled in one spot, and finalized records sync straight to QuickBooks as invoices. The gaps are just gone.
I wore two hats on this one, contributing as an engineer and serving as Product Owner. That meant translating how the team worked into product requirements, managing the backlog, and bridging the client and our engineering team. Having that prior relationship helped. I already knew the industry and understood the problem, which meant we could move fast without constantly pulling him back into every decision.
Two years of discovery, iteration, and honest conversation went into this. What made it feel different was what those meetings were actually like. We were laughing, solving problems, and working through real tradeoffs together. How do you weigh what a feature should do against what it actually costs to build? Those conversations are where good software comes from, and they only happen when there's enough trust in the room to push back.
At APAX, one of our core values is CV3: Be a Friend. This project showed me what that actually looks like. It's not about being easy to work with. It's about caring whether the thing you're building actually solves the problem. The trust that made this work wasn't built at kickoff. It had been sitting in a shared office for years.
As our client put it: "Working with APAX Software has been a game-changer for our business. Their team is responsive, skilled, and truly understands what it takes to bring a web app from concept to launch."
Big thanks to the whole client team for being such great partners. And shoutout to Caleb King, Megan Sizemore, and Chris Allen at APAX for building this with me. It's been great watching it change how the team handles requests, solutions, and billing. Looking forward to seeing where it goes.
The software built by people who genuinely care about each other tends to turn out better. I've seen it firsthand.
