Victoria Nduka wanted to get into tech, but she didn't have a laptop. So what did she do? She made money as a writer, saved up enough to get a laptop, and took a bunch of UX design courses. And when Victoria stumbled into open source by way of a video posted to a friend's WhatApp status. This took her down the path of getting a coveted Linux Foundation (LFX) mentorship, and finding ways to apply her skills as a writer, UX designer and all around Curious Human to contribute to OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Meshery. Join Adriana as she talks to Victoria about her undying curiosity and her surprise love for cloud native.
Victoria Nduka wanted to get into tech, but she didn't have a laptop. So what did she do? She made money as a writer, saved up enough to get a laptop, and took a bunch of UX design courses. And when Victoria stumbled into open source by way of a video posted to a friend's WhatApp status. This took her down the path of getting a coveted Linux Foundation (LFX) mentorship, and finding ways to apply her skills as a writer, UX designer and all around Curious Human to contribute to OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Meshery. Join Adriana as she talks to Victoria about her undying curiosity and her surprise love for cloud native.
About Victoria Nduka:
Victoria Nduka is a user experience designer who’s passionate about making technology more inclusive and accessible. She recently wrapped up an LFX mentorship where she conducted UX research to understand how users expect Prometheus to handle OpenTelemetry resource attributes.
Victoria writes and speaks about accessibility, open source, design, and more recently, cloud native technologies.
Key takeaways:
Find Victoria on:
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Chapters:
00:00 Opening credits
00:26 Guest intro
01:34 Icebreaker questions
04:01 LFX Mentorship
06:41 How being an LFX mentee in Prometheus led to the OTel End User SIG
12:21 Victoria's tech career journey
21:48 Contributing to the OTel End User SIG
24:29 The ups and downs of being a writer
26:53 Contributing to Meshery
29:59 Outside of open source, what's your day job?
31:49 Parting words of wisdom
33:20 Peace out and geek out
ADRIANA:
Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast, in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adrienne Villella, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Victoria Nduka. Welcome.
VICTORIA:
Thank you, Adriana.
ADRIANA:
I am so happy to have you on. And hopefully if anyone hears any screaming kids in the background, those are outside of our purview because it's the neighbor's kids. Outside our control. It's all good. We are rolling with it.
VICTORIA:
Yay! Oh, there they go.
ADRIANA:
So, Victoria, we're. Where are you calling from today?
VICTORIA:
Oh, I'm joining from Lagos, Nigeria.
ADRIANA:
And thank you because I know it's a five hour time difference from Toronto. So definitely appreciate you coming on to record.
VICTORIA:
So kind of explains the the noise in the background because.
ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah. True. The neighbor's kids are home from school, daycare. I get it, totally. Okay. Are you ready for some icebreaker questions to get started?
VICTORIA:
Yes. Let's get to it.
ADRIANA:
Question one. Are you left handed or right handed?
VICTORIA:
Right handed.
ADRIANA:
Do you prefer iPhone or Android?
VICTORIA:
Tough question. iPhone.
ADRIANA:
Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?
VICTORIA:
That would mean that I have used. I've used all three, but so far I've only used Windows. So I'm going to say Windows.
ADRIANA:
Fair enough. That is a super fair response. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?
VICTORIA:
Text. I like to read.
ADRIANA:
Me too. I'm a big fan. Prefer it over video any day. And then final question. What is your superpower?
VICTORIA:
I think I would say I'm a quick learner. I'm I'm quick at grasping things, especially things that I can do with my hands. So I, I learned how to braid myself. I taught myself how to braid. I...now I’m learning how to crochet. So.
ADRIANA:
Oh, cool.
VICTORIA:
I'm. I'm very good with my hands. Creating things.
ADRIANA:
That's great. Thank you for sharing your superpowers. That's really cool. I think, working working in tech, doing something that's, like, more hands on is super cool. It kind of breaks the monotony.
VICTORIA:
Yeah. It does.
ADRIANA:
What... So you said braiding and crochet, right? I find braiding really hard. I can't braid my own hair. And, and like my, my daughter has asked me to do, French braid on her, and I can, I can do a French braid, but it's like, it's asymmetrical. So one side looks better than the other. Of course, it's always the second side because now the first side was the practice side. Yeah.
VICTORIA:
Yeah, I get that. It's like, especially when you have to. Most times one side is always better than the other side
ADRIANA:
My daughter has a friend who does like, French braids and Dutch braids on herself. And I'm like, I wish, I wish I could figure out how to do that. That is not my superpower. That's cool. So, you know, one of the reasons why I asked you on the podcast for for those who don't know, you and I met because you were part of an LFX, or Linux Foundation mentorship, that you you that brought you to the OpenTelemetry End User SIG. So I would love to talk a little bit about, how you got to, how you found out about this LFX mentorship. What brought you to us?
