The Downsides Of Becoming An ‘Overnight Techie’

I ‘stumbled’ across the world of InfoTech in the year 2001, it was a very dark period for me as I was in an ‘obscure’ place in my life.

A relative called me up to sympathize with my predicament at the time and ‘suggested’ to me that I venture into the Infotech space as I had nothing to do at the time.

During that period, the two leading InfoTech training institutes in Lagos were Aptech and NIIT. I located the closest Aptech center to me and it was located at Maryland, Ikeja (Meridian Technologies). As soon as I took my first step into their center, I felt a strong sense of purpose, like I had finally found ‘myself’.

A fire was ignited in me for I had truly found my ‘passion’.

I recall the security guards chasing some of us home at closing hours because we were literally addicted to ‘PCs’, and most of us did not have personal computers at home back then, all the practice we had could only be done at our training center.

I absolutely fell in love with InfoTech and after I completed my first course with Aptech, being one of the best students at the time, I was employed as a lecturer or faculty as we were referred to by our Indian employers.

Not all of us that started the soft skills training together finished. Some dropped out, some lost interest, some had ‘no passion’ for it ‘at all’. At that time, it mostly appealed to those of us who had discovered our ‘passion’. These were some of our traits:

1. We gave up our social lives and would sit down in front of those ‘old school’ computer screens (CRT) for at least 8 hours everyday learning web designing (MS FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver/Flash)
2. Investing any money we had on books written by Dietel & Dietel (The C programming series – C, C#)
3. Gave up sleeping at night to learn and practice coding skills, etc.

And some of us at that time, the future entrepreneurs were already looking for how to convert our knowledge into delivering solutions for clients.

I recall one of my first consulting jobs ever, I helped a client who owned a business center to install Microsoft Office on their PC and I was paid N1,500, like wow, I was really excited. For me, I enjoyed it because every skill that I learnt could earn me money asap unlike the traditional educational system where I was taught that a cockroach had 8 legs (and I would think to myself as a student back then in secondary school how that information would ever fetch me money!).

So what’s the point of all this that I am talking about? The point I am trying to make is that every ‘IT GUY/LADY’ has a story to tell. The story is usually about ‘bumping’ into ‘Infotech’, discovering ‘passion’ and excelling in the field.

Today, the case is different and this brings me to my write up titled – ‘The downsides of becoming an overnight techie’.

Today, there is a ‘sudden rush’ to be a ‘techie’ by the general populace because tech professions get the best wages. As a result, most people are willing to abandon their most innate passions to pursue a career in Infotech so that they can make ends meet. The end result of this is employers are finding it very difficult to fish out the true techies from the ‘overnight techies’.

So who is an overnight techie?

1. One who has no passion for tech. while doing a tech. job.
2. One who is only into tech. because of high salary figures.
3. One who completes a ‘crash course’, crams dumps and get certified.
4. One who has no experience (but claims otherwise on his/her CV).
5. One who has no innate ‘know-how’ of the job.
6. One who pays people to assist in getting his/her job done.

Here are the downsides of being an ‘overnight techie’:

1. Easily detected by job interviewers.

2. The person does not have any passion for your job (your inspiration is the salary at the end of the month).
3. The person does not have any experience (so you have to lie on your CV and question your integrity).
4. The person lacks the skills needed for the organization that he/she works with to excel.
5. The person has a good job and fat salary but is not happy.

As a consultant, I am exposed to a lot of different kinds of people and organizations that show the absurdity of being in tech. without ‘a passion’ for it and merely for the financial rewards. 

Some examples of these people/organizations that I have met are:

• There is the digital transformation coach I met ( a former banker) who finds it difficult using digital products to manage his local team but teaches other organizations the necessity for using digital tools with their teams.
• There is the start-up entrepreneur for a tech company who only puts on his laptop to watch Netflix.
• There is the data scientist who pays people on Fiverr to help complete school/work assignments.

Last year, a lady in her early 40s who is a fashion designer based in the UK, called me to sign up for my Web Design Master Class, she barely made it past the first week of training, there was no passion, everything I was saying and displaying just looked like ‘gibberish’ to her. She dropped out of the class but she didn’t give up, she took up classes for Agile Master, Technical Business Analysts, etc. She got some very promising interviews with some notable companies but along the way, I celebrated with her because she came to terms with herself and left the IT career pursuit to become a social worker. She said to me “Damola, it’s not my thing”. She just needed the heavy paychecks at the end of the month, but she was not the type that would sit down in front of her laptop from 8pm – 4am. Never! lol

It is true that a lot of people are only keeping their jobs because of the salary that comes in at the end of the month and this is especially true with a lot of ‘IT Jobs’.

There are certain characteristics that ‘IT people’ have that come naturally. It is a geeky lifestyle. If you’re not a geek, you’re not a geek! Lol

This situation that I write about poses a VERY huge challenge for the tech. employment industry. 

People who do not have the required skills for a technical job would hurriedly do a crash course, get certified and PREP up the ideal CV to outsmart employers. Let’s not even talk about how applications such as ChatGPT can also be abused in this regard.

They get the job and are unable to deliver as expected, causing the company a significant loss. This approach does not help any party, the employers and the employees.

I get it though, everybody wants to earn big and that’s allowed. The question now is, how can you excel in the InfoTech field without being passionate about it?

Before I answer the question directly, let me tell you another story about a beautiful lady I met. I met her in my bank, she was a customer service representative at the bank, a very beautiful young lady but always looked ‘frustrated’..lol. She observed that I owned a corporate account for a technology company with the bank and so she got talking with me to show her interest in joining the tech market. She mentioned to me that her brother was a senior developer at his place of work and that she wanted to be like him. We exchanged numbers on whatsapp, my goal was to mentor her towards the right path in the InfoTech job market.

