Introduction

Funny enough, writing isn't exactly new to me.

Early in my career, I used to write technical articles, and a few of them did surprisingly well. One of them got over 12,000 reads. Then work happened 😅. I got busier, became more focused on shipping, learning on the job and progressing in my career, and somewhere along the way, I just stopped writing.

So this is me getting back into it.

A lot has changed since then. I've worked on bigger products, with much larger teams and much higher stakes, and I've learned that some of the hardest problems in software engineering aren't really about code. They're about communication, decision-making, asking the right questions and getting people aligned.

I've also come to appreciate writing as a way of thinking. In an age of AI, endless distractions and increasingly short attention spans, sitting down and forcing myself to articulate an idea feels more valuable than ever. Even as I type this, I've had to turn off autocomplete lol.

That's really the goal of this blog: to give myself a place to think in public. To refine ideas, document what I'm learning and share my experiences, opinions, mistakes, fears and aspirations along the way.

If you've somehow found yourself here, hopefully you get something useful from my ramblings too.

Topics I'd be writing about

In this space, I hope to write about a few areas of my life:

• Software Engineering and Productivity
• Traveling
• LeetCode and Interview Prep

Software Engineering and Productivity

For the first few years of my career, I approached work pretty reactively. I didn't participate much in meetings and discussions, partly because I was surrounded by other very respected experts and ridiculously smart engineers.

On one hand, I felt lucky to have the privilege of working alongside them. But I think it also indirectly stifled some of my growth as an engineer. I got into the habit of letting the "experts" figure things out. After all, they knew more than me and would eventually come up with something smart.

Over the last 2-3 years, that's changed quite a bit.

I've been working in a smaller team, still surrounded by really smart people, but this time I became one of the people expected to have the answers, particularly when it came to React Native.

That forced me to approach work differently. I started speaking up more, asking more questions, caring about things beyond just my code, and becoming more involved in decisions and discussions. Along the way, I've developed my communication and leadership skills immensely and gained more visibility, responsibility and recognition from stakeholders.

I've also been fortunate to work in a very receptive team with engineers at different experience levels. That's given me room to experiment with how I communicate, lead discussions and share knowledge, while getting real-time feedback on what works and what doesn't.

In this blog, I'll be writing about those lessons: communication, technical leadership, mistakes I've made, things I'm still figuring out, and what I've learned from trying to become a better engineer beyond just writing better code.

Traveling

Nigeria, USA, UK.

I've been going back and forth between these countries over the last 2-3 years, and I plan to write about some of those trips and experiences here.

I'm originally from Nigeria, so it's home. I did my Master's in the UK at the University of Chester (MSc Computer Science, Distinction 😁), and I've got two beautiful sisters who live in the US, so I typically spend some of my summers with them.

There have been plenty of interesting experiences across all three, so I'll probably ramble about those here too.

LeetCode and Interview Prep

I also want to use this blog to document my journey with LeetCode and interview prep.

I'll share what I'm learning, resources I've found useful, strategies that actually work for me, mistakes I've made, and my thoughts on preparing for technical interviews and getting the best compensation for my skills lol.

I've had fun with a bunch of these problems, and I want to keep grinding and improving, so I might as well document the journey along the way.