#279 Sophie Obomighie chooses to do hard things the hard way

Can one's fascination with technology begin with a childhood story of a laptop reward? For our guest Sophie Obomighie, that was indeed the case. From there, Sophie describes her journey through the tech world, from building a website on halitosis to participating in Google developer group events. Despite her medical background, she found a way to marry her interests in tech and medicine, proving that multiple passions can coexist and even compliment each other.

Sophie's path wasn't without its hurdles, as she navigated the world of programming education and sought out job opportunities in the tech field. From her time at a transcript processing company to her stint at Hotels.ng, Sophie was continually challenged. Yet, she rose to the occasion, learning and growing with every new experience. She is a testament to the importance of embracing challenges on the path to success. 

In the final chapters of the episode, Sophie recounts her experience as a Quality Assurance person. She openly shares about her struggles and her triumphs. Her story is a reminder to us all that sometimes, our greatest passions and career paths can be discovered in the most unexpected of places. Join us for this fascinating conversation with Sophie Obomighie.

Use my special link https://zen.ai/dsVpYxjSth5fD-hlbzdIiw to save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan.

Transcript

Sophie Obomighie: 0:00

I think just like following, like just adapting your plans to your own situation and how things are for you. So, yeah, that's what I would say. It's really just to be open and I still am trying not to make like my profession, my identity, like having a life outside of like programming. I think it helps a lot so that I don't like get attached to my plans. It helps not get attached to plans because if, for example, I need to change jobs because of, maybe, family or something like that, so I think the first thing is like being adapting your own plans to like your life situations and like not making your work your own personal identity, but at the same time, trying to do the work well, like trying to be a good developer or a good tester. Yeah, it's just been open really.

Tim Bourguignon: 0:57

Hello and welcome to Devilpurs Journey, the podcast bringing you the making of stories of successful software developers to help you on your upcoming journey. I'm your host, tim Borghignan. On this episode, I receive Sophie Obomiglie. Sophie is a young software tester who has worked as a dotnet developer on APIs and Office 365 applications before transitioning into IT support and now software testing. But her academic background is in human anatomy and she doesn't so secretly plans to come back to biomedical engineering at some point in the future, or so I heard Sophie. Welcome to Devilpurs Journey.

Sophie Obomighie: 1:38

Hello, thanks for having me, tim.

Tim Bourguignon: 1:40

Oh, it's my pleasure, and it's been a long time in the making. We had to postpone the recording for a while, so I'm really glad this is finally happening.

Sophie Obomighie: 1:48

Yes, I'm glad to. I'm very good.

Tim Bourguignon: 1:50

But before we come to your story, I want to thank the terrific listeners who support the show. Every month. You are keeping the Devilpurs Journey lights up. If you would like to join this fine crew and help me spend more time on finding phenomenal guests than editing audio tracks, please go to our website, devjourneyinfo, and click on the support me on Patreon button. Even the smallest contributions are giant steps toward a sustainable dev journey Journey. Thank you, and now back to today's guest. So, sophie, as you know, the show exists to help the listeners understand what your story looked like and imagine how to shape their own future. So, as is usual on the show, let's go back to your beginnings. Where will you place the start of your dev journey? Hmm?

Sophie Obomighie: 2:42

So the start of my dev journey is very there's no one particular place, so I could also say from when I was a child. I could also say from when I was in uni, but well, as a child, because the reason why I'm referencing my child to this because, excuse me, is because I recently read an article I don't remember, but this guy interviewed someone the guy who who created the cookies the cookie, louis Martinelli, I think and I was going to do other articles and then I saw that the ladies there who had done different things, created social network, created this, and that they kept on talking about their own childhood and how it wasn't necessarily stereotypical, like what you'd expect from an engineer. So that's why I think I will talk about my childhood. So for the, what happened in my childhood that contributed to my dev journey was, first off, I remember as a child I had done well in school and my dad had promised me to. Actually, before, before the end of the term, my dad had promised if I did well he would buy me something nice and eventually he got me a laptop, which I really appreciated.

Sophie Obomighie: 4:01

But at that time I mean this was like maybe 10, 15 years ago. So I mean it wasn't like the the most, it wasn't like modern laptops should find now. And also, I think when you buy laptops, when you buy laptops then you have to like do some kind of setup and all and all. So before he could go to set it up, I just stole into his room and opened it and just wanted to play with it already, but the operating system was installed on it and all and all. So I just found it really fascinating that I could put it on and I think what I was seeing was the bios, I think.

