Global Opportunities with EdTech By – Hope Oluwalolope, Software Engineer, Microsoft Canada.

What’s in a name? Is a common phrase in popular parlance, for Hope Oluwalolope, the answer to that is her life’s purpose. As is her name hope, she is making it her life’s work to inspire hope in others in whatever endeavor she finds herself. Right now, she is working as a Software Engineer with a specialty in cloud computing at Microsoft Canada. Not only are her achievements inspiring, but her journey to this point also sparks bouts of hope and optimism. Oluwalolope finished secondary school and found it difficult to secure admission into a tertiary institution after two failed attempts at her entrance exams. Her status as a high flyer at the secondary school level made the ordeal even more depressing for her. Based on her interest in computer science, she resorted to basic computer training in those two years before finally gaining admission to the University of Lagos to study Computer Science for 5 years, graduating in 2019. As she says. The situation was painful at the moment but gainful hereafter as those circumstances were perfectly orchestrated to position her for where she is today.  

Oluwalolope doesn’t always have a plan, she just takes the next right step, but she’s sure that whether it’s five minutes from now or five years from now, she wants to be in a space where she has tales of sweet victories and conquests that’ll energize whoever hears them keep going until they too are empowered enough to inspire others.

She credits internships she got while studying as giving her exposure that subsequently created a major boost in her career. Those internships for her served as a professional gateway to finding jobs and personal eye-openers to what tickled her talents and what ticked her off. For example, she came to find out while on her internship at Goldman Sachs that while an overall good experience, she didn’t find front-end design exciting or challenging and became more interested in the logic and functionality of the back-end. She was able to deduce that she likes to take on challenging tasks and devote her time to them like the rush of surmounting them gives her a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. “I’m willing to sacrifice, to go through the process to get it done because whenever I get something awesome done, I feel so happy and fulfilled than when I do something usual or ”normal”. I always want to do the “hard part”.”

“I don’t know about tomorrow so I worry about today but God had a better plan” 

Oluwalolope believes that as the years go by, exposure and access to global opportunities increases for students and young learners in Nigeria as chasms that existed in the mind of people between them and fine opportunities are thinning thanks to mentors who are leading the way to show that nothing is impossible. These opportunities are not however devoid of due processes and careful procedures like portfolios and experience for example.

Hope Oluwalope is heavily motivated by wanting to be in a position to help other people. Her desire to share her inspiring story drives and fuels her every move. 

She has needed this fuel for everyday challenges like a “code not working because of a comma you didn’t put or a logic you didn’t know about”, for slightly complex challenges like joining a new team and moving out of her comfort zone or for bigger challenges like learning a new programming language in a month while preparing for an international interview. “I had always been using C++ for my interviews, and while I was applying – I applied to several companies, but I had three prominent interviews that were so important, I had the technical interviews and I did those interviews in C++ but unfortunately I didn’t move on to the next stage and I felt really bad, in fact, I felt frustrated, I was done. I was like, no, I’m not applying to these companies anymore. I’ll be fine. I’ll find a job somewhere else. And then I had Microsoft’s on-site interview, and they sent an invitation. And I was like, I’m not doing this, I am definitely going to fail it. I just gave up before even going in for the interview. But miraculously and thankfully, I changed my mind. I think it was like, three or four weeks to the interview, I was just like, okay, let’s just give this a try. And I decided to change my language. I decided to learn  Python for an interview I’ll do in a month. 

It was really challenging, but I just felt I needed to make a change. I wanted to make a change in my interview. Let me change something to come up with a different outcome. I’m so happy I made that change because while it was really stressful during that period, I literally shut down everything I was doing for three weeks just for the interview and learning a new language. It wasn’t easy but I’m so happy that I came up with a good result. I mean, now at Microsoft.”

“If from a young age, we start getting exposed to technology, it doesn’t become a burden when people are grown up.

To prepare adequately for the jobs of the future, Oluwalolope thinks some of the top soft skills to acquire are curiosity, empathy, and communication skills while stating programming, personal finance, and health management as hard skills everyone should have.

For her hope for Nigeria, even though she’s currently physically removed from it, she wants basic problems such as epileptic electricity to be removed and replaced with better electricity, internet services, and security. As an optimist and enthusiast of Nigeria, and especially its people, she’s certain that the current labor migration that’s happening in Nigeria would be greatly reduced once those issues are addressed and people feel comfortable. 

I wish that right from basic school, people should start getting exposed to technology, which is what I’m happy you’re doing at 1010 Coding. There are a lot of simple programming languages now like Scratch they can start getting used to so that while growing, even if they are not in the tech space, life becomes easier as professionals in other fields”. Oluwalolope had this to say in response to the role of technology for the Nigerian youth.

“Imagine having a doctor that doesn’t know how to use a computer, how will the new innovations we have like hololens or augmented reality to treat patients and perform surgeries be possible? They should incorporate technology education into our education system. The real, practical aspect like programming so that technology becomes a way of life.”