Ben and Ryan catch up with Nenne Adaora “Adora” Nwodo, who recently joined Stack Overflow as a platform engineering manager. From her childhood fascination with computers to her years as a software engineer at Microsoft, Adora shares her evolution as a technologist. She tells Ben and Ryan about her experience interviewing for and accepting a role at Stack Overflow, the projects she’s working on in her new role, her nonprofit work in the edtech space, and how she prioritizes happiness in her career choices.
Adora is the author of Cloud Engineering for Beginners, Beginning Azure DevOps, and Confident Cloud.
She’s also the founder and executive director of NexaScale, an ed-tech non profit that offers educational support and simulated work experiences for entry-level software engineers, designers, and product managers. Check out their programs.
Find Adora on LinkedIn or through her website.
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BP Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Stack Overflow Podcast, a place to talk all things software and technology. I'm your host, Ben Popper, joined, as I often am, by my colleague and collaborator, Ryan Donovan. Today, we are going to be chatting with Adora Nwodo, who is a new hire at Stack Overflow. She's joining us as an engineering manager on the Platform Team, having spent some time at Microsoft and some other places. And so we wanted to chat, learn a little bit about her journey in technology, how she came to the world of software development, and a little bit about what she's going to be working on here. So, without further ado, Adora, welcome to the podcast.
Adora Nwodo: Thank you so much, Ben. Thank you for that introduction.
BP Yes, of course. Tell us a little bit about, yeah, like, how it all started. What led you to write your first line of code, and what brought you to working at places like Microsoft?
AN I feel like I've told this story multiple times, and, anytime I tell it, it's always like I've never told it before. I got introduced to computers– well, I started, you know, playing with computers as a child. I was about six years old when that started, and it was just a thing of my dad hearing about, you know, computers and how they're about to be a big thing and feeling like, “Oh, my children are not going to be left behind,” right? And then he brings a couple desktops home, and, you know, my brothers start to use it. For context, my brothers are, like, six years older than I am, right? So, at that time, my brothers were already sort of, like, over 10 years old, and they were more mature than I was, but I was still, like, five, or six, or something. And these are people that I used to play with every day. So, imagine, you know, playing outside with them, building sandcastles, all of those things that we do as children, and then, next thing, people that I was playing with and doing, you know, all these more physical games were now playing on computers. And they just left me. And, so, for me, it was like, “Okay, if you're not going to play with me on this computer anymore, I'm going to meet you at the computer, and all of us will play there together,” right? And that was what it was for me. I just really wanted someone to play with me. And, at that time, my dad was pretty much like, “Oh, okay, you're too young. Don't use the computer yet. When you get older you'll use it,” but then my brothers and I used to sneak around to use the computer, and they'd teach me, you know, how to use the computer. I learned how to type, I learned how to use the internet. I spent a lot of my time on Encarta Kids as well. I did a bunch of all these things, and I just fell in love with computing and computers, generally. And I told myself, from that point, that whatever it is that I ended up doing on in my life, I was going to end up in front of computers. I pretty much said I wanted to play with computers every day for the rest of my life. That was pretty much what it was. I mean, eventually, my dad found that I was using the computer, and it was fine, so I kept using it, and I was now using it in the open. And so there was this thing of, I stumbled on programming as well because I remember– obviously, it's very fuzzy in my memory, so I don't remember exactly what led to it, but I remember that, at some point, I was also coding in Visual Basic, VB.NET, you know. And I used to be that person that, you know, as a primary school student or I– what some other people would call elementary school, depending on what part of the world that you're in, right? You don't have access to calculators. They'll tell you– or, they give you a math assignment, “You should solve it by yourself. You are too young to use calculators,” all of that stuff. So, I'll come home, and I'll code out the calculator based on what the actual formula is, and I'll crosscheck my answer to be sure that, you know, the answer is correct based on the math that I did. And I'm actually not sure whether my love for math and wanting to pass math made me love programming, or my love for programming made me love math even more than I already did. It's sort of like a chicken and egg situation in my head. I'm not sure which is correct at this point, but I know that I loved math, and I loved to code out my math assignments. And it was a thing that I, you know, subs– continuously did and sort of, like, got into high school, secondary school, kept on doing that as well. I picked up HTML and CSS along the way because, I mean, that's, like, web development. That's, like, the first thing you pick up. It was, like, HTML 4 at the time; picked that up. Built really ugly websites. I was using CorelDRAW at the time. I was designing, obviously, very ugly, but, I mean, complimentary cards, I would say so. So I was doing a bunch of all those things, and I knew that I wanted to be a programmer. I knew that I wanted to write code, um, so when it was time for me to, you know, choose a university and choose a course that I was going to study in university, I was already sure what I wanted to do, and it was just very straightforward for me from there.
