Level Up: Nigerian Founders vs Devs
We're switching things up a bit in the Level Up Newsletter.
Our spotlight feature, where we interview experts from various tech careers, will be biweekly. What's replacing it? Real-life tech career gist and lessons, starting with this week's edition.
Founders have an issue with developers working multiple Jobs
Nigerian software engineers are catching the heat in the tech space this week, and it all started with a tweet.
Nigerian developers have been accused of being as unreliable as Nigerian tailors. Nigerian developers found the tweet in no time and assembled to fight like the Avengers.
It quickly became a founder vs dev fight. Developers say the reason why they juggle multiple jobs is because Nigerian founders pay low salaries.
The founders responded that the developers were either badly behaved or not skilled enough.
The elephant in the room amid this clash is the current economic situation. It has caused reduced job security due to layoffs and lowered purchasing power. Now, tech workers must juggle multiple gigs to meet their needs. Conversations with tech workers across Africa confirmed that the economic downturn is a major factor driving the rise in side gigs.
Regardless of your stance on the issue, one thing is clear: techies in Africa need to keep skilling up. Even with side hustles, finding time to improve your skills is crucial. As Derrick Tsorme, a product designer at YellowCard, mentioned in his interview, "Learning new skills is always important, but it's not easy, especially if you have a 9-5 like me. You're tired and mentally drained when you finish the day's work."
His strategy is: “I take two hours after work or use my lunch break to watch a YouTube video while eating. Recently, I’ve been doing late nights, learning, or coding late nights. After a while, it takes a toll on you because there’s only so much stress your body can take, but you need to learn how to pace yourself and manage your time well”.
Meanwhile, as all this was happening, a recruiter was looking to poach talents.
Tech News: Zoom adds docs to its online workplace
We’ve all been in online meetings using external transcription tools to take notes and highlight key points. Zoom is introducing a document tool within the app that lets you create shareable files based on your meetings.
This new feature, a direct competitor to Google Docs and Microsoft Word, uses Zoom’s AI Companion to automate tasks, generate documents from meeting transcripts, and track tasks discussed in the meeting.
Zoom Docs is part of the company’s latest effort to become a comprehensive workplace app, aiming to rival Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
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