VICTORIA:
Okay. Long story, Let's go back to the beginning. I learned about open source from a YouTube video. One of my contacts posted a video on her WhatsApp status about contributing to open source as a designer. So I watched the video and got me researching about open source and stuff. Then I learned about the Outreachy open source internship program and also the Linux Foundation mentorship. And at the time, I was looking I was looking for projects that that had other Nigerians contributing because then I feel like, okay, I think this, this might be a community. I mean, I'm, I'm may be welcome in. So one of my one, somebody on Twitter posted that Meshery which happens to be a CNCF project, was accepting applications for mentees, for the LFX mentorship program.
And I applied to Meshery as an intern. But I did not get accepted for the project. But I stayed in the community and I kept contributing to design documentation, blog posts, community management, and stuff. Eventually I got the I got Outreachy. I got into Outreashy. Not LFX. So I did Outreachy for three months. After that... How do I how did I get to Prometheus? Okay. I still had interest in LFX. So when did Prometheus... The first term of '25. I saw that Prometheus had a UX-related project, and I was like, like, it's very difficult for you to find something UX-related in the LFX mentorship projects.
So I applied to the Prometheus project. I was accepted as a mentee, and my project was around conducting UX research on how Prometheus handles OpenTelemetry resource attributes. So while working on the project, I got to interface with the OpenTelemetry community. And that is how I got to meet you in the SIG End User group. And here we are.
ADRIANA:
Oh that's awesome. So your, your, your original, mentorship was, was through Prometheus.
VICTORIA:
Yes, exactly.
ADRIANA:
And then you found your way into the OTel End User SIG... because your your mentor, Andrej. He, he brought you. He brought you into the fold?
VICTORIA:
Yes.
ADRIANA:
Which is amazing. I mean, honestly, like, your your contributions. Like, for for anyone, who's who's watching? Listening. So I'm one of the maintainers of the OpenTelemetry End User SIG. And for a while, there were, like, basically three of us running this. We we had a couple of people join here and there, and then all of a sudden I'd say like earlier in, in like 2025. I don't know, like March. I don't know some at some point, some point we had like, the sudden influx of of people who are like, “I want to join and contribute to the OTel End User SIG... Much, much to the happiness and joy of us maintainers who had been like pretty much the ones running the show. And, and and then yeah, you Andrej had joined. He's from Grafana. And then he brought you along, because he was your, your mentor. And. Yeah. And and I mean, both of you have been doing, you know, wonderful contributions. Like, really participating, like, taking on tasks.
Which has been so, so amazing. And it just shows like, you know, open source is only possible because of the people contributing. Who are willing to put in the time. Because, I mean, at this point, this wasn't even part of your mentorship, was it?
VICTORIA:
It wasn't. But I joined the OpenTelemetry community, and I saw how how welcoming they were. And that's one... like you mentioned, that that's one thing I like about contributing to open source. I've worked in a traditional organization before, and I've worked in... I've contributed to open source, and the culture is just different. Open source is more... it's more welcoming. You have you have you have some level of autonomy. You are free to make mistakes and you are not. You don't have somebody, looking over your shoulder and telling you this is not the way you should do this. So that kind of that kind of environment is... it helps people grow. And that’s one thing I appreciate about open source in general, and particularly the OpenTelemetry community. Okay. We had open source week in Nigeria. So, at one of the events, during one of the talks about CNCF becoming ten years old. The, the speaker mentioned that OpenTelemetry is the second largest growing CNCF project.
ADRIANA:
Yeah.
VICTORIA:
It does make sense because of how the community is. So there are lot of people coming in to to contribute and stay.
ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah. That that's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's second only to to Kubernetes. Which is just absolutely amazing. And you're right. I, you know, I think we're lucky too, because I can't speak for other open source communities because I don't have experience in those. But I can say that OpenTelemetry, as far as an open source community goes, is such a thoughtful, kind community. And I've said it many times, and it's lovely to hear you say that, too, because I think, like I only got in. I have a similar experience with you. Like, I, I spent like I didn't work in open source until until more recently. And so, you know, I worked I worked in I've been in tech for 24 years and, and open source has been a thing for me for the last three and a half years. And being able to, not just, like, work in a very welcoming community, like, like OpenTelemetry but also for me, like seeing other people who look like me is so important. Like, just like seeing other women. Like, I spent most of my career just surrounded by a bunch of dudes and, you know, like, I've, I've worked with some very lovely guys, but it's so nice to work with other women.
