Good day everyone. Trust we are all doing great? I just prepared my documents for the exceptional promise endorsement (2020 -2024). I will appreciate suggestions and feedback from everyone. @Francisca_Chiedu@pahuja@hsafra@ellagna@reachusama@mahesh3110@alexnk looking forward to your insights too
CV Personal Statement
LORs
1. Letter from the CEO of an international edtech company (over 12 years experience,
worked together for 2 years) - Company B.
2. Letter from the CEO of an international edtech company (Senior Product Manager at two
of my previous workplaces—approximately 10 years of experience, worked together for 2
years) - Company A and C.
3. Letter from the CEO of an African Logistics Company (10+ years of experience, worked
together for 2 years) - Company A
(all docusigned) MC QUESTIONS ANSWERED:
1. You have received nationally or internationally recognised prizes or awards for
excellence specifically in the digital technology sector (StackOverflow)
2. You led the growth of a non-profit organisation or social enterprise with a specific focus
on the digital technology sector (Google Developer Students’ Club)
3. You led the growth of a product-led digital technology company, product or team inside
a digital technology company (Company A)
4. You command a high salary or other remuneration for your services, as evidenced by
commercial or employment contracts with salary information including any bonus and
equity options and history of earning (Company B)
DOCUMENTS
Stack Overflow ranking showing top 1% of contributors as of Q4 2024, decent reputation (350+), badges, 370k+ people reached. Showed screenshots of badges, answers, and contributions, and also recognition by the AWS community on Stack Overflow. Included a link to the ranking that shows my full name on StackOverflow.
You led the growth of a non-profit organisation or social enterprise. Co-led the Google Developer Student Club (GDSC) for 2 years, organised events, and showed a Google-endorsed badge as a Core Team Member. Included a recruiter’s extensive chat for an internship in Bloomberg LP to help with the Bloomberg Terminal. Embedded in this document is a support letter from the ex-lead of the GDSC (now a Google Dev Expert and Cloud Innovator Champion).
Technical Contribution at Company A. Led the development of the product and showed multiple screenshots of GitHub contributions, Google Playstore Link, and Google Partners directly requesting to see my code implementation for a custom-enhanced service I built through the company. These contributions were also mentioned in LOR #3 by the CEO. The product currently has 18k+ active users and secured a pre-seed of over ÂŁ500k.
Remuneration proof (compared on Glassdoor) compared to my region. Showed payslip on accounting platform for 12 months, showed salary increase in less than a year, and email showing equity options on Carta.
OC2 QUESTIONS ANSWERED:
1. Evidence of contributions to an Open Source project
2. Evidence of mentorship must be for activity outside the applicant’s organisation or
normal course of work duties and excludes mentorship of other commercial
organisations as part of a commercial arrangement.
3. Talks or conference speaking
DOCUMENTS
Open Source Contribution Since 2020, Highlighted a major project that was part of the GitHub Archive Program. Included screenshots and contributor graph to an open-source blockchain SDK project with ~7k downloads on npm where I had 11 overall commits. Showed 2 merged pull requests on the repository.
Structured Mentorship on a major initiative showing selection (1 out of the 148 mentors in Africa) on cloud technologies partnered by Microsoft. Showed screenshots of the selection email (also downloaded the email and put it on a drive link), consistent email interactions with mentors, and Slack showing my mentorship channel on the program. Volunteer mentorship at a non-profit of 25k+ women across 20+ African countries.
Guest speaker at a webinar (Well Recognised African NGO), showing images of speakers and Linkedin post (2020). Panellist at a University Fresh Student Welcome of 4k+ students on inspiring creativity and innovators in digital tech (2022), included invitation letter, meritorious service award certificate, picture of me speaking. Panellist at a Nigerian Digital Technology event with 250+ people in attendance showed screenshots of a letter of invitation (Mid 2024). Guest speaker at a community of 14k+ people on building with emerging technology (October 2024).
OC3
QUESTIONS ANSWERED:
1. Having worked as a key engineer in the core product of a start-up, showing evidence
as to how you have contributed to its success.