BP So how did you go from university into industry? Like, what was your path for getting your first gig? Did you work in startups, or did you go right into big tech?
AN So my first gig was more of a personal thing. My first gig was that I was an entrepreneurial student. So, as a student, I had a business that I had started, and so I was selling stuff on social media, right, and also based on recommendations on WhatsApp, people having my phone number, Blackberry – BBM at the time – like different places, people knew that, “Okay, this person sells shoes.” I used to sell made-in-Nigeria shoes – make and sell them, actually. I had, you know, a couple of shoe makers. I had a full team, and we were building that business. And, at some point, because I was a student, it was getting too much, and it was getting too hard to handle that business manually in the way that I was doing it. So, obviously, as someone studying computer science, the first thing I would think about is to automate that process. So I sort of, like, built an e-commerce website for myself. I used the back office for managing the inventory, and that became sort of like a job because, apart from the fact that I owned the business, I sort of, like, was now a lead engineer and managing that product at that time. I did that, you know, for a bit. And then, in my school there, there's, like, a six month internship thing that you will do in your fourth year. So computer science in the school I went to – the University of Lagos – computer science in the school I went to is five years. So, in your fourth year you do a six month internship. So, obviously for that official internship, I couldn't hire myself, so I had to go work in a proper, you know, business in a proper company. And I joined an agency called Neukleos. It's, um, a full service digital agency, so they had a tech studio right there. They were building tech products. They had customers. It was kind of like consulting. They had advertising, they had the marketing, they had the creative. So you used to get, like, different kinds of clients that they would, you know, provide solutions for, based on what the clients wanted. And one of those solutions were tech solutions. So, as someone that was working in the tech side of the agency, I started there as a software developer intern. And I remember when I was done at the six month, you know, my manager was like, “Oh. I really enjoyed you working with us. We like your work ethic. We think you're talented. We think you're fantastic. If there's anything that you need from us while you're going back to school, let us know, and we'll help you with that.” And I was just like, “Hmm, the thing that I need is to keep doing this job while I'm in school,” right? So I became a working student. So I went back into school in my final year with a job. It was a remote job, so it was pretty easy to manage. So I was in school, and I was also still working there as an intern, right? So, by the time I graduated, I had spent a year and six months there. So, when I graduated, I automatically was no longer an intern, and I became full staff, and I kept working there. And I spent like one more year there. So while I was there, I was already thinking about, “Okay, what am I going to do next?” For a long time I wanted to go to MIT. That hasn't kind of changed, but I just understand that you might not necessarily get everything you want out of life. Um, you know, your life might go in a different way. I wanted to go to MIT because I just felt like I want to build interesting things, you know?
BP It's not over yet. You could still go to MIT. You could work here and go there at the same time. You could be a professor. You could be teaching there and working here. Yeah, don't, don't give up. It's not over yet. It's not over yet.
