At Talk360, we are committed to giving our users the best user experience and international calling quality. Not only we are committed to connecting lives through local and international calls, but also by building Africa’s first payment platform to combine all local currencies. That is only made possible with our Product & Tech team members, who are located all over the world, and work tirelessly to improve our international calling app and to build our payment platform.
What is it like to be part of a global team that is focused on bringing positive value to underserviced communities? And what is it like to be a Frontend Developer at Talk360? Today we interview Isah Ohieku, our Frontend Developer, who answered all our burning questions.
- What does your day-to-day look like?
Working remotely at Talk360 is a great opportunity. Every morning, I start my day off by checking the Jira board just before our stand-up. My team and I have daily stand-ups, to catch up on what everyone did the previous day, if there were any roadblocks or observations everyone should know about. Lastly, we use this time to inform the entire team what priorities we have for the current day. If there are things to discuss in more detail, we do that on another call. We collaborate using Slack for communication, Jira for Project management and Git for source code version control. My favourite tool for this is Slack Huddles. A huddle is quite easy to use with sufficient features to achieve our collaboration goals. Each project also has a dedicated Slack channel where we discuss the project goals, progress, and roadblocks. When I complete a certain task, I shout in the related project channel and ask for my work to be reviewed. My colleagues are always ready to review my work and provide feedback if needed.
There is always a great feeling working at Talk360, especially for the fact that even though we are remote co-workers, we are a tightly knit and supportive team. My proudest achievement so far, is seeing that after lots of challenging work from every one of us, the product we are building is finally going live in the bid of helping people in Africa. Furthermore, it will make money transactions seamless, enable access to digital services, for the first time ever, for all African people no matter where they are located.
- How do you keep up with the latest technologies, and what advice would you give future Frontend Developers?
Technology is always emerging. That is why, it is not possible for me (or anyone for that matter) to say, “I already know everything in the current technologies I use.”
My favourite morning ritual is reading a Medium article that’s tech related. I also follow a lot of topics related to my field of interest on Twitter. To add to that, I look up to top tech gurus on the internet. While I try to learn new things in technology, I try as much as possible not to forget the need to perfect the areas I think I already know. My advice to the future Frontend Developers out there is: understand the basics. This cannot be emphasized enough. Understand the browser and how It works, understand the basic languages, and make sure to get a mentor in the early stage of learning. It greatly helps smoothen the steep learning curve and increases efficiency when it comes to time spent on learning and practicing a new language.
- What is your favourite thing about working at Talk360?
I think a better question might be what can’t be a favourite thing about working at Talk360! Just kidding. But I do love everything about Talk360 from the team I work with, to the core values of the company. My personal favourite would be the positive impact of the Talk360 projects on Africa and beyond. Communication is key to every establishment, even family establishments. Bridging the communication gap in Africa is amazing and we can tell how much this means when we see the reviews we get from users. The satisfaction expressed by users from inside and outside Africa give us motivation and confirm that we are indeed impacting people’s lives. This is aspect of working at Talk360 is my favourite.
- What is your favourite benefit of working at Talk360?
Working with a diverse team is quite amazing, and I like the fact that Talk360 also looks out for our growth by setting aside budgets to help us develop ourselves. But the best part is ending the day knowing that I got a fantastic opportunity to team-up with an amazing team of experienced developers to make a product better than it was yesterday, and that it would have amazing impact on the users of this product.
Are you interested in joining the Product & Tech team for our international calling app or pan-African Payment Platform? Visit our careers page to stay up to date with our latest vacancies.
