In this Zuri 2024 career talk, Bosun Bosun Egberinde, a senior software developer and the creator of PHPSandbox, shares his inspiring career path. Bosun discusses his early interest in web development and how he began learning to code by building websites in 2012. He highlights the importance of curiosity and finding ways to practice coding throughout your career. Bosun also details his experience working at Shopify and transitioning to his current role as a site reliability engineer.
The video includes valuable insights for aspiring software developers, including:
– The importance of consistent learning and practice
– How to leverage personal projects to build your skills
– The value of curiosity in problem-solving
– An inside look at the role of a staff developer
Bosun also offers advice on overcoming challenges and staying motivated in the ever-evolving field of software development.
okay everyone uh I think we can start now we currently live on YouTube so the video will be on YouTube after the call you don’t have to wait for it to be edited and uploaded um my name is sh as you probably already know today we have with us BOS who I met a couple of years ago uh when we were part of the same program um and he’s a senior software developer he has about 8 years experience working as a software developer in different Industries um he’s a creator of PHP sandbox which most of you are already familiar with he also has had experience with companies like Shopify and other companies uh today he’ll be sharing with us his experience in terms of you know his personal projects and his experience working with companies and how far he has gone in his career and he will just take the time to also answer questions that you might have regarding anything that he talks about if you have a question either on Zoom or YouTube you can post it as the a comment and it will be answered after the call um all right I’ll hand over to BOS now um so you can he can take over BOS you’re welcome hi everyone uh let me try to share my my video so you all can see me okay hi everyone can you hear can you hear and see me right yeah we can we can okay yeah so and don’t mind the fact that my hair is different so more like I forgot to update the picture of my zoom profile so that’s the reason yeah yeah thank you very much um sh for giving me the opportunity and uh thank you everyone for coming as well so yeah you already introduced me so I think um I can probably do better than you already did in that aspect so yeah um my plan today is just to share a little bit of my not so much experience and also maybe tell uh a little bit of my story I mean how we got here and all of that obviously so and maybe doing that you guys will have a lot of chance to also be able to ask any questions that you have or maybe um share any concern or whatever and if I’m able to uh help in any way I can also give my advice as far as those are concerned so yeah that is um my purpose for for today so uh let’s just get started with I mean I didn’t plan to talk a lot because um I always prefer opportunities like this should be to answer um if not at all the most important questions so which I believe many people here actually actually have so my story I would say is not that very very peculiar I mean it might be peculiar because you know everyone is different in their own way but when you look at everything is more or less like the same as um some other people or maybe everyone else and and all of that so that is why I don’t want to put a lot um into that so the most of the room will be used for everyone to actually uh ask their question if they have anything or yeah just share anything and the likes so uh let’s just let’s just get started as you already said my name is bosum and yeah um I’ve had experience working with um a couple of company currently I’m based here in Germany I moved in when was that that was in 2022 yeah I moved in the September of 2022 to Berlin here working for the same company I started working with in Nigeria which is Shopify as of that time but currently I’m not working for Shopify I’m working for another company um called aesh I’m working as a site reliability engineer currently in aesh so and uh yeah I mean there’s still a lot I will still share in between all of that process so that everyone can also um learn a thing or two from that but that is pretty much what my current professional engagement looks like so working and based here in in Germany so yeah let me share a little bit about my about my story so because I believe everyone will also kind of have a little bit of relation to that right so um I started coding let’s say in 2012 yeah so not like in a professional way so to say more like getting started and trying to you know stumble just like everyone else trying to dabble into a new a new field as of that time for me I didn’t really know so much about the um established communities and maybe established things in that ecosystem because I left Secondary School in 2011 so I was just trying to uh you know do something fun and I found this particular thing called making a website so which one of my friend actually introduced me to back in secondary school then so showed me the website I can go there and I can learn HTML CSS Basics back then so I believe the website still exist today it’s called Oman learn. co.uk so which any of you can also check out so I believe many resources that we have now are much more even better than that right so but at that moment that was all that I needed to get started with so I’ve always like to know how things work right like say for example we have a radio and suddenly it’s not functioning I like to know what makes this radio tick like why do I turn the noob and something actually happens and I’ve had occasions like that where I had to open the radio even though eventually go them SPO and find the Tona find the rope and find the knob and everything like that and yeah I mean it all made sense when I studied electrical electronics Engineering in school but then it wasn’t it was just more like curiosity and then you get the things SP in the process so I’ve always been a person that knows um that wants to know how things work that wants to understand reality from that perspective as well so and um when I got to know through my friend that okay they are actually people that create the website I mean in our case Facebook was kind of common amongst us then cuz I remember my Facebook account was probably in 2010 or 2011 I can’t remember so it was quite um quite interesting to know that high as an individual can also create something like a website that other people can also use and the likes so and um it started off with going to you know uh there’s a website called wapka mob then and that was basically how uh I get started with that So eventually got started with using that website as learning HTML CSS is going on and on like that learning PHP and maybe uh a whole lot of other stuff that followed and eventually this is where we are right now so and um looking at that uh experience I mean just in that particular scope alone and also comparing with uh what I’ve been doing so far and everything that still exist now so I kind of feel like one thing that stood out then was curiosity like trying to know how things work um trying to know why things work and trying to know why things work the way they they actually work and not in a in a different way so I personally find it as an opportunity to to learn a lot of things so and it’s part of what I still believe is consistent even in this um even in this career so I mean I don’t know um the distribution of um everyone that is on this call right whether some are beginners whether some are still maybe little more advanced than the beginners or maybe they are experts and all those all those things but if you ha anyone it will be the fact that for you to actually make a lot of progress in this kind of career there’s a part of it that uh has to do with you being curious a lot so you asking questions you questioning everything right when I say questioning everything I mean about you questioning why does this thing work the way they work why do they even work in the first place Why didn’t it fail why um didn’t I use this method to make it work so there’s a lot that U actually relies on that and uh you can believe me you will never stop having to do that right you never stop having to ask um those questions for example you might have like a an application in production and somewhere somehow some something just suddenly happened and um everywhere there’s a lot and you have to look at it and see like okay what exactly is happening so at that point every bit of detail is kind of important so and when you look at every kind of details and everything you start questioning okay why did we have this variable defined this way why did we have this thing set up this way not like those things are not meant to be that way but you know you being curious about them it kind of creates an opportunity for you to kind of reorient your mind in a way that okay I think maybe there’s something else I can try to learn around this and also try to um take off from it and probably will lead me to what exactly is going on so in a way um if there’s