What my Stackoverflow dependency did to my career

Here’s the origin story for my middling OnlyCodeFans account. I am not affiliated with Stackoverflow (SO). Apart from having an account on the site, of course.

First, here’s my profile. Don’t muck about too long in there, it’s not remarkable - I’m no Jon Skeet. Now, Storytime.

I arrived in these United States from Nigeria in May, the year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Twelve. I had $10, a dream and a sandwich. Also about $8k in cash (because immigrant); but I had $10 too in one pocket. I may or may not have had a sandwich — it was over 9 years ago.

Ya boy had been interviewing since before leaving the homeland, and I all but had a job lined up on arrival. I arrived terminally wide-eyed and bushy tailed

I was going to make a difference here. I was going to be issued a personal bald eagle and a pickup truck on arrival at the airport. Maybe some flag-themed clothing if I could muster a decent American accent. If you’ve watched any of my material, you’d know how far I got with that last part.

The recruiter that had been wooing me all the way from Nigeria treated me to my first encounter with a churrascaria in NYC. She was effusive about my “rockstar” resume. She bought lunch, drinks, all smiles and things. Nigeria is not the place where employers treat you with anything but weapons-grade disdain. This treatment right here, was bloody brilliant. We talked shop and she threw some numbers out (I totally bollocked the negotiation here btw, I blinked first). We settled on $95k. I was to show up a couple of days later to sign an offer letter in person. Holy smokes, I was going to lock-in a job less than 2 weeks into my arrival here.

I showed up to the recruiting agency’s Manhattan office and met the founder. Small, cramped affair, but no biggie. Sat down to sign the papers and saw the offer for $80k.

I asked for clarification a.k.a “wtf, you guys?”

“Are you sure we said $95k? Hmm…that must have been an oversight, come back in 2 days and we’ll fix this”. I returned, signed the offer for the previously agreed upon amount. Two days after signing that offer, I got another offer (actually one of several within a span of like 3 weeks of my arrival). $110k. Ho. ly. Schittballs. I signed that one right quick and told the first guys I’m spoken for. And then I lived happily ever after.

Coming to America

Lmao no. The first agency offers to sue me (over the phone and in writing) for declining their offer after accepting. I was to proceed with their offer “or their lawyers will get involved”. I was petrified. I’ve been in this country all of 3–4 goddamn weeks and now I’m about to get sued? I told my other suitors and they laughed, said it was all bullshit and the aggressor was just trying it on. They said something about “At Will” employment, but I wasn’t totally buying it (see above: fresh off the boat). What followed was weeks of being yanked around by different employers, being harassed and coerced into a job. It was bloody harrowing, but goddamn I Americanized quick.

I eventually found love, in an offer from a big, sexy employer, perfectly aligned with my background in large-scale fintech. Pretty much the perfect job. It was a grueling interviewing experience, complete with a psych evaluation. I had 2 other offers on hand, but this one was the one I wanted to have babies with.

Monday, I get the call from their recruiter “They absolutely love you, and they’re preparing your offer”. Oh sweet!

“But I have two other offers that I’ll need to respon-”

“Dump them, Tayo. This is where you belong, and you know it. Your offer letter is being typed up, should get it by tomorrow”.

I declined the other competing offers first thing the following morning (see above: immigrant dumbass).

Monday came and went.

Then Tuesday.

Wednesday did its thing, no offer letter.

Thursday, I was sauntering across Wall Street to a Banana Republic, to load up on fresh dress shirts for my baller new job. I got the call.

“Ah…I’d recommend you go on with those other offers. Seems like the funding for your position won’t be approved”.

Oh. Welp, I’d best go return these shirts to BR then.

So, there I was, dazed and confused on Wall St. Threw away two birds in hand, for one in the bush. It was the first time I’d been functionally unemployed since I was a teenager. It suuuucked. That was the first day I started a habit I have till today: I take selfies of myself when I’m having a rough time. They’re my little mementos that I look back on from time to time, especially when I’m having a really good time. Helps me really savor the good times, seeing how far I could potentially fall in a heartbeat.

OnlyCodeFans To The Rescue

I felt pretty bad for a couple of days after. Actually, I was massively depressed, and questioned my competence. A string of bad interviews later, I really needed a pick-me-up.

