Written by Nnadozie Okeke
Story
"When washing rice, preparing vegetables, and so on, do so with your own hands, with close attention, vigorous exertion, and a sincere mind. Do not indulge in a single moment of carelessness or laziness. Do not allow attentiveness to one thing result in overlooking another. Do not yield a single drop in the ocean of merit; [for] even a mountain of good karma can be augmented by a single particle of dust."
— Dōgen, "Instructions for the Cook" (Tenzo kyōkun)
1995-NOV-08
Born
Grew up in Ibadan
they say 'Ibadan Kini so!'
Built up QMUL AI & Robotics Society
Trained with QMBL SWIM team
Studied Electrical and Electronics Engineering (Hons)
Learned Mandarin to HSK2 at QMUL Confucius Institue
Learned Java, C, Data structures, CPUs, TCP/IP, the works
year in industry changed everything
Discovered Software Engineering at IBM Hursley
Patented cool stuff
thank you, UK
Moved to Lagos
Built things at Compex Africa
Compex Africa got acquired by SFS Group
being interim CTO for Compex Africa taught me startup team leadership
Learned React, Frontend development, agile and CI/CD from Andela
Taught SFS Group to go agile and remote
just before the pandemic hit
Got promoted
worldview changed - company not role, market not product, vertical not technology
Said goodbye to SFS Group. Moved back home. Started Fronte.io
one goal: go EU/US remote
Found accountability in friends
7 of us, 3 from ISI, 1 from QMUL, a GADS mentee from Kenya, and 2 life-long friends from Lagos. I ran the group. We changed our lives.
Going broke
Joined Access Bank remotely
Brought Access Bank's worldremit POS systems back online
that was some fuggly enterprise code
Landed remote work at KindHealth
pure joy - thank you Shehu
Layoffs at KindHealth. Layoffs everywhere.
dark times
Long-time partner called it quits
that was all kinds of painful
Wrote for Memberstack (YC S20) while job hunting
thank you Molly and Duncan
Went to the UK for Guncle duties!
a child's love made the world make sense
Landed my second remote role at ShipFare
thank you Stefan
Did scaling, CI/CD, frontend, backend, observability, and more at ShipFare
building for a high-velocity company while babysitting a toddler 9-5 was insane work
A break from Guncle duties - freedom!
or so I thought. My body broke down - couldn’t walk, laid still in excruciating pain for 3 months
Continued building for ShipFare through the pain
not sure I let on how much pain and stress I was under
Back to the UK for more Guncle duties!
a child's love made the world make sense again
Continued building end-to-end features for ShipFare
realised I had all the skills to build my own SaaS products
Applied for a Canadian PR
back home in Ibadan
Said goodbye to ShipFare
burnout is all too real
Turned down co-founder opportunities
too low on energy
Took a personal health sabbatical
lots of needed rest, rejuvenation and healing
Moved back to Lagos
Set up a global HQ mancave in Lagos
a whole story in itself
The Canadian PR was approved!
The Province of Alberta gave me a whole ass provincial nomination in software engineering. Sweet ✌️
Continued my health sabbatical
hit the gym, hit my first 7km run since I couldn't walk, had some therapy, rebuilt my body and mind
Moved to Edmonton, Alberta 🍁
hello YEG! hello extended family!
Upskilled as an AI Engineer
LangChain, LLMs, Llama, Llamaindex, RAG Stack, Vector Databases, Prompt Engineering, the works
Worldview changed again
providing value at the application layer + cost to scale a product and marketing is everything
Re-focused on building my own SaaS products and riding the AI horizon
let's see where 2 years take me
In the meantime, I'll need an SWE job
ready to bring solid engineering and fresh AI expertise to the right team
New country, new horizons. Here we go!