Hey y'all, hope you have been well. It's been a while since I last wrote an article on my Hashnode blog. Honestly, I missed pushing articles to my blog but time and other commitments had me distracted. As the year is coming to an end, y'all know it's that time to retrospect and highlight what went down during the past year.
Why I didn't write a review in 2021
If you read my 2020 review, you'll know that I was looking forward to growing my career as a Data Scientist. This was slowly becoming a reality as I got a job as a Data Scientist at a start-up that focuses on African Languages (NLP). During my 6-months contract there, I grew so much in both my knowledge and skills. I even got a raise during that period because of my performance. It was sweet!!
As you know, all good things come to an end. My contract ended, but fortunately for me, I landed a new contract role as a Junior Data Scientist soon after that. Little did I know that the devil was plotting my demise. During the interview, I was informed that I would be joining a team and working with other engineers, only to find out that I was the only employee. Nevertheless, I honored my contract agreement. In the first 3months, I took up the tasks of a Data Analyst, Data Scientist, and even Data Engineering. I was so enthusiastic that I didn't mind doing all this work despite my boss having some toxic traits.
Where it all went south
So fast forward to the end of November 2021, my Oga (boss) decided to play god over my salary. My salary payments started coming in late. While everyone was busy with their December bonuses and enjoying their achievements, I was stuck at home depressed after putting in the work with little to nothing to show forth. My very own December salary was paid in the middle of January 2022 after begging and sending countless messages via email and slack. Half of my January salary was later paid in February and the rest in March. Imagine as a mother and as an individual, I had bills to pay. I decided to quit and take a break from data science altogether as I was severely depressed and burnt out.
All in all, I learned to scrutinize every organization and stay away from early-stage startups that have less than 5 - 10 employees because Batlao Hurda (they will suck you dry).
**P.S. Not all start-ups are that bad. **
The Not-So-Good Moments of 2022
I later found a job at Turing where I worked as a Technical Content Writer. Working at Turing was fun as I learned to write consistently and incorporate some best SEO practices in my articles to help them rank better. My articles were also reviewed by an editor, which helped me improve more on my grammar construction and writing skills. The best part was the team, their support, and getting my salary on time. However, my contract came to an abrupt end after being laid off which was a bitter pill to swallow. I guess we can blame the recession for that.
The All-So-Good Moments
As we know the Google Season of Docs program runs every single year and fortunately for me, I was able to participate this year. It all started with a single tweet by AsyncAPI that they were looking for technical writers and with everything that was going on, I decided to give it a shot even though I knew nothing about event-driven architectures. With a little research, zeal, passion, and desperation for a breakthrough, I was able to scale through the interview process.
After over 200+ applicants I was selected as one of their 6 technical writers.
Key Achievements
Being part of the AsyncAPI community catapulted my skills to the next level. I was able to:
Learn more about Event-driven architectures and asynchronous APIs
Write clear, easy-to-understand, and concise documentation
Create engineering diagrams using mermaid.js
Learn Git
Improve my collaboration and communication skills.
Give a talk about my journey into open-source
Host a conference
When I look at the success of the AsyncAPI docs project (read the case study here) and the support received from the community, it truly gives me joy.
What's Next
To be honest, I don't have a lot of resolutions for 2023 except to get a full-time job, upskill, and invest more in myself. But one thing is certain, I'll be to doing a lot more open-source work and advocacy so watch the space😉 .
Final Words
With the current state of the economy and many people being laid off, it is important to reflect and take care of your mental health. Job hunting in tech is difficult and you'll probably receive a dozen regret/rejection emails, but this doesn't mean you are not good enough. So keep your head held high and smile. Finally, What God Cannot Do Doesn't Exist.
Till next time - e go be ✌🏿✌🏿