AN Yeah, it's not over yet. Exactly. Like, MIT isn't running away. So, at that time, I was actually thinking about going to do a master's degree and then doing something with AI. Like, that was where my head was at at the time. So I wanted to go to MIT and sort of, like, pursue that. Basically, I wanted to work in emerging technologies, and I thought that, “Okay, the best place for me to do that would be in the US, and I would want to go to school first. And then graduate and get a fantastic job and, you know, just be there.” So, at that time, I was sort of, like, getting ready to write GREs actually, because as– I have a family friend – he is one of my mentors – I have a family friend that went to get a master's degree in MIT. So, you know, he was pretty much telling me, “Okay, this is what you'll do. This is what I did. Go get ready to write your GREs. When you're done, then you would apply. You know, we could do it together. I could help you,” so I was getting ready for my GREs and things like that. And then the opportunity to interview with Microsoft sort of came. And I started thinking about it: if I interview with Microsoft and I get it, I get to stay back home with the people that I love, and that just makes a lot of sense. Because, if I go to school in MIT, I will go to school, which is great, I will graduate, and then I'll still end up at the same Microsoft anyway, so what's the point? So, that was my thinking process at that time, and I obviously didn't stop getting ready for the master's degree because I was like, “Okay, what if I interview and they don't pick me?” Right? So now I was juggling both getting ready for my interviews at Microsoft as well as my master's degree as well. So I did all the interviews with Microsoft and then I got the offer. And, at that point, it was just very easy. I was like, “Okay, I'll do this master's some other time,” I don't know. At some point in my life, there'll be many opportunities to go and get a master's degree. And I liked the technology that I was going to be working on.It was mixed reality at that time. Mixed reality was the hot thing in the ecosystem, right?
BP Hey, hey, it's still, Facebook's got those new glasses out. It's still around. AR is still around. It can make a comeback.
AN It's still around, but, you know, right now, everyone is talking about AI, so it's still pretty much a hot topic.
BP Right.
AN It’s just no longer the first on the list.
BP Yeah, it's the– it's not the number one hotness right now, but people keep plowing money into it, man. Those new Meta glasses look good. I could wear those, and people are just like, “Oh, you got some chunky glasses on.” It doesn't look like I'm wearing, you know, ski goggles.
AN Yeah, so I, I saw the Meta RayBan glasses. I think they're cool.
BP Yeah.
AN Stuff is still happening there, but, you know, once upon a time, everybody was talking about the Metaverse. The Metaverse was the buzzword that, you know, if you look around everywhere you go, everything is Metaverse, right? So I, I felt like it was interesting, and I was like, “Okay, I'll do it, and then I'll do my master's, you know, degree some other time.” I did that, and then I got into Microsoft. I was building mixed reality services for a product called Microsoft Mesh, which is a collaborative tool that helps you, you know, communicate and collaborate in mixed reality within Teams. And it was a great experience. That's pretty much what led me there.
BP Would you like to go to the move to Stack Overflow? Or would you like to tell us a little bit more about what came before, and we can maybe talk a little about some of the different technologies and, and you know, things you learned?
AN Yeah, of course. So, the move to Stack Overflow was quite interesting. So last year, August, I moved to the UK. And, when I moved, I resigned from Microsoft. It was a bittersweet thing for me because I, I didn't want to go. I remember when they did my send photos, I was actually crying on the call. I was crying on the, on the call – that was how much I loved my team and the work that we were doing. But I was moving into a new country, and I just felt like, “Okay, maybe it's time for me to explore other things,” you know? So it's something that I had been tinkering with for a while, which is like engineering leadership. I had gotten opportunities to lead projects, lead teams, lead initiatives, and I also have a business diploma from Stanford, GSB, it's called Stanford Lead. So I've been empowered with, like, a lot of things, you know, that sets me up for leadership in some way, and I was just like, “Okay. Let's explore and see what's her,” like, if I hate it, I could always come back to being an IC. That's fine. But let's explore and see what's there. So I joined a small company as sort of, like, you know, leading engineering there. Think an organization that is sort of, like, helping connect people that want apartments to people that, like, have apartments to shortlist, if that makes sense. So I joined them, and I was leading engineering there, as well as I went full-on, in the last year leading initiatives at my nonprofit. So I was doing a lot of things with the 25 volunteers that we have; we have over 10,700 plus people in the community, so it was a lot of work. I was very busy at the time. And what I was doing in that time was just prepping myself up for the global leadership opportunity whenever it comes up, right? So around the time, I just stumbled on the Stack Overflow gig. I think it was on LinkedIn. Like, you know how when you're on LinkedIn, sometimes you'd scroll, and, depending on how your LinkedIn is configured, sometimes you'll see some jobs, right? Even if you're scrolling through like your regular LinkedIn timeline. I think I was looking at the profile of a Stack Overflow person. On the top right, I saw, like, you know, a couple of jobs for Stack Overflow in my area, and I saw Engineering Manager there. And I was like, “Hmm,” because I was already, in quotes, “manifesting” being an engineering manager. It's something I have been manifesting since March this year. Not just in a smaller company, but in a more global setting, in a larger company where I get to lead more impactful projects and do more impactful things. So, when I saw the role, I was like, “First of all, is AI listening to all things that I'm seeing?”
