Career Decisions

This is officially the last week of my internship, I cannot believe how time has gone by so fast! Between today and tomorrow, I’ll be challenging myself to write my final 3 Outreachy blog posts, 2 of them are long overdue and the last is a wrap-up post showing what I’ve gained and how I’ve grown over this period.

Career Opportunities

Before this internship, I had spent months trying to get a job in tech, rewriting my CV several times and getting a lot of reject mails. Of course I put a hold on all that once I started, but by the end of January, it hit me that I’ll be back in the job market and I needed to start that battle again. That honestly scared me, but after many conversations with my mentor and Outreachy chats addressing this, I have a lot more confidence now in my abilities and in the opportunities out there that would fit these abilities.

What I want

I’m still exploring lots of fields in tech and everyday I see something that looks really exciting, so I’m still open to the various ones. Right now though, on a very high level, I’d say something around cloud computing and back-end development. I’ve been looking into those fields a lot and it just keeps getting more and more interesting.

Apart from my field of interest, I also want a job that really challenges me, one that isn’t monotonous. Sure, there’s the general programming languages and tools I’d be using, but the task should change and allow me study and experiment some more just to achieve these tasks. This is what I loved the most about working with OpenStack, although I used python primarily, basically everything I did needed some extra research and allowed me think for myself.

My Skills

I have a bachelors in Civil Engineering, but I doubt I’d be using that anytime soon. Right now, I’d say my top skill is Python and it’s also the language I enjoy the most. I also have a few projects in Java, Spring boot and Hibernate, then I did a bit of Javascript, HTML and CSS for a few months. I recently started working with Django and with my understanding of both python and web development, it shouldn’t take me long to add some valuable projects to my portfolio. I’ve always worked with Git and Github and thanks to OpenStack, I can now use Gerrit as well for version control. Then I’ve gotten a good grasp of how to use REST APIs.

I worked with some other tools in the past and understand some of the basics: SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL, JUnit, Heroku and Postman.

Next Steps

Even though my internship has ended, I’d still like to continue contributing to OpenStack, my job was rewarding and I gained so much from every contribution, plus the community is one I want to keep up with. I’d start by completing my project of extending Ansible modules, then depending on where I’m at afterwards, I could look into other related bugs and work on them. There’s still quite a lot to do.

Besides Open Source, I’d continue my work with Afropelo Care, a business I’ve been working with for about 5 years now. Initially, I created the website with wordpress, now I have started building another one with Django starting with the online store. This would really help grow my Django skill and it’s a viable project to add to my portfolio. I’d also like to get contract roles with this while I search for a full-time role.

Since the beginning of February, I had been revising my CV. I have made several revisions! My mentor helped me review and gave some very important feedback. I plan on sending it out to as many companies and recruiters as I can reach. I also plan on creating a portfolio page for myself with Django, where I can bring all my work together for anyone to see.

Speaking

This is something that I’ve always wanted to do but felt like I didn’t quite have the content to speak about. I’ve learnt to still share my knowledge at whatever level I’m at. It’s an opportunity to start conversations, let people know what I’m doing, encourage people, learn from others and generally build relationships. I guess the pandemic has allowed for remote talks so I can do more from my home. I’d start submitting proposals about my work as I evolve and volunteering whenever I get the chance to. This is a challenge for me and I’d have to accept rejections at different points, but it will all eventually make me better.

So that’s it for me. I mentioned in my introduction post that I value growth and believe in taking one step at a time. This is what I still continue to hold on to. I don’t exactly know my future, I don’t even know where I’d be by the end of this year but at least I know my next steps and I’ll keep moving ahead from there 🙂