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General

Midnight Starter Pack

Miracle – Noodles, Egg, bread, pancake, drink

Onaopemipo – Garri, Biscuit, Yoghurt

Kruse – bread and akara

Faruq – Coco pops, cornflakes or, in times of scarcity, I just mix powder milk and water and drink

Abayo – Eba and efo

General

How do you handle fame?

I do my thing as I want without thinking of what someone else will say.

Know that some people will not like you no matter what you do.

Also, the world doesn’t have a conspiracy against you. Even if they do, do not pay attention to it.

Just try to be the best you can when you can.

Why is it important to share your story?

My friend, Tabby and I live by a very simple quote that we hold dearly to heart

Progress is always progress.

And only someone who knows what you do can recommend you. Sharing your story helps you put the word out that you do what you do and inspire you and those who look up to you.

General

On charging clients.

Charging clients is a delicate matter. There’s no one size fits all. It differs from person to person. Here’s my approach to things.

  1. Have a base pricing per hour. This can go from as low as 1 naira per hour to as high as you like.
  2. Be able to break down what is required of you to tiny bits and place it into hours. It’s helpful to note that you won’t use an hour to complete each task so factor in breaks.
  3. Have a standard base price for all type of gigs that you get. Apps. Website. Custom code. This is serving as a base price.
  4. Sum up your base price + total billable hours price. Then round it up and down based on how worthy you think of yourself.
  5. Goodluck, you’ll need it.
General

On parents, laptops and doing nothing.

Often times, because parents are a part of the older generation, they do not know what we go through. They do not know what WhatsApp is or Facebook is and definitely do not understand why you are sitted in front of your laptop everyday. Here are a few tips to help:

  1. Be of your best behavior. Once your parent see that you have ‘yahoo trait’, they begin to cast doubt over what you are doing.
  2. Sit them down and explain to them in your local langauge. They don’t know what website or apps are but use analogies like TV, radio and stuff to explain to them.
  3. Do your chores on time. I know parents will always find something for you to do even when there are no chores 🤦🏽‍♂️ but do your chores when you can.
  4. Look for an internship, make a few bucks and get them a gift. Show them what you created in your internship and how much you were paid.
  5. Goodluck. You will need it.

❤️,
Baby Boy.

General

On the matter of jobs

On the matter of jobs, tbh, there is a lack of good software developers who knows their skill.

How do I know this? I manage about 2k+ developers directly in the ecosystem and I still find it hard to hire outside of a core circle of people.

Here’s what you can do:

  1. Volunteer. Most of the projects people use to build my portfolio are from volunteering to work on stuff. Last two Backend and Frontend gig I employed for was just because they volunteered for 30DoC. No CV. No interview. No cover letter.
  2. Build Projects and Tell Your Story. Can someone tell me what’s special about a weather app? Something that Google Assistant does effortlessly everyday? NOTHING. But I still built it and TOLD the story. What happened was a lot of people had it in mind that he does this thing and they started recommending me for jobs and gigs. It’s important to tell you story. Because only someone who knows that you know what you know can recommend you.
  3. Know clearly what you know and what you don’t. There are a lot of buzz words in this space. Just to build website, there is angular, react, Vue, WordPress and a whole whole lot. Omo mehn. Please know clearly what you want and master it well. Our agency collects gigs in React Native and I have never written a line of RN ever in my life.
  4. Wake up, dress well and approach the small businesses in your area and build a simple website for them or an NGO in your area. Make sure they pay for domain and hosting so you can have proof you did actual work for a actual brand that is going live. It helped me way back in 2012/13.
  5. Sign up for OHW 2020 – ohw2020.web.app.

Thank you for coming to class.