BP Yes, yes it is.
AN Right? And I was like, “Okay, this is very interesting,” because it was, it was so random, right? And I remember that it wasn't even only that role, I just noticed that there were lots of engineering manager-like opportunities. And I decided that maybe this is a sign for me to try a couple of them and see where it gets me. So I started interviewing, and at the end of it I had five offers. And I was so confused. I did not know. I remember even before I signed this Stack Overflow offer, I reached out to the recruiters, and I was like, “Can I speak to the hiring manager one more time?” Like, I was so confused because there were, like– first of all, I had five offers, so it was easy for me to sort of, like, narrow down the offers to two. So then it was time to choose the two best offers that I had, and I couldn't choose between the two because I had met, you know, incredible people during the interviews. It was just fantastic. My heart wanted to really, really, really go with Stack Overflow, but then I wanted to make sure that, like, that was the best option, regardless. So I was like, “Okay, even if my heart wants to go with Stack Overflow, I want to be sure that it's the best move for me,” and I remember that I reached out to the recruiters, like I said, so that I could speak with the hiring manager one more time and ask every single question that I had in my mind. And, if after, that’s in quotes, “interview,” after the interview rounds, my heart still felt like it wanted to go with Stack Overflow, then I would accept the offer. And that was pretty much what happened. That was how we got here. The interviews were pretty interesting and amazing. I got to ask about, like, you know, what it's like working here. And there was something I heard that made me feel, like, “No, this place is the place for me.” There was something that one of the interviewers told me, and it just made me feel like they care about people here and– as much as the work is important. I only want to even do work where the work is important because if you know anything about me, it is that I'm very passionate when it comes to my growth and when it comes to my career, right? So I only want to interact with companies or work on things that will contribute to that growth. But, for me, apart from making impacts, and driving business outcomes, and growing your career, as well as growing the business, I want to be happy while I'm doing it. And that's a very important thing for me. And that was something that I noticed and it was one of the reasons why I actually chose this one.
Ryan Donovan So, tell us a little bit about what you're– I mean, I know you've only been here three weeks. What are you going to be doing at, at Stack?
AN I am going to be sort of, like, leading initiatives within that team for platform engineering efforts, both on the frontend and the backend. So, basically creating these tools – these self-service tools, these automation tools, all these tools that help other developers that build out the products, be more productive.
RD So I know this is a, a podcast for, for developers. So tell me, uh, a little bit about the, the sort of tech stack that you were using before you came to Stack Overflow.
AN Okay. So, before I came to Stack Overflow, I was doing a lot with Azure and C#, so I was doing a lot with the .NET stack and deployments. The Cloud I was using at the time was Azure. Also, because the roles that I've typically been in recently are roles where I sit in between the backend and the Cloud, .NET, you know, it's typically for like my backend stuff, but, if I had to do anything infrastructure related, it's either between Azure Bicep, Pulumi, or Terraform, and I've used tools like GitHub Actions and ADO. That's Azure DevOps. Some PowerShell here, some Grafana here, some ClickHouse there. So, I mean, a couple of things, um, because it depends on, you know, what you're working on at the time, the particular projects, and what's being done. But, generally, that's kind of what I, I was using before I joined Stack.
RD Nice. Well, that makes sense. We, uh, as far as I know, we are still a .NET shop here. Has it been easy to adjust?