anything one thing I would say first off is that curiosity is a very important asset for you so and if you find yourself to already have that I will count you um I will count you very lucky and I will count you to keep being curious as well so and if you feel like you haven’t really been so much curious like that so I would say just um get started anyway right with the things you already know try to know how do they work right you already know HTML CSS try to ask the question how does html work how does CSS work okay who is even behind HTML in the first place why is it that it is HTML that they actually chose as a language you be using to write um things for the web why is it CSS why is it not something else right you asking these questions it’s helping you to go deeper and deeper to start knowing things as well so basically what got me started in this line of work is curiosity so it may not be what got you started right but I believe it’s a very good asset for you to actually have while you are progressing in this line of in this line of work because it’s something that you deal in knowledge a lot and questions are the way you can actually probe information out of everything so by asking questions by getting curious so and that is the point I’m trying to make so moving on on my own story like I said um I’ve described how everything started in 2012 and moving on from then uh I told you I finished um Secondary School in 2011 so that means I was looking for admission for the rest of the time right even the time I started in 2012 and all of that I was still trying to look for admission because I wrote my jam in 2011 I passed but I failed the POS me obviously and didn’t got an admission so we are back in the house obviously so um The Journey continued and eventually I got admission in 2020 no not 2020 that would be too much um 2014 rather so I got admission in 2014 so which that was like maybe plus or minus three years or something U sitting at home actually so but in that period I already picked up a couple of things buil a couple of project myself um um I started writing HTML CSS JavaScript and and PHP back then so which was already already a thing but all this while I’ve kind of imagin like okay I don’t really have an idea of what to do with this skill that I’m actually acquiring there was a I met um one of my brothers in church not like Blood Brothers but you know Brothers you know you get the context so I met one of my brothers in church and he was in a university I think Federal University of Technology a then so I showed him a Mobile H that I made because I was playing my hand around Mobile H um back then so using eclipse and all of those Android Studio setup back then so and I showed him um there’s this manual had in church like um if you are a Baptist you will know R ambassadors and re ambassadors have manual like a manual so my plan was to make that man into a mobile app so that instead of carrying the paper around the paper I never had a chance of having anyway I can just borrow one put everything in the H and I can just be using the the H so I showed him and he was like ah that this thing is cool that um you see what people are making from this thing in school and all that that it’s so much and I was like so people actually make money doing this so I’m like wow that’s weird but I didn’t really pursue the idea cuz um it wasn’t really something much to me then I was just doing this because I think it was very fun so but then I entered University obviously and um I met a lot more people who are actually doing this as well so but prior to that um I discovered there’s something called Google developer groups in school so when I was searching I discovered that oh my University actually had one so my plan was that when I do reach University I’ll probably try to um see how I can join one or maybe partake in one because I remember reading a news where the lead something like that um had some gifts from Google and maybe some sponsorship and all of that I’m like wow I am already doing this thing so maybe when I get to school I can be a beneficiary as well so when I eventually got to school and um I eventually discover the group in school in the second year not even the first year right there were reasons for that which is also still part of the part of the lesson as well so in the second year I discovered um there’s Google developer group and all of that and eventually I started attending and I become an active member remember you know uh we had things like arons we had things like events where we do um some talks and and the likes we had places where we do teach ourselves stuff and the likes so then eventually um we had this event in the year called um death Fest so and for HS you had to go to Lagos to attend the deathfest so I had a chance of going to deathfest in Lagos so and that was where I met even a lot more people who are also doing Tech and writing code and everything so and that totally changed my orientation right it totally changed my orientation about um what I think I’m doing and show me the possibility of what can actually be done with what I already have right so I mean if you note the progression of everything starts from Curiosity you learning a skill then you knowing that you are not alone then you seeing that oh there’s actually more potential with what you can do with what you already have and the likes so and to not go further one lesson I like to pick from that is the fact that um there’s a lot that has to do with you being part of a community you not being in isolation in what you are doing so which part of it is why I think um a program like Zuri is also important because you are not learning in isolation it keeps you together with um other set of people who are also on the journey with you and you can rub off on their own experience um they can rub off on their on your own experience you can rub off on their own experience and in a way you both have this Synergy that makes you a lot more better than if you are just on your own so and also there’s a part whereby it grants you a lot of exposure I mean um then I would say it was something that was very vital because a lot wasn’t happening on in online or maybe I would say online accessibility isn’t really that much of a thing even as far back as then at least for myself that is what I can say but for some other people who were maybe based in Lagos and all of that that wasn’t probably their their challenge but for me that was a thing so and having that local group where you can you know um someone can say you can use this can use this thing there this thing called you can just use it rather than you trying to revent the will for for everything you you want to do you can just use that thing right so and yeah that was pretty much a lesson I can take from it um always think of always think in terms of communities right think in terms of communities when you when you are starting off because when you are starting off you need a lot more energy to keep yourself afloat you need a lot more motivation you need a lot more um understanding you need a lot more encourage agement and those are things you get from you belonging to a community as well even though I will still further emphasize on on that as we go but that is the second lesson right the first lesson being being curious the second one being um understanding the impact of community in your own in your own growth even in this career as well so and moving on from there basically I met a lot of people through there first then you know that kind of um it kind of rewire my energy in a way more like hard to give me more energy to know that oh there’s a lot more I can do I can come back to death Fest next year or I can maybe go somewhere else for de Fest and yeah that was pretty much my first time in Lagos as well you know a young boy from O Town and all that then finally making his way to Lagos yeah it was it was fun and the experience was very great so movie on from there um it got me closer to the community so that I was now able to know even other things that were happening in the community so and that led to me um also eventually applying for hng because when the hng application started the people that were part of that Community messaged us and was like oh there’s this um thing called um hng and I remember my g g i I think sh remember K sh K was GG lead then so he handed over to me back in back in F so but he was the lead as of the time I was still a a member that was still there so and that kind of um he told us that oh they also enrolled in the previous one so and in this one this is the hng hg3 so and yeah we just you know get on board because then you already have the energy from the community every wants to do this and yeah we just like oh yeah let us let us go into this thing and and do it so and that was very much um that was pretty much it and we we started the internship The Internship started for me during um an holiday in school but I stayed back in school to actually do the internship and the internship ran for um let’s say the entire period of the of the holiday so I resumed school without having to go home or going back home to go and pick food stuff and and all of that and likes so and a little bit of