Pathway to Continuous Growth as a Developer || Mayowa Tudonu || Alumni Retreat

Transcript

[Music] So today I'm talking about pathway to continuous growth as a developer. Um this is a very interesting topic in the sense that um it's I like the fact that the developer growth is a journey right there is no um end to developer growth. I mean ideally even your growth as a human is a journey you know you don't stop growing even when you're older you still continue to grow you learn new ideas you learn new concepts new ways of talking to people new ways of interacting and as a developer in this space or even as not a developer you are

you know doing other things you are the manager you are in the finance finance space you are in any other space at all um you know there is a path to continuous growth that you have to And there are several what I'll call um yard sticks and pointers along those paths. But for today I'll focus on just three core areas you know that can help you on your path to continuous growth as a developer. And even if you're not a developer um I introduced myself you know earlier as a solutions architect.

Uh my core area is solution architecture, designing solution architecture, working on um solution engineering as well as uh um solutions operations. Um yeah and to keep growing continuous as as as a developer there's in my opinion three things that matter right productivity, prioritization and proactiveness. I know this sounds like um what are you calling? Sounds like you know um sound bites. Yeah, it sounds very nice to say productivity, prioritization and proactiveness. And I intentionally picked this style of presentation for this particular talk because I rather than go through like a lengthy talk of what you could do. I

think having sound bites handy sometimes can be very useful. If you are productive, if you can prioritize and if you are proactive, you can go very very far in your career. So don't think of them as sound bites. Think of them as things that you need to have at the back of your minds every single time. Right? So I'll talk about the first uh appar which is productivity. Um productivity as I mentioned here is not about doing more work. Right? Productivity is about doing meaningful work efficiently. Doing meaningful work efficiently. Um it's very easy to get distracted in a workplace or even in your personal projects or while working in while collaborating with others. It's very to

get distracted with very interesting things but those things are not meaningful in the context of the work that you are doing. So as an example as an engineer it's very interesting to want to try out a new technology in ZK for example right meanwhile you can simply use you know any other simple cryptographic um primitives out there to solve a very simple problem and keep it moving but you want to explore you know the very complicated the very new technologies it that is doing you are being productive yes because you are researching you are reading You're probably writing code as well, but is it meaningful? Right? Is it is it

really relevant in the in the grand scheme of things? Will people use product? Will your product team appreciate what you're building? If you're working if you're not working if you're not if you're not a developer, it's important to be productive, but it's important to be productive in a very meaningful way, right? You just don't get productive for the sake of being productive. And when it comes to productivity, there are three things three key things that you should pay attention to. One of them is skill. The other is clarity. And the other one is focus. Um skill I I don't think I need to, you know, um talk too much about skill. You just need to know what you're doing.

It's it's so important, right? Competence is not something that you can play around with. It's not a a value that you should, you know, play around with. Um I think very recently uh a fresh graduate from OU by the way I'm an OU alum very proud one at that. So a graduate from OU I reached out to me. He said oh he's done now and um he wants to go into the blockchain space. What should he learn? What should he do? I asked him if he had a job. He said no. I said fine. I first recommended him to work three page because I know you guys do very good work. But I went ahead to tell him some things. I said, "Look, this is not the time to focus on trying to get some, you know, weird developer

job where you're doing some weird thing and you're making, you know, little bucks." I'm not saying you should not make money. I'm saying if I were you, I would spend the next 6 months to one year focusing on learning just one skill, right? I told him Rust is there, you can learn it. Solid is there, you can learn it. these programming languages are very that they are um applicable in a lot of blockchains you know across across the ecosystem spend time learn them don't pick on any job don't take any side gig because you can use AI to do it don't do any of those things right don't do that just focus learn and I said that because I understand the importance of having

depth in a particular skill like it's so important it's so important that depth in a particular skill is transferable able to depth in other skills. Go and check people who know a particular topic very deeply are able to easily transfer that skill to every other areas of their life. Right? So if they pay a lot of attention to learning a programming language to learning a financial concept they extend the same attention to other areas in their life. So it's so important to know your skill. But beyond that, you should leverage the tools of today. Right? Use AI as an amplifier.

