This article is a memory dump of my feelings as of 11:59:59.999 December 31, 2019, Please consult tech support for a more accurate memory dump.
This year was a joy ride of a year. A year with ups and downs and lefts and rights. Some times things came full circle and I was WTF?
Oluwa
This year started out fucked up. My brother was in a ghastly accident that should have claimed his life, when I saw the car I was like HOW?? What I sha know is that Oluwa answered the call at the last minute 🙏🏿. That moment would have meant my family starting the year on really bad note. I was in church when it happened so yeah, Oluwa picked my call!!!
Work
Work was fucking awesome, I learnt so much this year, worked with some amazing people, did my best work in like EVER, trained about 5 people, grew our engineering team from 3 to 20 people. I managed and learned from the not so great parts which involved working with third parties —SOAP, begging for server, long email threads, you know the drill—, learning how to play office politics. I learnt how to delegate work and prioritise tasks that would benefit the team in the long run, over those that would affect the team at the moment.
Health
As a result of work, I burnt out a lot this year, I fell sick a lot tool, I broke my personal record of going to the hospital, we thank the Lord for companies like Reliance HMO. If I just listened to my babe all this won’t have happened but no, I was doing badoo, it sha ended in tears.
I took sleeping seriously this year ehn. I don’t joke with sleep again oh. I even tried the gym thing —a gym near my house— but the guy was a menascum so I stopped going there.
Cooking
I cooked A LOT, haha. 😂 😆 🤣
Leadership
Someone thought it was a great idea to make me Lead Engineer in January, lmao, me that I didn’t claim it till November, but I’d been doing the work since January.
Anyhow, with a lot of help I built and led the team, the job came with a lot of anxiety —I still short spasms till this day, on some days I get home and I’d cry because… oh well. I sincerely have no idea what I am doing leading this team and I have to figure shit out daily, all the books and articles don’t really tell you what to do when a team member keeps messing up and keeps making silly excuses but you have to keep giving him a chance because you can see his potential and you don’t want him to mess up. These amongst others I feel the tech community should talk about. Please no more TODO app talks.
All in all, I am glad for the opportunity to lead, it’s been an eye opener and an awesome learning experience. Having to make decisions that affect the business side of the product as well as the technical side is something I am getting the hang of.
Tech Community
To be honest, I want to speak more. I feel the tech community should talk about work culture in different companies, day-to-days in different companies, how to quit your job, how to manage stakeholders, how to interact with team members, how to write technical specifications, etc. Tis isn’t an exhaustive list I know. I have seen devs I hired fail at these really badly because we think the job is just to come and write code; IT’S MORE THAT THAT. You need all these skills to excel, I had to learn all these, it’s not enough to know how to write code.
Other noteworthy things that happened (in no particular order)
- I got my parents a new apartment. 😎😩
- I paid rent TWICE!!! 😑
- I became daddy 2. 🤕
- I travelled to Rwanda with my Gs(Richard, Jude and Eniola) 😬.
- Fell in love with the woman I love again (I did this twice, LOL 😂🤣).
- I almost dropped prod DB 😭
- Trained android devs.
- Paid a lot of utility bills (MY GOD!!! LIVING COSTS EASILY ADD UP TO A MILLION 😭🤕).
- I wrote tests ehn!!! The time I spent writing tests this year… 😒
- We had several prod bugs (we fixed them,haha).
- Got closer to my mum.
- Learnt to love more.
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- M️an Utd is still trash 😑; I mean we beat PSG but we didn’t beat Watford home and away. 🤷🏿♀️🤦🏿♀️
Plans
- I want to leave Nigeria this year, I am actively working towards it, I love my team, sadly I do not love being in Nigeria. If I could teleport us somewhere else it’d be perfect.
- Learn more, learn smart.
- Earn more — at least $50k p.a., plis dear.
- Build more products.
- Finish this game (I don register company sef, lmao)
- Become a better man, so my baby doesn’t dump my ass 😅😬
- Love more ️♥
PS: We’re hiring a QA Engineer. My QA is on your TL. My DMs are open.