lesson from that is the fact that there’s also the place of making sacrifices within you know you trying to get yourself working and trying to um do something that you think is going to give some meaning to your life right so it doesn’t mean it’s going to come at um it’s going to come on a on a very good platter maybe a PL of good or something it won’t come on on top of that just easily so it means over time you will find yourself getting deeper and also trying to make sacrifices on say these are the things I can afford to to lose these are the things I cannot afford to lose and all of that and in a way you are trading in your own passion just to get that thing that you really want so in a way sacrifices are also involved for different people it might be different for me I kind of feel like that was part of My Sacrifice because I could have go as well and I could have probably join my dad on the farm and maybe do a lot more or whatever I can’t say but I had to stay back because I feel like I was doing something very important so and after finishing the internship it was in The Internship that I met um that I met sh right now it was in The Internship that I met um my wife currently it was in The Internship that I met um most of the people that I know in Tech right now it was in The Internship that I knew all of them so in a way I’m still coming back to that part of the community right so the more you expose yourself up to the community the more you still expose yourself to more and more other people like that so in a way you can eliminate the impact of you having a Community around you in the whole process of say you and growing your own career and and all those things in fact I could if I can remember correctly right from after the internship every job that I had was through either someone in the internship or maybe someone indirectly linking me to someone that is also related to that internship so and it was really a great thing because it was um a a thing that really brought out everything that I’ve been learning everything that I’ve been practicing everything that I’ve been doing it kind of gave me like a foundation to actually bring all of those things out for people to actually be able to know that okay um I think this guy knows this thing I think this guy knows this thing I think this guy can do this thing and once people start seeing this is what this person can do you are kind of creating an opportunity for yourself because when they do remember that oh I know one guy that can do this thing let me just try to call him so and for me I wasn’t really a very outspoken person right so in terms of I’m not a Legos guy so and you can you can compare someone that is a Legos guy right living in the let’s say y back then which basically is a start up area of Legos back then and someone like me who doesn’t have that kind of experience it means people there will have maybe access to more opportuni and they only want to bring in people that maybe they think can do one or two things and help out in any way and yeah that was pry much it so I have a friend if there’s anything PHP back then it will just reach out but soon there’s this thing do you have do you have time do you want to do it and and likes and yeah pretty much that was um how that part actually started for me so and then um moving on there is um moving on on the story obviously there is the part where um I started looking out for looking out for more because now the community will show you how far you can go because you will see some other people with certain things for example I remember in death Fest 2016 that was the death Fest the first death Fest that I went to in Lagos so and that was where I met Prosper I met um IR I met um a whole lot of other people that are quite popular in the tech ecosystem system in Nigeria right now so and in a way um seeing them and seeing things that they have accomplished also kind of helps in you kind of reimagining the things you can do as a person so and the more you get deeper and deeper and seeing those people the more your whole dream is also being Amplified in a way that okay you know what is possible because some other people have also achieved this thing so I think I can also try to do that so toward was my final days in let’s say from the start of my high te basically I started applying for um for you know rows that are outside the country like I was thinking I wish I can get even something much better CU I feel like why not why not just try so I started applying I started you know improving my CV doing all those stuff and here and there and everything but you know nothing really came off of that got a lot of um rejection a lot of maybe not so much of a rejection more of a silence or whatever so I mean some also came back with the fact that you know there are highlights on my skills that maybe are not so much there and all those things like that and which is which is a good a good thing because if you apply for a job and you able to get feedback on maybe where you have deficiencies and all those things I count it as something go because it helps you to go back prepare and you know apply again and see what we what we happen from there so the lesson from that for me was also the fact that you know as you get in right you start applying for job you see a lot of um discouragement so but they should serve more or less like an opportunity for you to to go back to retreat not like retreat as per giving up but more like um going back to replenish yourself um there’s this adage in [Music] so for those that are not the on the call so in English it’s literally says that a ram that moves back is not giv up but he’s going back to G momentum and that’s pretty much what Rams does when they want to hit themselves like you see to RS fighting they both move back then they will just run towards each other and just and just collide so that’s by the way so there is a time you will just try to move back reassess things and then based on the feedback you’ve gotten okay you just try to align yourself some of the feedback I got then was around oh um the testings that I did for my um for my code submission wasn’t so comprehensive and all of that and everything like that so then what did I do I started looking at okay how can I write test right how can I be able to spot those edge cases within the code that I’ve written and be able to write test for them and all of that so and yeah um if I say in my career right now I test something really well right I was um doing something last last week so and part of the feedback I got from the review after submitting the code was that the test was very very um was very very good so and the coverage came back and it was 100% right so there’s a reason for that because there’s a backstory to how that came to be it’s not because I started doing it there but because something has happened and then I’ve seen that okay it’s an opportunity to actually get better and do um something extra as well so and as far as testing is concerned you never really can do too much about it so it’s just going to be about how much test can you get in in the shortest time for POS so testing is a very good um a very good skill to have so but yeah um I didn’t give up so that was during my it anyway and I got those rejections then towards the end of my of my bachelor degree I got back again to looking for job since we almost done with school so let me start looking for job right because that is the um that is the default thing and I have some skills and I’ve also seen some of the people that I look up to use the kind of skill that I have to also get something so why can’t I also do the same thing so and that was pretty much how I started looking again and I started looking for also opportunity for people to see me see me in the sense that um I’m doing something good I’m looking for opportunities for people to also know about it and also U maybe ask them for referrals in their company and all of that so I remember highlighting some companies I would like to work for inos back then and also maybe if possible some companies outside the country that I would like to um try my hands out on so and yeah that was pretty much what I did I started applying and I got my offer by I think um some days I think some days to my final defense that was when I get um that was when I got my offer at Shopify for the internship back then so and um part of the lesson in that is for me is just to you know try I won’t say try your luck but it’s more like just give it a shot right make plans the planning here is okay I’m already getting finished with school what do I want to do next so the fact that it is stch doesn’t mean it’s readily available you still have to make the effort that an average person will make and that is in maybe you um planning on how you want to go on your path to actually get your first job right Zuri can do all its best to train you to give you the skills that you need but you still have to make your plan as an individual the community can give you all the access you need can give you all the exposure you need but you still have to make your plan as a human being just like you will do when I wake up this is what I would do when I when I come back from the kitchen