Sophie Obomighie: 4:37

So anyway, I played with it before he got the chance to. I didn't think he knew I had done that, so I played with it before he got the chance to like take it for, like setup and all. So yeah, that was my first encounter with computers and I just found it fascinating. I just generally because I'm curious. So I just found it very fascinating. So, but fast forward, my, my mom also like cause she would have a lot of things to do. She was very I mean, she had good knowledge of using computers and all. So because of work and managing different things, she would ask me or my sister to help her like maybe impute some data in in Excel or create PowerPoint For example for interest.

Sophie Obomighie: 5:26

We have, yeah, interest.

Sophie Obomighie: 5:27

We have this thing called Havest and she was in charge of the Havest committee and she has like imputed a lot of data, cause she's like a secretary by training and she's like very professional at those kinds of things. She would, she would ask us to sort that out for her while she had to manage other things. So I think that also helped me. And I guess also I mean, one reason why she would, she would entrust such to us, to my sister and I, is cause I mean we're doing that in school and she expected us to practice while we're learning and then, yeah, and then also during the holidays, like my GS three I think. I think that's called like grade nine in the U S, but my GS three. Like the final year of my junior school, junior school I had a long break and my mom signed my sister and I up for a computer training that we did. I also found that really fascinating because I just learned like basic things like word and Excel and how to beat fast type and all those kinds of things. So yeah, so that so I mean she was really interested in helping us to be up to date because the whole thing of computers were like really just coming up. So she really wanted us to be very up to date. So my parents were very influential in that. And then also I mean getting back to school, I would sign up for like just club and stuff like that. So even though we didn't do that computer related project, but anytime we had to do something in a computer lab, I always wanted to. I want us to be in front and to like figure out how to fix these or how to do that and so yeah, so that I think that also contributed to like my interest in it and I also like continually used to help out with designing our yearbook or typing. I would type the yearbook thing, those kinds of things with the basic things. So but after after second year school that I thought, okay, maybe I could actually make this a career. So my oh yeah.

Sophie Obomighie: 7:30

Another thing I forgot to mention was so this thing of video games. I actually realized I actually did play video games when I was younger. My mom got us this I don't remember what it was. It was like Super Mario, but it's different from Super Mario. You have to like jump and jump. So anyway, I remember I used to play that with my sister until the Jockey, the pad went bad, like what you used to control. It went bad and my mom didn't think there was any need to fix it so we could concentrate on our books. So yeah, so anyway.

Sophie Obomighie: 8:08

And then by the time I was about entering uni, I was speaking with my dad and everything. I was talking about what to do and I thought, okay, maybe I could do something related to computers. And I mean at the time nobody I think people around me were really sure of the prospects of building a career in computer. So I mean my dad, just okay, well, if you can do computer by the side, it's something that you can always learn why don't you apply for like medicine? Cause I mean just the whole thing of you know when you're it's just like a stereotypical thing, like if you're like top in class, the stereotypical thing is to study medicine or engineering or law. So I mean at least in Nigeria. So I said, okay, maybe I would apply for medicine.

Sophie Obomighie: 8:53

So I applied for medicine and I didn't get the high enough score for medicine, but I was able to get in for human anatomy. So the initial plan was to get in and then we rise the entrance exams for medicine the next year, or I could just get in for the meantime. So I tried to do that. Anyway, there's a lot of back and forth, so eventually I just decided to just stay in anatomy and after school figure out what next to do. So but while I was in school like I think my first year I met some friends who were also in, who were in medicine. I know I had a friend who was in dentistry and this my this particular friend I figured out.

Sophie Obomighie: 9:44

I found out some time later that he was into development. I didn't really know what development was, but I see I just knew that computer was fascinating and something I would like to learn more about. So we started talking and he told me oh so there's this training this summer for teenagers. Why don't you like apply for it? Cause in uni I'm now still a teenager. So I applied for it and I got in. So it was like a Microsoft thing, microsoft partner with some, an NGO called Ola Foundation. So I got in and I didn't know what to expect. So I just I think what I learned was like was HTML and CSS and WordPress and different kinds of things, php and stuff like that, and that's many people that I am still in touch with till now very useful to them.

