Compulsive Globetrotter | Developer Advocate
@smallsteplabs
| Advisor
@DevNetwork_
| I tweet about travel, public key cryptography and developer education.
If you're just coming into tech, I'll advise not to go for paths like frontend, backend, or design. The market for these roles is already saturated.
Consider data analytics, cyber security, cloud engineering, or even customer engineering, and then japa if you can.
Jide, it’s enough na.
Every minute let us look back.
Proverbs 4:25 says: "Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly on the Rhode before you."
As we celebrate International Women's Day tomorrow, I want to look back at some key promises I made to women in Lagos.
We promised to empower women for optimum participation in governance and to protect vulnerable women in the society.
1/4
We saw my brother off for school yesterday, and I haven’t slept a wink.
I’m stunned.
I’ve done a lot of notable things in my short life but this one?
You mean that at 25 I’m able to completely pay for another person to go start their undergraduate studies abroad??
One Nigerian tech person joins a foreign company and because of their outstanding performance, the company starts considering hiring more Nigerians. Love to see it!!!!
I think I've cracked Chat GPT for editing.
I started using this exact prompt: Rewrite the text below to make it clearer. Don't change the tone. Just break down long sentences into shorter ones, and add appropriate punctuation and conjunctions.
The results have been impressive
This false narrative needs to die.
It's doing more harm than good.
People (including myself) have been using words like delve and demystify before AI chatbots became a thing.
I think every fintech or crypto app should have a next-of-kin feature.
If you’re going to be handling people’s money / digital assets, I think that’s a vital feature to have.
If an account is inactive for a pre-specified period of time, contact the next of kin.
I just met this Dutch guy who lives at a border town in Netherlands.
He says he lives 5 min walk and 1 min drive from Germany. He says he goes to Germany to buy gas because it’s cheaper there 😂.
Sigh. Men will make you question your intelligence.
The one I was dating had a full blown fiancé in the UK, dated for over 8 months, he met my mom, became friends with my friends.
When I found out, he was still insisting that I was the best thing that happened to him 😂.
I deserved a better goodbye.
We had dated for five years, it was his annual leave and I dropped him off at the airport, kissed and waved him goodbye to go spend his supposed two weeks leave with his family (mom and sibling) as he always does.
A lot of people have asked me if I don’t plan on relocating. Tbh, I don’t see the appeal or maybe I’m not as courageous to leave everything/everyone I love to go start over.
I want to travel the world and live in different places temporarily, but I always want to come home.
Dear recruiters, sometimes it's not AI.
It's the tone school taught us to write formal letters in.
Nevertheless, if you use AI to write, the answer isn't to stop using it. The answer is to upgrade how you use it to avoid sounding robotic.
Here's what to do:
Finally, finished my mother's house — a five-bedroom all en-suite bungalow!!!
Ah! This project has been ongoing since last year and ate so deep into my pockets, but we're finally done!!!
I'm so happy because this was my father's dream. I hope that wherever he is, he's proud 🥺.
I just paid abroad school fees for another person.
If you see me, hug me, and squeeze $1k into my hand. I'm going through it.
All my travel plans cancelled. If this boy does not buy me benz in 3 years, ehn!
Nobody talks about how when you reach a certain financial status as a lady, your dating poll drastically reduces. Some people will even voluntarily take you off their list.
My unpopular opinion is that in the early stages of your career, (especially if you want to go fast, and you have no one handouts), you have no business with work life balance.
The reality is that when you're building phase, you have to be obsessed with what you're building
Can’t be me sha.
I will always do better. My savings culture is top notch. I save and invest like my source of income is going to dry up the next day 🙏🏽.
I’ve known lack, and I never want to be intimate with it again.
Every time I tell people I’m not sure I want to birth children, but will like to adopt, their counter is always “if your parents felt the same way ….”
My parents didn’t do me a favor by birthing me. Existence is stressful. If I wasn’t here, I won’t know and it won’t matter.
It's how this man signs the front pages of all the books he buys for me with something humorous. Now, every time I pick up a book to read, I'll see whatever he wrote first, laugh, and then proceed to think about him for a while.
It's the little things, fr 😂.
If you’re a man and you share this mindset, I implore you to heal. You deserve to be loved ❤️.
Love and respect are not mutually exclusive. If someone genuinely loves you, they’ll respect you.
‘Respect’ without love is usually masked fear, dependence or favor-seeking.
I will say it again.
I don’t need your love. All I need is to be respected.
Keep your love.
Hollywood with all their love and romance (I don’t think anyone here can be as romantic as them), how long do they last when they marry? That your “love” is simply not enough.
Delivered the car I got for my mum to her yesterday, with the help of a friend.
I can't stop watching the videos — the shock, the disbelief, the smile, the tears.
Really grateful that I was able to this for her 🥺
Let me share exactly what I did when I made the same income leap:
1. Resist the urge to immediately upgrade your lifestyle after an income increase. Instead, allow yourself a period of 3 to 4 months to maintain and marinate in this new income level before making any significant
So, I promised you all a thread, and here it is:
How I make an additional monthly income of $1200 - $2000 monthly from technical writing (been doing this since February).
