Hi, I'm Olatokunbo Ogunlade, better known as The Coding Mum.
My tech career didn't start in an office. It started at home, as a stay-at-home mum teaching myself Python through online courses and YouTube. After about nine months, my portfolio was a calculator, a shopping cart, and a few other small apps.
Then I saw a post on Twitter: someone was looking for a female senior software developer.
I wasn't senior. I had no professional experience at all. By the usual rules, I should have scrolled past. Instead, I replied. I was honest about what I wasn't, and I offered proof of what I could do.
A recruiter saw my reply and invited me to interview. Because I'd built every one of those simple projects myself, I could explain every decision I'd made. I got the internship.
- Stay-at-home mumTeaching myself Python, online and on YouTube
- Replied to a tweetHonest about what I wasn't. Proof of what I could do.
- Internship
- Frontend engineer
- DevOps
- Senior Site Reliability EngineerAt a remote-first company, working from Lagos
From there, I moved into a frontend engineering role, then into DevOps, and on to international remote roles. Today I'm a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a remote-first company, working from Lagos.
But here's the part most success stories leave out.
For a long time, my job searches were a mess. I sent the same CV to almost every job that looked remotely relevant. I didn't research companies. I didn't tailor anything. And I heard very little back. Things only changed when I got intentional about how I searched, applied and prepared.
This workbook is everything I wish someone had handed me before those long stretches of silence.