I was 13 when I found IRC.
I don’t remember what I was looking for. Maybe game cheats, maybe warez, maybe nothing at all. But I ended up in a channel full of people talking about Linux, open ports, memory addresses, and compilers.
I didn’t know what any of it meant. But I stayed.
No one told me to leave
I asked bad questions. I pasted logs into the channel. I misunderstood basic things. But a few people took the time to explain.
They didn’t call themselves mentors. They were just there. Pointing me to man pages. Walking me through broken Perl. Teaching me how to look deeper before asking for help.
They were strangers. But they changed how I thought.
I didn’t start by building things
I started by trying to break them.
Buffer overflows. Open FTP servers. Unpatched forum software. It wasn’t about causing damage, it was about understanding systems by finding their edges.
That’s how I learned to read. How to ask better questions. How to see software not as magic, but as assumptions waiting to be challenged.
Over time, the impulse shifted
I wasn’t interested in exploits anymore. I was interested in structure.
In why one system collapsed under load while another survived. In how data moved. In what failed silently.
Eventually, I wasn’t just exploring someone else’s system. I was designing my own.
That’s where systems thinking starts to take root: not in solving a problem, but in noticing the shape of it.
Today I’m a CTO
I lead architecture. I review designs. I still debug things when no one else can. Not because I’m the best, but because I’ve practiced thinking about the whole, not just the part.
What changed over time wasn’t just the tools, it was the perspective.
Early on, I thought in terms of inputs and outputs. Now I think in flows, failures, and responsibilities.
That’s what the best mentors gave me, whether they knew it or not.
If you’re helping someone now, even casually
It matters more than you think.
A link. A nudge. A quiet explanation instead of a sarcastic reply. Those moments stick.
I’m here because someone answered questions they didn’t have to answer.
They gave me just enough to keep going. To stay curious. To learn how systems really work.
If you’re doing that for someone now: keep doing it. It adds up.