My Four Year Anniversary as a Software Engineer — Quick Recap

TJ Oyeniyi
2 min readDec 20, 2020

Today’s my four year anniversary as a software engineer!

I still remember calling my dad back in April 2016 to tell him my plan to quit my job in June, teach myself to code full-time until October, and get a job by December 2016, latest.

Can’t believe I met those crazy deadlines. And these past four years have been just as crazy.

My first engineering job, I was the sole software engineer at a startup with a Black CEO. Even more amazing, the startup got into the Techstars 2017 accelerator and I got to experience that with him.

The next startup I went to ended up getting on Shark Tank and we made a deal with one of the Sharks!

It was amazing being part of that experience and helping lead the engineering effort to keep our site up when we aired.

Then, I moved to DC and ended up working at a company where I had a solid group of Black co-workers for the first time.

Even the engineering team started out all Black, except the manager. My tech lead was Nigerian. He’s like an older brother to me now.

Oh yeah, built my own startup.

Then, Covid.

Now I’m back in Texas at another startup while building my own business on the side.

The past four years have been fun, but I know I didn’t come this far just to come this far…

2021 👀👀👀

Sign up to discover human stories that deepen your understanding of the world.

Free

Distraction-free reading. No ads.

Organize your knowledge with lists and highlights.

Tell your story. Find your audience.

Membership

Read member-only stories

Support writers you read most

Earn money for your writing

Listen to audio narrations

Read offline with the Medium app

No responses yet

Write a response