My First 6 months at AirQo as a Frontend Engineer

This post was originally published on the AirQo Engineering Blog.

Take the initiative. As you do your day-to-day work, you will think of new ways of bringing more value to the organization. I've learned that it is upon you to talk to your team lead or mentor to help you find ways of making your ideas stand out.

Internship (first 3 months)

I joined AirQo in February of this year(2022). During the first week, we had an orientation where we onboarded the different products, teams, codebases, and documentation. We learned about developing a product mindset over a project mindset as it allows teams to build strategies that they think will result in the best product for the end-users. My first task was updating the Platform codebase READMe, which was outdated and not very helpful for new team members.

The engineering blog

During the internship, our team lead introduced the Bus Factor Initiative to increase knowledge sharing around the AirQo products. I joined several teams, including the engineering blog writing works, an initiative I started! The engineering blog is a great way to document and share knowledge on the technologies and strategies used to implement and maintain various products. At the time of publishing this piece, we have more than 10 published blogs!

Graduate trainee(next 3 months)

In this period, I was "thrown into the deep end" with more responsibilities and expectations. Learning on the go was pretty much what I did, and this being part of our work culture, I had the support of my team members every step of the way. I mainly contributed to the website redesign and implementation. We had design workshops that I particularly enjoyed as I got to meet and brainstorm ideas with the other team members physically since work is remote. Even though my role was implementing frontend-related tasks, we were encouraged to stretch beyond our comfort zones and contribute to the website backend development. We had a series of backend workshops led by a team member who taught us how to create and work on projects in Django. In addition to the website redesign, I also got to implement UX/UI fixes on the Platform and even develop some new features.

Design workshop with the team (Belinda, Raja, Deo, Faith, Mike, Paul)

Key takeaways from my first 6 months at AirQo

• You can't know it all. It is common for a developer to get lost in the fear of not having all the skills needed for their job. Luckily at AirQo, there's a conscious effort to encourage learning on the job and even opportunities to develop your nontechnical skills like public speaking, leadership, writing, and so forth. I was privileged to be a panelist in a youth discussion on inequities in air pollution in this year's Air Quality Awareness Week Campaign. It was a challenging - and exciting learning experience for me.
• Take the initiative. As you do your day-to-day work, you will think of new ways of bringing more value to the organization. I've learned that it is upon you to talk to your team lead or mentor to help you find ways of making your ideas stand out.
• Enjoy the process. I have enjoyed working with the other team members as we actualize the AirQo vision - Clean Air in all African Cities. There will always be setbacks and new challenges along the way. What matters is that you are quick to reflect, ask for help and learn from your mistakes(and betters).