Sophie Obomighie: 10:38

So, yeah, so that was where I actually like started development per se development, like getting knowledge of how to write code and stuff and I was very fascinated and I can be very hyper, so I was always all about the place, trying to understand here and then trying to build. I remember building a website cause I had a friend who was studying dentistry and that friend was studying dentistry and I mean I used to hear a lot of dentistry related things. So I remember, okay, because at the end of the training we had to do like projects, so I thought I could build a website on Halitosis, which is like it's a dental issue with people with like bad breath and stuff like that. So I don't remember why I chose that, but it just seemed like a very basic dental thing that I could talk about, cause I used to hang out with a lot of these my friends. So I set it up and then I used bootstrap. I didn't understand much of what I was doing, but I was just trying. So I was able to build the website and just in the form of like a hospital advertisements kind of thing like a hospital homepage, but the only thing the hospital does is helps in tracing and helping people to know more about Halitosis. So I presented it and, yeah, that was like the first. That was really how I started.

Sophie Obomighie: 12:04

And when I go back to school, I started doing a lot of community thing, like I used to go with my friends for hackathons and like Google developer group events and those kinds of things, but I was still like studying anatomy, I was still like trying to like study and figure out how to match both of them. So that was how I also met a friend who was into biomedical engineering and then I thought, okay, maybe I could do biomedical engineering after school. But immediately after uni I decided to focus on tech, on like building my IT skill in a particular area, just so I'm not everywhere, I'm all over the place. So when I was done with school, I decided to focus on development. So I actually started in EDX course.

Sophie Obomighie: 12:58

So I mean, even while I was in school I was doing different things. I tried to do the free code camp course and I tried different kinds of things and then I used to follow different people that I found really inspiring. And then another thing I forgot to mention was I also remember participating in this NASA space apps challenge with my friends. Yeah, I think we came second. It was really exciting. I mean, the whole thing was very, very exciting.

Tim Bourguignon: 13:24

But anyway, professionally, there's a question before you get there. Yes, during this re-routing, or deciding to focus on that, how did your parents take it? They were very adamant in pushing you toward medicine. How did you react to that?

Sophie Obomighie: 14:47

Well, I think my parents are very open, they're very open-minded. So I mean, they were not like, oh, you have to be a doctor, blah, blah blah. But their only concern was I need to make sure that whatever it is I'm doing, I make sure I do it well. So if I'm going to do computers and I'm studying anatomy now, how do I enter into it? Merge both of them. So actually the ones who pushed me to find a way to merge my medical background with my IT interests. So yeah, they didn't give me too much problems.

Tim Bourguignon: 15:23

Okay, okay, so sorry, I cut you, so you were taking speaking about EDX courses, free code camp and the NAVA space challenge.

Sophie Obomighie: 15:33

Yeah, exactly so I so well in school, yes, I did all of these different things and I remember for my final year project I actually planned to build something. So I'm, technically, I still was growing Like I still was trying to like improve my skills and just building different things, but I wouldn't say I was like the best developer, even though I knew people who were really good and I aspired to be like them. But I mean, my course was demanding, for me at least, and so, anyway, it wasn't very easy to like grow very technically. I guess also it also has to do with like time management and all. But I was trying to to finish my degree, Because another option, because some some other option would be to like just leave the degree and like focus. But I didn't think that was a wise decision. I thought I just need to finish my degree and and then know what I need to do after.

Tim Bourguignon: 16:30

So anyway yeah.

Sophie Obomighie: 16:32

So I was just like juggling between my anatomy degree and my programming thing, so, but anyway, after school, at this point, even while I was a student, there was a lot of anyway I think it's that I would call it pressure like because of my hyperactivity, I was getting a lot of what like tablet or what do you call it like people trying to interview me. I think thinking about now I don't really understand why, maybe it's a whole thing of women in tech and stuff like that, but anyway, many people. I got some people, maybe because I would write something or I would be at this event or that event and then, oh, interview for this, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so I'll just talk about doing what I have done so far, competition to have participated in, but I was at some point I stopped accepting because I didn't see the point I wanted to do technically. I didn't want to focus on, like, maybe, helping with sales, because I think one thing that was making me very in front of people was because I was the brand manager for an organization called Girl Lead. So Girl Lead were like training girls in my uni, giving them like IT or liter skills, like digital marketing and software development and other entrepreneurship kinds of things. So I needed to be at events and I needed to be like very outside, very in front of people. But I think it didn't match my temperaments because I used to burn out with all the activity and I needed to focus on growing technically at the same time. Anyway, I put a hold on all of that to finish my degree and when I finished I decided to focus on, I decided to focus on development. So that's when I started the EDX course.

