I’ve been trying really hard to navigate the Nigerian tech space for about a year now and it’s been hard, Lol. The current education system doesn’t teach anything about becoming a programmer. A couple of departments; computer science and computer engineering, teach one or two programming languages, and that’s it. So for the average Nigerian getting into tech, it’s all stabbing the air in the dark and praying you hit gold. Or at least it was for me. Till of course I turned on the light. Pretty basic yeah, that’s what I should have done in the beginning, but you’re probably like me and you don’t know yet. So here are six things you should not do when you’re starting out in tech.


Don’t Wait for passion.
Passion drives a lot of people and industries and while it’s a great thing to have in your corner, there’s really nothing passionate about writing tags or numbers on your editors or pulling images and containers from done, it’s not interesting or fun-filled. It’s boring and are guaranteed to fall asleep when watching you tube videos and taking courses especially if you’re self taught.
I’m not disputing the fact that some people might have passion for this, but a better drive would be passion for being rich, or being employed or let’s say a willing ness to get the job done. Even a sense of responsibility is a better drive than waiting for passion or inspiration. It might never come and what do you do then, give up?

Don’t underestimate having a plan
You need a plan, you need to know where you’re going, what you’re trying to become. As beautiful as it is to be a jack of all trade, you might waste valuable time acquiring skills you do not need without a plan. Not all programming languages are needed for a back end developer and same way not all are needed for front end development or UI/UX. While it’s great and beneficial to understand one or two in every field, you would save a lot of strength when you specialise.

Going without a mentor
One sure way to avoid missing your target or burning out quickly from exhaustion is to have a mentor. Once you narrow down the area you want to specialise, look out for a mentor. You can start by could emailing some popular ones you know or just plain shooting your shots in the DMs on Twitter.
Joining an Organisation like She Code Africa(SCA), Utiva, Stutern, Developer Student Club(DSC). Is an easy way to get a mentor and also a sense of belonging in the community, this is so helpful and would give you the push when you need one.

Don’t wait till you have money
A wise man once said, “check YouTube”. A lot of academies online now teach professional courses on that tech career you want to pursue on YouTube you could be saving your coins by looking for free stuff. Be strategic. Take that one month free Python class or beginner web dev webinar, get the outline or an idea on the next step them check for free courses online. There are tons and tons of them. Save your coins!!

Do: Check for other areas in tech.
Tech is wide, very wide. There’s so many avenues to build a career in tech,
Cloud engineering, Software testing, Dev ops, just so many, if you’re coding and it’s giving you a hard time check out other areas you need little coding knowledge. Product management and designs are areas you can specialize on with little coding skills. Check out Univelcity for these.



Do: Consistency
This is so important. Code every day. Practice every day. 1 hour daily is better than seven hours a day once a week. You would have forgotten everything you learnt the previous week. There’s a high risk of burning out. Set weekly goals, daily goals and meet up, you’ll love it.

Good luck on that amazing career you're building. Go forth and make sweet dollars.

Thank you so much for this!

God bless you real good Sir! I really needed this gospel truth! Being someone juggling between the path of Web Dev and UI/UX

Ok

.

M

I can debate your first point

As you guys know, I am big on Crypto Fundamentals. This market is volitile and wild. Many projects will moon and then lose energy over time. Others will sneak up on everyone, and in hindsight it will seem obvious why they succeed.
Here are the fundamentals that I look at for any project:
Brand: Dogecoin showed that a cool brand and logo go a long way, brand is more important than most think.
Community: Tokens measure underlying economy -- so the larger the community of HODLrs and Buyers, the more value. For example, Shiba Inu has a 1 million person community of buyers. Bitcoin is now probably 100x larger.
Utility: Utility adds real world demand for the token beyond voluntary adoption from community Liquidity: That comes from trading activity and being on a lot of exchanges Growth Potential: How big can the community get? How much use will it drive? Traders come behind any token that looks like it has demand and community behind it and growth potential. I think that most people in crypto do not understand crypto very well. It is such a new market. There has not been a market for creating currencies (this was a monopoly by govt and central banks until now). People confuse money (measuring tape) with economy (the thing that is being measured by money). YOU are the economy. What you value and what you do, what you buy and what you sell, is the value. Imagine 100 people with no money, simply trading goods and services through barter. The economy is what they trade. If they start using a money, that does not increase the economy, it just transfers the value of the economy into the measuring tape for convenience of trade. So now the measuring tape (money) has value because it can be exchanged for things in the real economy. For a community to use money requires a lot of TRUST. If someone can create more money than there is economy, they decrease the value of the money people hold, and people's trust in it goes down. Because central banks and government had a monopoly for SOOOOO long, they abused this to an incredible degree since we had no alternative. Enter CRYPTO CURRENCY. After the crash in 2008, trust was at an all time low, and people wanted a change. Geniuses found a way to create a money on computers that governments could not interfere with. They could not control it (they are trying every trick they can). They could not stop it (they are using every evil plan they have, and are failing miserably). So Crypto Currency is a massive success, and has slayed the old system, and the giant wounded dragon is slowly dying while lashing out in its dying gasps.

