►
Description
Ezekiel shares his journey from a Computer Science Major from University of Newcastle (Australia) to a Senior Frontend Engineer at GitLab.
A
C
Sure
so,
I'm
currently
located
in
sydney,
australia,
it's
the
lovely,
sunny
part
of
australia.
I
was
born
in
nigeria
and
then
my
family
immigrated
to
australia.
When
I
was
much
younger,
so
I
spent
most
of
my
life
here.
I
grew
up
a
little
bit
further
outside
of
sydney,
I'm
in
a
nice
sort
of
coastal
beach
town.
B
B
C
So
I'm
not
sure
exactly
when
I
first
heard
about
software
development,
I
did
kind
of
come
across
programming
fairly
early.
So
I
remember
one
of
my
school
friends
when
I
was
probably
around
in
maybe
year,
seven
or
year,
eight
he
used
to
make
little
video
games
using
qbasic,
which
is
sort
of
like
a
programming
environment
in
dos
and
windows
95.
C
So
I
used
to
kind
of
hang
out
with
him.
He
would
make
some
games
and
would
play
them
and
I
thought
was
really
cool.
I
didn't
really
understand
what
he
was
doing,
but
I
thought
you
know
this
is
something
that's
kind
of
interesting.
I
obviously
grew
up
playing
games
as
well
like
a
lot
of
people
in
the
90s,
so
that
was
another
big
part
of
my
life.
C
And
then
yeah
a
couple
of
years
later,
my
older
brother
had
a
maths
tutor-
and
I
didn't
realize
at
the
time,
but
he
was
actually
studying
computer
science,
but
would
kind
of
hang
out
after
he'd
give
tutorial
lessons
and
he
got
me
kind
of
into
reading
about
linux
and
unix
and
started
kind
of
hinting
at
things
towards
programming.
So
I
think
that
was
probably
my
introduction
to
software
development
was
a
little
bit
more
passive,
but
yeah.
B
C
Sure
I
think
that
was
probably
a
mixture
of
the
influence
of
this
math
tutor.
My
mother
was
a
librarian
and
she
kind
of
was
involved
in
the
switch
to
the
internet
when
that
started
happening
within
libraries,
so
we
kind
of
always
had
a
computer
in
the
house
from
when
I
was
a
little
bit
younger,
so
I'd
you
know,
jump
on
play
games
mess
around.
I
managed
to
find
a
lot
of
ways
to
mess
up
the
os.
C
B
B
B
C
Exactly
so
yeah
I
studied
computer
science
through
university
and
yeah
through
that
as
well.
I
I
kind
of
worked
in
like
a
general
ict
help
desk
sort
of
scenario,
so
the
library,
the
university
that
we
had
they
were
quite
forward
thinking
with
technology.
So
we
had
something
called
the
information
common
where
essentially
it's
just
like
a
lab
full
of
computers
that
students
could
use
and,
through
the
course
of
my
studies,
they
ended
up
making
it
24-hour
access.
B
C
Students
could
go
in
at
any
time
and
just
use
the
computing
facilities
for
research
or
working
on
their
assignments.
We
also
had
kind
of
collaborative
and
group
learning
sort
of
environments,
and
so
part
of
the
this
was
that
they
needed
people
there
to
help
with
just
general
problems
like
printing
connecting
to
the
wi-fi.
A
B
C
So
I
spent
a
couple
of
years
doing
that
while
I
was
studying
and
then
through
that
I
managed
to
get
involved
with
the
educational
resources
development
at
the
university,
and
I
picked
up
a
role
as
a
web
developer
there.
So,
while
I
was
studying,
I
would
work
kind
of
part
time
sure
web
developer
role
and
that
was
fairly
general.
It
was
just
maintaining
their
website.
Uploading,
pdfs,
downloading
pdfs.
B
C
Kind
of
rudimentary
stuff,
but
over
time
it
evolved
into
a
little
bit
more.
So
we
started
building
online
interactive
tutorials,
particularly
for
students
from
non-english
speaking
backgrounds
or
students
who
are
new
to
university
yeah.
So
I
think
that
was
that
was
probably
more
interesting
than
my
studies
at
the
time,
because
that
was
a
bit
of
real
world
experience.
C
B
Well,
that's
great
because
you
know
most
people
here,
at
least
in
the
states
right.
You
generally
get
that
experience
through
an
internship.
You
were
lucky
enough
while
you
were
actually
working.