VICTORIA:
Seriously. Yeah.
ADRIANA:
Like, it's it's just, I don't know, it's a breath of fresh air. And I think it's empowering, too, you know, to see other women and have that representation and see people who look like you, and like, for me, you know, I've been living in Canada for, for 30, I want to say 36 years. And I'm originally from Brazil.
ADRIANA:
And to be able to interact with other Brazilians in open source as well has been like, so cool, like such a cool way to reconnect with my culture. You know? So anyway, I, I, I echo, I echo your sentiment around open source. I wanted to dig a little bit. Change gears a little bit and talk about, like how, like your, your your tech career journey. How did you how how did you find yourself in, in the tech space?
VICTORIA:
I got into tech in 2022. Yeah. In April. But before then, I've been wanting to get into it, but I, I didn't I didn't have a laptop, so that was one deterrent for me getting into that area. So I started with writing. I started out, with content writing. Then after graduation, and that was while I was still in university. After graduation, I. I got an internship as a supply chain management intern. As one of the big breweries in the country.
ADRIANA:
Oh, cool. Like, that's so different.
VICTORIA:
So non-tech. So it was while I, while doing that internship, the I, I had saved up enough money from writing, doing freelance writing on Fiverr, then I got a laptop, and then I started designing. And I started, I started design because I saw a scholarship. There was this nonprofit that, they collaborated with another... With a tech hub, kind of, that offers programs, and it's mostly design group to learn, to learn design. So I got this scholarship and and I started learning design. I did that. Yeah, that was in April 2022. Then I got into open source in August, I think. So I designed for over a year before getting into open source. I took a lot of classes after the initial introduction. Courses on YouTube. On Memorisely. It was interesting. I would say. So yeah. That was from studying. I studied chemical engineering and. And practicing for a while to become a designer. And hopefully I'm trying to. I'm looking to transition to cloud engineering.
ADRIANA:
That's so cool. I think it's you know, I have such admiration for people who like, they start off doing one thing and they're like, nope. Not for me. And then just change. Because it's so like... first it's like the realization that, okay, this isn't the thing for me, but then then to follow through and take the steps that you need to take to make the change.
ADRIANA:
Like, it's it's so daunting. And I think it honestly, I think it's such a test of... it shows character. You know, like. It really does. It really does like it does. It takes a certain type of person to just like, want to do it, go for it. I think, like those are the types of people like we see again and again in tech, which I think is is amazing. So many people that I've interviewed on this podcast are like, yeah, I started one thing, but yeah, changed to tech. And then they, they do the things that they need to do to like, upskill. Like, that's so cool.
VICTORIA:
I think they like that now. Like I feel so good about the transitions I've made. At first I was thinking, will people think that I'm confused. They're like, why can't you just stick to one thing? When you say, when you say that way. Now I'm kind of like, I feel good about those transitions. But at the time, it wasn't it wasn't easy because when, when I as a young person growing up, you don't have your life figured out. You have a lot of interests that you want to explore. So it's difficult to say, this is the one thing I want to do for the rest of my life. So my, my yeah, I do one thing for a while. I find out that I don't think this is the place for me. Let me try this. And it's harder because you don't have all the time in the world. At the end of the day, you have to make a decision and stick to stick to it. So there is not that luxury of time where you say, oh, I can, I can try this. If I don't like it, I can switch to this. There's money to be made, there are bills to be paid.
ADRIANA:
So yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's, that's the hardest part, right? Like, it's like, you want to make the change. But as you said, you have to like pay the bills. So how do you, how do you balance that? But you know, you touched on something so important. And because. Okay, I've had this conversation with my daughter so many times. Because in high school, early on in high school, like, they made her take these courses. They made her take a class on basically telling her you need to pick the classes you want to take so that you can get into the university program that you want to do. And she'd come home, like, super stressed out. She's like, oh my God. They're expecting me to choose what I want to do. And it's like university still like three years away. And what the hell? Like, how can they ask me to know what I want to do? I don't know what I want to do. Right. And I told her. I told her the magical thing. I'm like, you can change your mind. And she's like, but what if I put in all that work and did all this stuff? And then I have to, like, start all over again? I'm like, it's okay. It's better than, like, being miserable.
VICTORIA:
Yeah. That's what I think the, the sunken cost policy. That's one thing that holds people back from making switches. Even now I'm still doubting this, this this switch I'm trying to make it to to cloud engineering. Is this what I really want? But I'll do it.