Use AI to amplify your skills. Use AI to be more productive. Right? Now you can code. Now you understand how unit tests work. Now you know about uh design patterns. Now you know about all those programming concepts. That's absolutely fine. Next thing is how do I become more productive? Right? So it's not to try to use AI to be productive before you know them. No, know them first, then be productive, right? Know those concepts. You read them, read those books, read those articles, practice, practice, practice, you know, but then be productive. Use AI to be productive. You want to write a simple NodeJS server. Of course, you know how to set it up. But before you pull all the items together, one hour is gone. You can just, you

know, ask CL to do it for you. You ask GitHub copilot, set up a new JS server for me. It does that. you know you move forward within 10 minutes you are done you've saved 15 minutes more time to do something else clarity is another thing that is important for productivity you need to be clear on what you want to do right whether it's personally whether it's you know at your job you or at some um some at some gig with you know some client whatever it is but you need to blend the importance of clarity right what is expected of me what do you want as a user This this little thing is has caused problem in several places right at work it causes problem in relationship itaus

causes problem in personal business causes problem people tell you I want this you I want A you bring B right don't assume what the user wants ask them don't assume what your colleagues want from you ask them don't assume what your manager wants ask them how do you want to be productive what do you want me to do these are the things that will get you promoted things that will get you, you know, um um new users. If you're building a product, you need to be clear on what your users want. You're speaking to users to introduce your products to them and you're telling the user, oh would help you sort your bills in your business and the users are telling you that they're not telling you no directly but but in telling you that their most

important or their most um their biggest problem in their business is not sorting their bill but it's actually you know paying the bill on time. So there are two these are two different problems are related in the sense that it involves bills but we are not solving that you're not solving their problem you're solving your own problem or your your own perceived problem. So clarity is very important in productivity and it's as I said it's applicable to many areas. You just need to be clear on what people want. Someone is telling you how you're making them feel, you know, how you're not responding to them in the way they want. Clarity ask them, you know, and clarity ask comes from asking questions.

Ask to understand. It's it's very important. The final one is focus. It's very easy to get distracted in this world. I swear it's very easy. It's very very easy to get distracted. It's very very easy and everybody get so this is not a you know I'm not coming here trying to act like you know I don't I get distracted very very well as a matter of fact my role itself is distracting because in a single day I'm writing code right I am responding to my colleagues my manager other managers I'm responding to users I'm responding to you know questions from other places and then I am filing tickets I'm following up with gets like I'm doing different

things in a particular day, right? And I'm still thinking in my head that there is Champions League match in the evening and I want to what are we dragging to like it's easy to get distracted but it's also important to know how to focus. There are different techniques to get focused. All these techniques are very nice. You know, koduru deep block. But you know what I'll say? I'll say ignore these theories, right? If you need time to focus, remove, you know, the distraction. Let's not act like we don't know what's distracting us. Let's not act like we need some kind of, you know, um what's it called? Some special technique somewhere, you know, to 25 minutes. You know, you know that your

phone is distracting you. Turn the phone off. go and keep it in another room. You know that Tik Tok is distracting you, log out. You know Twitter is distracting you, log out. You know, whatever is distracting, just get it off. You know what is distracting? You know, it's your TV. Sell it. Well, don't sell it. But, you know, but you know what I'm trying to say? You know, turn on the TV, right? Maybe don't sit down in your sitting room. Maybe, you know, if you have a TV in your sitting room, you have a TV in your living room, you know, maybe use one, you know. But point is, you know what is distracting you? Remove it.

Okay, the second pillar is prioritization. This is important um for growth as a developer. You need to know how to prioritize. Prioritization is one of the biggest um indicators of growth as an individual is I'll say it again. Prioritization is one of the biggest indicators of growth as an individual. If I'm interacting with someone and I feel like they don't know how to prioritize their time, I just see I just see them as persons already, right? And that is not a way to dismiss them or discredit them. It's in a way to say I am not going to be helping you manage your time or manage your you know your responsibilities. You

need to know how to prioritize right. What do I need to do first? Now the interesting part is that there can be multiple competing priorities. That is the most interesting part. Now when there are multiple competing priorities, what do you do? So there is this um this theory called or this method called the Eisenhower matrix. Now this is a this is a theory that I think is important. I learned it I learned about it about four years ago when I was working at some company. the manager came in and was trying in trying to like sort sort us out and he taught us about Eisenhower and since then I've always applied it so it's a theory that I think is important in terms of focus pomodoro and I think those theories are just

trying to highlight to you what you should know but this is a theory that I think you should at least defer to as an individual when you're growing it's just so important if you're going to be working in places where there is demand for your attention like you need to you need to be locked in at work. This particular tool model is something that you need to pay attention to. If you are working on multiple projects, you are somebody who is working on you know multiple businesses. People like that they log multiple businesses because it gets them going. One business is boring. Three businesses that's where they, you know, they they perform optimally. You need this particular theory.

