From Jollibee Crew to Frontend Developer: My Non-Traditional Path into Tech

I want to tell you about a path into software development that doesn't fit the usual narrative — because it involves serving burgers at Jollibee while studying IT at university, riding for Foodpanda to make ends meet, and eventually landing a role building enterprise React applications at a software company in Manila.

This is my story. I'm sharing it because the path was messier and more interesting than most dev origin stories I've read.

Where I Started

I studied at Bulacan State University — BS Electrical Engineering first, then shifted to Associate in Computer Technology, then BS Information Technology coursework. I have always been drawn to technical fields. What made my path non-traditional wasn't the absence of education — it was that I was working a full-time service job at the same time.

From 2016, while still pursuing my studies, I was working as a service crew member at Jollibee. Busy lunch rushes, managing orders, keeping service fast with a queue ten people deep. It wasn't where I'd imagined ending up, but it paid the bills and it taught me things no classroom covered — patience under pressure, real empathy for the person on the other side of a counter, and the discipline of showing up every day regardless of how you feel.

The Gap Between Knowing and Doing

Having formal IT education gave me the foundations — programming concepts, data structures, how systems work. But there was still a gap between what I learned in school and what it meant to build production software that real people depend on.

After Jollibee, I worked as a delivery rider for Foodpanda, and then briefly as crew at Bonchon Chicken. That period taught me to navigate uncertainty, solve problems with limited information, and keep moving when conditions weren't ideal — instincts that turned out to be just as useful in software as they were on a bike navigating the streets of Malolos.

Getting My First Dev Job

Landing my first developer role was still hard, even with a technical background. Having an Associate degree and incomplete BS IT coursework is not the same as having a four-year Computer Science degree, and I knew that. What I had was a genuine technical foundation and a work history that showed I could show up, learn fast, and handle pressure.

When I got an interview at MYCURE, a healthcare SaaS company, I was honest about where I stood. I understood programming fundamentals from my studies. I was ready to learn fast. The team gave me the opportunity, and I made the most of it.

MYCURE is where I actually learned Vue. In my first months there, I went deep on Vue 3, Pinia, Nuxt.js, Vuetify, and TypeScript — applying concepts from my education to a real production codebase for the first time. I asked questions, read documentation obsessively, and built features that real healthcare workers used every day to care for real patients. That context made the work feel meaningful from the beginning.

What Service Work Taught Me About Software

Years in service jobs taught me skills I see missing in developers who went straight from university into tech. Genuine patience with repetitive tasks. The ability to stay calm when something breaks in production. Real empathy for the person on the other side of your interface.

When you have served hundreds of customers in a lunch rush, you understand viscerally that the person using your app is a real person with limited time and genuine frustration when things do not work. That empathy shapes how I write error messages, how I think about loading states, and how I treat edge cases. A form that silently fails is not a minor bug — it is a lunch rush where the system goes down.

Riding for Foodpanda also built problem-solving instincts that transfer directly to software: you cannot wait for perfect information or perfect conditions. You figure out the best path with what you have and adjust when things change. That mindset applies to debugging, working with incomplete specs, and making progress when the right answer is not clear.

Advice for Career Switchers in the Philippines

If you have a technical education but a non-linear work history, own it. Your path is not a liability — it is what makes you different from developers who only know screens and keyboards.

Build things continuously. Personal projects that you can show and explain matter more than credentials in a portfolio review. A GitHub profile with consistent commits tells a hiring manager something about who you are.

Be honest about your gaps in interviews. The right team will hire you for your foundation, your work ethic, and your potential — not just your current skill level.

The path from Jollibee to frontend developer was not straight or fast. But every role taught me something I still use, and I am a better developer because of where I started.