How to Waste the Remaining Six Weeks of the MLH Fellowship.
Tags: mlh, explorer
Published: 2020-11-16 13:55:21

To all my fellow explorers, congratulations on making it this far!
Yes! we've all been working very hard, and it's surely worthy of praise. 
But don't sit back, it's not over yet; we are still in the race. 
Okay, Enough of the smooth and easy stuff.
Let me hit you with something tuff.

The MLH team needs to clad us all in gold for our Genghis-Khan-like bravery in battle...lol. Battle? Yes! The past six weeks, for me, every single day was like a puzzle that needed to be solved. But in the end, we are all still here. And now, we have just little time left to  wrap up this fellowship. We've spent the first half of this fellowship connecting with new people, working on projects, and for me all these experiences had added up to an overwhelmingly inestimable lessons. 

Please permit me to, in this piece, share some of these lessons I had learnt; more specifically, *tips on how to waste the six weeks that we have left in this fellowship... haha.*


# Focus on the Technical Aspect of the Fellowship and that Alone!
_Build bridges?_ nah! burn them! You don't need to walk on any bridge to become a successful developer. You could just swim anyway.

_not always about what you know, sometimes it's about who you know?_ Gibberish! That's what incompetent and highly political people say to justify their efforts to replace meritocracy with nepotism in the workplace. And fortunately for us all they haven't succeeded. These days you don't need any network to become a successful entrepreneur or get your dream job.

Be intentional and relentless in your efforts to avoid all avenues provided by the MLH team to help you improve your soft skills. Also avoid opportunities provided by the MLH team to help you build relationships through 1-on-1s, and to improve your communication/presentation skills through show and tells, and round tables. Focus on improving your hard skills alone and you go dey alright (you'll be fine).


# Work With New Sets of Technologies Every Sprint
_The best generalists were at some point specialists?_ Come on! that doesn't even make sense! You are better off working with new sets of technologies every sprint. You are better off having just a shallow understanding of all the programming languages and frameworks of our time. I mean, who even cares about how well or deep you understand a technology?

I know even as you read this, some of you would argue that it's easier to transition to a new technology if one already has some prior deep understanding of a related technology. What a lame argument! After all, the explorer track is all about experimenting with new technologies and of course that ultimately means working with new sets of technologies every sprint and not pursuing an interest.


# Completely Ignore the Engineering Focus of Each Sprint; Who Cares About These Things Anyway
_Git? Clean code? Security? Testing?_ For crying out loud who comes up with these things? The MLH team expects fellows in the explorer track to focus on each of these per sprint? What a waste of time! Software engineers only write code. All these other things are just distractions. Focus on writing code and that alone.

Why waste your valuable time learning a version control system when you could spend that time perfecting your Python or Javascript skills. Why push your code to some remote server when you'd just be fine having it locally on your own machine?

I'm so tired of all the bullshit(please pardon my french) about version control systems making collaboration between devs easier, helping developers and organizations track changes made to a code base overtime and serving as a backup of some sort in cases of file loss. I strongly don't think these are good reasons to learn and use a version control system and I hope you see things the way I do. These guys only want us to learn this thing because everyone uses it! You don't have to fit the mold tho! Don't bow to societal pressure! Just do your _thang_ and ignore all the noise around you.

Like learning how to use git effectively isn't enough burden already, the MLH team wants its fellows to focus on learning how to write clean code and a bunch of other things? clean code? You don't need that. You're not writing code for other people; you are writing code for yourself. So your code is excellent provided you can always understand what you've written.Even if you don't understand the code, it doesn't really matter! It still works.


# Only Work on Your Team's Project When Motivated
Yes! you read that right. I really don't have much to say here. All I can say is, the best way to get a lot done is by only working when you are motivated.

Ladies and gents! commit to applying all the above tips and you will successfully waste the remaining six weeks we have left in this fellowship...haha

Lastly, on a somewhat unrelated note, if the sarcasm in this writing isn't very obvious then I did a horrible job. Please forgive me. It's not intended to be rude.

Okay I'm done.