It's a says that there is a matrix of four boxes and each box has a label and each box tells you what to do you know when a task falls into the box. So what you need to do is pick up a task identify which box the task goes into which box task goes into and then uh decide on what to do. to the boxes are urgent and important, urgent, not important, excuse me, important not urgent, neither urgent nor important. When an item is urgent and important, do it now. When an item is urgent but not important, delegate it. Okay, that is exactly what managers do. The reason to

them, this needs to happen, that needs to happen. It's urgent, but to them is not important. They delegate. they give it to someone on the team to handle. Good. Um, when an item is important, not urgent, what do you do? You plan it. So, it's important that you go on a date, you know, with your partner. It's important that you eat. It's important that you It's important that you do a number of things. But are those things urgent? No. So, you plan it, right? You plan for those things. long-term goals, skill development, system improvements, documentation, you plan for them. When it is neither urgent nor important, you remove it. Just, you know, just shove it, keep it aside, right? There are

things that are neither urgent nor important. You know them for examples of you know urgent and important task crucial task you know production issues critical bugs deadlines for deliverables presentation those things that for example this particular presentation is important but it wasn't urgent as at the time I was told I was speaking it wasn't urgent but it's important right so what did I do I planned for it I communicated with you know told him okay I'll send you the slides so I planned I put down the dates on my calendar when I not meet up. I told him I can't meet up. You know, I you know, reach out to me over the weekend. Saturday morning when I woke up, what did I do? I picked up my computer. I knew I was supposed to do

this. I looked for um an AI tool that could help me productivity, right? I don't have the time to sit down and start designing um Google Slide Edoon. I looked for a tool called Gamma. I put in I've written down written down everything. So, immediately I told him I was going to plan for it. I started thinking of what I'll talk about. I put them in my notes. I put down all the everything I wanted to say I put everything down used the AI to generate all the things for me this what I want to see I edited it that is productivity that's just it and I leverage productivity with AI within 3 hours I was done with the entire thing you know I shared it with him that's all right but the point is that I planned I prioritized it during the week when he

told me about it I was busy with work I don't have time for it right but it's important so I planned it so that's how you should you know prioritize things. It's just so important. You cannot continue to, you know, drop the ball because you cannot prioritize. No, there is a way to handle multiple priorities, right? And this applies to everybody, developer or not. The PM comes to you, this is a feature we need to build. Another PM comes, this is a feature we need to build. Ask yourself on these two, which one is the most important? That's the first question. Which one is important? Okay, A is important. Which one is urgent?

A is urgent. Okay, I go with A because it's urgent and important, right? Which one is not important? If it's not important, but is it urgent that needs to be done? Yeah, it needs to be done. For example, responding to a user is, you know, is is urgent and important. It depends on the situation, right? But responding to a user for maybe user is asking you um for a new feature. When is a new feature going to be available? is that that task is important but it is not urgent. It's important that you respond to the user because you want to be responsive but it's not urgent. You can respond to them tomorrow. So what do you do? You can either delegate it, you know, or you can plan for it in the future, right? So that's just it. So um

yeah, that that is just what rising power metrics is about. It's important to know how to prioritize. Um I have a you know a real world scenario here where he says that you know you're working in the product team and a PM comes and says can you fix this UI color bug before tomorrow's demo you know and uh at the same time your note service is is going down right how how would you how would you handle this if I may ask which is more important and why which is more important okay I want to see the chats which is more important and Please

which which is important which is urgent you know which which how would you maybe I should go back to the question so there are two things here there's a demo tomorrow there's a UI bug right now issue right nodes are fing they're not receiving receiving requests or they're not processing requests. How would you Yeah, I know you want to get the the note up and running and the note service. Um I want to know which like how are you thinking about it? Which one is are you thinking of which of which of which of them first and in which box did they do they fall in? Right. Yeah.

Okay. Good. Thank you very much. I like I like um David's answer. says server is going down. It's important and it is coent. Yes, node service is coent and important. You cannot play with that. Thank you very much. Which which box do we put the second one? The um UI box. Which box do we put it in? Let me go back to the boxes. Which which box do we do we which box we put in? Are we putting it in important? Not urgent. Uent not important. Which one do we put it in?

Because because it is important. I should have said that. Exactly. Yeah. Thank you very much. It is important. Is not urgent. Yeah. It's not urgent. That's just it. It's not urgent. So what do you do when it's not urgent and important? You plan it. So you just keep it aside. Maybe when you close at work at night, you can look at it or delegate to somebody else. >> What if there's no one to delegate to? What do you do? If there's no one to delegate to, what do you do? I want to see in the chat. What if if there's nobody to the only you're the alpha and omega of that company now only you they write that code. You're the only one that plan it.