this this is what I would do when I arrive at home this is what I would do just like you will make your plans you still have to make your plans because those recruiters um won’t come and for a beginner it’s even much more difficult because you don’t have a lot of experience that other people have so it means you have to do some extra planning and extra effort on your own hand so as you are going in your own path don’t uh don’t try to shy away from actually making plans right make your plans try to look at where you are right now and try to look at what kind of path can you cultivate for yourself to actually be able to um go through all those things so and then um another thing I want to pick up from it because uh even in in the in the whole process and and the likes because I believe I wasn’t the only one that um that also probably applied and okay why was it me that was considered I mean I don’t know maybe I was lucky who knows I don’t know right so but one thing I do know is the fact that um from then on when I know the things I have to do what I didn’t stop doing was to keep practicing so which was kind of also evident from some of the things that I did during that period for example the reason why I started PHP sandb was kind of like the aftermath of all of that as well so I mean I wanted to cultivate an environment for myself where I can be writing code every day like every day and I’m looking at what kind of things can I do right and the answer that came to mind was just to solve your own immediate problem because you don’t have a job right you don’t have um maybe this very big project or whatever that someone that is hiring we concern we consider as a very big replacement for experience and all of that as a beginner so what do you have to do in that kind of case it means you have to solve your own problem because your problem as closer to you than the job you don’t already have so just start solving your own problem and the more of those problem you solve you realize that people’s problem are also kind of familiar like they are similar to all these things that I’ve been doing right so and the more you do that the more you also get better on your own rather than having to wait to get into a company to actually have that kind of experience so you don’t need to wait to join a company for you to have um good experience start by looking at problems that are surrounding you personal things that you can actually solve by yourself right and honestly speaking as human beings we don’t run out of of problem to to solve sometimes we just try to judge them by say Okay um you are maybe trying something difficult and you feel like it’s not it’s very difficult on my experience let me just drop this thing or let me just let it out of let it out of the way so I mean I might give a little bit on you know writing PHP soundbox I started PHP soundbox in I think late um maybe last quarter of 2019 that was when I started writing the first code in PP sandbox and why did I start writing it because um then making composer packages was I mean it’s still common now so don’t let me say then then I was learning how to make composer packages and then I’ve made a couple and what happened I was like okay what if someone wants to try this package out how would they actually do that and then I discovered that there’s actually no way than to just install the package in the project and then try it and then I have to patch up the code in larav then you have to maybe register the service provider then you write some code snippet then you do this then you do that then you do this until you’re not able to test is test the package so and if you are very familiar with the JavaScript ecosystem it’s um it’s something very easy to do right I discover one project that you can actually use to test um any note package back then so and there’s also code pen where you can try HTML CSS in the browser and I feel like why can’t the PHP Community also have something like that right I don’t know anything about how to achieve something like that but what do I know I know how to write PHP code very well I know laravel I know um JavaScript I can write HTML CSS and all of that and maybe if I feel like it should be better I know some people Al I can maybe ask them can you help me to write this page um in HTML CSS in a better way than I can do it and those are everything that I do know so yeah I just started right I started writing it and I started writing um something that I know is possible in a way that I can actually do it right not in a way that I know that the other people that have done it have also done it I just started solving the problem in my own way and that was it that was basically how PHP sandbox um started off I made the first example it worked I posted it online I see that oh people actually liked it and I’m like okay why not let me even push this thing further from just writing the script to say okay let’s just see what it can do with running a full project and all that and yeah that was pretty much how it started going and I would say the first um line of code that I wrote for PHP sandbox is not what it is currently because it has gone way beyond that a lot of don’t let me say a lot of but people have contributed given feedback um some people have paid for it so but the whole idea started from say you just trying to solve your own problem and moving on the way from that when I applied for my Shopify internship one key specific thing that was heavent there was that they wanted to see what I’ve done right so I mean um it’s not that straightforward for me to present a project that is um is from other people right maybe things that I worked on in another company you now opening that code and showing them and all that they said I should present a code base of something that I worked on right so I’m what did I do I just presented them with the code base of PHP sandbox and they went through it and they started asking me question about it this is the code I authored something I devised myself all the methods there I can defend it anyhow I want to defend it right this is the reason why I did this this is the reason why I did this so it was pretty much a cakewalk for me because this is something that I wrote by myself that I’m bringing to the table so if I’m asked anything about it I know anything I can say about it so then I show them this is how it’s working and all of that so and then the old knowledge of how I eventually Leed on designing things this way knowing okay this is how this thing works so that already um kind of patched all the Gap so the interview was quite easy from that perspective so the lesson from all of this for me is more like you practicing is very important even after you’ve acquired a skill and finding avenues for you to practice is very important even when you get a job finding avenues for you to practice is very very important and you have to keep practicing keep practicing keep practicing because uh we work in a in a in a field that is dominated by knowledge and the more you have knowledge in that particular field the better you will be in that um in that field as well so that’s why practicing is a very important thing and even as a beginner I feel you will need even more practice because um for someone that is more or less an expert some things have become muscle memory for them right some understanding has done on them and they don’t have to say let me reopen the book and start um checking things again but for a beginner that is not the case so it means you have to even practice even more until you reach that understanding and be like I know what IFL statements I know what it is anytime if I’m woking up from my dream or whatever I can just tell you about if else statement and I’m good right so you should aim to reach that kind of um understanding in whichever case so um I will stop here because those are some of the things I could um I could quickly pick on but for me to round up let me also say like um as you are doing things as well right part of what I learned on this is also the fact that you you should start improving on say making sure that you are putting your best food forward best food in the sense that um as you are learning to do things also learn how to do things um very well as well so that is another thing I will kind of pick up from that um experience so I would um try to pause here so as to make enough room for us to ask question as well so if you need more detail on any part of the experience that I’ve shared you can always still ask as well so yeah let me pause here for question thank you thank you so much BOS that was that was quite insightful um can everybody just show appreciation to BOS Maybe by you know putting Emoji somewhere clapping uh thumbs up thank you so much for that b we’ we’ve been really learn a lot from all that you said uh one thing I would like to ask before even anybody ask question um is you mentioned your interview with Shopify you said all you had to do maybe I maybe I heard you wrong but let me just say it that all you had to do was to present your own already done code base and defend it you didn’t have to go through process of doing data structure and algorithm test and all of that so it’s it’s like you skipped