I wrote my way up

My encounter with Rust was, in summary, fate smiling upon me. I used to write mainly on JavaScript-related technologies, Vue and Node to be precise, on LogRocket, a technical article blog. LogRocket allowed its writers to suggest (pitch) article topic ideas, which would get vetted, and if approved, the writers get to write on. They also have a pool of topics for writers to pick from. Due to its popularity, JavaScript had a lot of articles written on it, and at some point, I found myself without any unique topic to write on. The suggestion board didn't have any JavaScript topic at the time, so I had to explore other technologies. One of the available suggestions was a Rust-related article topic idea. It had been sitting there, unpicked way longer than other articles usually sat. Apparently, there weren't many Rust writers on the platform. After some contemplation, I thought, "why not?". My thought process was, there was google, the documentation, other articles, etc. I was pretty confident in my research skills and since there was really nothing stopping me, I picked two Rust articles and wrote on them.

One of the articles I picked was on Cryptography in Rust. I remember the day I started writing it. I was sitting outside at home writing and researching my article, and I thought, "this is easy". I found the style of writing Rust intriguing. Like I said earlier, I used to write JavaScript, so comparing that new Rust experience to JavaScript, where packages would generally be installed with NPM, I found just writing your dependencies in cargo.tml more instinctual so I wrote the article and submitted it. It was reviewed, accepted, and published. It was the regular "all in a day's work" until the feedback came in. My article was really liked, and apparently, it helped people understand cryptography better. This spurred me to write the second one, then I paused, there weren't anymore Rust topic suggestions. During my break, I learned a bit more about Rust and wrote more on my personal blog.

A while later, an organization put out a call for developers to submit proposals for a talk. I was interested, so I applied. My submission was one of the Rust articles I had written before. "Ownership in Rust", and it got accepted. I gave the talk, and the feedback was overwhelming. It was then I decided to really immerse myself in Rust. I had realized that because the Rust ecosystem hadn't been explored as deeply as other technologies, when I wrote, traffic was enormous.

During my exploration, I discovered two crates - Ether.rs and Web3.rs. I wrote on the differences between the two and shared my article on Twitter. That's when someone reached out to me. He said he loved my article and hoped we could have a conversation. I agreed, I'm glad I did. During our conversation, he brought up an open role in his company that he hoped I could fill. Of course, I had lots of questions which I asked. After a while, he asked me to search for him on the internet. He turned out to be the former CEO of Tendermint. I was excited and mind blown. I mean, before that day, I had chopped plenty of "rejection breakfast" with regards to job applications, so this was a welcome surprise. After I had calmed down, we scheduled something like an interview call for the next day.

Hehe, I almost missed my interview. I forgot to take the time zone difference into consideration while preparing for the interview. I first argued that the call wasn't due for another 1 hour 30 minutes before my attention was drawn to the time difference. I was not ready. I mean, I still had my hair net on and was still in my PJs. Anyway, I had my interview like that. At the end of the interview, the interviewer said he was seeking to hire a junior Rust developer, and he thought I was a perfect fit. He then asked what my expected remuneration would be. I laughed; that was new, hadn't been asked that before. I reflected on the question a bit then asked what they wanted to pay. That turned out to be one of the best questions I've ever asked before. He mentioned what they had planned, and when I did my calculations, I could barely contain my excitement.

The company I work for is Sommelier. We help users and market makers to invest their funds to increase the chances of making a profit. At work, I write Rust as a Protocol Engineer. My job is basically to write applications for the Blockchain, managing how contracts behave. Work has been really interesting, and I've had the opportunity to grow. The fact that we are writing Rust has played quite a role in this. We have this thing when a person is working on a feature, we allow the person to work on it from start to finish. We don't have to worry much about code quality amongst the different developers. Rust's opinionated style forces everyone to conform to a single style, allowing for code uniformity among features even if they were written by different developers. The opportunity to handle a feature alone has contributed to my growth.

When I think of my journey so far, I have to admit I was fortunate to have encountered Rust. When I got my job, I was just in my final year of university; it was my first role. I did not expect such good fortune. I was just doing my thing, writing articles, Rust articles, and it happened. I've been here for 8 months now, and it has been awesome.

This story is based on Ugochi Ukpai's experience.