Happy new year, people 🥳🥳🥳.

Welcome to 2022, and welcome back to Notnull Blog.

In one of my blog posts from last year, I shared my one-month experience as a Frontend Engineering Intern at Evolve Credit, and now I’m thrilled to announce to you I have moved on to become a full-time Junior front-end Engineer. I will share some experiences of the journey to my one year at Evolve Credit. In my previous blog post, I shared my story as a girl who did not have access to many opportunities in tech growing up because of the gender gap in the technology world and parents who wanted a risk-free life for their daughter. You can read about it here. I joined Evolve Credit as an intern, and it has been a fantastic ride. I have grown as a developer and as a person, which was my goal for 2021 during our All-Staff retreat (yes, we get to set individual goals for the year).

You might be wondering, Evolve Credit? 🤔 What do they do🤷? I know many of you (might) have not heard of Evolve Credit, so I would be sharing a little bit on Evolve Credit and what we do there. Evolve Credit is a financial technology (Fintech) company that specializes in providing credit infrastructures - in the form of software - to lenders in Africa. It was founded in 2019 and has been active ever since then with one primary goal in mind “To power thousands of new loan providers over the next five years and make billions of dollars in credit available to millions of people and SMEs.” In summary, significant work is being done to make lending easy for any potential lender and make credit available to individuals and businesses.

I joined Evolve Credit in 2020, and it has been amazing being a part of the team. I was initiated into the “hard” work done on the team, which has shaped a lot of my decisions. I became more intentional about my growth, left my comfort zone, and moved into my growth zone. My team is constantly challenging and encouraging me to do better, and Daniel Osineye (the CTO) has a favourite quote that says: “any task you have been given, you are the best person to do the work”. This quote has made me see every task I am assigned as a challenge to improve my work, and it has resulted in me being more productive and achieving than I have been in previous years. It’s been light bulb moments for me all the way.

On my typical day as an intern at Evolve Credit, I worked on a new feature, fixed bugs, or learned a new concept. Typically, we start the day with a general all-staff meeting, an engineering team meeting or progress/update check-in. I particularly love our all-staff meeting because apart from having everyone on the call, which happens once or twice a week, there is a work progress check, mood checks, snaps (for small wins) and a check for how your weekend went. It has always made me feel like I am part of a family. During engineering meetings, each of us talks about our updates on tasks and what we should work on next. There are days when work is light, and there are intense days, but I am having fun all the way.

Another great benefit I enjoy at Evolve Credit is the support system; it is incredible!!! Everyone supports each other in ways they can - from providing a laptop if you don’t have one, to being celebrated on your birthday, the regular snaps for when you do your work well, etc. A good example is how my team lead always appreciates me for a job well done, and this love goes around the team. All these constantly make me want to do better at my work. I can confidently say that I have successfully transitioned from an Intern to a Junior Front-End Developer because of this support system. Yes! I have been promoted. 🥳🥳🥳

It has been a bumpy but sweet ride getting to this point in my life and Evolve Credit has been a big part of it. I look forward to sharing more stories with you about my journey at Evolve Credit, lessons learnt, and steps to becoming the better developer or person you want to be.

Till next time, don’t forget to react to my post❤, add comments✍, and subscribe to my newsletter🏤.

See you in the next NOTNULL Blog post🤗.