HOW I WENT FROM WORKING A FINANCE JOB IN 'THIS LAGOS' TO ENTERING TECH part 1.
The 'painful' taste of victory.
If you don’t know, now you know.
What a puzzling way to begin, alas I promised to bring you into the know. The date is 16th January 2023 (to be honest, I can’t remember the exact day of the week, the 16th should do). On this supposed 'normal’ day, I was hard at work multitasking as I always do. On my computer screen, were open Excel sheets containing details of pension-related payments to be made to certain individuals who were about to be brimming with smiles because of the credit alert they would be receiving in no short time; my intercom was buzzing endlessly - a call from a colleague in the department that audited payments I had processed the previous day. A call I wasn’t intending to pick up, as my mouth was actively feasting on my morning meal of bread and tea. Yeah, I was holding my phone too while impulsively scrolling through Facebook.
In the backseat, I hear murmurs and whispers “Why should you be handling such payment and pressing your phone at the same time?” To speak quite imaginatively, I think some of these social media applications are made with soap, and for some reason you can’t seem to get off, just scrolling endlessly. I think it’s a problem we all face, I think you think the same thing too.
Back to my story; a post I saw seemed to startle me. A tech academy named i-Academy asking for applications from individuals interested in learning programming; precisely React (frontend), Java (backend) and Dotnet(backend) more commonly known as C# pronounced as c-sharp. I kid you not, it was the last day of application and I simply couldn’t believe my eyes. As a very sharp kid, I did the obvious, dropped every other thing and did the needful.
In the weeks that followed, I began to prepare for a looming career switch. In all honesty, this moment was the la decima I had worked towards for two years. Post 2020 and the COVID-enforced lockdown that happened globally, I began to embrace the idea of pursuing a career in tech. Simply put, becoming a tech bro became something I gave good thought to. Not just for the ‘soft life’ that was associated with them, or the grandeur of building exciting technology; neither was it for the inviting successful startup stories that filled the media. I gave it good thought because I was convinced that this was something I could really excel at, as for the other possibilities, I understood there was no limit to what I stood to gain.
Life comes at you fast and months after purchasing my first course on Udemy, my early optimism seemed to give way to a gloomy outlook because great progress wasn’t being made. I wouldn’t say the concepts were overly difficult even if they were new to me. It was more a case of juggling learning such a demanding skill with working a 5 to 9 in Lagos. Apparently, what is referred to as a 9-to-5 by career people is simply an unfortunate reverse in the metropolitan city that is Lagos.
For the uninitiated, this is how it works - the vast majority of employees live on the mainland and work on the island. To beat Lagos traffic and ensure you arrive at work on time say 8 or 9 AM, you most likely have to be on the road as early as 6 AM (4 AM for some people). For starters, the staff bus that I joined to work departed the pickup point closest to me at 5:50 AM. I leave you to imagine when I had to wake up from Monday through Friday. The reverse is the case when it comes to going back home from work. With each passing day, major road channels seemed to develop faults and more routes were closed. This only compounded traffic and ensured that after leaving work at 5 PM, you could arrive home as ‘early’ as 8 PM or as ‘late’ as 12 PM (midnight).
I guess you see my plight. These are no excuses but these are undeniable ‘obstacles’ that certainly stalled my learning process. I practically lived like this for 23 months starting from the first quarter of 2021. With time, I found my way around these hurdles (sabi boy like me). I took my personal laptop to work on some days. Apparently, it was unprofessional to be involved in activities not related to work during work hours. So I strategized, omo, I invented the wheel and re-invented the wheel consistently. First of all, I targeted the hours before and after work.
Yes, having to leave the house early meant we mostly arrived at work at 6:45 AM. So I had a great deal of time before work commenced at 8 AM. With time, I learnt another strategy albeit a risky one because when it backfired, it backfired spectacularly. This darling strategy of mine was to stay put in the office after work. My reasoning was to beat the traffic by not being in the traffic. How? I hypothesized that the road was ‘choked’ because everyone was rushing home from the so many offices on the island. So I planned to wait a considerable amount of time till the road was freed up. For context, backfiring means, the hypothesis fails and the road is still ‘choked’ when you finally set out for home late in the night. In such a situation, don’t be surprised that you reach your house just in time to have your bath, get dressed and head out to work immediately.
Anyway, my humble self with a darling colleague of mine (… shoutout to Naza Naza as I fondly call her) would leave the office by 9:30 pm. As such, I had four full hours (counting from 5 PM) to practice and code along with the videos I watched on Udemy. When it was time to leave, I would leave my laptop and other belongings I couldn’t afford to have ‘obtained’ from me. In retrospect, this plan never backfired and I am thankful for that.
Vision stays vivid always.
In these moments, I showed firm resolve; I lived by a personal mantra that I held so dearly (quoted above). It guides me, it still does, and it will always do.
Lifelines: Have a vision, write it down, be reminded by it and work towards it inspite of the challenges. Your life depends on it!
to be continued …