Tara Ojo is a Software Engineer at FutureLearn. In her young age, she already had the chance to inspire many people. More than that, she talks about her experience in order to help others. Not only she’s willing to help new junior developers, but also those who work with them. Tara is working in this amazing learning platform and likes to help others feeling comfortable in their job position. Isn’t this amazing?
Tara in which company are you working and which kind of technologies do you use to work?
I’m a software engineer at FutureLearn. FutureLearn is a social learning company, enabling online learning through conversation. I work predominately on the front-end, using React, but I’ve also been doing a lot of Rails work recently too which has been fun!
I knew I wanted to be a developer when I made my first (absolutely terrible) website for a charity supporting youth groups after a year of learning how to code. Being able to take everything I had learned and build whatever I wanted was so cool to me.
When did you start coding for the very first time?
I started coding at university unintentionally! My degree was based on a computer science degree and the first language I learned was Java which was a big adjustment. That was about 7 years ago now.
What brought you to chose this profession? Tell us for example how did you understand you wanted to code and what makes you feel accomplished on your day to day work?
I knew I wanted to be a developer when I made my first (absolutely terrible) website for a charity supporting youth groups after a year of learning how to code. Being able to take everything I had learned and build whatever I wanted was so cool to me.
I also love working in education, FutureLearn has a great culture and learning is at the heart of what we do, so I always get the chance to learn and practice something new. Whether that is PWAs, ES6 or even crochet!
At Codemotion Berlin you will talk on how junior developers move on to the next level. How did you get to talk about this topic? What’s your speech based on and who is it directed to?
I’ll be talking about how we can help junior developers progress in their careers. A lot of the advice has been learned from personal experiences and those of junior developers I’ve worked with.
This talk is useful whether you’re a junior developer yourself or if you work with juniors. There is lots we all can do to support and encourage new developers in the industry while also developing our own skills.
Do you have any suggestion for our attendees on how to stay updated on the latest technologies?
Twitter is my way of staying up to date with the latest technologies, especially if you’re following all the people in the tech industry you care about.
What’s the most inspiring music that you listen to while you are programming?
My current programming music of choice is a mixture of gospel and afrobeats. It’s great when I’m in the zone, but it’s hard to not dance in my seat in the office. I can usually get away with a shoulder wiggle though!