2. Having led in the development of high-impact digital products or services
DOCUMENTS
Technical contributions at company B, Led a new department that was instrumental in getting a license that helped break into more international markets. Included GitHub contributions (pull requests merged) and a YouTube link to a company video mentioning my name and the role I played in breaking a new annual recurring revenue milestone. Included a support letter from the engineering lead of Company B.
Technical engineering lead at company C, led the development of one of its core products, raised ÂŁ1m and impacted over 15k+ people with the products. LOR #2 mentions this too. Also included Employment Offer Letter and screenshots of PR review and code contributions.
Support Letter from Engineering Lead at Company B (7+ years of experience)
It looks like you have a good profile to start here. Based on your provided information, I may suggest you a few things:
swap between MC1 (Stack Overflow ranking showing top 1% of contributors) and OC2-3 (guest speaker) as they will fit in better in each criterion
MC3-1 (contributions at company B): ensure that you include the metrics and screenshots in here. It is also suggested that those metrics/nunbers are to be mentioned in your supporting letter (OC3-3) as well.
Looks good from my end. Let’s wait for the other volunteers to comment here.
Alright. I will swap MC1 with OC2-3. Yes, the metrics and screenshots are included in both MC3-1 and OC3-3. Thanks so much @alexnk for your help. I will be looking forward to the feedback from other volunteers too.
Hi @Maya@pahuja@alexnk@Francisca_Chiedu. Thanks so much for your review the last time. I applied for the endorsement (Promise) and was rejected on all criteria. It is somewhat unclear as the assessor mentioned only 1 out of the 5 evidences I submitted for my Mandatory Criteria. This was the first evidence in the list. Is the assessor only mandated to assess a single document out of the Mandatory criteria ? (and totally neglect the remaining four ?). The reason for rejection claimed that why was I “leading,” even though I was early in my career? This was a students’ club as stated in my personal statement (and I was a student at the time), CV, reference letter from a Google Developer Expert and the Google Badge I received from google for my contributions also affirms this. I had 4 speaking engagements in a single evidence with pictures, technical contribution a leading edtech company in North America, selection as a mentor for a cloud program in Africa in 2021, salary and stock options (5th) document.
Regarding OC2, how many of the evidence is expected to pass ?
(My stackoverflow contribution is over 375k, ranked 276 out of 27m stackoverflow members, ranked on 3 different ocassions by the AWS community) with publicly verifiable link on StackExchange showing my name. Also, screenshots were added since the guidelines state that the assessors aren’t mandated to check external links. The other evidence was a personal open-source project and a contribution to an Algorand foundation project, the comments on both is in the proforma.
Regarding OC3, I was the founding engineer of a company A. This had metrics, code contributions, email correspondence with different google partners was mentioned by one of the LORs. OC3 also had a reference letter from Engineering Lead at company B, impacts and necessary numbers. The third document in OC3 was for company C. This was also mentioned by one of the LORs and it seemed that was the only document assessed by the assessor. In one of the 6/7 screenshots, it included a screenshot that showed an unsigned employment contract. However, the assessor said it showed that I contributed but that was the only documents assessed out of 3.
I will really appreciate any help towards an appeal as I followed the guidelines judiciously and wasn’t expecting an outright rejection on all criteria.
I submitted 10 evidences in total
5 MC
2 OC2
3 OC3
Am I expected to pass 1 MC, 1 OC2 and 1 OC3 ?
Is the reviewer only mandated to review one evidence per criteria and neglect others ?
I will be looking forward to everyone’s help towards a successful appeal
Good evening everyone. Do you think I should still appeal the case. @pahuja@alexnk@Maya@hsafra@Durga@Francisca_Chiedu and anyone else that can help review this case. I think I have technically 19 days left to appeal. Will genuinely appreciate anyone’s assistance.
MC: The assessors aren’t required to follow external links from the files and the feedback seems to indicate that your evidence was externally linked and as such disregarded. Is that correct?
OC2 needs to show ongoing contribution to the industry - are they right in saying that the commit evidence only shows commits from 3 years back. Do you have other data there?
