So I found a job — a young Nigerian’s first taste of the software industry.

Well three. Three jobs.

Onikute
Onikute
Aug 25, 2017 · 10 min read
This is one of my favorite things, partly because it’s the first of it’s kind i did.

I haven’t published anything in a while. Maybe it’s because I thought my writing trajectory was parabolic, and nothing I wrote would ever be better than the previous ones.

But I’ve realized that it’s best to share my experiences. I might be helping someone or a bunch of people avoid my mistakes, or see the bigger picture.

Plus even if I write garbage, it’s my garbage. And I’m responsible for throwing it in the blue dustbin outside for when the people in the big 🍊 truck come on Thursday.

So, I found a job (or three).

I promised myself when I wrote that article that in one year I’d write a follow-up, have some brighter things to say and correct most of the naive assumptions I made.

This post would double as correcting the previous and an update on my naive antics.

It’s a Tim Urban type post. I apologize.


Payges

Payges was my first real job. Shortly after writing that article, Seun at Devcenter called me and told me some guys were looking for a Python developer, to work on a microblogging platform. I said yes.

At the time I was busy with the Enactus National competition, so I couldn’t start right away. This was a good thing because I didn’t know squat about web development at the time. I had only just done HTML & CSS tutorial on W3Schools and I was feeling good. All the Python I had written then was mostly desktop GUI and game stuff.

But who knows anything before they start their first job raii? So I learnt the basics of Django and took a 👃 dive into trying to sabi the work.

Most of the beginning stuff was just HTML, CSS and content. And, as you’ll recall, I had done ONE W3Schools tutorial so I was basically an expert.

They were impressed small (mostly because the project had been stalling) and gave Seun positive feedback. The Django part wasn’t bad too, although in hindsight I didn’t accomplish that much.

That went on for about a month and then school resumed. I assumed I could take on the world that semester and tried to carry a lot on my small, beautiful head.

Enactus technical lead, Payges backend dev and the treacherous terrain of being a 400-level Electrical & Information Engineering department student in a very blessed school.

Like clockwork, Payges started to shift further and further down the priority list as I spent most weekends working on Enactus and nerding at the library.

I couldn’t find a balance.

I became the guy who made promises and didn’t deliver, and I hated it. I eventually told the lead I couldn’t carry on anymore, because I was going on IT the next semester and would be working full time (Which was clearly not the real reason).

I guess the most important lesson I took away from Payges was, you can try to take on the world, but when you start to deeply neglect one thing for the other, its probably best to let it go. Especially if it’s something other people are invested in/working on.

Plus I got to meet Kolapo. Dope guy that’s really trying to build beautiful things.


Enactus Tech Lead

If you’ve read my post about the national competition, you probably understand what Enactus is all about.

If you haven’t, here’s my bootstrapped definition:

Enactus is a platform for students, academic leaders and businesses to change people’s lives by creating sustainable business that provide environmental, social and economic impact.

I always describe it to people with the give a man a fish concept:

If you give a poor man a fish today, he would be hungry tomorrow. But if you teach him to fish, he won’t be (If he’s wise).

So we tried to do that. We went for our first National competition, and came third.

Based on your boy did the slides, I was chosen to be the Tech lead for the semester. This one was a less clearly defined role for me, because I was in to be in charge of all things tech that semester.

I was graphic designer, slide and content provider, photographer, baby boy and terrible speech giver.

I enjoyed the graphic design part most, because I got to make cool things like these:

All through the semester, we had meetings and tried to accomplish as much as we could.

Also in hindsight, we could have done much better and much more. Live and learn.

Even before Payges, Enactus was where I learnt to take work seriously and to work with people.

I couldn’t be involved in the next competition because of other Kommitments (which would soon be discussed + pun very intended), and they came second by His grace.

At this point, my Enactus journey is complete and it’s time to work on another exciting project next semester.

I’m really grateful for all the mentorship we received.

Enactus would always be my first work home.


Konga

The aspiring engine of trade and e-commerce in Africa.

The real looking for a job started during the semester. I beefed up my LinkedIn, created a resume I thought was dope with ineedaresu.me, and made a list of companies to apply to. They capped at about 30 I think.

I made sure to send out my dope resume to at least five companies per week, and asked for advice from a number of people (Osarumen, you might not read this, but thank you for always replying and giving good advice).

Then I spoke to Oo, and he decided to introduce me to the Stutern guys. Formal email and all that.

I was really excited, because they sent my resume out to about twenty companies immediately. They were about to change my life and didn’t know it.

A few companies showed interest and in September, I got invited for the Konga interview. I couldn’t make it out of school that week for some reason so I told them to tell me when the next one was.

I also got invited for the remote Flutterwave interview through Stutern, for which I built this mini BVN validator, but I didn’t get in.

It was a group interview, and I’m not a big talker when I’m in a group trying to prove themselves.

But then something happened. One random evening in school I introduced myself to Celestine, co-founder of wemove, and he told me he had a friend looking for a Python developer.