So
did
you
at
any
point
during
here
in
the
states
we
refer
to
it
as,
like
you
know
the
summers
where
you
have
like
the
summer
off.
Did
you
have
there
going
to
school?
Did
you
ever
have
sort
of
a
formal
internship,
or
was
it
done
predominantly
during
your
time
at
school?
While
you
were
in
school
rather.
C
It
was
mostly
through
school,
and
that
was
partly
adult
opportunities.
Definitely,
but
I
just
had
too
many
other
interests
like
I
love
playing
football
or
soccer
outside
of
work,
and
I
love
playing
music,
so
I'd
often
play
in
bands-
and
things
like
that,
so
I
didn't
really
apply
myself
in
that
in
that
scenario
as
much
as
some
of
my
peers,
but
I
think
having
the
ability
to
work
while
I
was
studying,
definitely
helped
the
closest
thing
I
kind
of
did
was
a
few.
C
Few
years
later,
I
ended
up
working
in
government
technology,
and
so
I
did
something
called
a
fellowship
which
is
kind
of
like
a
year
of
focus,
research
and
prototyping,
and
we
were
really
kind
of
working
on
kind
of
bringing
concepts
of
digital
innovation
into
technology.
It
sounds
a
little
bit
cringy
now
because
we've
probably
all
heard
all
the
buzzwords,
but
this
is
you
know
five
six
years
ago,
so
even
mentioning
the
thought
of
agile
practice
or
prototyping
government
technology
was
pretty
foreign,
so
that
was
probably
the
closest
thing
I
did
to
an
internship.
C
It
was
a
bit
broader
than
just
working
in
software
development
because
we
worked
in
things
like
user-centered
design
and
kind
of
kind
of
ideation
and
rapid
prototyping.
So
I
think
it
was
quite
an
interesting
experience
and
I
kind
of
wish
I'd
done
something
like
that
earlier
in
my
career
as
well,
but
yeah
it
was
nice
when
it
did
happen.
B
C
So
essentially,
once
I
graduated,
I
continued
working
for
the
language
center
at
the
university,
so
I
think
that's
probably
my
first
role
at
that
time.
The
role
sort
of
changed
a
little
bit
and
it
became
a
bit
more
exploratory,
so
we
started
doing
things
like
migrating
flash
animations
and
flash
educational
resources
into
javascript
and
html
and
css.
So
there's
a
lot
more
kind
of
for
me
at
that
stage.
C
Complexity
involved
in
the
role-
and
so
I
guess
after
that,
the
next
role
I
went
into
was
a
similar
sort
of
role
just
in
another
university.
So
I
ended
up
doing
another
kind
of
software
developer
role,
working
in
educational
resources
within
a
library,
so
I
think
the
two
kind
of
blur
a
little
bit
for
me
yeah.
That
was
essentially
the
first
role,
but
these
were
really
sort
of
general
web
developer
roles
like
they
were
back
then,
so
you
do
a
bit
of
everything.
Yeah.
C
Sure
so
I'm
a
front-end
engineer
and
I'm
working
in
the
manage
stage
of
the
devops
lifecycle
so
manage,
I
think,
is
quite
an
interesting
area
because
we
kind
of
work
on
features
that
sort
of
tie
together
a
lot
of
gitlab.
So
things
like
access
control
and
compliance,
importing
information
from
other
devops
platforms
and
then
the
tmi
working
directly
is
optimized.
So
we
work
on
kind
of
drawing
insights
from
gitlab
installations,
try
to
help
engineering
managers
and
product
managers
and
other.
I
guess.
C
So
I
mean
how
this
sort
of
plays
out
is
that
we
kind
of
build
things
like
charts
and
tools
to
help
visualize
what's
happening
within
a
company's
devops
process
based
on
the
data
that
we
get
in
gitlab,
and
I
guess,
aside
from
that,
I'm
also
a
front-end
maintainer.
So
I
sort
of
spend
a
lot
of
my
time
reviewing
code,
not
just
from
gitlab
staff,
but
also
community
contributors.
B
C
Yeah,
so
I
mean
I
work
quite
closely.
We
work
well,
we
all
work
quite
closely
with
our
product
managers
and
who
kind
of
the
interface
with
our
clients.
Clients
also
just
comment
directly
on
issues
and
merge,
requests
and
just
say
what
they
want,
which
is
always
fun,
and
especially
when
things
are
in
progress
but
yeah.