Sophie Obomighie: 18:29

So, but while doing the EDX course, I found it's really difficult. There's the C part, the part that's the week one, because it's from week zero, week one. So week one was on C. So I found it difficult understanding the material. So I thought maybe I could find like an online community that has people learning C or something like that, because I think I just I lacked some foundational knowledge or maybe it just because I hadn't taken the time to learn something. So I went about looking for such and then I found something called hotelsng. It's like a very popular internship, stroke training in Nigeria. So it actually starts with something called statsng, where you like learn, like basic skills, I like. Okay, let me just start from the very basic. So I went through all the courses and there was no C but there was C-sharp. So I thought C-sharp was close to C.

Sophie Obomighie: 19:36

So I thought learning C-sharp would help me with my EDX course so I could probably sign up for this. So at this time I was working at a transcripts processing company transcript like university transcripts. So I got the job there and so it was an on course company so it was able to like allow me to do some kind of internship there. So I mean it wasn't very technical per se, but it was a lot of administrative duties Like I had to call universities. I mean there's a lot of things happening and it was exciting. But that wasn't what I planned to do for long. So that's why I decided to focus on both my EDX and my C-sharp course. So I signed the C-sharp course and decided from the very beginning I tried to follow along. I asked a lot of questions. I think that's another thing that brings me out to lots, because I, when I do understand, like I think I need to ask questions. So I just kept asking a lot of questions and before long day I was made the class rep because I was always in front of the teacher, like I was always asking him a lot of questions, trying to understand the material, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I eventually finished with the start of NG and then realized it was very different from EDX. So I just thought, okay, maybe because I also need to work. The CS15 is good, but I don't know if I'll get enough skills to get a job now. So I just needed to get a job in programming. So I decided to continue with the hotels or NG internship, which is more intense and requires you and would help you to grow in particular fields. So you build stuff. So I would build a lot of things under a lot of pressure. I remember building APIs and MVC applications and then I meet a lot of friends. So I was just building and building and I did that for almost a year. Well, no, not up to a year, actually maybe three months Then after that, because you have to go in a competition format, so stage one to stage 10. So I got to stage six, I think, and I couldn't continue because there was an assignment, what I was supposed to do, and I couldn't complete the project. I tried and tried and it didn't work out. But anyway, I left with a lot of experience and I was able to start working with the company of one of the mentors from the program. So I did some API development there and I just had left my other job because I needed to focus on this. So I did some API development and I still continue with my community thing. I was involved in the community because I had to start lettingnet I usually just get into community things so I started helping out with events, organizing events and stuff like that and eventually I I left the company.

Sophie Obomighie: 22:47

But I got the internship arts like the C-Sharp internship and started applying to other companies and I got another job. Like at this time I just needed to get a job. That was even though I was staying with my parents and so housing wasn't necessarily a problem, but I just needed to have a job. And I wanted to have a job in a field, in like a tech field. So I just kept applying and applying and trying different things. So I got this Office 365 job. I didn't understand what it was.

Sophie Obomighie: 23:20

So my career has been a lot of figuring out on the board. Yeah, like I'll just get in. In fact, I think that's how I've been learning. Like I just push myself and I just do hard things the hard way, like I don't even put the simple rounds, I just like put myself on the spot and say you know what, just do it. And if I fail, I just feel embarrassed and I just keep trying again. So I got this other job in the Microsoft Partner Company and I knew it was C-Sharp. So I just thought, okay, I could just go in so I can internship actually. So I decided to just go in and start learning again. So I started this one and then I realized it was Office 365. So, like what happens? You see, you know how Microsoft Teams? Microsoft Teams is where you have like small applets inside of it. So what we had to do was to develop the apps that you would install on Microsoft Teams.

Sophie Obomighie: 24:22

So, yeah, it was really interesting and it was easy to get started with it because there are so many like open source materials I could use and then just add extra features, like extend them. So I did that for like five months and I was just learning. I would try different things at different points. But then after some time I decided to leave that job because we have this thing in Nigeria called the youth service, call NYSE, so I need us to go for that. So you have like three months like paramilitary training, so like three weeks paramilitary training, and then you come up for like a year to do like a service in an institution or something. So I decided I didn't want to do this in this company, I'm gonna go somewhere else. So I got to apply for a university in the IT supports department. So I actually wanted to.

