From Junior Developer to Team Lead

Building the ladder instead of climbing it

I started as a part-time junior developer, balancing university and work. Some weeks I worked 40 hours, some weeks 20, taking whatever I could manage between lectures and exams.

My university classmate named Domonkos Pál became my mentor quite early, and we were the only two constant members on the mobile development side, so we built the entire team together from basically nothing.

We learned everything side by side—how to write proposals, how to pitch clients, how to mentor, how to build a team when you've never built one before. We were standing in front of tasks we'd never done, figuring it out as we went along. There was no "that's not my job" because everyone did everything, and some days I didn't even know what my position was called. A problem showed up, and I solved it.

Making it work

Confidence is great, but confidence without clarity is just noise, and I had to learn the hard way that speaking up isn't enough.

I started talking to clients more and more, and that's when it hit me: if I can't get my point across clearly, it doesn't matter how right I am. I had to learn how to communicate my ideas effectively, how to be assertive without being aggressive, how to make sure my message actually lands instead of getting lost in translation. Client meetings became my training ground for packaging my thoughts, delivering them with precision, and standing behind them without bulldozing everyone in the room.

Then there's managing people, which is a completely different challenge. You can't just tell someone what to do and call it leadership—you have to motivate them, understand what drives them, give feedback that actually helps instead of just pointing out what's wrong. I learned to pay attention to what my team needs before they have to ask for it.

None of this came naturally. I learned it by doing it, messing it up, and doing it better the next time until it finally started to stick.

Leading a team

By 2017, I was mentoring my first developer while still figuring out my own path, just trying to give someone else the support I'd been lucky enough to receive.

By 2019, I was leading the Android team when there were five of us total. Then both teams grew, Android and iOS, and I took on the whole mobile department as architect, responsible for not just one platform but the entire mobile portfolio. Today it's 15 people split evenly between Android and iOS, and the path from junior developer to here went through senior, mentor, PM, technical account support, and every step in between.

The journey wasn't linear, it was chaotic and full of moments where I had to take on new challenges and opportunities. But every step taught me something I didn't know I needed. And all this time my mentor supported me.

Watching them grow

I mentor 5-6 people now, trying to give them the same thing I got from day one: real professional guidance, honest feedback, and someone who genuinely cares about where they're headed.

But the real win isn't in the mentoring itself. It's watching my mentees become mentors themselves, stepping into that role and lifting others up the way they were lifted. That's the metric that actually matters to me—not my title, not the size of the team, but knowing that the support I received is rippling forward through people I helped along the way.

My mentor is my friend, and that partnership didn't end when the org chart changed, it just evolved into something different and equally valuable. Now I'm seeing it happen again with the people I've mentored, watching them build the same kinds of relationships I was fortunate enough to have from the beginning.

That's the kind of success you can't put on a resume, but it's the one that keeps you going when the work gets hard.

Be the next you

Don't wait for the perfect moment or for someone to hand you the title. Find the problems worth solving and start working on yourself, build your own ladder, and when you're a few rungs up, reach back down and help someone else climb.

Join us here: https://www.hiflylabs.com/careers