a lot of things that sh would normally do um and just went straight to you know getting the job am I correct yeah I mean it was at least that was um what I went through so I had the introduction call then I had the um the technical call so and it was two two the same day one is to show like a code base which is in this case what I already explained then the other is just um they wanted to see how I can work through like the entire product development life cycle so and I also kind of picked from from that idea of PHP soundbox I mean there was a guy that designed and from the design there was the implementation of the front end it was implementation of the back end and they gave me a problem and I just walked through that process with them so and that was the last call that I had I would say this is very interesting because one of the things that we’ve tried to mention several times in this particular court is how it is necessary for people to build and build solution utions to things around them and I’m glad you’ve also mentioned it we’ve had a couple of calls with several counselors like I think two other counselors have come to speak with them and they’ve always been hammering on the same thing you have to look around you you have to find something that is causing problems around you either something personally or something that you just see that people need and fix it um you know this is important for me to even you go over again and I’m glad you’re saying the same thing here so obviously nobody here has an excuse not to build something because like you see I know some people would say um I just need a job to get me money the problem is for you to get that job you need to actually show that you’re valuable person enough for the company and what you show is by for example presenting your own project and he was able to skip a couple of steps and just went straight to um interview and get a job by Spotify uh one other thing that BOS has mentioned is the importance of uh curiosity curiosity can be something that is already you as a person or something you have to intentionally develop um so I’m just trying to remind everyone of some of the things that You’ said um also talking about Community working with people not being isolated helping people being helped by others asking questions when you need it and being involved as much as possible and a lot of people have had excuse even on on our own programs when they say things like uh I don’t live in Lagos I don’t live in major city I’m very introverted I don’t really talk that much the funny thing is BOS said is all of those things but that doesn’t stop him from you know connecting with those that would be helpful in in his career uh by joining programs like this also you can make friends that can eventually be very useful for you in your career growth so just reminding me what he has said already and one last thing is that he said he started applying for jobs quite early and all the feedback he got from those applications were very helpful to shape his CV and improve on his CV he got feedback about writing test and understanding that he needs to cover a lot more uh areas in in in his code base to cover a lot more possible edge cases in terms of writing test so all of these things are very important and I really hope that everyone is taking notes okay so we do have a question on YouTube uh this person is asking um do you think it’s possible to if you don’t have a tech background I’m guessing like if you don’t study anything computer related in University do you think it’s possible to really scale through the industry even without a background in technology yeah I I think so and there are a lot of stories about that to to go around so and honestly speaking the idea that you have to have a background in technology I think that is not so if anything at all there is the part of the part of tech that has to do with you also understanding how other fields have um actually works right for example I work in a company that sell Foods a l fresh sell Foods right that is the cor of the business so but I don’t know anything about anything else aside aside Tech so it means I have to rely on some other people that also knows about different areas of the business so in a way I see it as more like you are also needed because you are bringing a fresh perspective from wherever you are coming from your home background into it so because um if you can scale through your secondary school maybe you did math you did physics I don’t know what kind of background that person has but my opinion is that anyone can actually um learn anything because none of us actually has um anything growing up in terms of say this is the field that you are born for and that is what we only do that because we went through school and that was the field eventually I mean we started broadly from primary school social studies home economics um literature and arts and everything then we start narrowing down narrowing down narrowing down so and that was because we had a less developed brain right now we have a lot of brain power like a lot of things to actually do with it so I personally don’t think that um someone in a non- tech background will not be able to learn because it’s just as easy as you giving yourself to learning it as you’ve always been doing in other fields that you currently are so it’s just as straightforward as that yeah yeah I I mean I totally agree with that you don’t necessarily need a certificate a BC or a btech in anything computer related to succeed in the industry I I do think everybody in fact from what you said what you’re trying to say is you are a bit of an advantage to have a fresh perspective for the team and in fact you would be able to look at things a bit more differently than those who have have always done computer related courses all of their lives so you know to that person that ask the question I think the answer is really clear you don’t need to have a tech background or a computer background to succeed in in this industry that’s one of the main advantages of the industry um another question for you B is has to do with your experience at Shopify uh I will come to the job you currently do I have a question on that but let’s talk about Shopify um how was the pressure like for somebody who just basically leaving University uh and getting into a company like Shopify did you have to deal with you know a lot of imposter syndrome did you see people that are highly experienced and how did that make you feel how did you go through that whole process if you could share more on that yeah I think that is a very good question like obviously uh yeah there were a lot of imposter syndrome right so I mean I work with a lot of very experienced people people that I still know till now right so for example I remember one of my colleague then who was also someone assigned to me as um a mentor throughout that whole process so in a way um it was very experienced like far more than myself and also much older than myself right so but dealing with it was just me understanding the fact that one this person has probably been working far back as when I entered secondary school so I am just starting this thing not so long ago I mean maybe longer than some other people but not so long ago so in a way I had to still cut myself some slack right so and um it will help you to know all the facts all the facts in the sense that what is this person’s background what is their experience right before you start comparing yourself and say oh maybe I’m not doing so well enough so there were a lot of that and also part of what also helped me was the fact that I was able to focus on the aspect that I do know best and not rely on the areas that I have a lot of weakness in right for example when I joined Shopify I didn’t know anything about ruby and Shopify is probably the biggest company in the world that use Ruby and Ruby on Rails so and I Didn’t Know Jack about ruby and Ruby on real right so which was weird so and most of the projects we were doing and we’re going to do are going to be about ruby and Ruby on ra and all of that so it means in a way I have to level up as well and also it means extra work for myself so when I say extra work I mean just like I’ve been saying initially you have to have that um that mindset of say you’ve been able to get curious about something and trying to see how things work and and the likes so while also still relying on your major strength my major strength back then was back end right and I knew Ruby Ruby Onre is also a back end thing so rather than say I just don’t know Ruby Ruby on reals can I try to compare Ruby and Ruby on real to something that I already know what is the similarity between them and maybe I can easily pick out points that are intersecting and points that are not so intersecting like that and pretty much I didn’t have to go find a dedicated C and try to learn Ruby for months because I don’t have that time right try surfacing what are the differences what are the not so different things that I would encounter and that was it it was more work for me but I was willing to do it because I know this was a very good chance for me to learn Ruby on Rails as well so whever you see like you are at a