By Samantha Sappenfield

I sat in a meeting room at Accel in San Francisco with a bunch of my new Laravel marketing friends and the senior leadership team. The prompt was "say your name and something you love to do outside of work."

Everyone shared their passion. Skiing, reading, traveling. When it was my turn, I said "I'm Sam and I like to surf." Which is true!

When it was Taylor Otwell's turn, he said "I'm Taylor, and honestly, I just like to build stuff on my computer." I thought, dang, Taylor actually has it all figured out.

I've always wanted to feel deeply passionate about the thing I do to make money. Unfortunately, my time has passed to be a professional surfer. (In fact, I'm a casual surfer. I just like the small, cute waves.) I really do like marketing. The people, the problem solving, the creativity.

I've also had this feeling that I like to build. I just never really felt like I had the tools to do it. But, then agentic coding came along. It's feeling like an "aha!" moment for me.

An athlete

I swear, every software engineer has a picture of themselves when they were 8 years old on a computer. Like did y'all really find your money-making passion that early?!

Me, well. I always wanted to be an olympic athlete.

It didn't dawn on me until I was in the 8th grade that my dream was probably too far fetched. I sat in the counselor's office and the lady said "what do you wanna be when you grow up?" I said, " I wanna be like Kerri Walsh. I want to win the Olympics."

She said, "well, you should probably have a backup plan."

That was a pretty heavy thing to hear at 13. I'd literally never thought of a different path for myself. My parents, never once, pushed me one way or another. They just said "you do you, Sam, we'll be in the stands cheering you on."

For most of my childhood, I didn't think about who I was outside of sports.

Then high school came and I really started to battle with: who am I if sports isn't forever? I really grappled with that. So much so, I decided I'd be done after my senior year. I wanted to figure it out.

(torn ACL, meniscus, and a traumatic arm injury from a four wheeling accident also had a play.)

So I started adulthood with: wait, who am I?

An accidental marketer

In college, I tried every major under the sun. As an athlete, I spent a lot of time at physical therapy. Maybe I'm a physical therapist?

I spent a year making $7.25 an hour at a PT office and hated every second of it.

I like business? The university I was at is notorious for weeding out the unserious with really hard prerequisite courses. I'm competitive in sports, but in knowledge? Nah, I didn't have it in me.

I like science? Ha, biggest joke of it all. Turns out, I just like watching people do science (and look at the stars and stuff).

(I actually have many more things I tried and hated but let's cut to the chase.)

Near the end of my college career, I had a billion credits completed and no set major. I asked a counselor for help. He said, "well if you do journalism, you only have like 12 more credits to go." SOLD.

My friend invited me to dinner with her and her family. There, her brother in law said "hey, I really need an intern. You interested?" Sure why not!

Social media had just made an appearance in the marketing world, and this company wanted a (super cool, hip, chill (my words, not theirs)) intern to run their accounts. Tbh, the job was too easy. But the people up top didn't get social media. "What do you mean the post you got has 12 likes?? Wow, you're a marketing protégée!"

I ran with it. Soon, I was running all the VPs and GMs and Heads of personal social accounts. Then, I was ghost writing articles about subjects I had no business giving opinions about (automotive dealership accounting management systems if you were curious). THEN, I was writing their talks and presentations and traveling with them all over to watch them present (my material) in front of large crowds.

So, I guess I'm a marketer, now.

A developer bystander

Shocking to no one, I got bored of automotive dealership accounting management systems. And, I was fortunate to find a content marketing gig at a really cool coding bootcamp.

It was one of those "3 months to learn how to be a developer" in person kinda bootcamps. This, was my first time being around a lot of developers, a lot of the time.

I found my best friends there. There was so much energy always, in every room. We were running hackathons, family fun coding evenings, and "show what you made" kind of events.

I wasn't coding anything. I was just inviting people to be in the room (marketing). But man, I loved being around people who were always making stuff. (I didn't know it yet, but it's because the builders were building and builders love to build.)

Since that career shift to the dev space, I've always leaned toward jobs that have a lot of developers and development as it's core. (except once but let's not talk about that!)

A serial entrepreneurial dabbler

From a very young age, I've liked earning my keep. It's a simple as that. I cleaned garbage cans, watched every neighbors dog while they were gone, started a window cleaning business, picked an insane amount of weeds, yada yada. There is an actual thrill when you've earned money.

(Tried babysitting once, hated it. Don't ask me to do it I'm sorry! For my nieces, free of charge tho. That's not actually work.)

As an adult, I've tried really small businesses just to see if I could make more dollars:

We actually made money doing these things. Which was the most exciting thing to me. But, between covid, not being able to build at the speed we wanted, excuse excuse excuse they didn't stick. (reality was, just didn't have enough passion behind them)

A builder

I've always had a boss I've look up to. (I do not take this for granted because it's a very lucky thing.)

Every job I've ever had, I've happened to have a boss that is extremely smart and willing to share what they know with me. And they've all been pretty cutting edge when it comes to technology. So when agentic coding came into play, it was: BAM. Sam, you gotta try this.

At first, I dabbled (like I do) just to see if I could actually build something useful. I've done a lot of ops related building (marketing automation tools) so I can naturally see the "this can be automated" logic.

I built a couple things to help with small tasks I do. And then I had a crisis. I legitimately lost my mind (because AI, because other things, it's really not important).

Then, I got lucky, and found my way back to Laravel (thank you, Aaron Francis, genuinely). My first week back I sat in the audience at Laracon as Christina Martinez talked about building silly software. Idk why, I had yet to think of using agents to build something fun on the internet. Christina talked about how building silly software can reignite your love for building.

The next week, I got to work.

I built and deployed something. She was right. It ignited in me this "wow, this is actually fun" feeling.

Then, it started changing how my brain thinks. I joked recently about how I'm feeling like George Costanza, pretending to be an architect. But that's actually what's happening. Sure, I don't know how to read or write code still, but agents are teaching me I need to think like an architect.

Suddenly, all these pieces of my life are feeling a little less random.

An athlete who loves dreaming.

A marketer who loves figuring things out.

An entrepreneurial dabbler who keeps starting little businesses.

A person who always gravitates toward builders.

I don't actually know what my future holds. But I feel like I've found the word to describe who I've become.

I am a builder.