As the year 2024 draws to a close, I find myself reflecting on how it all began with excitement, hope, and a dash of uncertainty. It’s incredible how much can change in just 12 months.
This article is a look back at a pivotal chapter of my life: how I landed the opportunity to work at Hashnode as a Customer Success Engineer (CSE), the wins I celebrated, the challenges I faced, and the lessons I’m carrying forward into the new year.
Working at Hashnode has been nothing short of transformative, opening doors I never imagined and pushing me to grow in ways I didn’t expect. Join me as I share my journey, the highs and lows, and how this incredible experience has shaped my year.
Getting the Call - (Before Hashnode)
On a faithful day, I was at a church program when I got the call from (Ayodele Samuel Adebayo , aka Unclebigbay) asking if I would like to work at Hashnode as a Customer Success Engineer.
Although I did not know much about the role at the time, I quickly jumped at the opportunity once he explained some of the responsibilities. I said yes, and that was it.
On November 30th, 2023, I received a follow-up email from Samuel officially introducing me to Sandeep (Officially because I had interacted with Sandeep casually before). That’s how the journey began!
Sandeep and I arranged a meeting, during which I learned what was expected of me, what I needed to know, and that I would be on trial for a week to determine whether I would be a valuable member of the team.
During the interview, I remember Sandeep mentioning that one of the core values the team was looking for is someone with a CEO mindset, someone who is proactive, takes action without being prompted, and has a sense of urgency. So, have I been able to meet these expectations? Well, you'll have to read further to find out 😉
After the interview, I started working on Dec 1st, 2023, but on trial to see if I was fit for the role and the team; oh boy, did I put in my best efforts doing the trial. I was given access to Discord, and other tools needed to work.
Before the first week ended, I received a message from Sandeep saying my “work trial“ was a success, and that’s how I started 🙏.
Early Days at Hashnode
The early days at Hashnode were full of learning. I needed to understand our team's vision, the products (Docs by Hashnode was being developed when I joined), and all the features. I also had to learn the best ways to communicate with our users about the various issues they encountered.
To give you an idea of what the role of a Customer Success Engineer (CSE) at Hashnode entails, here’s my scope of work:
Customer Interaction: Handle customer queries, provide technical assistance, and ensure customer satisfaction.
Product Knowledge: Maintain in-depth knowledge of Hashnode's features, capabilities, and updates.
Feedback Loop: Collect and relay customer feedback to the product and development teams for continuous improvement.
Training and Education: Educate customers on product features, usage, and best practices.
Problem Solving: Address and resolve technical issues faced by customers.
Community Engagement: Actively participate in community discussions, providing insights and technical support.
In short, my responsibilities as a CSE are to ensure our customers are satisfied with our products. This involves addressing customer queries, providing technical assistance, creating product documentation, and educating users. I also serve as a bridge between customers and the engineering team by relaying valuable feedback to help improve the product.
On the job, I got help from the team, helping the transition to the role, and looking back, I really disturbed my manager - Sandeep, with a lot of questions 😅
Over time, I became familiar with our customers' frequently asked questions, which helped me communicate and address their needs more effectively. For issues that required our engineers, I learned to ask the right questions to better convey them to the engineering team. I also became more mindful of how I respond to customers and handle the interesting issues they bring.
Highlights & Events & Outside Work
I promised myself that this year, I would make it a duty to try new things, go to more events than I had in previous years, network with like-minded people, and be exposed to other possibilities. I’d say I accomplished that.
Sailconf Africa
Sailconf Africa was the first event I attended this year, on May 17th, 2024. It was organized by Kelvin Omereshone, (the number 1 indie hacker I know) and targeted at mid-level and senior web developers in Africa.
Though my role is in CSE, I saw it as a means to see some big guys we have in tech Nigeria and a means to travel to a new location for the first time - Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. Thanks once again to my boss for allowing me to go to this event, and of course, I talked about Hashnode while I was there 😉.
During the conference, I emerged as the winner of the squiddy game challenge, with the prize of 1 Million naira, by God’s grace. This was my first time winning that kind of money, so it was a big deal to me; you could see the excitement in my smile 😊.
I got to meet the one and only David Herbert for the first time, Kelvin Omereshone, Olabode Lawal, Tobiloba, and other senior tech bro in the industry. It was really a memorable conference.