as a at a disadvantage right you should see like you are having a bit of Advantage also because for me that was what I see and now um I put it in my CV that I wrote Ruby and Ruby on Rails in the biggest company in the world that runs Ruby on Rails in production so in a way that is a lot of Mark so and now I can write Ruby on real I’m with it and it’s cool but it didn’t come that easy like that so yeah to simply answer your question there were a lot more experience people than me that was the first time I met someone called a staff developer I don’t know who a staff developer was until that time I had to get on the call with person like what does a staff developer do and then he explained to me this is what they do this is what they do and all of those things so far more experience people and the way to just go focus on what your strengths are while you are trying to also improve your improve your other experiences right in my case I focused more on the PHP applications that they have right and I was trying to develop my Ruby and Ruby on real skills while not trying to just ignore them instead of ignoring them and just throwing them away I picked up a project in it did a project with someone overseeing that project and I was able to contribute to it so in the end the company gained something High also gained something and in the end my inferiority complex was just um reducing because that was pretty much it so I don’t know if that answers the question but yeah that’s that’s that’s that’s very helpful that answers the question very well so basically you didn’t let yourself be pressured into not doing what you are supposed to do although the is there the intimidation is there from much more senior Engineers but you kept pushing through even in all of that and focused on your area of strength while trying to build the areas that you needed to build so this is you know this perfectly answers the question um could you help us answer that question now what is uh what does a staff developer do just give us like a sentence so we can learn that to them yeah um so you have um let me say where does you know staff developer come from if you are a senior developer for example you have two paths to go you know generally it’s common to find managers after senior developer but there are other people who are also Engineers that are on the same level as an engineering manager so and those are the staff developers so and what do they do they kind of overseas um let’s say for example a company has lots of products right let’s say they have a product called payments they have a product called um maybe something that is serving some things that is not related to product for example Maybe Pro that is not related to payments rather so they have payments as a application that is managed by a bunch of teams then they have um Also let’s say product as a service that is managed by other set of team as well so sta developers are people that they can work within any team within different product right so they are able to have context of what is going on in here what is going on in here and what is going on in there so basically they are required to be embedded as much as they are needed within anything so in a way there are people that can quickly um they can quickly catch up with the context of what is going on while also maintaining the entire sometimes organization context of everything that is going on so and they are very vital because sometimes issues do happen that requires like a lot of communication across those teams or maybe a lot of fixes that might go between one line of product to another line of product to another line of product so having people that have like a high level thought of um how those things interact together it always help in those particular cases rather than having people that are just embedded within their team like a senior developer is just embedded within their own team and they kind of see things done within their own team and maybe adjacent team but sta developers they are embedded within all the teams for example um in my current team we have a sta developer uh when I joined he was working with us doing stand up with us but now he still part of our team but his stand up is in another team because now he’s working on something that is related to another team so and that is the work of um staff developers basically yeah thank you so much that’s something we we we’ve learned today um one more question for you so person from personal experience I think last a couple of months ago um I was working at the company I work at and I made some I made I ran the Ceda on the wrong database but I thought I was on my Local Host so I just went Ahad D the database and said let me just run the again unfortunately for me I was on the dev environment but at that time I didn’t know I was on the de environment so when I immediately I did the dump dumping of the database my my eyes then went to I was not on my local environment I panicked for a couple of second then I realiz okay I’m on dev I just quickly restored the back and backup and everything was fine what has been the the scariest experience for you like what was the mistake that you made that made you feel like maybe I be fire today have you had any experience like that before yeah it’s okay if you don’t had before your mic is off I’m trying to think of something that will probably be as close as that I mean uh I’ve I’ve never had the thought of say oh I’ll be fired for doing this thing right I’ve never had that but I’ve had experiences that are you know very close for example back in Shopify I had this experience where we were working with um Shopify has this H called Shopify payment like if you use Shopify shop before you will see like there Shopify payment like that’s shopify’s own native um payment provider so rather than using third party payment provider they have their own Pro payment provider just say like there’s a flutter wave that is inside Shopify itself so they won’t have to start dealing with multiple payment providers so there was um a reimbursement program I was working on like a promotional thing such that if you enr for that period you will get like some discount then that discount will be reimbursed in your payout and all of that so unknowingly I let me say unknowingly more like the setup I didn’t really expect the setup to go that way so but if I remember correctly the eventual result was that anyone testing that thing locally we get actual money deposited and reimbursed for them so which was a bad thing because it means for anybody that around that thing locally they will get money actual money reimburse for them so it took a while to to discover it but that was that was the case so even in my own case probably I would say it was maybe a little bit worse than yours because now the company is losing money because of that right So eventually it was discovered and fortunately um because of good Pro es they were able to revert all those money that were actually deposited right tracking them down and that was because no one really had a way to quickly withdraw money from their test shops because there was a lot of us I also got those money but I didn’t have any way to remove it from my test shop because we have this test shop that all of us do have so I think that was that was part of it I’ve had some also here where there’s a tool we use for Incident Management and um I did some upgrade in Python and um when I deploy the code everything just went down right and that is what we used in managing incidents so you just disabled the tool that you are meant to use to manage incidents I don’t know if someone understand the gravity of that the gravity is that when incidents do happen you will not be able to manage incident anymore and that is very bad right so I think those are part of the mistakes so yeah if I sit down to reflect correctly I’m sure there are maybe a couple of others as well yeah so but maybe not on your own skill I didn’t really feel like I was going to be fired for them but I still feel like those were very big um issues yeah I mean I I I would say anything that cost the company to potentially lose money is possibly worse possibly worse than just deleting a couple of Records okay so and I guess adding that will just be uh being in control backtracking whatever you did wrong reporting to the right officials and getting it fixed as soon as possible um panicking and trying to do it on your own and getting things a bit worse um thank you for that answer B soon so we have one question here on on on Zoom I can’t find my chat anymore okay yeah uh I don’t know if you have experience in Mobile development but maybe you can answer this question the person is asking how what do you advise for somebody who wants to go into mile development in 2024 what what are the steps you think you know they can take if they want to go into Mobile development well like you said I don’t have experience in Mobile development the ones I had are just tinkering around right even though I’m still looking forward to a day I would have experience in Mobile development because it’s an area that I feel like I haven’t really explored like that so I don’t have an experience in Mobile development so but I