So
a
lot
of
it
gets
driven
from
the
product
direction.
C
So
I
guess,
from
a
front-end
engineering
perspective,
a
lot
of
what
you're
doing
is
kind
of
interfacing
between
product
managers,
designers
and
our
back-end
engineers,
because
a
lot
of
the
the
core
business
logic
of
what
gitlab
does
is
in
these
back
end
libraries
and
frameworks
that
we
have,
and
then
we
have
ways
to
expose
that
through
apis.
But
we
also
need
to
present
it
in
a
way
that
users
can
actually
operate
them
and
interact
with
them
to
achieve
goals.
C
So
a
lot
of
it
is
kind
of
liaising
between
designers
and
back-end
engineers.
To
say
this
is
the
goal
that
users
have.
How
can
we
actualize
it
based
on
the
the
data
that
we
have
available
and
the
ui
components
we
have
available?
So
sometimes
that
means
building
out
more
components
so
that
we
can
achieve
the
aesthetic
that
we
want,
or
it
might
be
working
with
back
again
engineers
to
add
more
data
or
building
out
api
endpoints
ourselves
to
increase
the
amount
of
data
that
we
have
available.
C
B
All
right
so
say
you
then
make
the
change.
Do
you
then
directly
go
back
to
the
product
manager
and
say
look.
This
is
the
change
that
we're
thinking
about.
Let's
hear
that
feedback
and
then
do
you
then
test
it
like
amongst
people
in
the
community
first
before
it's
then
ultimately
released
to
the
public.
C
So,
as
we
have
more
stakeholders
involved
in
the
process,
we
see
some
of
the
shortcomings
a
lot
of
the
time
it
might
be
things
like
we
just
don't
have
the
data
in
the
right
format
that
we
can
present
it
in
the
flow
that
the
user
journey
is
supposed
to
happen,
so
we
can
kind
of
work
through
with
them.
These
sorts
of
things
which
helps
make
the
I
guess
when
you
need
to
either
sacrifice
or
amend
requirements.
C
We
can
kind
of
check
that
with
the
product
managers
and
they
can
either
run
that
by
customers
or
make
the
decisions
themselves
on
where
we
can
kind
of
change
the
direction
a
little
bit,
and
so
that
that
helps
quite
a
bit
in
terms
of
actually
testing.
We
do
a
bit
of
everything,
so
our
team,
particularly
the
future
areas,
we're
working
on,
are
still
fairly
early
on
in
their
maturity
level.
C
So
we
do
a
lot
of
dog
fooding
ourselves.
We
we've
got
some
relationships,
a
few
other
areas
within
the
company
who
are
using
a
lot
of
our
features,
so
they
give
us
a
lot
of
direct
feedback,
and
then
we
also
routinely
kind
of
have
some,
I
guess,
reach
out
to
customers
and
conduct
surveys
and
things
like
that.
All
the
features
that
we
have
how
we
actually
roll
them
out.
We
generally
will
roll
out
features
within
our
team
first
as
they're
sort
of
in
flight.
C
This
helps
things
like
the
designers
to
get
a
feel
for
how
a
feature
actually
works
within
the
gitlab
code
base
and
we
have
ways
to
kind
of
turn
them
off
or
turn
them
on
for
certain
users.
So
we
generally
roll
them
out
within
our
team.
First
then
roll
it
out
for
like
a
wider
group
of
users,
perhaps
a
whole
stage
and
some
features
we
have
particular
buy-in
from
customers.
C
C
I
didn't
really
choose
front-end
engineering.
I
think
it
chose
me.
That's
probably
the
best
way
to
think
about
it.
It
was
just
one
of
those
things
where
I
don't
know
like
quite
a
few
years
ago,
front-end
engineering
wasn't
really
seen
as
a
discipline.
As
such,
you
had
these
sort
of
more
general
web
developer
roles.
Anything
user,
interface,
related
or
front-end
was
generally
seen
as
just
the
icing
on
the
cake,
so
it
was
sort
of
like
yeah.
C
I
think,
generally,
I'm
not
a
terrible
communicator
and
I
can
understand
a
lot
of
what
people
are
trying
to
convey
in
different
messages.
So
I
think
it
sort
of
just
fit
my
personality
a
little
bit
more
than
maybe
other
roles,
and
it
was
just
the
nature
of.
I
got
interested
in
javascript
more
and
more
invested
some
time
in
it
at
some
point
and
then
all
of
a
sudden
someone
says
hey.
