2024 Year in review


(This read and honestly, any other one would be nicer if you had Beautiful Things by Benson Boone or Higher by Burna Boy playing in the background and once you are done you should play Agnaterepopi by Coni gangster or Kongolese sous BBL to dance and celebrate)

Twelve months have passed and here we go again, my favorite part of the year, I don't know how to describe it but the atmosphere is always different during this period, everyone seems happy, I feel like I have a lot of money to spend (even though I don't) and I think I'm a real writer sitting in a coffee shop writing this year in review.

So here’s the story of the last twelve months:

Programming

Programming is the thing I do the most daily and I still enjoy it. This year I tried a lot of new things learning new programming languages like Go and Java with Spring Boot, deepening my knowledge in infrastructure by learning tools like Kubernetes, observability, and testing a lot of AWS services.

I have finally published my website, and seiri my tasks and note-taking app.

I built Guma a project management app that was the final project for my master's thesis in software engineering.

I have started many other projects (shirabe, ticket API, etc) that I didn't complete and honestly, I'm not sure that I will touch them again maybe later we never know.

Academia

I had my last class in 2023 but officially graduated this year with a master’s degree in software engineering because it took me some time to decide to write my thesis and defend it. When it comes to writing the thesis people at least from my school choose the “easy path” What I mean by that is choosing a not difficult project to get rid of it, instead, I decided to choose the "most rewarding path", I reminded myself that if I wanted to get my degree it was mandatory to write a thesis why not using that opportunity to learn new things and expand my knowledge? that is why I took a project that was completely new to me, at the beginning I didn't know how I was going to build all those things but guess what, In the end, I figured it out, I learned valuable new skills and got a high note for my project.

After graduating I took some time to think about the next step and the possibility of doing a PhD, I discussed it with my mentor who has a PhD and is a university professor as well, I asked him all the questions I had after that I concluded that it was not the right path for me, so no Dr Marius haha.

Teaching

I mentored two people this year while reflecting on this, I have already been doing it mostly in university teaching my classmates or helping them with their projects but this one was different because they paid me and it was my responsibility to teach, help them to build their foundation and make sure they understand what they had to.

It was challenging because I had to relearn things I completely forgot, come up with the simplest way to explain something, and sometimes acknowledge that I hadn't an answer to a given question. The first person is doing great and has validated her programming class, the second one I don't know if he even applies one thing that I taught him 😅 so I don’t know what to think about It, was I a good or a bad mentor I believe it’s up to the mentee.

Job

I planned to focus on my thesis for the first half of the year and then on Job Hunting for the second part. After graduating I put all my energies into job hunting, interview preparation, and applications. My priority was to find a job abroad that supports relocation. I applied to over 200 jobs (yeah 200) I got rejected by almost 170 of them, the main reason was that they moved forward with better candidates, and for some, it was because of my location. The remaining simply ghosted me. I remember one day I applied for a job at 11 pm and got rejected the next day at 6 am 😅, it was funny but really frustrating at the same time. After I think 2 months in which I was receiving at least 4 rejections per day I finally got an interview for a London-based company. The first and the second interviews went well then I moved to the final one, which was a 2 hours interview with 3 engineers, the first hour went well, and they asked a lot of questions about my experiences and my current role, which I think I was able to answer well. Then they asked me a ‘simple’ question that I wasn’t expecting at all, and that’s when everything fell apart. I panicked and I wasn’t able to form a sentence until the end 😅 then the next day I received a rejection email.

I’ll spare you the details, but I continued to receive rejections for another 1 month, and then I had two interviews that I still didn’t manage very well. I think that’s the only time of the year when it became mentally difficult for me, putting in so much effort and each time seeing all those opportunities disappear because of my lack of skills was difficult to handle.

3 months later, after 160 rejections and 3 failed interviews, I finally got another chance with a company based in Munich, all the interviews went well, I think I did 4, I received the offer and the recruiter told me that the relocation process usually took 2 to 3 months, so all I had to do was wait for her to get back to me. 2 months later she contacted me again and told me that they were having visa sponsoring issue and I might not be able to join them ah ah ah ah.

At that point, I was like okay maybe I'm not meant to find that job abroad so I decided to apply for a local company that I have always found interesting to work with, I did the entire interview process and got the job 😸.

This experience taught me that job hunting especially abroad is difficult because we are competing with people around the world and you can be 400 for only one position. I also learned the hard way that I am not as good as I thought, but it is just a matter of time and effort.

Writing

It wasn’t an amazingly writing-heavy year for me but! I wrote a few good ones.

My articles have been viewed 14926 times and read 9384 times. They keep increasing even though I'm writing less than I used to but for next year I want to fully get back to writing at least one article per week.