For MC, it is not correct. The 5 documents for MC had very few hyperlinks but there were screenshots of those claims are well explained and illustrated in the original document,. The assessor was almost pointing to have only checked 1 out of the 5 documents
One of the open source projects which shows me as a top contributor had my last commit in April 2022 (This was after the sdk was launched and there weren’t core issues to be resolved anymore), community contributions to the project stopped in 2023), this was the biggest project on the Algorand blockchain in the year 2022. The other was a personal open source project and was termed as not sector-advancing (It was a procedural script written in a language for High Performance Computing and it is still being used to benchmark the fastest supercomputers in the world, the project was selected for the Github Archive Program in 2020). OC2 also had a document dedicated to Stackoverflow. The assessor claimed there wasn’t a recognition for it whereas, stackoverflow only shows recognition in terms of leaderboard, top rated answers and badges. I was rated 276 out of 27m stackoverflow users in Q4 2024 (included the public link on stackoverflow affirming the claims, added a screenshot too), rated top 50 on 2 different occassions for AWS collectives (added screenshots) and I had an impact of over 375k as at the time of submission (10+ badges).
For OC3, only 1 out of my 3 document was probably assessed.
I fail to understand why you say the assessor confirmed they didn’t review all evidence in MC?
If you believe that’s the case, and that that files by themselves have sufficient evidence without the external links, this might be grounds to appeal the decision on MC.
OC2 is about showing ongoing contribution beyond your work. I think that’s what rubbed the TN panel wrong - there’s a few commits from 2022, a break and then stackoverflow ferom Q4 2024. They might have deemed the commits too infrequent and the stackoverflow evidence as to close to the endorsement request
OC3 - if you indeed believe that documents were overlooked it might be worth noting this out. The evidence needs to show impact on the business, not just the technical contributions.
Also, the OC3 documents showed impact on the business and emphasis weren’t even as much on the technical contributions.
For the OC2, contributions outside of work should be anything from open source, mentorship, speaking, stackOverflow ? All of these were included in the application but weren’t mentioned by the assessor. If for anything, can I point the assessor to some of the documents in the MC that adds to the “contribution outside work” to make the appeal stronger ?
The assessor won’t necessarily mention all the evidence files in their response. But assuming the evidence fits the rules (is legible, not externally linked, etc.) then they will review it.
You can’t submit new evidence during an appeal, and moving evidence from one category to the next might be deemed as such. Worth mentioning it though.
I think you should appeal the decision and point the appeal panel to evidence that were not considered. Also clarify why you were leading. It doesn’t make sense that they think someone early in their career can’t lead. This is just in consistency as the idea is for you to demonstrate you have potential to become a leader. If you have been entrusted leadership role early in your career it means you are talent and trusted to take such role. However, it is unclear if most of your evidence are recent. I hope they span a period of time. For the 2022 evidence, as long as it is within five years, it is fine. I just think the application was assessed in a ruch or you didn’t present it clearly. Use the review and add some context to help them understand your evidence better. Show how each evidence show your leadership and impact.
Thanks so much for your input @Francisca_Chiedu. My evidences aren’t recent. The only recent part of my evidence was the Stackoverflow leaderboard recognition that happened in Q4 2024 (It has also been active since 2020 as my first answer was in 2020 and it garnered over 350k impact). Every other evidence shows a track record (2020 to 2024). Most of the evidences I submitted weren’t considered as I did try to present it as clearly as I could.
For Exceptional promise, you need to be qualified 1 of each criteria.
It seems that you have provided too many self-authored evidence. They can be improved by getting them mentioned in reference letters in your next application. (You cannnot add anything in the appeal process)
For OC2: It seems that some of them are not significant enough, which is a grey area which you should appeal. For the consistency, is something that you know, and I cannot comment much. But you can definitely appeal to see if your consistency enough.
OC3: You can assess your own “impacts and necessary numbers” you included in the evidence again to see if it shows the Exceptional leader/promise or not. I mean… are they just numbers? are they really good numbers? However since you have been backing them up with LOR, you may also point them out in the appeal to see what the second assessor say