You don't have time. Let's say you don't have time. Let's say you don't have time for it. I say you're the only developer. Say you're the only person you're the AI. You still have to spend time with AI. Now mean you I can delete your entire code base. So before you know the demo has been deleted. I don't have I don't have anything to present. So what what do you do since we don't know? Let's continue. Let's continue.

Okay. So what do you do? You be proactive. Yeah. You have to be proactive. Okay. Yeah. This is this is the final this is the final piece of the puzzle that you know that this piece that solves the entire puzzle. What if there are multiple competing pars what if there is something that's important it's not audience but I'm the only one who can do it. Yeah, it's called a key man risk where you you as an individual are a risk to the company because a lot of things you know happen around you right uh key man risk is everywhere to be honest CEOs of companies the key man risk there is a very there's a very popular example of a key man risk when he when he when he tweets the stock go down when he tweets the stock can go up he can tweet they can burn his car

company he can tweet and he can everybody knows that person let's not talk about him right now say give Don't give up. So be proactive, right? And I I I wrote this quote myself. I said, "Proactiveness will set you apart in a world of nonchalant developers." See, it is very easy to be nonchalant. I promise you, it is one of the easiest things to do. What does nonchalance means? You just don't care. It's very easy to not care. As a matter of fact, Nigeria built us to not care, right? How? As a Nigerian, you can buy the most expensive car and drive it on a bad road because you just don't care, right? We just don't care enough. The

people who are meant to do things will not do it just because they don't care. You understand? And this it is I would say that it is not a fault of you know those of us who are like we're raised in the country because we met the culture there and it's very hard for such a culture to not permit your own you know personal values right we are a product of our environment and when you realize that you are Nigerian product of your environment one thing you must always tell yourself is that I am not going to you know begin to display the characteristics of where I come from especially the bad ones right nonchalance is a very like it's it's

it's even in hospitals okay in healthcare happens there in payment systems it happens there in education it happens there happens everywhere a lot of people just don't care but proactiveness is what solves nonchalance what does proactiveness means it means doing things before you are told it means anticipating needs right and responding to problems before they even arrive. Now I go back to what I said earlier on where I said what if you are the only person who can who is you're the one who wrote the demo solving node problems. How do you you know deal with this request from the PM when you don't even have the time because you don't even know if yes you

could plan it. Yes we we can plan it because it is urgent and because it's important not urgent we can plan it. Fantastic. But the question is will you ever get to it? Will you ever get to it? you may never get to it. That is just the truth about about it. What do you do when you know you can't get to it? You proactively communicate, right? You proactively communicate. I I put it here. Proactive communication. You tell the PM, I am going to plan for this, right? I can't do this right now because there is a high priority task of solving this. I don't know when this task will be done. I don't know if it is going to be done before the demo

tomorrow but I'm going to plan for it. Now what you've done is you've informed the PM that first and foremost you have something important they are doing that thing could take plenty of time. three, you may never ever get to that particular book she's talking about. And there's a high chance, sorry, sorry, they are talking about and there's a high chance that when you guys get to the demo tomorrow, you may be going with that bug. So that will inform the PM that they should go and figure out how to handle that particular bug when it comes up in the demo because it is important. You see how proactive communication or being proactive

resolves all these things. It helps you to look I I think it's in fact amongst all the three pillars in my opinion it's one of the most peace of mind giving kind of thing that you can do. I promise you one of the most peace of mind giving kind of thing that you can do when something comes on your table and you say I can't promise you I'll get this done in 3 weeks time but I'll try and the reason is that I have this and this and that you've taken a lot of pressure off your chest. So when people say things like they're under pressure and all whatnot, by the way, pressure is real. I've experienced pressure, okay?

But there's also a way to manage pressure. There's a way to manage it. And the way to manage it is proactive communication, you know, and proactiveness. You need to know to be proactive, right? For you to be proactive, you need to anticipate. Anticipate that something bad will happen, right? As developers, we do this a lot when you use try catch in your code. Try catch is a very, very good example of anticipating that the API you're going to make a request to or the function you're going to call is going to fail. Yes, you're not assuming that everything is going to be fine. You anticipate it's going to fail. So you prepare for it. If it fails, what do I do? You know, I do this next things. You understand? Because a lot of things are

not within your control. That is why you need to be proactive. You know, pract, plan B, plan C. All those things is proactiveness. You know people plan like that. They have three plans, four plans. Just in case one doesn't work, they switch to the next. It's just important to be proactive, right? To not be nonchalant, you know, not be part of that group. People are saying they're writing code. What if something happens when it comes deal with it? It's fine to do that, right? But what what if it happens?

