Alfred Rowe at the MPower Hackathon

Why Ghana’s Top Developers Eventually Leave the Tech Industry

I’m an Engineer in Ghana with over 10 years of professional experience. I strongly feel there is a lot that needs to be done by local tech companies to attract and retain top talent. There are few trends I have noticed over the years that eventually forces top engineers to give up and leave the industry.

1. We don’t understand the cost of losing top engineers
   Historically many local tech companies are comfortable spreading the base than properly rewarding their top developers. Its an undeniable fact that all fingers are not equal and we can all agree on the importance of having/losing a thumb. When you look at a football team, you can visibly tell the weight some players have on the performance of the entire team. Unfortunately many local tech companies don’t see this. They are under the illusion that “code” is code and every “developer” with a fancy laptop can write one.
2. Managers don’t believe engineers have a direct impact on revenue
   Many managers I have met downplay this point, they are under the illusion that a technology company can succeed with an “OK” product. Tell that to Google, MS, Facebook, German Car Manufacturers like BMW, Audi, Benz etc. Engineers don’t spend their time and energy talking about zero down-time, response speed, optimization, refactoring etc. just because we derive some intellectual orgasm from it. It has a direct impact on a company’s profitability. Here’s the reality. In 2009, Visa’s global network (known as VisaNet) processed 62 billion transactions with a total volume of $4.4 trillion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc.). Now lets work the math, that’s 62Billion/365days which gives us approximately 169M+ transactions a day which can be reduced to 118K+ transactions a minute that means VISA was making approximately $139K a sec. Now imagine you get a 10 mins downtime, imagine your engineering team is not capable of building a system to handle such volumes. Checkout how Braintree Engineers changed datacenters with zero-downtime https://www.braintreepayments.com/braintrust/switching-datacenters. These things have a direct impact on revenue generation, yet somehow local tech companies feel sales & marketing are the only variables that really matter in a technology company.
3. Top Engineers are more than just keyboard cowboys
   Experienced engineers actually do more thinking than coding. A top engineer has the ability to shrink or stretch an idea, all with the aim of maximizing output. Experienced engineers are semi entrepreneurial and they bring a lot more to the table than companies realize. Your experienced engineers are the difference between having a team of 100 compared to a team of 5, helping companies cut cost in many ways. Experienced engineers think more about yesterday, today and tomorrow which leads them to develop systems that are robust enough to be useful in the foreseeable future and beyond. Experienced engineers are extremely insightful across diverse fields due to years of work on projects with varied requirements. Top engineers just don’t go nodding yes to every feature request, they validate ideas and give insightful feedback which on many occasions help managers make better decisions. The smallness of our tech industry makes some of these things seem trivial and managers find it hard to notice the impact of experienced engineers.
4. Top Engineers leave companies with Intel and its dangerous
   Local tech companies in Ghana don’t realize losing top developers leads to losing a lot trade secrets and intel. History has always shown many engineers who pioneer products have the ability to see beyond the curve. This phenomenon is not limited to tech alone but it can be found unquestionably rooted in human history. This is the reason why many products fail when founders/pioneers leave. We’ve seen companies jump back on track when founders return. This has nothing to do with conventional skills, I don’t have the right words to describe it, but its there in our face. The tech industry in Ghana is extremely small, you can virtually visit all the tech companies in Accra in a day, until competition becomes extremely vigorous, companies will not see the dangers of losing top engineers to other competitors.
5. Remuneration is not logically/scientifically structured
   Top engineers put in more effort either directly or indirectly and in many cases both (think about football assists). In Ghana many experienced developers are in their late twenties, in my experience it usually starts from 27 years onwards. It may sound fancy to be taking home a thousand dollar when you are 22yr old junior developer, inexperienced and you have no personal responsibilities. Things change when you are like me, a CTO, married, two kids, school fees & bills to pay and a whole lot mambo-jambo adult life comes with. I earn less than a thousand USD a month same salary as my junior team mates. Some people may argue that when revenue goes up your salary will yet management is comfortable hiring more people with the same salary. This is why many top engineers in the tech industry here end up working for the Banks, because it gets to a point where your contribution is actually under valued until you made a bold move. Overtime as top engineers get older your passion for the job withers away and your economic survival takes over.
6. Too many non technical managers
