Reflecting on three years at Softcom as a Full-Time Employee
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect somewhere down the road, will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn paths and that will make all the difference.
— Steve Jobs (2005)
Over the last six months, I’ve made life-altering decisions — including who to love, and where to work. In this post, I want to tell you about the latter.
A little background
On January 12, 2015, I started an internship with Softcom Limited, an indigenous technology firm co-founded by Yomi Adedeji who is also the CEO.
I got the internship by pitching myself to Yomi at a school event that he attended as an alumnus. Although it was not automatic, that act of shooting my shot began the process for me. In 2015, I was in my penultimate year in the Department of Computer and Information Science (CIS) at Covenant University, Ota.
Final year students of my department had to do a technology-related undergraduate project, usually programming. So, with my placement (SIWES¹), I was hoping to learn more programming that will give me the confidence to do my final year project.
Enter Softcom — proud partner of potential. Yomi asked me to meet with someone who acted in the position of Tech Lead at Softcom and the person decided to take me on.
In my time at Softcom (2015), I contributed to multiple edtech initiatives. These edtech initiatives include the deployment of over 6,000 mobile learning devices (tablets) to a secondary school and a University, organising a Future Ready Educational Conference and brainstorming on a mobile app for connecting teachers and students.
While I enjoyed my time doing the work of a Junior Project Manager and Technical Support Associate, I was afraid that I might not have enough time to get the hands-on programming experience I sought.
So, after spending more than 80% of my SIWES at Softcom with only about a month left, I moved² to Andela. Then, Andela was a one-year-old startup in the news for paying Nigerians to learn Computer Programming. Still, I was hoping to garner enough coding experience before returning to school. Unfortunately, I didn’t get into their Software Engineering team that built internal tools. But at least, I got to work with Ebun Omoni in the (Developer) Success department. (Read about my time at Andela below).
Three years after my internship at Softcom, I rejoined the company in March 2018. By the time I was rejoining Softcom, I had an MSc in my bag and a Google internship under my belt.
Between March 2018 and now, I’ve had the opportunity to do some interesting work while rotating across functions to get a fuller grasp of the industry.
2018: Working at Eyowo, a fintech and a bank
I started as a Product Manager (Partnerships) in Eyowo (2018). Working in Eyowo at the very early stages gave me an opportunity (of a lifetime) to truly understand and appreciate the nuances of the fintech space.
In Eyowo, I focused on product partnerships and third-party relations (including working with regulators).
As part of my product partnership work, I explored working relationships with NIBSS, Banks, Switches, Card Schemes, and Telcos via VAS companies. We needed each of these people for inter-bank transfers, bill payments, wallet deposits at bank branches, cardless ATM withdrawal, card issuance and USSD shortcode/service. Today, we have our USSD shortcode and all these functionalities on Eyowo. Card is coming, anticipate 🔥
Also, I was involved in evaluating what regulatory passes we needed to fulfil our mission, sourcing the requirements and putting together the documents (including writing a Business Plan) for the licence application. Several trips and demos at the CBN office in Abuja, we now own a PSSP licence!
Those two things were major highlights of my work at Eyowo and I’m very proud of all the work the team has put in so far.
2019: Moving to Client Services
After a year, when we had set everything in motion at Eyowo. I left to join the Client Service division.
I don’t know if I ever mentioned that I used to be a corporate guy before startup culture engulfed me. First, I attended a University that made its students dress corporately! Then, my first taste of real-world working conditions was at a Consulting firm, KPMG (some 7 years ago). So, basically, client service charisma and communication was in my blood. But now coupled with my IT background in designing process flows and drawing UML diagrams, I was ripe for a Solutioning role.
So, yes, I left Eyowo to become a Solutions Architect, reporting directly to the Chief Solutions Officer, Seinde Olobayo, whom I had met during my internship.
As a Solutions Architect in Softcom, I was involved in some level of pre-sales consulting. So, in the role, I was working as a “supporting striker” to our Account Managers. I supplied them with client engagement and sales enablement materials like proposals, presentations, brochures and I followed them to meetings as a form of complementary Technical Account Manager.
We worked on numerous deals and projects both for clients and ourselves, respectively. Some of the products and proposals we designed and submitted have been executed while others are in the works.
Take, for instance, the Coca-Cola EPL National Consumer Promotion. In my role as a Solutions Architect, I worked with the Key Account Manager to craft a winning proposal for the project. As you’d expect there were many other people involved in closing and delivering it, including the Product Lead and Engineering team.
Overall, I enjoyed the work I did. It was fast-paced & demanding and I got to enable the work of other people. This was where I got to work more closely with Yvonne Ige, who would later become my manager till this day.
2020-date: The evolving role of a Business Manager
In line with the company’s objectives to become a house of brands, it became evident that new roles were needed.
There was an opportunity to become a Business Manager (BM) overseeing the profit and loss of a business division. The business division was going to be made up of a product, its manager & the engineering team, then, we had Account managers selling the product to business clients. We had four major divisions: Payments, Learning, Identity and Data.
I was promoted to become the BM of Data. Thus, DataBeaver was the product in my division.
Alongside the team, we created a website for DataBeaver, I was more involved with the copy for the site. Then, I did some bit of Solutioning work to support the Account manager(s) selling DataBeaver to business clients (B2B).
As we continued to interact with the market, we realised that we built DataBeaver for businesses and not quite for the average consumer. So, we expanded our vision. This expanded vision meant that we needed to revamp the product and hire more product marketing managers than project managers (who typically helped the clients use our product).
I collaborated with the People team to design an assessment centre for the shortlisted Product Marketing Managers and today, we have hired three of them 🔥
However, sadly, I do not get to work with them for long, because this week is my last week at Softcom.
Bringing it all together
Softcom has grown, or should I say, evolved. From a company of about 20 employees (2015) to over 150 employees (2021). As at my first day in Softcom in 2015, the office was still being renovated but anyone who resumed in 2019 will only have the memory of Softcom’s current beautiful office space in Ikeja GRA.
We’ve had our fair share of ups and need improvement, but we are well on our way to becoming better.
We have gone from having predominantly male employees to a more balanced workplace.
Gone from not having any elaborate retreats to flying over 100 people out of the country for a retreat in Dubai and South Africa.
As I celebrate my third year anniversary on March 14, 2021, I do not think there will be a better time to take a bow from Softcom, after:
- 2 promotions
- 2 Softcom leagues played, scoring at least two goals 😎
- 2 international retreats attended — Dubai and South Africa
- 3 company awards received; including the CEO’s Outstanding Award
- Countless tweets bragging about Softcom
I will miss my manager, my immediate team, and all of my friends that have been there since 2015; Ope, David, Jenna, Remi, Tunde and the rest of the team.
At this stage, I can only hope that the dots connect in my future.
But for now, thank you — Yomi and Seinde — for having and mentoring me. Softcom has shown me what’s possible. And I’m looking forward to all the work we do together in the future.
In the meantime, you can expect to see me on your TV soon 😌 , pending my next career announcement! — Benjamin
[1] SIWES, also known as, “Industrial Training” is a compulsory skills training programme for Nigerian students in tertiary institutions. For my Course, it spanned 6 months, the entire Omega Semester.
[2] At the time, it wasn’t the norm for people to switch places during their SIWES, due to the attending level of paperwork and coordination with school officials who come to visit (spot-check). Nonetheless, I did it because I thought it was the best for my academics and career. In fact, I received two other job offers during my SIWES, Citi and KPMG. But I chose Andela. Choosing Andela meant, I forfeited a return internship to KPMG NG and I missed out on about ₦90,000 cash from Citi.