AN It's a new type of role. I'm coming from engineering, from Microsoft, into my role before coming here, where I was a manager. So, going from being a manager in a smaller organization to being a manager in a company like Stack, where there's a lot of context, a lots of people to reach out to, and things are moving around you, adjusting hasn't been straightforward, but it hasn't been as difficult as I thought it would be because everyone has been so supportive. I’m finally beginning to add value to my team, and I'm enjoying the fact that I'm able to add, you know, some kind of value. I'm enjoying that. I'm adding that value. Obviously, in my first couple of weeks I was doing a lot of reaching out to people and gathering information, um, so there wasn't really a lot to do there, but that helped– really helped me with adjusting. In terms of the tech, because I'm not writing code in my role, my technical conversations are more high-level and architecture-like. It's been easy just moving because it hasn't been more, “Okay. I used to write .NET in my previous role. Now, I'm writing Go here.” I'm not writing code, so it's different. So I'm adjusting more to processes. I'm adjusting more to people. I'm adjusting more to ways of working, but it's been good so far because everyone has been really helpful.
RD Yeah. Do you, uh, prefer that? The, the sort of high level technical role as opposed to, you know, getting down into the weeds writing the code?
AN They both have their pros and cons, but, I mean, I chose this path for a reason, right? So, right now, I love it.
RD Sure. Right.
AN Right now I love it. I wouldn't trade it for anything. The good thing about being in tech, right, is if you feel like, at some points, you're tired of the manager path, there's always going to be an IC role for you. So, right now, I'm on the manager path, and I love it. So, yeah.
RD Yeah. Do you do any coding on your, your spare time?
AN I don't do any coding right now, but I typically build stuff outside of work. But, right now, because I have two projects going on, there's only so much you can combine with your job. So–
RD Sure.
AN –right now I'm writing another book, and I'm also doing an online master's, so that's my focus for now. Obviously, with the degree, there are a couple coding assignments. I wouldn't count those because they're just assignments, but, typically, I do coding in other, smaller ways outside of my job, but I haven't been doing that in the last four months since my degree actually started.
RD Yeah. Well, I mean, it, it sounds like you don't have much in the way of free time to do that.
AN Exactly.
RD Yeah. Uh, I mean, we, we've done surveys in the past about coding on the weekends, and a surprising amount of professional developers have their own projects, so was curious if that was you as well.
AN I used to have, like, different projects. I've built things. There was a time I built things around Game of Thrones. I used to be a huge Game of Thrones fan when it was on. But, right now, I am more focused on just getting my degree because I met someone two or three years ago – I'm not sure when we met anymore – but there's something that he taught me. He says that every year, he makes sure he learns a new thing that could add to his career. So, whether it's taking a course, whether it's getting a degree or something like that, and I feel like– and I don’t don’t do mine every year, but I also maybe would like to commit to a learning goal that keeps me sharp in the industry.
RD Mm-hmm.
AN That keeps me better, all of that. So right now, that learning goal for me is taking a degree, which is supposed to lead to something else. Maybe once I'm done and I have some free time, I can get back to building things, but, for now, that's not really happening.
RD Yeah, that's fine. When you do have free time, is there a technology that you're interested in that you'd like to explore a little more?
AN Right now, I'm very interested in infrastructure and platform, generally. So, you know, interested in enabling teams to build better products, ship faster, making developer productivity better, and also promoting developer autonomy in some way. So, I'm currently interested in tools that allow me to do things around, like, infrastructure and platform engineering generally.
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BP Alright everybody, it is that time of the show. Let's shout out someone who came on Stack Overflow and shared a little knowledge. A Populist badge awarded to pawstrong for hopping on and giving a great answer – an answer so good it got more upvotes than the accepted answer. What's the best way of implementing a messaging queue table in mysql? Congrats pawstrong on that badge. Thanks for the great answer. We've helped over 40,000 people with that question, so we really appreciate it. As always, I am Ben Popper. I'm the director of Content here at Stack Overflow. You can find me on X @benpopper. Email us with questions or suggestions for the show at podcast@stackoverflow. And, if you like the episode today, do me a favor, subscribe, and listen to it in the future.
RD I'm Ryan Donovan. I edit the blog here at Stack Overflow. Uh, you can find the blog at stackoverflow.blog. And if you want reach out to me with comments, suggestions, hot tips, you can find me on LinkedIn.
AN So, my full name is Adora Nwodo, A-D-O-R-A-N-W-O-D-O. I am currently the Platform Engineering Manager at Stack Overflow, and you can find me on LinkedIn at Adora Nwodo as well.
BP All right, everybody. We'll put those links in the show notes so you can check them out. Thanks for listening, and we will talk to you soon.
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