can probably say uh there’s this website that I find very useful Road map. sh so maybe they will have let me just try to road map uhsh so maybe they will have mobile developer road map uh mobile yeah they don’t have so I may not be able to to say specifically but what I can say that is General will be you can try to think what language do they use in Mobile development that is a known thing you will see things like cuddling you see things like Java you see Frameworks like react native you see Frameworks like floter you will see all those things there so you can say if I should start learning cutl am I making progress as a mobile developer I will say yes because cutl is part of what you will have to learn for you to be a mobile developer so why don’t you start from trying to find a way to learn something like cotl or maybe something like Java or something like that so and I would say maybe also what kind of advice are you looking at right that is also a question is he on advice on where to start or how to start because these are already how to start so it’s not so very confusing like that so I would say just you know the person has to make a choice on the specific area they want to focus on do you want to crossplatform development or do you want to focus on N development obviously it’s an advantage if you know how to create mobile apps for any platform at all so I would say crossplatform is basically much more um require much much more advantageous than learning a single language but in any case for the person that ask a question you can ask on slack and I can provide a bit more context and maybe send to BOS if you still need to reach out to him you know after this call um I think I have two more questions that we can ask before we end the call uh it’s about your current role you said you work as a site reliability engineer could you tell us a bit more about that role do you have to did you have to take some set of courses some certificate or what does it mean to be a site reliability engineer yeah well I think it’s um I was also hoping I will get to say something about it because it’s also part of the Highlight in the in the whole experience thing I mean um right now I just call myself an engineer anyway because doesn’t really matter if it’s back end if it is front end and all that so uh how did I arrive there so while I was in Shopify I’ve been picking up on on little bit of things around devops and Sr and all those stuff anyway so part of my intent was that I was going to move to join a team that actually focuses on that rather than doing it on the side let me just try to focus on that there was also um a lot of building PHP soundbox that has to deal with that for example you start a new notebook it starts a Docker container you connect to that Docker container you you know surface all of that you open a shell and all those things all those things are kind of um a little bit of devops and all of that so and I did all those things by myself designed them and implemented them myself and all that so in a way I kind of feel like okay I can do something else now so let me try to see if that is going to also um work out so and I told my le that that is what I want I want to switch to another team that will probably focus on that so and uh it didn’t happen in Shopify why because while in the process of all of that the layoff happened and that was basically my exiting point at at Shopify so but then um while looking for my neuro like what I was going to do next I was like I’ve been wanting to do um a devop r anyway so why do I have to um f focus on looking for just backend row right so and I was looking for Sr row as well so and um I would say I got lucky a little bit so why I say I got lucky would be that my same lead like my lead was also laid off so everyone knew everyone was looking for job so he knew someone who was um in another company here in I mean my current company who is my current lead in this hresh company that I am so and he heard that they have um an open Ro for uh site reliability engineer right so and yeah he said am I still interested in Crossing to devops and I said yes so he said he know someone in the new company that um he can reach out and put in a good word and that was it he put in a good word the person reached out I did seven stage of interview and here we are now as an Sr so that’s pretty much how it me so I didn’t do any course like a devop course there were just things that I picked up while still doing my job as a back end engineer mostly nice did you say seven stages of interview yes seven St that must be a new experience coming from Shopify that you have to do like two stages yeah yeah it’s it was I can’t imagine going through seven stages how long was that yeah I mean there was a because while doing this I also had to rush it right I did there was a day I did two I did one system design and then I did a um director of engineering level interview the same day as well so and that was because I already got a senior back in engineer Ro right so and I was trying to make a decision like I want to get to the bottom of me getting a devil’s row if I can get a devil’s roow I’m good because I’ve always wanted to be in that role to serve in that role and also work in that role so if I can get something like that and these are an opportunity so I had to rush the interview so the entire process took like a month in total but the there was a week that I had like four alone within that week so the one that was slowest was the um take home the take home was a bit slow like um the take home was they give me like few hour then submitting then having to now get response back maybe took like a week and a half or something like that then we now moved on to the technical stages and and all of that and then the there was a data structures and algorithm also at the um in the middle so that was pretty much how it went wow a lot um okay so just two more questions but now focusing on PHP sandbox yeah somebody wants to know if you currently accept people to work with you at PHP sbox uh we have a couple of people learning PHP in the program do you currently have people that join you as volunteers just to work with you on the project and possibly you know help you one way or the other and you know having that on their CV might be very relevant also uh so do you currently accept people to work with you at PHP sign box uh I would say no the short answer is no yeah so and there’s a there’s a lot of nuances to it in fact part of my part of my a will be like if it’s open source I feel like maybe if at all people will get to learn and people will get to contribute and do all those stuff so but currently um I kind of feel like onboarding someone will also take u a lot of time on my own end and I might also really ready to be able to do that I think most of that problem is on my hand because I’m not I would say I’m not so ready to actually be able to do that and you know when you start thinking of something in terms of um being a product there’s a whole lot of things you have to think about like okay um how does that actually help you get close to the goals you have for the project and all of that so and if the answer is not really that good it’s will probably not be something you would consider so that’s one aspect of it as well so that’s why I said the short answer is is no so but maybe in the future that could that could be the case because this is still something that sometimes I just feel like is open source so I just to take off that maintenance burden and maybe if everyone is maintaining it just be much better in that case okay I mean when the time comes if you eventually decide to do it just you know reach out to me and I’m be sure to send some people your way um so we have one more question regarding PHP sandbox then I will ask two more questions from YouTube um how do you I think You’ already answered but ask anyway how do you currently manage your current role and running PHP sandbox do you currently actively write code on PHP sandbox and how do you balance you know both of them with your own family yeah well uh balancing with my own family number one don’t have kids yet so I don’t have kids yet so that is pretty much the problem is sliced in half right then secondly um my wife is also an engineer so she’s also like a CO contributor to PHP sandbox so that part is also helping in a way so then do I still actively write code yes I do actively write code in fact before joining this call I was still writing code for PHP sandbox so in a way you still more like something once you see something as what you have to do and what is really interesting to you on the problem you are solving I think um the majority of that on how to do it and it’s already solved even though there are still other things that will make life a little bit easier and part of what I learned about that is also like you have to really plan a lot especially when you already have a job and you are still trying to you know Do Your Own Thing on the side and everything like that so you have to need you have to make a lot of plan for example part of what I feel like has been reducing the whole stress on myself this year was um making plans and making plans are not getting pressured