Speaking Engagements
This year, I was privileged to have three speaking engagements, during which I shared the little I think I know with a global audience. The very first engagement was with the Faraday Africa community, where I was invited to speak to new developers in their community on Web accessibility and SEO.
Build 2.0: Web Accessibility and SEO
Feel free to watch the session below
My next speaking engagement was at TIL Conf 2024, where I discussed The Benefits of using Hashnode Headless CMS for Your Blog. It was a big conference with many great speakers, so I felt really nervous about giving my talk 😅.
Also, this was my first time giving a talk about Hashnode, and I knew there would be a lot of people watching. To make matters worse, my time allocated for the talk clashed with the day I went to Sailconf Africa, so I had to reschedule the talk for the next day because my flight was delayed.
From the nervous feeling I had and not being able to get my laptop webcam working and then lending David Herbert a MacBook for the talk, I’d say I wasn’t as expressive with the talk as I previously planned. Well, I think it was okayish 😅
You can find the session here.
GraphQL 101: Learn to Build with GraphQL APIs
My last speaking engagement was the Hashnode Webinar hosted by. I was brought on board to share the most basic approach to using GraphQL APIs based on the Hashnode GraphQL API.
I believe I did well in this talk, and I’m proud of the session. What do you think? Do watch it and let me know.
The day I turned 22
Hashnode, Fazle, Sandeep, and the team made the day I turned 22 a very memorable day for myself and my family, and for that, I’m really grateful ❤️.
I was sent a huge cake, which made the day extra special. We just had to celebrate in our little way by getting drinks and taking pictures 😊
My mom told me to change my outfit twice for pictures 😅
Books Read
Oh, I'm glad to say I read books this year. I joined a book club started by my friend Jesugbogo Enis. It began as a "Read Two Books in April Challenge" but has now turned into a book club. My goal was to read 10 books before the year goes, but I ended up reading 6. Here are the books I’ve read with the help of the club.
The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
This was the first book we read, starting with the April challenge. In summary, I learned to think differently about money, how your environment can influence how you handle money, how saving and investing play a huge role in compounding wealth, the difference between getting wealthy and staying wealthy, and the importance of patience, humility, and long-term thinking.
It was really a good book, I recommend.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Mansion
This book highlights how much better we’d feel, improve, and succeed in areas of our life if we don’t pay attention to things we shouldn’t pay attention to, things that aren’t important. There were other insightful and interesting points highlighted by Mark, and I’d say it was a good read.
If you’re not comfortable with the F word, then I wouldn’t recommend, cause it was used a lot 😑
Unleash: The Blueprint for a Life that Attracts Uncommon Opportunities by Topsy Kola-Oyeneyin
The book Unleash was centered around youths (young ones) like myself, saying we aren’t too young to unleash our potential inert in us. There were a total of 12 dimensions mentioned in the book, around “How we are to operate”, “how to relate,” and “how to work, “ laying the blueprints we are following, unleashing uncommon opportunities.
This is my favourite book of the year, highly recommend for everyone, young and old.
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
Atomic Habits, a book I’ve had since last year but never read completely until the book challenge in July, 2024 😅. The book focuses on laws, principles, and guidelines one can take to either break old habits or form a new habit. How tiny changes daily or frequently can compound to an unimaginable difference.
I do feel I need to re-read this book to digest the principles in the book, it’s really a good book for everyone to read, highly recommend.
Finish What You Start by Peter Hollins
Favourite, finish what you start….👀
That’s what I got out of the book. It spoke to me, saying I should finish what I had started and describing different techniques I can apply, like temptation bundling — a process of combining an undesirable task with a required task for instantaneous reward.
Honestly, I still struggle finishing what I start, for example the article took forever to be completed - if I wrote everyday I should have been done with it, but then…
If you see this article, and get to this point of the article, make sure to comment, congrats on finishing the article 😂
Well this is a good book to read, similar in some ways like Atomic Habits
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Oh, what a great book this was. The book went on into the psychology of human interactions, where Part 1 mentioned the “Fundamental techniques in handling people”, Part 2: “Six ways to make people like you”, Part 3: “How to win people to your way of thinking” and Part 4: “Be a leader: How to change people without giving offense or arousing resentment.” Some of the principles from the book I keyed into are: Part 1 - Principle 2: Give honest and sincere appreciation; Part 3 - Principle 6: Let the other person do a great deal of the talking, Part 4 - Principle 7: Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to, e.t.c
The book is fill with gems for winning friends and dealing with people generally, a great book I must add and I highly recommend.