After several conversations, trying to ‘discover’ her true passions, it became clear that this lady had made up her mind to quit her job with the bank and enroll in a training program to become a software developer.

Without trying to discourage her, I advised her to start her journey as a ‘Product Designer’, I educated her a bit about that skill and told her to familiarize herself with an application called FIGMA and also pointed her to some other useful resources.

UX/UI designing was my best recommendation for her to get started and build up from there. My suggestion was that if after she was done mastering UX/UI (using FIGMA) and she still felt the need for more, then she could pick up ‘front-end’ (Java script, CSS) development so that she could acquire a very rare title of  ‘UNICORN UX SPECIALIST’ or ‘SENIOR PRODUCT FULLSTACK DESIGNER’, indeed this would have provided her several mouth-watering job opportunities (locally and globally). My UX designing friend was offered a job in Germany about 3 years ago and his life has absolutely transformed, all he uses is FIGMA, she would have had the edge over someone like him with her front-end development skills.

However, this lady decided to do what she wanted to do! She did not buy my idea and I wished her good luck.  Barely a few months down the line, she called me telling me that she was now a software developer and she had a job interview! She said she had written down the name of my company on her CV claiming to them that she had done her internship with us and that they might call me to ask a few questions about her internship! Lol

So I carefully told her to remove my company name from her CV because she never did any internship with us and integrity is one of our pillars at ServerPoint Technology Nigeria. She was upset. Imagine the company that employs her with so much expectations, not knowing that she only ventured into software engineering with less than 6 months programming experience! Very bad for her and for the company as well.

Obviously, this lady has some passion, she just needs guidance. However, the rush to start earning BIG money was her primary priority.

So, I ask, how can a person succeed in InfoTech without having any passion for it? The answer is simple, get a mentor. A mentor like me, who has over two decades of experience and has worked with organizations and people of all types. It is easy for me to know where you would flourish in InfoTech because whatever your innate passion is, there is an IT sector/field that would easily match it, but you have to be guided.

With the right mentorship from a ‘true and seasoned’ practitioner, together you would be able to work with your passions to determine which field in IT would best suit your idiosyncrasy.

Take for example, the fashion designer I spoke about earlier, if I were to advise her, I would advise her to venture into Infotech from the ‘hardware’ department and not ‘software’. That means she would flourish better as a ‘network engineer’ rather than designing websites because she is used to taking measurements, cutting cloth, joining things together, etc. Her passion is more of an ‘active’ vocation rather than just sitting down staring at a computer screen all day, that would easily make her bored.

However, we have a trend in Nigeria, I choose to call it ‘follow the leader’! 

If Mr. A becomes a Scrum Master and becomes rich, then everybody will want to become like Mr. A and so everybody will want to become a Scrum Master! Get it?

However, Mr. B would be better off as a graphics designer due to his innate passion for the fine arts. On the other hand Mr. C would be better off as a Cybersecurity consultant, due to his passion for checks and balances (as an accountant).

I think the mistake that people make is to narrow down InfoTech skills to a minute fraction of what is available out there and like I said, there is the ‘follow the leader’ mentality  whereas the narrative should be ‘follow your passion’.

So is InfoTech for everyone? I dare say ‘YES’ because the field of Infotech is so large and monumental, everyone has a place, but you have to find that place for you starting from your inborn passion. To achieve this, you have to talk with a mentor who would also coach you towards getting the best out of changing careers to become a ‘techie’.

At ServerPoint Technology Nigeria, passion is everything! I can only work with people who I see a burning passion for IT in their eyes. In similar fashion, we have an initiative which we have started in Lagos, Nigeria called CODE-TANK LAB. The goal of this project is to discover passion in the Nigerian youth.

Two years ago, when I started the CODE-TANK LAB. initiative, I visited MERIT LAND SCHOOL in Badagy and engaged the students from SS1 -SS3 in a 2 day Infotech Seminar, after the seminar, I gave the students an assignment. From the assignments, I selected about 5 who were literally spitting out PASSION!

I started lecturing 4 of them at home in my living room and today they are  now in University studying computer related courses, one of them is studying CyberSecurity. It was a challenge for his ‘Nigerian’ parents to accept that their son was going to university to study ‘cybersecurity’, not law or medicine or architecture! It almost caused some trouble between them, but finally, they agreed and allowed the boy to follow his passion. I was really glad because thats the exact goal of our initiative, to discover, to mentor, coach and guide these youngsters who have a natural passion for InfoTech in their DNA.

Included in our mantra at ServerPoint Technology Nigeria is to put Nigeria on the global list for the delivery of elite InfoTech services, this includes those who have not yet discovered their passion like me in 2020 and you that is looking for how to change careers and become an IT practitioner.

I am concerned about your journey into the world of InfoTech and that is why I have added this new service to my company, to mentor people towards venturing towards the right path in the InfoTech market that is based on their ‘innate passions’.

If you want to get started in IT and do not know how, please feel free to send me an email (damola.adewusi@serverpointnig.com) to get started. You would be professionally guided so that you don’t end up being a certified IT professional without any passion and innate ‘know-how’ of the job.

Trust me, job recruiters have stepped up their game and can now easily detect ‘overnight techies’ during interviews.

When you pick up an IT skill that identifies with your innate passion, this is the ultimate formula for succeeding in the IT job market because the passion will spit out of your eyes directly to your job interviewer and when you get the job you would easily succeed at it.

Moreover, our doors are constantly open at CODE-TANK LAB. to take in youth that need to discover their potentials in the world of Information Technology.

If you have any questions or need help in this regard, then kindly send a DM here, an email to damola.adewusi@serverpointnig.com , or lets chat on whatsapp- 08132007370.

Thank you for reading till the end!