Sophie Obomighie: 25:24

At first my intention was to continue with development and like get proper grounding in backend, because at this time I mean I was just doing CS50, but now my attention was on doing backend and growing in dotnet. But situations changed and the only job that I could find for development I mean it wasn't in a very good, in a conducive I don't know how to put it. But anyway, it wasn't the best for me at the time. So I decided to go instead with the IT support role, and also because I felt it's also good to have that. I don't know if this is a correct thinking, but I thought it's good to have a holistic understanding of computers, to be a good developer. That was just my thinking, like, okay, I need to be a good computer person before I can be a good or at the same time be a good developer. So I took the IT job, the IT support job, and it was very exciting as well.

Sophie Obomighie: 26:28

I had to carry things. They had told me before joining are you ready to carry heavy things and monitors? But actually I didn't have to necessarily because they were all guys and they were willing to do all the heavy lifting for me, but I didn't want that. I remember one time we had to move the wires I think some Ethernet cable or so from one part of the roof to the other so that it could go into one of the classes, and of course the guys were doing it, blah, blah, blah, and then my boss had stepped out to do something. So I was able to convince the other guys to let me do it. So I climbed the ladder, I went in and I was doing it and my boss came in and I was like what are you doing? Please, please, don't do the heavy lifting. I don't want you doing that. So I mean, they were just very they're very elegant, it was a very nice place to work and they were very respectful of me as a woman, so they didn't want me to do anything to inconvenience him so much.

Sophie Obomighie: 27:36

I always pushed to just pick up things. I remember the time it took me to learn how to crimp the wires, like the Ethernet cable, like to connect the head I think it's called EG45, I don't remember but the head of the cable like you connect to your PC, I'm connecting to the wire. So it took me almost six months to successfully do that and I was always wasting it. But they let me play around with things.

Sophie Obomighie: 28:09

I was the only lady, but I didn't feel any form of discrimination or anything. In fact they encouraged me to do things, but they didn't want. You know, it's just like this chevalry, like you know how, like, like guys just want to like make sure that the woman is not inconvenienced. So that's just what was happening and it was lovely to be in that space, but I was always pushing because I felt if I don't push I probably wouldn't learn. So I was always pushing back. So it was a very lovely place to work and I learned so much professionally, like, and technically and humanly in different ways. So I did that for, yeah, sorry.

Tim Bourguignon: 28:49

If I may, you said at the beginning that you thought back then that having a holistic understanding of the computer world would help you afterwards With what you learned. Do you still stick by this?

Sophie Obomighie: 29:07

Well, yes, I still do, but even though I don't think it's the same way as I thought, because now I think what I gained from that experience was not being afraid of, like, opening up computers. But practically I don't think there's a correlation. So I think the reason why I still stick by it is because I think it's helping me to not be afraid of like challenges, like because the whole thing, if you open up your computer, my share was always I wouldn't be able to close it back or I would spoil something, something would go bad. So I would say it's good generally, but I don't think it's a necessity. It's not a necessity to me to have like hardware skills at all, but I guess it was just good for me because I like those kinds of things.

Tim Bourguignon: 30:04

Okay, that makes sense. Makes sense. I really like going deeper as well, and there's some kind of intimidation of going deeper, not just necessarily on the hardware, but manipulating network security and network parameters. You never know if you're going to put it back together afterwards and you're going to shut off your machine from the network and you won't really know what happened. And so going deeper sometimes is really jumping over your own shadow and trying to take up the challenge.

Sophie Obomighie: 30:35

So I guess, there is some value to it. Yes, I think I also, cause I feel like it's good Because, since I didn't have a computer science background, you know how having a computer science background exposes you to the different fields. So I felt I needed to like expose myself to these different fields and eventually just have one place. And then also, I think it helps me to have like many like discussions that I would otherwise would not have been able to talk about things that I probably won't have been able to if I didn't like practically do them.

Tim Bourguignon: 31:09

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely Sorry, I cut you. You wanted to move along.