This is quite helpful in a very large way

Nice write up.
Let me add this:

A. When the jobs start coming in, don't underprice yourself.
Your knowledge is gold.

B. Seek knowledge daily, there is room for advancement.

As for me, I started programming in 2006, now, I'm thinking of retirement. I've paid my due, no more hard labour. Glory to God

Nice read

Let's fucking Go... You mustn't know programing before you become part of the tech world!!

555

I need to stop procrastinating

...


This your opinion is twisted, you sound selfish.... It's not all about riches...

Passion is an important drive.... If you have passion you wouldn't feel like you are working, and not everyone needs a mentor, some of us don't have mentors, mentorship is optional, keep it that way my dear sir.


Not everyone is about money, some of us just want our purpose and skill to be recognized, we just want To reach out to people for various reasons...






I do short films on my YouTube channel, you can check out my latest titled Daughters of Lilith episode One.

Please do subscribe and comment...

Noted, thanks.
Also,

Noted

Different advice everyday... God help us make we for no lost

Fact

julybaba:
Nice write up.
Let me add this:

A. When the jobs start coming in, don't underprice yourself.
Your knowledge is gold.

B. Seek knowledge daily, there is room for advancement.

As for me, I started programming in 2006, now, I'm thinking of retirement. I've paid my due, no more hard labour. Glory to God

Baba before you retire gift me your laptop.

[quotGOD e author=Ven20 post=99587014]I’ve been trying really hard to navigate the Nigerian tech space for about a year now and it’s been hard, Lol. The current education system doesn’t teach anything about becoming a programmer. A couple of departments; computer science and computer engineering, teach one or two programming languages, and that’s it. So for the average Nigerian getting into tech, it’s all stabbing the air in the dark and praying you hit gold. Or at least it was for me. Till of course I turned on the light. Pretty basic yeah, that’s what I should have done in the beginning, but you’re probably like me and you don’t know yet. So here are six things you should not do when you’re starting out in tech.


Don’t Wait for passion.
Passion drives a lot of people and industries and while it’s a great thing to have in your corner, there’s really nothing passionate about writing tags or numbers on your editors or pulling images and containers from done, it’s not interesting or fun-filled. It’s boring and are guaranteed to fall asleep when watching you tube videos and taking courses especially if you’re self taught.
I’m not disputing the fact that some people might have passion for this, but a better drive would be passion for being rich, or being employed or let’s say a willing ness to get the job done. Even a sense of responsibility is a better drive than waiting for passion or inspiration. It might never come and what do you do then, give up?

Don’t underestimate having a plan
You need a plan, you need to know where you’re going, what you’re trying to become. As beautiful as it is to be a jack of all trade, you might waste valuable time acquiring skills you do not need without a plan. Not all programming languages are needed for a back end developer and same way not all are needed for front end development or UI/UX. While it’s great and beneficial to understand one or two in every field, you would save a lot of strength when you specialise.

Going without a mentor
One sure way to avoid missing your target or burning out quickly from exhaustion is to have a mentor. Once you narrow down the area you want to specialise, look out for a mentor. You can start by could emailing some popular ones you know or just plain shooting your shots in the DMs on Twitter.
Joining an Organisation like She Code Africa(SCA), Utiva, Stutern, Developer Student Club(DSC). Is an easy way to get a mentor and also a sense of belonging in the community, this is so helpful and would give you the push when you need one.

Don’t wait till you have money
A wise man once said, “check YouTube”. A lot of academies online now teach professional courses on that tech career you want to pursue on YouTube you could be saving your coins by looking for free stuff. Be strategic. Take that one month free Python class or beginner web dev webinar, get the outline or an idea on the next step them check for free courses online. There are tons and tons of them. Save your coins!!

Do: Check for other areas in tech.
Tech is wide, very wide. There’s so many avenues to build a career in tech,
Cloud engineering, Software testing, Dev ops, just so many, if you’re coding and it’s giving you a hard time check out other areas you need little coding knowledge. Product management and designs are areas you can specialize on with little coding skills. Check out Univelcity for these.

GOD bless you amen.



Do: Consistency
This is so important. Code every day. Practice every day. 1 hour daily is better than seven hours a day once a week. You would have forgotten everything you learnt the previous week. There’s a high risk of burning out. Set weekly goals, daily goals and meet up, you’ll love it.

Good luck on that amazing career you're building. Go forth and make sweet dollars.
[/quote]

Impressive

Thank you very much for this. I'm just starting out, bought a course to learn python and it's a struggle not to be lazy. This really helps. Thanks again.

Exactly,
I really wish I had a mentor and joined a tech community earlier on.
I can now see how important doing that is and not just in tech but other fields as well.
I now have plans to do that.

Nice write up by the way

I need a tech mentor

07040154668

I'd really appreciate. Promise to behave

Consistency is the key. Ironically it's the hardest to maintain.

julybaba:
Nice write up.
Let me add this:

A. When the jobs start coming in, don't underprice yourself.
Your knowledge is gold.

B. Seek knowledge daily, there is room for advancement.

As for me, I started programming in 2006, now, I'm thinking of retirement. I've paid my due, no more hard labour. Glory to God

Good evening boss, I want to go into programming but don't know where to start from. Please kindly give me clue and headstart. I really need a mentor like you.

Do need passion to be a coder. If not I assure you, you'll rush out the same way you rushed in.