and all that you know there are times people will be like oh can you implement this feature can you implement this feature I would probably pay if he has this feature or something like that so in a way it gets you on your toes and be like I have to do this I have to do that I have to do this so rather than trying to put yourself in that particular form you should just make plans that you know that even if it is 6 months I know this plan is running and gradually I’ll be getting closer and closer to it so I I know how we run projects in let’s say Shopify when I was in Shopify in my current company I’m like why can’t I run P sandbox that way as well you have a board you have all the to-dos you have all the things in progress you have all the things in review everything in done and all those stuff you have your iterations and in a way it’s kind kind of helps you ease the stress if you have an idea that you feel like you would um you would like to implement later on just go to the board had it there and you don’t have to worry about whether you remember it or not so putting in a little bit of that process also helps in you managing your your stress and you not having to just jump on everything that just come your way so that’s the that’s the answer yes I still on it actively thank you so much for that answer um so basically manage your own time by having something to track the things that you’re working on the things that are supposed to be doing so things don’t get uh mixed up and obviously you have an advantage because your wife is an engineer also yeah so that’s a good advantage to have uh we have one last question from YouTube somebody wants to know uh the main difference between being a backend engineer and a devops engineer and this is this is something that we’ve had trouble with in Nigeria because a lot of companies expect to just do all these things when you say you’re a backend person they expect to know how to deploy to the server and how to manage the server because somehow they feel like the back end is same thing as um devop role so can you help the students understand you know the main difference between the two because you’ve been in both roles so if you can highlight some differences that you’ve noticed that might be very helpful here yeah well uh devops or let me say back in has to deal with product so there’s product there is how you run the product right so building of the product is what backends are doing basically now how you will run the product and where you will run that product that is another question that I think devil gives a lot of answer to and how you will get it to where you will run it that’s kind of um is a separation so to simply answer the question backend developers deal with building of the product while develops people start from how you will take the product to where you will run it and also getting where you will run it ready to run the product so I don’t know if is as simple um as that so that’s why you would see things like cicd in DeVos because cicd is more like the process it to take for your product to arrive where it’s going to be running so if you build something like this you say the back end is maybe laravel nodejs or maybe python or maybe flask or whatever that is the backend and the developers working on that they are the back end developers but the people that designs how you will deploy that to say like an ec2 instance or maybe like um how you will monitor it when it’s running in that2 instance or how you will scale it when it is running in that ec2 instance that is the devop at least the understanding of it right now that is what it is so but of course like you said you can see some backend developers that are also doing deployment that’s because um in some organizations there’s really no business Advantage for you to have those rules specified right in my company like there’s a lot that goes on currently and the reason why they actually need Sr in the first place right maybe they are doing like billions of ERS right in let’s say maybe a month I don’t know or maybe a lot of others very lots of others so and a lot of things is happening in the cloud lot of um lot of requests being made lot of moving parts and all those things so rather than let the backend developers that are meant to be Building Product focus on how things will run successfully where they are meant to run that is a whole lot of domain right so why not just put some other people and let them just focus on making sure that if we ship something to this cluster we are sure that some people will make sure that it is running as it’s meant to be run so we now provide the people that will ship it there with the tools for them to actually ship it there so part of our work is also to empower other Engineers like backend engineers and also to give them the tools that they need to deploy to whever they want to to deploy to also give them the tools to monitor whatever they want to Monitor and also maybe um for them to also develop faster as well while they are developing so those are part of the things that we we do at least that is what I can say about it there might be if you go online you probably see a whole lot of definition for um devs but from our own point of view um Sr which is what I do that is pretty much what we do we specialize in monitoring in reliability and also in the release process of the product but there are other people who is also employed like myself as a devops engineer who monitor our clusters like make sure our clusters have services that they are meant to have make sure that they are upgraded make sure that things are working fine for them which is not what I do at the moment so you can see when you even talking about devops there are still other places that you can spread your wings into as well thank you that was quite insightful it means you know it’s so big that you can’t really do everything on your own so if you’re interested in going into it for whoever asked the question um you could explore do a little bit more research and see where you can start from and and I’m one of those that believe that you have to have some coding experience before you can graduate into being a Dev person this is just my own personal opinion so you know is the right toin because sorry for cutting giving an experience from how I work right now I told you I work with um I do undergo like a one week rotation of supporting other Engineers so it means I have to know what they are doing and what they are trying to do so that’s why it is very vital for me to be an engineer already myself rather than just say okay I’m a developed person and I don’t know what an HTP service is I don’t know why an H C Service need this type of objective and all those things so yeah just to butress your point it is not just your opinion I think it’s something very fital yeah totally totally I agree um so we we’ve we’ve basically covered everything we have to say for today and I I must say it’s been a very insightful one even for me and I feel like you know anyone that is watching this right now that’ll be watching later might still be much more insightful for them because they have time to now re rewind it and go forward or you know takes some time to listen even more um so thank you so much for being here BOS uh you know it’s it’s been great to have you here do you have any final words for everyone that will be listening um now and later uh do I have final words no I don’t have final words yeah everyone should just be don’t don’t get to um I’m sure I’m as worried as you are about whatever the future has in store for you as you have going through it now but my summary is just that be consistent with what you are doing keep learning keep being curious ask questions if you do all of that being consistent with it I think you in a good spot so anytime you are doubting whether am I good or am I not good just think about it am I being consistent am I learning am I being curious I’m sure you are in a good good spot so just keep doing that thank you so much BOS so you’ve heard from bos um with all his experience he has said that you need to be consistent because no matter how good you think you are or where you think you are you you just need to keep practicing and keep pushing and keep um improving on yourself don’t let the pressures around you stop you from improving and growing uh be consistent somebody yesterday I was attending a lecture yesterday and the person said it’s better to do 10 minutes practice every day than to do 1 hour practice every every week just one day in a week you didn’t want hour practice and then you go to the next week it’s better to do a daily thing rather than try to do a book practice you know consistency is very important when you’re learning a new skill and Tech is not Exempted from that same principle you have to be consistent with your learning you have to keep improving and you have to be curious to even want to learn more okay so thank you all for being here thank you B soon it’s been great having you here hopefully we have you some other time in future uh and uh yeah that would be the end of our call for today thank you all and bye-bye hi [Music] everyone bye
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nice