Sophie Obomighie: 31:14

Yes, so so. But while I was doing this NYSE service, I also like try to continue like staying in touch with C-Sharp. So I applied for this hotelsng internship again. Well, I didn't finish again because it's very competitive, but anyway I didn't get to stage 10. I also applied for Outreachy. That was like because my habit of always like pushing myself and doing the inconvenience things and hard things, so I applied for Outreachy even though I didn't know so much about open source Like I, even though I had, like I had a GitHub account and I used to like try to contribute to stuff, but I didn't really know how to contribute open source project. But I thought it was an exciting thing to try out also. So I did apply to Outreachy and I'm even trying to rewrite an article about my experience. Maybe I would share it with you.

Sophie Obomighie: 32:11

I'm trying to like yeah, put it together and I just realized it was in my draft for like, but past two years or so. So anyway, I did and I got into the contribution stage and, my gosh, I loved it. I learned things I didn't know existed, like I remember I contributed to two projects Genome and Ceph. I didn't even know what Ceph was, but my colleagues who have been like IT administrators for a long like were so excited hearing me talk about Ceph because I think they had used it. So I think Ceph is it's like a product that helps with you know how you would have, how distributed yes, you know how you have like distributed storage. So I think it's something around distributed storage. I don't remember the details anymore, but anyway they were very happy. So something about when you have, when one of the storage is down, you can always have access to your data and the other storage. I hope I'm not making it up, but anyway. So I decided to contribute to Ceph precisely because I didn't know what it was and because, on when I was going through the different projects, ceph was one project that didn't have so many people are planning for it, because it was obviously difficult, like many of the other projects were like simple things to start up with, like writing I mean so like those things are like don't have their technicalities. I think they have their technicalities, but I think it's easier to like get started with those kinds of things. But like to get started with something like a lot of heavy lifting, infrastructure and stuff is difficult. So but I was able to to do a lot with Ceph with because I had Microsoft subscriptions that I could play around with because I had written the Microsoft 365 exam, so I had some subscription I could use to spin off virtual machines, because my laptop wasn't very strong so I had to use virtual machines to work on the project. So I had to learn go lang and a lot of like systems and things and I had to use like AWS S3 buckets and stuff like that.

Sophie Obomighie: 34:32

So, but at the end of the project, I think the reason why I didn't get in was because at least the feedback I got from the Ceph mentor he was really helpful. Like I was going through my discussion, my like Gmail thread, with him and I saw like I sent him like almost 100 emails and he was always responding, always like I would have this issue, I would email him, I would have this other issue. He would email him and he would respond, and at the point he was even on his vacation and I thought so bad, like I mean, if I don't ask him, I don't know who to ask. But many of also the many of the past Auschwitz interns from Nigeria helped me as well, like I just reached out to so many of them. So so, anyway, the main thing was I needed to like clean up my code, like I needed to like you know how you'd have this thing, comments and stuff like that, so I needed to like clean them up. So that was like the major feedback.

Sophie Obomighie: 35:29

So, yeah, I think I think that was that for for my internship. So, after, after the service, I applied for jobs, like net jobs. I didn't get any because I was still junior, yeah. But eventually I got this company that said, oh, you can come in, but we don't take like junior people. But you could come in as a QA person, okay, I don't know what QA is, but no problem.

Sophie Obomighie: 35:58

One more challenge. Yes, one more challenge. So I got in and I started learning. I found it really annoying at first because I felt like I was just clicking buttons and blah, blah, blah. But I read this book by Glenn's Myers, the art of software testing. Well, I don't understand so much, but I just kept on looking for materials and studying, and studying. And I did this course, the RST rapid software testing course and I think that was really what opened up my eyes and because at first I was thinking you know what, after the six months probation, I'm going to move back to development, because it gave me that option of moving back to development, when I did that course I felt okay, I think I could actually stay in QA, at least for now. So that's how I ended up where I am now.

Tim Bourguignon: 36:43

Wow, and so not annoying anymore. Sorry, I can get you, so the software testing is not annoying anymore.

Sophie Obomighie: 36:52

Oh no, no, it's not annoying anymore. Exciting, very exciting.

Tim Bourguignon: 36:57

Wow, that's cool. That's really cool At the beginning. So you talked about the human anatomy a little bit and in the bio I read of you, you said you secretly plan to come back to biomedical engineering. Is this true, and do you have a plan already for that?