A THREAD
Man!!
- salary went from -- to ----------------------------------
- Did my first ever 5 figure ($) gig
- Building a house for mumsi
- Buying her a car too (in the works)
- Helped my siblings get started in tech
- The most important is I've become more peaceful and less anxious
Like I was going after my business, on my own, you came after me with such intensity and intentionality.
I can laugh about it now, but bruh, the heartbreak I had to deal with?
Olabanji, wherever you are, you will find happiness, but it’ll always be laced with deceit.
For the boys and men, things you can start doing, so that nobody can steal your babe:
- Put your card on her Chowdeck app, so she can order food on your dime whenever she wants.
- Monthly book subscription if she loves reading. So she can get 1 surprise book and an
For newbies in tech, prioritize good work over joining cliques.
Share your work, share your journey, sell yourself, show your value and good things will find you.
Communities help, but you don't need a 'clique' to be successful in tech.
Never been part of any and I'm doing well
This man’s refusal to admit that a different view other than his exists and that this bias he has for what’s perceived as ‘formal’ language is purely cultural and contextual is worrisome.
Never visits me without a gift. If he comes or stops by at my place 4 days in a week, he’s definitely bringing something along for those 4 days.
It’s so cute 😂.
One time, he stopped by unplanned, so he gave me a bundle of cash. Felt like a proud Igbo woman.
This man asked me to call his father and tell him that I wanted to marry his son.
I called. His father asked me what I do, I said I’m a software engineer with a company in the US.
Then he went “is it all these online work?”.
It was at that point I knew I fucked up 😭.
@leograndprince
This!!! Always had to hammer to it to someone I was trying to make things work with. I eventually gave up. "You can't love someone the way you know how to and expect them to be happy, you have to love them how they want to be loved".
This is 25.
To being surrounded by intense and deep love,
To more moments filled with belly cackling laughter that’ll have me gasping for air,
To peace and joy,
To more flights and globe trotting,
To seats at tables I’d never have imagined,
Happy birthday to me 🥂❤️.
At this stage of my life I’ve figured that for me to commit to learning something, there has to be an incentive or a group of people I’m accountable to.
Have been meaning to read the Ethereum docs for a while and never got to it. Took this contract job with a web3 startup …
I mean my account is bleeding right now, but I’m glad.
I’m astounded, emotional, and grateful that I can give my people the life that was never given to me.
“One car cannot make an entourage”.
Just remembered when a colleague messaged me on slack with "wait you're Linda? As in codewithlinda? Omg I literally have your site bookmarked. I love how you write frontend topics without all the usual jargon".
Everytime I remember my head swells up unapologetically.
The tears and lash outs to this tweet is primarily because it was posted by a woman.
If a man had tweeted the same thing, it would not elicit such outburst. The average Nigerian man struggles to associate women with power or knowledge, and will try to undermine them.
That's
That's why my advice to people trying to break into tech is to experiment till you find what works for you.
I started my career as a cloud engineering intern at Huawei, then I worked as a frontend developer, then I worked as a Technical Writer, and now as a Dev Advocate.
My manager took these pictures last year at our company retreat in Arizona.
Never posted them, but they look like something out of a dream 😴.
Look at that view!
Tiny (big) brag. This user has now climbed stages across 4 different continents as a speaker:
Asia, Africa, North America, Europe.
Intercontinental Speaker no be guy name 🧏🏽♀️.
I'm in Singapore to speak at APIDays Singapore.
As a chronic excellent procrastinator, I just started working on my talk.
If you're attending, stop by to hear the story of Bob, a frontend engineer on the NextBigAIProduct team.
Play den, 04:50 PM to 05:15 PM Singapore time.
Python for web development
Python for machine learning
Python for game development
Python for data science.
Python for desktop GUIs
Python for web scrapping.
Python for what next?
Alien invasion or space travel?
Most people do not understand the roles of their managers, or even how to work with them, and that sometimes leads to frustration at work.
These tips will help:
Just out here wilding at the fact that early Eden customers used to select their meals via spreadsheets.
This new year, don't let perfection be the enemy of your progress. That idea you have, start from somewhere, collect feedback, improve, rinse and repeat.
My next project is to get my sister to a country with a stable and reputable education sector where she can comfortably study to achieve her lifelong dream of becoming a nurse. This country wants to kill her dreams.
Turing School of Software and Design has a fully fleshed-out curriculum for anyone interested in learning frontend development. Very solid stuff and it's all free.
@Echecrates
I think you missed the point of the article; it was not a cry for help.
American/British authorities congratulated BAT publicly, claiming that the elections were effective.
She wrote to them publicly to correct the narrative since they never bothered to do some homework.
I just made my first money off travel.
No it wasn't from UGC, or ads.
It's from what I know how to do best: storytelling through writing.
I just sat down one afternoon and wrote a ~1000 words story about my time in Amsterdam, pitched it to Fodors and got paid $400 🤭.
