Sep 11, 2022
For every disciplined effort there is a multiple reward.
Jim Rohn
My third month at TIIDELab is about putting in more disciplined effort and getting multiple rewards. I will be breaking my August experience into:
- Learning and Practicing
- Brown Bag Meetings
- Coding Challenges
- Mentorship
- No-Laptop Friday Meetups
Learning and Practicing
One of the problems that TIIDELab is solving is to help escape tutorial purgatory, where one just keeps learning and jumping from one tutorial to another without putting the knowledge into practice. TIIDELab solved this by assigning each team to a project and we continue building the project gradually as we learn.
My team was tasked with building a Crowdfunding Platform and it had been an exciting experience. My third month at TIIDELab revolves about completing 2 Sprints where I contribute to various aspects of the project.
Working with the Design team was an exciting aspect of my third month. The Sprint and tasks were organized and managed with Trello, while we use Slack for effective updates on changes made to the repository, as we integrate Github into our Slack Channel.
Our daily Peer Learning session also continues, where we discussed the materials and shared the knowledge gained from them. This usually ends in one of the teams making a presentation. I presented the topic “Javascript Best Practices” and it was an interesting discussion.
The most interesting aspect of the presentation is where I used a Meme to explain the importance of following best practices. The takeaway from the presentation is to know that bad practices do not mean your program will not work, it might work but will lead to a greater problem in the nearest future, which might be in the next few minutes or months.
Brown Bag Meetings
One of the exciting activities at TIIDELab was Brown Bag Meeting. Brown Bag Meeting is a Tech Excursion to Tech Companies to interact with their Engineers and other departments in the company, learn from their journey and ask career-related questions. Our August Brown Bag Meeting is to Terragon.
Terragon Group
Terragon is a leading Data and Marketing Technology company that uses data and analytics to help companies focused in Africa, intelligently connect at scale to their customers. devices. Headquartered in Lagos; Nigeria, we also have a presence in Kenya, South Africa, Ghana and India. — Crunchbase
We were opportune to learn from the CTO, Mr. Ayodeji Balogun, who enlighten us on the problems we need to solve as Nigerians. He discusses how Terragon started and transformed to its current form. One thing was evident in their journey, Technology is changing the world, the question is will you be part of the change?
He advises us to have something motivating us outside getting a job with a good salary because to change the world with Technology, we will have to solve problems that money won’t be enough motivation for. In his words, “Sapa (being broke) will end one day, what will keep you going then?”
We visit other departments in the company which the Data Team is among, which comprises the Data Engineering and Data Analysis team. Learning about other fields in Tech and how powerful their section is in the company is such an interesting aspect of my Browbag meeting.
Mock Job Interview
In the process of learning, TIIDELab is ensuring we are getting prepared for the Tech World by making us go through the process of Tech Job’s application process.
This process involves 3 stages, the first two stages involve solving Coderbyte Challenges which range from Easy to Hard questions. TIIDELab Fellows that score above 65% in the first Coderbyte Challenge will proceed to the second CoderByte Challenge, while the top performance from this stage progresses to the last stage which is to have an interview with a company in the diaspora.
During my Interview, after the technical question part, I was asked to explain how I will deliver an E-commerce project, in two scenarios, when the Client is in haste and when I have enough time. I answered the question by applying the Agile Methodology, in both cases, the most important features that the Users need will be built first. The minimum feature is to ensure Users can see a product, view its details and pictures, then proceed to order it. Once a User can view a list of products and place an order successfully, then other features can be added. I also explained how I will document the agreement with the Client to avoid future disagreements which my Interviewer acknowledge as being a good practice.
This shows the importance of paying attention to other aspects of Software Development, as we’ve learned at TIIDELab, it goes beyond writing codes.
At the end of the process, the result came out and I emerge Second, it was an announcement that excite me. TIIDELab, as in their practice, rewarded me for this feat, and it was one of the lovely moments I had during my third month in the Fellowship.
Mentorship
In a bid to ensure we do not spend time on irrelevant things in our journey to being Software Developers, TIIDELab paired us with experts in the field to mentor us and work with us individually. I was excited to be paired with Mr. Ige Temitayo, a DevOps Engineer @Emirates Group, Dubai.
My session with him had been an interesting one. I got inspired by his journey, learned from his experience, and as well laid down my target for him which he helped me refine and gave me tasks to achieve to hasten my journey to the target.
No-Laptop Meetups
Planting your Flag — Mr Kadir Salami
We were opportune to learn from our Founder, Mr. Kadir Salami, in one of our No Laptop meetups, where he discuss with us the little things that make us unique and sought after.
Critical Thinking Strategies — Mr. Shamsudeen Aderoju
We also had a session with our Program Coordinator where we discussed Critical Thinking Strategies as a way of making better decisions.
The End?
NO, Learning and Practicing continues, I will be working more on Javascript and making contributions to my team’s project. I will be implementing the feedback from my Mentor and as well work on some personal projects.
Thanks for your time, till we meet next month, put in the disciplined effort, and the multiple rewards will come.