In the spirit of reading, I bought myself a new collection of books, and I’m looking forward to reading them next year.
If you have books you recommend, do let me know 😉
The books to the left and the new one’s I got.
Other Events and Highlights
Here are some of the other events I was privileged to attend over the course of the year:
Dev work done at Hashnode
At some point, I missed coding, and I was looking for an opportunity to work on the codebase at Hashnode. Thankfully, Sandeep gave me an opportunity, and my first coding task was to develop the AI for Tomorrow hackathon page.
The hackathon page was fun to build, and there were a lot of “what I designed isn’t correctly implemented“ from Pritam Paul 😅
My major task was migrating the account settings page to the new layout you see today. Well working on this, I really went through the amazing code written by the other engineers, learning from the works and implementing. Ayodele Samuel Adebayo was my code reviewer along this journey, and it was great working with him 🤩
A work I’m proud of is building an app that allows users to migrate their blog from Ghost to Hashnode. At some point, I was getting a lot of requests regarding this same request, and unfortunately, we don’t support migrating from Ghost to Hashnode yet. While looking into the issue, I ended up building a solution, and I’m glad I got good feedback for the effort 😊.
Here’s the app, if you’d like to try it out.
A minor development work I worked on is the personalized feed widget you see on the community feed. Allowing users to personalize their feeds by following different tags.
Trip to India - Hashnode Workcation
The trip to India was my first international journey, and I must say, it was an incredible experience going abroad for the first time. Traveling on three planes from Nigeria to Bengaluru, India, was surreal; after thinking how it was going to be for too long, I’m glad everything worked out. Also, shout out to Kaijego for helping me with the Visa process and for tips I needed to know before traveling.
The Hashnode Workcation at Bengaluru (or Bangalore) was for a week, planned to bring the entire team together, to work together as a team in a physical location and to discuss our future plans for the company growth and, most importantly unwind which we did all.
I got to try out different Indian foods, like dosa and tea. Some foods were PRETTY GOOD, and others spicy, but I ended up liking Dosa.
While working, Haimantika Mitra and I, worked towards launching docs.hashnode.com - Hashnode new documentation. It was launched the following week after the workcation.
Do check the docs and let us know your feedback, it was great working on it and I’d love feedbacks from you all - docs.hashnode.com
We celebrated Lakshya Thakur for his 3rd year anniversary at Hashnode and also Jannik Wempe’s birthday 🥳
On our last day in Bangalore, I knew I had a lot of fun 😅. We explored a park, went jogging, had our last dinner together as a team, and played different games—go-karting, Laser tag, and Bowling.
Overall, the trip to India was a beautiful experience. I got to interact with everyone on the team present, and we had personal discussions—not just work-related ones. I also got to know everyone a little better.
Reflection
From joining Hashnode in 2020, trying new things, like technical writing and building connections, to now working for a global company. It’s been a journey, and I’m grateful to God for the privilege and opportunities.
Also, to the Hashnode team, my managers, Sandeep and Fazle, and my colleagues thank you for making the year extra special. I’m grateful. Especially to Samuel, thank you for the call and recommendation, I’m grateful 🙏
On December 1st, I also celebrated my 1st anniversary at Hashnode 🤩
As much as I feel I unlocked some boxes this year, I know there are areas where I felt too relaxed and need to step up in the coming year. These include
writing about what I’m learning and sharing it here,
reading and actually executing the knowledge I've gained,
building more connections with people,
advocating Hashnode and our products better and louder,
broaden my horizons by exploring new things - stepping outside my comforts
getting back to creating videos on my YouTube channel,
learning more technical things so I don’t get lost and
working towards growing my faith
Conclusion
2024 was a year beyond my expectations. I achieved some personal milestones I didn’t think were possible in a few years to come, as well as in my growth and life. I can’t wait to see what 2025 brings.
Thank you for reading and being part of my 2024 journey, and I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in advance 🎊.
Cheers to 2025 🥳