ADRIANA:
Oh, cool.
VICTORIA:
I'll see how it goes.
ADRIANA:
So, for for, you know, if you want to pursue a a career in cloud engineering, what, what what are the things that you're, you've started looking at, exploring, for anyone who who might be considering that too. I think it'd be really valuable.
VICTORIA:
Yeah. Now, this is also influenced by my my internship with the Prometheus project, but I'm looking at I know there are a lot of cloud engineers. But honestly there are very few people who do cloud native engineering in Nigeria. So that is what I'm I want to focus on. And also within the open source space.
ADRIANA:
Is there, is there any like open source project besides OpenTelemetry that kind of, interests you in, in the cloud engineering space?
VICTORIA:
Yeah. Prometheus. Naturally.
ADRIANA:
Prometheus. Of course. Of course.
VICTORIA:
Meshery, because that was the start of my open source journey. Yeah, I think that's all, so far.
ADRIANA:
Well, the good news is there's like, there are so many resources out there. For. For this. So like. Yeah, you know. The sky's the limit. It's it's amazing. And there's so much good content. Like, I mean I gotta hand it to like the CNCF like, between the CNCF itself, like having its YouTube channel and blog and all that. But also like, various CNCF ambassadors put out their own content. So there's so much to learn which is which is really cool. I mean, like when I was growing up... shows you how old I am... when I was growing up, YouTube wasn't a thing. I think it was becoming a thing in like my last couple of years of university. And this was like in the late 90s, early 2000s. So we don't we didn't have we don't we didn't have that to fall back on. I remember in, in like high school doing research on encyclopedias. And now and now there's like Wikipedia and like all sorts of different like reference materials. I mean.
VICTORIA:
Yeah, somehow we have it easier when it comes to learning new things.
ADRIANA:
Yeah. For sure, for sure. Which is I mean, I think it's so amazing. I mean, my, my daughter will like, learn the most random stuff on, on YouTube.
VICTORIA:
On YouTube.
ADRIANA:
Like super into, like learning about like paleontology and, and cosmology. And I think it just like blows my mind. Yeah. That you have that and people go out and produce content around that, which is really cool. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and, and in your words, like, talk a little bit about like the some of the contributions that you've been doing with the OpenTelemetry End User SIG.
VICTORIA:
When I, when I joined the OpenTelemetry End User SIG, it was to help with outreach for my, for my UX research for the service that I was going to put out my UX research. So I was I was hoping that the End User SIG would help me publicize it more, and I could get more responses on the survey.
VICTORIA:
After the mentorship, even during the mentorship. I think I was still joining the calls. So from my past open source contribution like, from my past experience contributing to open source, I usually look out for areas where I could help with the skills that I have. Even though I'm a designer, if I come to a community and they may not necessarily need design done, design work done, I also write. You don't need. If you have any areas where I could use my skills to contribute, I just contribute. I don't box myself in with a job description. So I looked out for ways that I could contribute to the community. This community is helping me publicize my my research. I have I need to give something back and I and I decided to my first contribution was co-host the “OTel Me...” session with you.
ADRIANA:
Yep, yep.
VICTORIA:
And we had.
ADRIANA:
And I. Appreciate that you did that. So much because like, you know, like, generally it was either like Reese or Dan or me, hosting those and to have someone else step up and say, hey, I want to try that! I'm like, oh, that's so cool. Because that's nice to be able to have, like, you know. It sucks to be like the only like to be the bottleneck. And so, like, if one of us isn't available, it's like now you've stepped up and have done that as well. So then you could like, on your own if you wanted to.
VICTORIA:
Exactly. So that was that. I, I helped out in that regard. And since then I've been helping with other tasks like I have the skill to contribute to. More recently, I have designed the OTel Collector follow-up survey. I also help with socials as well, every once in a while.
ADRIANA:
And and by the way, I, I have to say like, until you mentioned that, like, writing was, was like a passion. Like, I didn't realize. Sorry, I should, I should reword that. Once you realized that writing is a passion of yours, then everything clicked for me because, like, I remember you wrote a blog post summarizing, like, your findings for the for the Prometheus work that you had done. And you've written the social media copy and, like, honestly, like your writing was solid. I was like, damn. Because, like, let me tell you, you know, this, like, it's hard to come by good writing in tech. Okay. So whatever you encounter another like, good writer who like. Thank god... finally! Finally, finally. Yeah. No, honestly, like your your blog post was like a delight to read. I'm like, oh my God is so engaging. Especially like, you know, like it's not... technical topics aren't fun.