Sophie Obomighie: 37:14

Yes, yes, it is. So after school my plan was to focus on a tech skill that I could transfer to biomedical engineering. So I've been doing that for some years now. I think I still have a long way to go, but I plan to do some computer engineering postgraduate diploma. I guess that's like good stats. So that's like my first step to this biomedical engineering. And I mean the key thing is since applicable or applicable to biomedical engineering. So anyway, I'm just going with the like as life goes on. I just follow what happens, because sometimes it may be something else that will influence my decision on a tertiary professional, maybe like some situations or stuff like that. So I'm really just open and I'm going to get my degree soon. I have plans for that, but for now I'm just trying to grow, do my job.

Tim Bourguignon: 38:15

And this is awesome in itself. This is usually a place where I ask for an advice, and one thing struck me while you were talking is how deliberate you were about everything. I mean you. By the time you decided, okay, let's go out of human anatomy, let's embrace the stack stuff, I had a feeling you really deliberately made one step after the other, saying, hey, I need to try this out and I need to understand this thing and I need to go this direction. And, okay, there was a lot of challenges. But how did you or maybe did you? Did you feel it this way? Or do you feel it this way after the fact? And if so, how would you encourage people to be deliberate in what they do?

Sophie Obomighie: 39:01

Well, I don't think I'll call myself that, but I'll say that not holding onto plans is one thing, because you may not know that, you don't know how the future would be. So I, for example, going into my IT support role, for example, I didn't know I would ever do that. I always found it fascinating opening computers and all, but I never knew I would do that. So I just the situation I was at at the moment and then I thought, you know, I could just do this. So I think what I would say is, first of all, be open to life, like not holding onto your own personal plans, because otherwise you would just be angry, angry with everybody, angry, and upset that life isn't going out as I plan, but I think, just like following, like just adapting your plans to your own situation and how things are for you. So, yeah, that's what I would say. It's really just to be open.

Sophie Obomighie: 40:10

And another thing also was I try I'm trying not to I still am trying not to make like my profession, my identity, like having a life outside of, like programming. I think it helps a lot so that I don't like get attached to to my, my plans. It helps not getting attached to plans, because if, for example, I need to change jobs cause of maybe family or something like that, yeah, so I think so, first thing is like being adapting your own plans to like your life situations and like not making your work your own personal identity, but like, at the same time, trying to do the work well, like trying to be a good developer or a good tester yeah, but it's just being open really, yeah.

Tim Bourguignon: 41:01

And thank you for that. That's really wise. That's really wise. And then not making work your identity, that is that has deep ramifications in how we approach life and how we approach our works and how we we approach the challenges that we have every day, both on the personal level and on the professional level. This is something to ponder. Thank you for that.

Sophie Obomighie: 41:19

Thank you.

Tim Bourguignon: 41:21

So, sophie, where would be the best place to continue this discussion with you?

Sophie Obomighie: 41:26

So I think that would be Twitter. I'm on Twitter at Google media, sophie. That's O-B-O-M-I-G-H-I-E, and then, sophie, or you could just send me an email. Maybe I'll send you the email that I could use, because sometimes I'm not on Twitter. So Twitter and email are like the best two channels to reach me out. Absolutely, and we'll add both to the show notes and the thing is, I also have a blog that I'm trying to build up. Sure, yeah, I guess I'll send the link to.

Tim Bourguignon: 42:03

Yes, and we'll add it to the show notes as well, so you don't have to search for it, just scroll down and click on it. Anything else you want to plug in?

Sophie Obomighie: 42:13

Well, nothing else, Just. I mean just the listeners to be happy and, yeah, to just keep doing great things. Amen to that, sophie.

Tim Bourguignon: 42:23

thank you so so much. Thank you to Tim.

Tim Bourguignon: 42:28

And this has been another episode of Delver's Journey and we'll see each other next week. Bye, bye. Thanks a lot for tuning in. I hope you have enjoyed this week's episode. If you like the show, please share, rate and review. It helps more listeners discover those stories. You can find the links to all the platforms the show appears on on our website devjourneyinfo slash subscribe. Creating the show every week takes a lot of time, energy and, of course, money. Will you please help me continue bringing out those inspiring stories every week by pledging a small monthly donation. You'll find our Patreon link at devjourneyinfo slash donate. And finally, don't hesitate to reach out and tell me how this week's story is shaping your future. You can find me on Twitter and at Timothab T-I-M-O-T-H-E-P, or per email info at devjourneyinfo. Talk to you soon.