Saw
@AdoraNwodo
tweet about seeing rejections and disappointments as redirections.
It reminded me of something that happened to me recently that would have meant embarrassment on a global stage for me.
The last time I gave a talk in the US, something unexpected happened ...
2023 Speaking Engagements Wrapped 🎉
This year was one for the books. In total, I was scheduled to speak at 12 in-person conferences across 12 cities this year, but made it to only 8:
- PyCon Namibia (
@PyConNA
)
- WriteTheDocs Portland (
@writethedocs
)
- Kansas City Developer
I'm not sure why this tweet blew up 🤦♀️.
When I tweet my hustle now, crickets ...
Anyway, for everyone asking for tips, here's how I think about savings/investment:
Can’t be me sha.
I will always do better. My savings culture is top notch. I save and invest like my source of income is going to dry up the next day 🙏🏽.
I’ve known lack, and I never want to be intimate with it again.
Did I tell you people that a big government organization in the US cited one of the articles I wrote for my company as the reason they considered adopting our product?
You see this developer advocacy/ developer marketing/ technical content strategy thing? I know it!
Nigeria has never had a female president and it is time for one.
I’d like to announce my intention to run for president.
If you’re wondering what my tenure will embody, go listen to Mama G’s national moi moi.
In summary, together, we will create a better Nigeria for all.
Better late than never.
In 2020, I:
- Interned with Huawei
- Got my first full-time job as a React JS developer
- Made my first million
- Made a million from guest writing in just 4 months
- Pierced my nose 😂
e.t.c
Well, read all about it here:
Yesterday was a dream come true.
I gave a talk at the largest conference for documentarians and technical writers
@writethedocs
.
The icing on the cake was so many attendees walking up to me to tell me how much they loved my talk and my delivery.
Still not over the high 😌.
I'll be speaking at
#oscafest23
on Friday about Navigating Career Transitions.
I've changed titles thrice in my career, so I know a thing or two.
Come with your questions too, the session will be very interactive and not the usual with slides.
Add it:
Today, while walking back to my hotel in Mexico City, I ran into two Mexican girls.
They start with complimenting my outfit, then they ask where I’m from. As soon as I mentioned Nigeria, one went ‘that’s where Chimamanda is from yeah?’
When you’re big, you’re big 🙌🏾
You people should just stop lying.
You’re in a community filled with exceptional women, yet you’re coming to say there’s an influx of unskilled women in tech? This same tech?
What exactly do you stand to gain from putting down other women and spreading this false narrative?
Whatever you do, build a community for yourself.
Find a few people that care about you and would show up for you and do the same for them.
Last week was a very difficult week for me, but for each day of the week, I had a friend over with food, cake, or wine. Grateful 🫶.
If I’m not going to further my education, I really do not see myself yearning to leave. It’s never been something I’ve aspired to.
Although, I may have to really reconsider if Tinibu wins the upcoming elections. 😔
Y’all on Naija tech twitter amuse me swears. Every 2 business days, it’s always one argument or the other or who’s better than the other . No constructive conversation.
Why can’t y’all just do the jobs you’re hired for?, deliver excellently, collect your money and go home?
At the start of this year, I started what I called the 10X developer group.
The goal was for a 10 developers to come together in a group, study together and level up aggressively to land remote jobs/ gigs.
Glad to see that it’s paid off. This one just got a US job 🚀
Early birthday gift to myself.
J.Cole said, “there’s no such thing as a life that’s better than yours”
Hu Nke Gi N’Anya = Love yours.
A reminder to myself to romanticize my life as often as I can, and to fearlessly pursue things that bring me happiness.
‘Achalugo’
In truth, I don’t think there’s one English word that fully encompasses the depth or interpretation of that word.
It’s a such a transcendental word.
It’s literal meaning is the abode of an eagle, but it’s used to describe beauty or poise that’s beyond mere humans.
I told her I loved wooden accents, and she just went to work and created this perfect ensemble.
I didn’t have to break the bank, I didn’t have to fight with Nigerian artisans about the quality of their finishings.
I just said what I wanted, and went to bed.
All yee workaholics, try and rest oh. Rest 🙏🏽
Stop chasing fulfillment and filling the void that boredom creates with work.
Some of y’all’s health is currently being held with cellotape.
Try and fall in love and move in with your partners. That should help.
@OluyomiOjo
So what if the email sender isn't American?
Do you not see how not having a discourse that enlightens him of realities different to what he believes could become problematic?
He also replied to a quote tweet from a black woman claiming that 'delve' is a pretentious word and 'no
and forget about everything else. Something always has to give.
But once you've built the foundations, then you can have that. But you actually have to work your ass off to get to where you want to be.
It's why the only people I genuinely envy are those from rich homes.
I often wonder what my investment portfolio would like if I didn't have to cater to so many bills.
Ok, enough ranting.
I've had a 99% success rate with visa applications, and I've noticed is that self employed folks are more frequently denied tourist visas (especially schengen)
As a self employed person, here are 3 things you can start doing to strengthen your visa applications.