VICTORIA:
Exactly.
ADRIANA:
So anyway. Yeah. Like that. You definitely have a talent there. So everything clicked after you said that, I'm like...
VICTORIA:
It's so nice to find someone that appreciates good writing, because. The writing process itself is is it's very it can be frustrating, but... But when you're done with the work and you get the outputs, I really feel like, wow. So I wrote this. You forget all the, all the weeks of research and struggle because the, the output is just too good. And you're like, yeah, I’m very proud of it.
ADRIANA:
Yeah, And yeah, I mean writing I don't know if you feel this, but whenever I write a blog post. I, I always like I always end up gutting most of it. I don't like how it sounds. And I'll start I'll start off writing. I'm like, this is horrible. This is the end of me. No one's going to want to read my no one's going to want to read me anymore because like, this sucks. And then and then you refine and refine, you're like, okay, I'm happy with this.
VICTORIA:
Yeah, yeah, I experienced that too. I get that look.
ADRIANA:
So you feel my pain. I want to I want to ask you to, because you said you've done contributions to Meshery. What kind of contributions have you done to that project?
VICTORIA:
Oh, my very first contribution was to fix a typo, so I was.
ADRIANA:
Oh, hey! Right on! Every little bit counts.
VICTORIA:
So I was I just learned about open source, and I was I had just found the community, so I was reading the documentation to find out how do I contribute to this community. So in the in the course of reading the documentation, I found a typo. And it was it was easy because you know how documentation is. Most docs are. You can. There's this button at the top right that says edit this page. So I just clicked that and it took me to Github. And I saw the MD file that had the that doc page. And I found it [...]. And it got merged And it was funny because I, I was reading documentation to know, to be able to make my first contribution, and I ended up making my first contribution before making my actual first contribution.
ADRIANA:
That's so great. Hey, that's the way to do it!
VICTORIA:
So after that, I went on to write a blog post that was very. It was so unplanned. The you maintainer for the project... He he wanted to write a blog post, but he was too swamped and I volunteered to to write it. The title of the blog was, “The Importance of GitHub Stars.” And that was my I think that was my first major contribution to the project. I struggled because then I had to actually clone the repo and start working.
ADRIANA:
Poor you.
VICTORIA:
Git command in the command prompt. I was so lost, like I, I, I was practically living in ChatGPT and and the GitHub docs. Why did I give myself this kind of work? But eventually I was able to figure it out after like creating about three draft PRs. Creating and closing the PRs. I eventually created the final, final PR and it got merged. And then I, I also did some design contributions. I designed. I improved existing existing web pages that I had also designed them. Graphics for the social media. Community management. I have worked [...] getting started with contributing to the community. Oh I did some UX usability testing as well. Yeah, I did a lot of things.
ADRIANA:
Yeah. I was gonna say like that's quite a bit. And, are you, you know, outside of your open source contributions, like, what's, what's like your, what's your day job?
VICTORIA:
Oh, so much of my professional experience is from contribution to source. So I think I think since graduation, I've had just two, regular jobs that are not open source. And that is the internship that I did at the brewery as a supply chain management intern. I did that for a year and six months, I think. And then [...] I worked at a what's it called? IHS Towers. It's a. I know in network provider but they are like and I they offer IaS, infrastructure as a service, for telecom telecommunications companies. Yeah. So they have they have towers and then move ISPs can mount their devices on the side. Yeah. Make use of infrastructure. So I worked there as a network analyst for about two months before I got to intern with Prometheus. And from, from those experiences, I've, I think I found out that I, I'm not cut out to do regular regular like, I just like contributing to open source projects.
ADRIANA:
You're addicted. Now we are coming up on time. But before we wrap things up, I was wondering if you could, if you had a piece of advice, to share with our audience or words of wisdom.
VICTORIA:
As the first one, I give a lot of advice to my younger ones. But now that you ask, all of a sudden I. I'm out of advice here. But one thing I would say. One one piece of advice I'll I'll give based on my... was based on my own experience would be. Try try everything. So if you have any interests, life is too short. You want to try it If you want to learn sky.... be a skydiver, do that. You want to fly, fly plane, go fly plane. Yeah.
ADRIANA:
I think that's such great advice. That's really great advice. I think a lot of the times like something stops us from trying certain things. Right? And I mean, I feel like you're a testament to, like, you know what? I want to try this. I'm going to do it. So yeah, I, I very much appreciate that. And yeah, thank you so much, Victoria, for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...
VICTORIA:
Peace out and geek out.
ADRIANA:
Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter, Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally, designed all the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bio.site/geekingout.