He introduced us and I got called for an interview. I went for the interview in October and think I did alright. Few days later he messaged me offering the job.

I thought the terms were good so I accepted the offer. From that point on, I felt my IT was settled. We kept in constant contact because it was quite an early acquisition and I didn’t want them to forget me.

January came, and it was time to start work. I messaged the PM and he said he wasn’t around that I should wait, with no timeline.

I was worried.

Then I got an email from Konga the next week, saying the next interview was that week.

The interview itself was alright. I liked most of the challenges and I got to build something from scratch in three hours. The next day, I got an email offering me the Software engineer intern position at Konga Online Shopping Limited.

The interview was on Thursday.

I got accepted on Friday.

I started on Monday.

If you don’t know, KongaPay is Konga’s proprietary payment processing platform. I was placed in the KongaPay team and work started.

I had a pretty slow start and when I eventually got a ticket, I pushed straight to staging.

Please when you start a new job and they give you a task, ask questions from the beginning to the end. Before you breathe, ask a question.

There’s an unspoken two week period (maybe a month for interns) where no question is a stupid question. So please ask.

On my first day, I saw awards for “Best place to work” at the reception. I was intrigued and wanted to find out how true this was. They did not disappoint.

Konga is a wonderful place to work, because the people there are so great. A lot of the people there are superstars but they act like they have something to learn from you.

I’ve met so many great people. Jacob, Razaq, Mayowa, Kayode, Iyanu and Chidi, Oosita, Lukky, Efe Money, Gbenga, Andrew, Yemi, Yinka, Bodun, Wale, Miji, Mr. Jide Williams, Baaaaaki, I can’t go on.

I ended up learning a lot. Before I entered there, I had never written any PHP or JavaScript. But because I had so many people to learn from, my learning was accelerated. I worked on the core API, front end clients and even the recurring service client.

I also had the privilege of constant access to great learning resources and c ourses on Node, Angular, JavaScript, MongoDB, Python and s’more. Waiting on my laptop to be shared with the community in school.

What was so great about KongaPay, was that they didn’t treat me like an intern. Jacob kept calling me a “full staff” because of the amount of work I was doing.

But it didn’t feel like work most of the time. I just really loved what I was doing and wanted to make a meaningful contribution to the team.

KongaPay made me feel like family.

Even when I was leaving they said so many wonderful things, and told me how they’d love to have me back.

I can’t say thank you enough for the privilege and I hope the year isn’t too long because I’m not seeing your faces everyday 🌚.


Corrections

So in a one year hindsight, here are the things I was naive about in that post (The sentences in the quotes are from the previous post):

I believe a lot of Nigerian tech companies are selling themselves short, or maybe I’m just a braggart.

It turns out there are quite a lot of companies doing wonderful things. Until you take your time to try to understand our ecosystem and needs as human beings, you would barely understand how innovative a company is. Because that’s where i think innovation stems from, a deep understanding of the people, cultures and behaviors you’re trying to change.

Some of my favorite companies in this regard are Delivery Science, Max, Konga, Hotels. What i have come to appreciate the most is the innovation that happens in-house in these companies.

We can probably do better at sharing these in-house triumphs, but one step at a time I guess.

I’m seeing a lot of interesting breakthroughs happen abroad and getting increasingly frustrated with my country’s lack of participation.

This is very important.

What i have come to realize about this is, every country, nation, culture or generation has some core indigenous problems and these problems might not be the same as those other cultures have.

It’s not enough to just see what’s happening abroad and long to have those things applied by businesses in your country.

What problem would it solve? Would there be an addressable market? Would the business be sustainable? Is it something people really want?

I think this course on design thinking and this prototyping course (Both Coursera) really made me re-think my classification on what to build and how to think about building.

They are great resources if you want to learn.

The chart below shows that interest in Nigerian software isn’t stable and is even on a decline.

My rule for this now is that if you want to provide data or statistics, please do not reference a Google search you did.

It’s tacky.

Best to find bodies that are authorized to provide statistics about a sector or nation and reference those. e.g. National Bureau Of Statistics (I hear they’re on a role right now)

This isn’t a typical Nigerian write-up.

This is a generalization and also a very conceited thing to say.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

As of right now, Google’s search interest on Nigerian technology is lower than it was in 2005. I don’t know about you, but I find that very pathetic.

Search interest on one term is not a quantifiable nor strong enough metric to judge an entire country by.

In essence, I’m not looking for a job. I’m looking for an industry.

I still love this, and I’ve found one.

I’d like to write a post in a year that shows a higher interest than in 2005 at least.

Based on (v) above, this is no longer relevant.


So that’s where I am now. In the next year, I hope to help create the foundations for a solid developer community in my school, work on building Farmworth and dance through 500L.

If you have any advice concerning any, you know where to reach me.

If you liked this post, 👏 for Jesus.

Thank you for reading,

Puff puff is life.

OO.

)

Onikute

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Onikute

thoughts and notions.

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