2020 YEAR IN REVIEW

This is the first post I will make reviewing a previous year. This is my review of 2020, which was an unbelievably difficult year for most people.

I feel very lucky that despite the personal challenges many of us experienced, I managed to have a productive year — perhaps the best year professionally in my career so far. I would like to highlight my personal positive achievements for the year.

Highlights

• First Professional Software Year

  Prior to 2020, I was mostly hobby coding. I got my first job late 2019.   

• Cloud Journey

  "Cloud", and "serverless" felt like alien terms thrown around more often than not. I picked them up in 2020 and it was rewarding.   

• Writing and Blogging

  I started writing on Medium and later moved to my self-hosted blog later in the year.   

• AWS community Builders

  I got selected as one of the pioneers of the AWS community builders program.   

• Project Alloy and WePowerTech

  Offered a grant via Amazon’s WePowerTech initiative via nonprofit Project Alloy — I will possibly be able to visit Las Vegas in 2021.   

• Open Source

  Made contributions to a few open-source projects. One of them is the starter template I use for this blog, and some other ones that should be are displayed on my Github.   

• Reading

  A great year for me reading-wise, I hit my targets on reading at least 10 books during the year. I think I read about 12.  
  

Putting in the work

Job

  I started at my first company very late in 2019 and fully got into work in 2020. Before that, my professional experience was a 6-month academic internship. I levelled up my skills mostly by hobby coding and trying out starting a startup with friends.

We figured there was a wide range of issues with certificate authenticity in Nigeria. We started building a platform to help with this issue. We reached some reasonable points but couldn’t go further for various reasons. Building solo can be fun, but the growth and confidence-building that comes with working with a good team cannot be compared.

For the year, I worked on 3 cool projects at work. One of them got launched and is currently doing proud numbers. I grew my skills through this validating work experience, and I gained confidence in my abilities.

Meeting, interacting, working and building towards the same goals with like-minds helps personal growth.

 

Serverless, Cloud and AWS

  Late 2019 I saw lots of unfamiliar terms thrown around with regards to "Cloud". Words like "serverless", "AWS", "Docker" and a bunch of other unfamiliar terms. Curiously, I picked up two courses from Udacity relating to cloud technologies with focus placed mostly on the DevOps/Infrastructure parts.

One thing about learning is most of it would not stick if not put into practice and put into real us. This is true for me, and I feel many others too. I got the opportunity to put my learnings into practice at work, and that was where most of my improvement came.

Deciding to pursue curiosity and learn about all these cloud buzz words brought great opportunities my way. There are opportunities I might not have gotten if I didn’t chase my curiosity.

 

Writing and building my blog

  I previously never paid attention to writing, and I envied people talented with the pen. I felt I was not gifted with the skill, but I still tried a few times and put out my thoughts through the medium.

Most of my writing was done on Medium, but I decided to move my blog and self-host last year. I experimented with a few tools, mostly static site builders and went with Gridsome because it was based on VueJs. Picked a starter site from Gift and redesigned to my taste.

Here’s the thing about blogging, especially for software developers. Shawn @swyx puts it in the best of words: "Do not let coding get in the way of your blogging. Number one feature of your blog is your writing". Link

Building a beautiful fancy blog can be nice, and you should do that if you have the time. The thing is, it does not in any way make your writing better (everyone knows this) or give you a better incentive to write. The only thing that actually helps with that is writing.

So pick a platform, build your writing and think about moving later.

 

Some wins

AWS Community Builder

  This has an interesting story around it, but the key thing is it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t pick up cloud technologies or built my blog.

A follower made a tweet about the application which I opened, saw the requirements and decided not to apply. A few days before the closure of the application, I saw the tab open on my system and decided to go on with the application.

The mail accepting me to the program came in the middle of October. The program has been great so far, and there’s definitely more coming out of it. Watch this space.

You miss the shots you don’t take. As much as rejection is frowned upon, you will only get the opportunities you apply for.

 

WePowerTech grant

  For those who don’t know what WePowerTech Grant is, it a grant by Project Alloy and AWS. "The We Power Tech Grant Program was created to support a future of tech that is diverse, inclusive, and accessible, by offering financial grants and other resources to underrepresented technologists early in their career". This grant for reInvent 2021 includes airfare, hotel and registration fees for reinvent 2021 (If held in person). You can learn more about we power tech here

An application link was shared in the community builders slack channel, Gift also shared it on her Twitter page (She was a recipient for last year). I applied due to her story and got in. It has been great meeting different people from around the world and learning about their journey in tech. Hopefully, we get to see each other in 2021.

The guys at Project Alloy are doing a great job for inclusiveness in tech. You can read more about them and support or volunteer here

2021; What do you have for me?

I can’t see the future, I don’t know what the new year brings. I have made plans for the year, and here are some of them.

• Transition into SRE 

  I have picked up interest in cloud and infrastructure, and I plan on going into it in 2021.  

• AWS certified 

  I have the Solutions Architect exam scheduled for March and plan on taking one of two more before the year runs out.  

• Write More 

  What’s the point of a blog if you don’t write? I plan to put out my thoughts more on my blog, and hopefully, they will be useful to someone.

I hope 2021 is a better year for us as people and the world generally. Thanks for reading and a happy new year to you :).