Reading

I have read:

  • Hunger Games — Tome 2 l'embrasement
  • Hunger Games — Tome 3 la revolte
  • Understanding Kubernetes in a visual way (Programming)
  • Harry Potter et les Reliques de la Mort
  • Silo — Tome 1
  • System Design Interview Volume 2 (Programming)
  • Designing Data–Intensive Applications (Programming)
  • Le joueur d'échecs

Training

Originally my main goal for this was to run at least once every week of the year but I failed for different reasons the recurrent one was laziness. I'm still proud because I managed to run more than last year and I have also pushed myself through my limit by running the furthest distance I’ve ever covered 15km.

Content i enjoyed

Here are a few bits of content out in the ether that I enjoyed this year.

Watching

  • Past Lives (Movie)
  • Acrimony (Movie)
  • Juré n° 2 (Movie)
  • Billions (TV Show). It is probably one of my favorite shows ever, each - year I rewatched the 6 seasons.
  • House of the Dragon (TV show)
  • Good Doctor's last season (TV show) was the perfect ending for me.
  • New York Unité Spéciale (TV show)

Listening

I still listen to a lot of music 32493 minutes on YouTube and 33791 minutes on Spotify 😅. Here are the songs I listen to the most on each platform:

Youtube

Spotify

For Spotify users, I have some public playlists that you can check: burnt from the Inside Out, Fally Ipupa Songs, and 9ja.

Traveling

I moved a bit this year, here are the places I visited and the things that stood out: 

I spent a day in Thies, Senegal for my friend's traditional wedding, we ate so well there and the music was amazing, I remember one guy playing the saxophone so smoothly. 

I went to Saint Louis, Senegal for 3 days it was for my girlfriend's birthday. We had an amazing time there, the hotel and the food were great, my girlfriend is the type of person who posts bad reviews on Google Maps when they don't like the experience Surprisingly for this hotel she posted 5 stars so I can confidently say that it was great. I finally learned to swim I'm not Leon Marchand yet but I can get from point A to point B 😅 my girlfriend taught me, it was a bit awkward at first but I managed to handle it. One thing struck me about Saint Louis, I've been living in Dakar for over 6 years now, and every day in the street without talking it's not that obvious that I'm a foreigner but there it was obvious to people that I didn't belong there I still wonder why.

Last, I spent 8 days in Lomé, Togo for a work trip. I was the only foreigner in the group so my friends took care of me, they made me feel comfortable, showed me a lot of places and most importantly fed me amazingly well. The food is good there, and the atmosphere as well, in some places it reminded me of home. We created memories that won't be easily forgotten at least for me.

Finances

I wanted to know how I spend my money so I had the good and at the same time bad idea of ​​tracking all my expenses that exceed a given threshold and honestly I don't know where I found all this money 😢 I spent way too much this year, the only thing that reassures me is that I saved much more than I had in previous years. For next year, I want to track what I spend daily to have a 360° view of my finances.

Personal note

Mentally I'm doing good I haven't had to deal with anxiety at all, no panic attacks oh I got one but it was for a stupid reason nothing important. The fact that I'm feeling mentally well is reflected in my journal because I haven't written much in it during the year. Life is good and I have nothing to complain about.

This year taught me two valuable lessons:

First, When we try to learn something new, especially something difficult, we often feel uncomfortable, we feel stupid and as humans, our brains push us to escape this feeling of discomfort by finding a thousand and one reasons. Whenever I couldn't understand something I always told myself that it wasn't that important so I chose to do things I was good at. It was only after I'd failed an interview on a subject I was supposed to have mastered for years now, that I took some time to reflect and realized that I'd been running away from this subject because it was difficult for me to understand. Just to say that we need to embrace this uncomfortable feeling, maybe even seek it out because it's proof that we're making progress, try as many times as we need to understand difficult things it's the only way for us to continue to grow.

Second, happiness doesn't always come where you expect it. When I was starting this year I thought that graduating and finding a new job was going to be the highest point of my year but while I'm writing this review the moments that stand out are the ones I spent with the people I love:

  • the moments with my girlfriend, Saint Louis, her laughing at me because I didn't know how to swim. We tried new funny things together this year and I hope we maintain that energy next year. 
  • Dancing in a club with Tito, Espoir, Phlorisse at 4 am. 
  • Having my little sister, big sister, or my mom over the phone. 
  • reconnecting with Chef, our sleepless nights just talking about everything and laughing, oh Gooddd I truly missed her in my life. I have the impression that nothing has changed it's like someone pressed on the "pause" button a few years ago and this year we pressed on "play" and continued where it stopped the connection between us is still there. She is still important to me maybe more than ever.
  • Playing football with my colleagues.
  • Playing video games, watching the Olympic basketball final, and screaming because of Steph Curry's last 3pts shot with my man Bachir.

And 2025?

For the next year, I want to:

  • Go for a run at least once a week, reach the milestone of 300km, and start going to the gym. 
  • Write more technical articles at least once per month. 
  • Since I'm starting a new role, I want to be comfortable technically and within the team. 
  • Continue to grow as an engineer. 
  • Read the books I bought but haven't touched yet. 
  • Spend time with the people I love. 

Happy New Year y'all and cheers to 2025 🥂