   Have you thought about why the military has its own court? Above everything else I think its because their training and orientation makes them think, act and react in certain ways that will not be necessarily seen as “normal” in a civilian court. So in order to stay on the objective they need a judicial system that is sensitive to their orientation. I know many very smart and excellent non technical managers, some over the years have learnt the ropes and understand technology well enough to be able to make impactful decisions. Don’t mistake me, I am not in anyway saying we cannot have non technical managers in tech companies. One thing is however universally agreed on, from here to silicon valley, they must understand technology deeply. Its easy for managers to understand the sales department when they close a big deal, you can evidently see how this overtime leads to higher salaries because its evident what they do and its easy for non technical managers to relate. Lets turn the coin over; Your top engineer has his head buried in the same “upcoming update” for 2 weeks, management does not see the mountains he’s moving, they don’t see the decisions he has to make to order to push this update into the live product and not lose data, they never see all the trivial and non-trivial decisions you need to make about post-update and pre-update stages. Once the update is complete its treated as just one of those, you never really see a “true” appreciation of your efforts. A manager with an engineering experience can appreciate/understand these efforts much more. Think of it like seeing a surgeon performing brain surgery, you will appreciate it from a simplistic point of view unless you have experience in that field too.
7. Partnerships don’t work well
   For someone who has partnered on a couple of products, I am confident that many local partnerships do not work to the mutual benefit of all parties. Its more or less milder way to say “An alternative to cheap labor”. I may be wrong but I personally think local tech companies have an amateurish approach to partnerships. We know besides revenue every company dwells on goodwill, in fact many companies bounce back from bankruptcy by shear goodwill, goodwill is a catalyst to investment, goodwill is built on sacrifices, trust & growth. Top engineers sometimes leave to start their own businesses and may want to partner with their former employers or other tech companies. Overtime a short while you realize your’re in a sort of master and slave relationship instead of a partnership. You soon realize your emails somehow never get a reply immediately you raise certain issues. Its a nice way of saying “shut the hell up lets run this thing and focus on your code and stay in the corner”. In the end it kills morale and you end up gradually not contributing to ideas.
8. Lack of Technical/Right Investors
   Many investors trying to invest in our local tech industry either don’t have a technology background or don’t share a deep understanding of the field. I am not trying to encourage investors to prefer top engineers, but what I have seen is that investors actually think to succeed locally here it requires only a tightly nipped business plan with a rosy seal. Non technical pitchers have also created a perception that you don’t need big capital to invest in Ghana. Tonaton.com spent 300K USD alone just to make the product a household name in Ghana. Sometimes lack of visibility actually kills products that could have succeeded easily. Top engineers find it extremely difficult to win over investors partly because they lack some “magical” pitching skills, but largely because many of the investors are not technical and they cannot appreciate where you coming from and where you’re going. Many non technical people don’t understand many tech products succeed only when they have a viable traction. I find it hard to understand when someone uses Twitter/Facebook to tell people you need to start making money from Day One, I wonder how Zuck feels. Many Engineers have built great tech companies and its something I’ve noticed investors coming here don’t strongly consider.
9. Finding a co-founder/team is a lot harder than it sounds
   When you are 20yrs with an idea, its a lot easier to get your friends involved or find co-founders/team mates. You may still be in school and you have a vast network of people to tap into. You have lesser external responsibilities giving you leverage to really focus. Salaries may not be something you need need to worry about. Let’s fast forward 8 more years, you’re really experienced and you’re starting out in an place like Ghana. Almost everybody here after 30yrs enters an anti-risk-taking mode and you will find it hard looking for co-founders. The ones that you find might not have the strength to walk the journey with you without some pay (They’ve got bills and families to take care of). You need capital to pay salaries if you’re going to need a team. I believe in teamwork, I also believe team is not everything without a visionary. Unless investors are in for short term returns, they must understand some of the greatest tech companies where built by not more than two people, teams can be built overtime, I don’t understand why we drum this as a requirement for “Startups”…really? Who emphasizes on the importance of clothing to a new born baby’s first few seconds in the world?

In the end the biggest factor is remuneration and fulfillment, nobody likes to see his/her efforts go unnoticed or properly compensated for. If all players on the field earned the same salary even after they’ve proven themselves time and time again, we will not have the Messi’s and Ronaldo’s.

Too many local companies treat experienced engineers like they just added years to their skills and junior engineers can do the same level of work. Overtime you become fatigued with the nonsense and you just quit. Join a Bank and take home something meaningful that pays the bills.