My first formal role: inherited a legacy CodeIgniter 3 CRM used daily by a growing team of <10 employees (now 50+). I learned the codebase on the fly while shipping production features.
What I Built
Real-time team team management module with clock-in/out, AFK management and overtime detection, for a growing team
Crafted a Recruitment Management System with built-in email piping using AWS SES/SNS
GPT-3.5 powered reminder system via Google Chat webhooks, Built before agents were cool
Key Wins
~50 employees still press the same clock-in button daily I coded 2 year ago
Shipped first production module in under 10 working days without prior CodeIgniter experience
Acquired practical experience in integrating modern tools like LLMs, cron-based automation workflows, and AWS-based infrastructure into legacy system architectures.
The Lesson
Fast learning is a superpower. Sustainable systems are the goal. Extending legacy code taught me that architecture is about future humans, not just today's compiler.
Tech Stack
PHPCodeIgniter 3MySQLAWS SESOpenAI APIGoogle Chat API