Now, prior to arriving in the US, I’d only ever been a consumer of Stackoverflow. I honestly didn’t consider contributing — hell, I wasn’t even aware it was an option. But here I was in the pits, unemployed for nearly a solid month. I needed to feel like I wasn’t as bad as my latest interviews would imply. Here was this site that would reward you with upvotes and points, validate your expertise somewhat. Huh. Sure, why the hell not.

My first answer got downvoted. Rightfully so — it wasn’t a great answer. I barely read and comprehended the question, I just went to typing an answer.

The second did much better. Didn’t get downvoted, didn’t get upvoted. Progress.

Then I got my first legit upvote. It…still wasn’t a great answer, at least by Stackoverflow standards. But man, it felt good. Some randos agreed with me, and it meant I maybe knew what I was talking about. The dopamine hit felt like nothing I’d ever felt till then. That little green notification icon, “+10”, whooo boy, it felt like a warm hug, wrapped in a kiss, smothered in choco. And thus began my march upward.

The Coders’ Delight

It became an addiction. No, that’s not an exaggeration — it was a serious preoccupation for me, mentally. I absolutely lived for those little green notifications. The green checkmarks. Bounties. I would spend literal hours researching APIs and libraries I had zero experience in. I got very very intimate with many J2EE (yeah, yeah, I know) specifications, solely so I could answer some obscure question with a 100-point bounty attached to it. What’s weird is that I wasn’t that way with anything else. I tweeted for the first time ever like last week. I don’t have an Instagram or really any other social, save for Reddit.

I’d wake up in the morning and immediately reach for my phone, refresh it to see who’s validated me most recently? No one? No, no, no, this can’t be happening — I spent hours on this person’s answer, why wouldn’t they acknowledge me? I studied voraciously, for the sake of “fake” internet points. Stackoverflow was about my only excuse to learn anything new. Work wasn’t nearly challenging enough for me. I would be typing out lengthy answers on the bus on my way home from work (yeah I’d gotten a job pretty soon after all that rubbish from earlier). I could be snogging and I would still be refreshing my page in one hand. I tied a borderline unhealthy amount of my self-worth to my internet points. Sure I was learning like crazy, but a day without upvotes was basically a wasted day.

The Payoff

It became competitive for me after I crossed 5k points. There’s a leaderboard that I would use to track my rank. At this point, the points weren’t really worth anything. I was content to just “git gud”.

By the time I decided to make the run for 10k, I had relearnt how to learn. I understood how to research questions/issues and provide methodical enough answers. I wrote a bunch of answers based solely on what I understood from specifications and official manuals. When work was slow, I’d turn to SO for “entertainment”. I’d built muscles that I still use today for problem solving. For many technologies, I learnt them in reverse: by trying to fix other people’s broken code and projects, instead of building an example from scratch. Shoot, I’d estimate I had real world experience in only about (at the time) 50% of the technologies I provided answers to. I did it for the love of the game.

Then OnlyCodeFans started listing jerbs. Awww yisss! I could cash out my chips from the casino! But first, I’d need to cross 10k pts, to really show them all! Nevermind that there were folks with tens, hundreds of thousands of points. I was going to break 10k points, and then start twerkin’ for employers. I would need to grind.

And grind, I did. My employer at the time was beginning to piss me off anyway, so why the hell not. I would go on to get my next 5 gigs from SO. Tens, may be hundreds of employers would approach me, solely on the strength of my modest profile. A combination of part-time and full-time gigs that have played huge parts in building my current portfolio of professional capital. Your mileage may vary. SO’s changed since I came up.

Epilogue

I can directly credit my activities on Stackoverflow for the direction my career has taken. I’m an absolute nut for Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) now. My “super power” manifests only when an application starts coughing up blood. I’m a published book author, Linkedin instructor and I started LettuceWork, among other things. I can directly link all of these to the muscle I developed providing free helpdesk support to strangers for “fake” internet points.

FWIW, Stackoverflow doesn’t do it for me anymore. I no longer get the buzz from answering questions. Something’s…different now. Could be with them, could be with me. Maybe the questions aren’t fun anymore. Maybe I’ve run out of imagination.

Or I’ve ODed on Stackoverflow.