You
know
some
javascript
you're
a
front-end
engineer
and
you
go
okay.
I
guess
I'm
a
front-end
engineer.
Now
there
you
go.
B
C
I
think
definitely
communication
is
probably
one
of
the
main
things
and
this
fellowship
that
I
did
kind
of
really
helped
with
that
process.
So
I
was
forced
to
spend
a
lot
of
time.
I
was
working
in
a
government
department
in
actually
in
the
legal
sector,
so
it
was
completely
out
of
my
depth
out
of
my
knowledge,
but
finding
ways
to
kind
of
bring
staff
along
and
through
the
process
of
research
and
prototyping
finding
ways
to
sort
of
like
work
in
areas
that
are
outside
my
comfort
zone.
C
I
think
these
are
probably
all
some
of
the
skills,
maybe
that
sort
of
curiosity
to
dive
into
something
that's
not
fully
fully
scoped
out,
but
we
have
a
little
bit
of
a
direction
in
it
and
just
get
the
ball
rolling.
I
think
that
probably
helped.
I
also
was
lucky
enough
to
spend
a
little
bit
of
time
working
remotely
before
I
joined
git
lab,
so
I
spent
sort
of
six
to
eight
months
traveling
around
and
I
was
working
for
a
company
in
in
australia
in
melbourne.
C
Actually,
while
I
was
in
europe,
so
I
had
a
little
bit
of
that
experience
of
what
it's
like
to
work
remotely
and
kind
of
know,
some
of
the
limitations
of
that
and
some
of
the
areas
that
you
need
to
focus
in.
So
I
think
those
were
probably
two
of
the
main
areas,
and
I
guess
the
skill
set
that
I
have
as
well
were
probably
attractive
at
that
time.
C
B
C
So
I
guess,
having
that
confidence
to
just
release
things
and
take
the
the
iterative
steps
to
getting
towards
a
solution,
I've
been
some
of
the
skills.
I've
learned,
iterations,
probably
the
hardest
thing
I
think
at
gitlab.
It
definitely
is
for
me.
I
think
it
is
for
quite
a
few
people
as
well,
so
I
feel
like
I've
improved
in
learning.
How
to
iterate
effectively,
but
every
milestone
kind
of
just
throws
up
slightly
different
challenges.
So
it's
kind
of
nice
that
there's
something
that
you
always
have
to
iterate
on
iterating.
C
B
C
Yeah
I
mean
it's
the
the
idea
of
sort
of
generalist
web
developers
back
then,
was
probably
pretty
pervasive,
but
I
probably
still
would
go
back
and
tell
myself
to
just
pick
a
couple
of
areas
and
really
focus
on
those.
I
spent
a
lot
of
time
kind
of
chasing
different
frameworks
and
languages
sort
of
like
trying
to
keep
up
with
things
as
they
changed.
C
You
can
kind
of
pick
up
as
the
as
the
job
demands,
and
that's
also,
I
guess,
because
now
there
are
so
many
more
specialized
roles
in
software
development
you
can
move
into
front-end
back-end
devops
sre
release
management,
whatever
you
want,
but
I
think
finding
the
area,
that's
probably
of
most
interest
to
you
and
just
sort
of
honing
in
on.
That
is
probably
something
that
I
would
have.
That
would
have
saved
me
a
lot
of
time.
Basically.
C
Yeah,
that's
a
that's
a
tough
one.
I
think
we'll
probably
see
this
trend
of
specialized
roles,
kind
of
continuing,
just
as
software
development
practice
becomes
a
bit
more
complex,
as
it
has
over
the
last
few
years.
There's
further
need
for
areas
of
particular
expertise,
so
I
guess
probably
like
things
that
I'd
suggest
for
people
who
are
looking
for
roles
focusing
on
knowing
how
you
learn
and
knowing
I
guess,
being
comfortable
knowing
that
you
won't
know
everything
about
everything
and
that's
probably.
Okay.
C
B
A
C
Just
if
you're
coming
to
this
industry,
one
thing
that
I
found
quite
helpful
is
like
I
mentioned
learning
how
I
learn
so
for
me
that
was
about
being
more
effective
in
how
I
take
notes,
and
things
like
that.
So
that's
really
helped
me
sort
of
keep
up,
but
I'd
also
say
if
you
have
areas
that
you're
interested
in
that
aren't
directly
related
to
your
work.
That's
super
important!