Okay. So another one is you know um I mean an example of being proactive is to write documentation before someone asked for it right this for example is something that I'm suffering from I worked on something before you know but I didn't document it because nobody needed it at that time when we worked on it now someone needs it I'm I'm currently the only person in my like my smaller team who is you know around now someone needs documentation I have other priorities and I'm having to manage all the stakeholders Okay. So, you know, improvement is also a way to to be proactive, right? You anticipate, you document things, you improve. These are just examples of ways of being proactive. Improvements. Try to improve on things. Okay? Try to improve

on things. Don't just look at think ahead. Think ahead ahead. This the way we're doing this thing, is it good? How I'm teaching this course, is it good? How I'm explaining this thing, is it good? You know, you think through what you're doing is just so important. Helps a lot. I mentioned earlier on you know error handling in in in development is is pro is being proactive right you know a a developer that is not proactive is going to be reactive right you want to deploy a contract you just you don't you don't put any no checks no try catch nothing you just write the code just runs right and then it fails and then you start running up and down it just doesn't work right developers

build resilient systems you know when you're practice It helps to build resilient systems. You can think ahead of things that could fail, right? Things that could go wrong. What if what if this things go what what if this thing goes wrong, right? What if something happens? What if what if what if you know you plan ahead? Even an example of being proactive is you're arriving early for an event, right? You know that yes, it's a 30 minutes drive away, but what if something happens? What if there's traffic? What if my car breaks down? What if you plan for all those things? Of course you cannot you know plan 100% for things but when you are proactive every single time you you'll be able to manage things properly right and when things don't go your way you also be able to manage properly.

So this growth framework in my opinion um for you to continue to grow as a developer as an individual you know working in finance working in business working in operations working in you know customer side of things you just need to be proactive you know learn to prioritize sorry you need to be productive you need to learn to prioritize you know you need to remain proactive it's these skills are just so important if you can master these skills you are productive you know what to do you can write code properly you can use the tools at your disposal Because you can prioritize. You know what is urgent and important. You know what is important, not urgent. You know what is not important, not urgent. Right?

Somebody tells you you're working on something, someone tells you that there is some event happening somewhere that does not concern is not important is not urgent. Don't even involve yourself. As a matter of fact, there are things that happening with your within your company. It's not important. So, but because you get distracted by them, what happens? you you you are not focused and you don't become productive right and proactive and being proactive right this is just important this this being practive is in my opinion you know senior level skill CEO level skill this this being practive is see if you can master it very well you can do many many things managing you know conversations

managing stakeholders is all about proactivity because at the end of it all the people who will do the work are the people under you right just need to be proactive Think about it. What is this person doing? What's that person doing? What if they don't know it? What what would be my response? How would I manage the CEO? What should I tell the CEO? Like it's it's just so important to to you know to be proactive, right? To be to know how to communicate properly. You mean some people might might have mastered these uh the skills and it's fine and people are still learning myself. I'm still learning, right?

Learning how to use skills, how to be productive, how to prioritize. I'm learning to my mistakes, listening to feedback from my manager, listening to feedback from other people, you know, but it's just important to have it in mind that you need to be productive, you need to prioritize and to stay proactive. So, I finish with this very, you know, nice quote says your skill gets you into the room. Yes. When I did interview, your skills what would you know get you into, you know, that room, right? But when you need when when they when there's it's not interview even when there's a big project at work you know and you want to be part of that project for example your team wants to ship a feature that will change you know way things are done in the in in in finance

for example let's say you're working at one of the tech companies I really admire is OP you know I like what they do I I like I like I like the product itself just the truth you know and they have a new product for you know teenagers and all whatnot let's assume that that is going to be a big product you want to be part of it. You need to be skillful to be part of it, right? But when they get you into it, what keeps you there? Because they can kick you out. The managers of the project can kick you out, right? You need to be productive to stay into productive, you know, to get done. You know, how will they always call you back? Say, I enjoyed working with Samson. I enjoyed working with David. I enjoyed working with Maya. I want to work on I want to

work with him again. It's true. We are proactive when they don't have to, you know, um always um quench fires because of what you've done, you know, and always just there stepping in makes one, you know, just so so easy, right? So, I think if you do this, it's going to be very helpful, going, very important. [Music]