[BAWD #87] Tips for Evaluating Soft Skills

Aug 21, 2022

Hello, dear friend 👋🏾,

I trust you had a blissful week. Btw, here’s a friendly reminder that you should focus your energy more on the things you can control. Try not to waste time on what’s beyond your capacity.

If you love #BAWDLetters, please forward this email, share it on social media, or invite your friends to subscribe. Feel free also to share feedback or suggestion(s); thanks!

Share Bolaji Ayodeji's Weekly Digest

Featured Technical Articles ✍🏾👩🏽‍💻

Seven tips for evaluating soft skills in interviews by Marcin
Olichwirowicz.
How I Hacked my Car by greenluigi1.
Why React Re-Renders by Josh Comeau.
Browser Cache and Edge Cache Explained by Hristiyan Dodov.
Building an external payment gateway with the Twitter API by Bolaji Ayodeji.
The Basics of Web Application Security by Cade Cairns and Daniel Somerfield.
SSH vs. X.509 Certificates by Linda Ikechukwu.
Introducing Microstores by Daniel Oh.
Functional programming is finally going mainstream by Klint Finley.
How to successfully onboard remote engineering staff in four weeks by James Stanier.
Why an Unknowable Future is So Hard by Alex Hillman.

Featured Productivity Articles ✍🏾🦅

The Day You Decided to Take the Leap by Lawrence Yeo.
Measure Backward, Not Forward by James Clear.
How to Be More Productive by Working Less by Mike Manson.
If You Don’t Use It, You’ll Lose It by Benjamin Hardy.
20 Questions to Change Your Life by Ali Abdaal.

Product of the Week ✨

Block Party allows you to filter out unwanted Twitter @mentions and use Twitter as normal.

Good Tidings 🔊

You should check out J.P. Morgan’s Code for Good virtual Hackathon for the chance to put your coding skills towards doing good for nonprofit organizations. Top participants may be offered a position in their 2023 Software Engineering Internships.
A friend is carrying out some research for their master's dissertation on the level of knowledge web developers have on web accessibility in Nigeria. I’ll appreciate it if you can spare me 5 mins of your time to answer some questions.
Here’s a very rich text-based course you can use to learn how to design systems at scale and prepare for system design interviews.
Need support for your learning? Every month, you can get funding for your learning needs (from an internet subscription, a computer device, or course purchase) from anonymous people who care.
You can learn how to build an offline-first application by reading this guide from the Android team.
Do you want to learn the habit of writing, grow your existing writing skills, and win some cash while doing all these? Then, you should sign up for the Hashnode 4weeks Writeathon.
Microsoft is still offering software engineering internship opportunities to students pursuing a BSc or MSc degree in engineering, computer science, or a related field in Lagos 🇳🇬 and Nairobi 🇰🇪 (with up to 50% work from home).
If you’re a student (at any level), you can apply for the GitHub Student Developer Pack to access the best developer tools and courses for FREE.
Here’s a curated list of project-based programming tutorials you can use to learn how to build applications from scratch.
You should check out this tutorial or join this Slack community to learn how to build global ecommerce experiences with composable commerce APIs and micro-frontends.
Here's a recommendation of the top five websites to find remote jobs for different fields in tech.
Joe's Jobs curates the best product, engineering, design, devrel, open-source, etc., roles at exciting startups.

Dev Term of the Week 💾

SSL is a protocol for web browsers that allows the safety of data sent over the internet. Learn more here (text) or here (video).

Book Recommendations 📚

Building Python Web APIs with FastAPI by Abdulazeez Adeshina.
All of Grace by Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt.
Knowing God by J. I. Packer.

Featured Tweets and Videos 😍

Here are some tweets I think are cool and some of my favorite videos from YouTube this week.

Bọ́lájí Ayọ̀dejì @iambolajiayo

I wrote about an interesting experiment last week where I built a “Pay With Tweet” payment gateway using @commercelayer and @TwitterDev API, that enables customers to pay for their order by making a tweet without any cash transaction. What do you think?

commercelayer.ioBuilding an External Payment Gateway with Twitter APIIn this article, you will learn how to use Commerce Layer’s external payment gateways to create a pay-with-tweet payment gateway using Twitter API.

Sean DeLaney @SeanDeLaney23

"Books are the closest you will ever come to finding cheat codes for real life. You can access the entire learnings of someone else’s career in a few hours." - @tobi

Liz Fong-Jones (方禮真) @lizthegrey

@blackgirlbytes The best DevRel resumes highlight two things: domain expertise, and communication skills, in equal measure. You don't have credibility without domain expertise, and domain expertise without ability to communicate does not make for effective change in the world.

⬇️: The spelled-out intro to neural networks and backpropagation: building micrograd

⬇️: How any dev team can build like Google

⬇️: Solve the “But it works on my machine!” problem with cloud based development environments

⬇️: My Bleeding Edge Tech Stack for 2025

Quote of the Week 💙

“A champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall” –Serena Williams

Shout out to my current Patrons: Maya Shavin, Angie Jones, Sarah Drasner, Samson Goddy, and Obinna Odirionye.

Become a Patron 😉

That's all for this letter. It will help if you forward or share this email with your friends. Also, if you've not subscribed yet, kindly subscribe below 😊. See you next week Sunday and stay safe!

Bolaji Ayodeji's Weekly Digest