The hottest thing in Nigeria right now is the tech industry. From series of funding to really high salaries and remote work which has a lot of people earning really high while living in Nigeria. Imagine getting 2000 USD a month working for a small company in the USA. That's 1 million naira monthly just sitting at home. Some companies like Basecamp are removing location based pay. That means if you get a job there they pay you the same rate as their engineers in silicon valley which is 200k USD yearly. That's 100 million naira a year in Nigeria. Almost ten million naira salary every month. This is the really high end of the spectrum before a lot of people think is normal but then 1000 to 2000 USD a month is quite atenable especially for a new developer with one to two years of experience. Even remote internships pay around 500 USD which is like 250k. Doctors in Nigeria with ten years to thirteen years post medical school experience do not even see such salaries.

But all of this is remote. As much as you might not like it you are profiting from another man's economy. Things other men have built in their own nations. The pay for programmers in Nigeria before this whole remote and funding craze was really really low. It was Maximum of 50k. It wasn't even a viable career. For instance, threads from the programming section didn't even use to make front page till last year and you know have people advertising pirated versions of Udemy courses and all of that.

As of 2012, how many people even wanted to be programmers in Nigeria. When andela came here in 2014 they literally had to pay people to learn. People were paid 80k then alongside new macbooks to learn coding because we literally had none to very few programmers in Nigeria but even andela depends on foreign clients for revenue. Andela Devs can agree with me here that they all mostly work with foreign clients so the whole bulk of money still comes from abroad.

Now imagine that working remotely doesn't exist or isn't a thing or that programming was a field like medicine or law or engineering that restricts you to your country, would programming still be a viable career. Would people still want to learn programming especially Nigerians. Because to me honestly even if you learn programming and you decide to focus on Nigerian clients, many Nigerians don't have money. How many Nigerian individuals or companies can shell out 500k to build a website. Where I work, 50k USD is really the standard minimum.

On the product side, how many Nigerians have the money to patronise tech products. Imagine building something like Shopify for the Nigerian market. How many Nigerian individuals can afford the fees. Aside Lagos Island, Abuja and port Harcourt a whole lot of Nigeria is still stuck where Europe was in the 1800s. Are those the people that will patronise your tech products and they don't even have any money. All they think about is where the next meal will come from.

So programmers in the house, if remote work wasn't an option and programming was a career that restricts you to Nigeria like other professions would you still become a programmer?

With or without programming. Money must be made.

To be very honest here, I wouldn't bother to learn how to write a html tag but for the the fact that I can be indoor and earn, that alone is one huge factor that is making me to still be here. Nothing like car accident or office politics etc. So to your question YES. I want to stand out, I wanted to be legally learned and tech learned too.


PS: Tenga, stop dragging these my professions like Tiger gen.

I will still be programming
Nairaland came to existence via programming long before the remote job era.

I believe there will still be money to be made for those really committed to programming cos they have the liberty to build practical solutions that solve problems in the country. All they have to do is monetise these solutions.

PS: The above is not easy to achieve in the country due to several unfavourable odds.

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Yea.....you can code up your personal projects that would earn you money. (Like nairaland).
Also you can work in a huge organization as a programmer