Iyin Aboyeji on Nigerian youth and Change

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@Tola has a valid point he (I assume it’s a he) is trying to make. However, it is not based on understanding of @iaboyeji’s business. Iyin understandably got emotional and the opportunity to educate got lost.

Tola,

For as long I have known E, he has had a passion for education. When he was 19, he did his first startup called BookNeto. From there is created Fora and finally got it right with Andela.

No matter how altruistic a business is, it must survive. Even RedCross thrives on donations.

Think of Andela as an NIIT/APTECH where you are paid to learn rather than paying to get a certificate you cannot really use to get a job.

Now, how does Andela make this possible? Well, they train you as you work for other people. i.e learning on the job. While Andela gets paid for jobs you dey use learn work.

The beautiful thing is, you can leave anytime. So even after Andela trains you and gives you a Macbook, you can take a stroll after 3 months.

But who will employ you that is still learning? who will give you a contract?

Andela’s advantage is the fact that they can bring out value from inexperienced developers and get paid to do it.

Andela’s challenge will be 2 years from now when the developer go don bam. Will they stay when they are good enough? Well, Andela can up salaries for the experienced ones or find a way to turn the 4 years into a degree (Nigerians will say in a place for 10 years to get a paper saying, “you haf try”

Here is why Andela is not only good, but VERY IMPORTANT to the ecosystem.

Churn.

If they train 1000 people, after 1 year 500 of them will be out of Andela. Where do they go? Back to the market. We now have 500 people who otherwise would have had zero knowledge of programming available to everyone and themselves (they can start a company)

In my opinion, I cannot see any way Andela is bad for anyone.

My man E, you have to understand Nigerians do not like “storytelling” like it is practiced in the West. As a result, we are on the short end when we try to sell our country/startups etc to that audience.

Since you are not in the business of teaching us PR, know your audience and tailor your message accordingly.

Keep doing the great work and keep your passion strong. I am proud of what you have accomplished and this is just the beginning.

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87

Lol, allow him…so we can both invest after IPO! It’s all good.

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This is the very problem we have in Nigeria. I think it is just sad on your part to even contemplate writing about any ‘inconsistency’. Who else is doing what Andela are doing? NIIT have been in Nigeria for how long? Yet we never saw their impact in the Nigerian ecosystem. I think the likes of them should be criticised for their ‘capitalist inclinations’ without much positive impact if that is solely their aim. You get trained to write some certifications and you are back to ‘nowhere’ and doing ‘nothing’.

Yet Andela with so much positives are getting slighted for ‘telling their story’.

Need we say more? At the moment its rather bleak to say it nicely. Why we can’t compete on anything? (aside other myriads of problems we currently face).

This quote sums it up for me!

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Again, not a BPO. It is an educational institution. :slight_smile:

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I haff hear but I’m not here to tell stories and I am writing for myself. If the ecosystem sees any benefit in it - fine. This is not a PR exercise.

91

Class of 2002. :blush:

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There is a whole lot of background you are conveniently skipping and because I hate distortion I must respond. Any intelligent person who did some research will come to a few counterpoints about the narrative of BPO’s being harmful :smile:

  1. Capital that came from exporting talent via BPO was recycled to invest in startups.
  2. IITs were supported by BPO infrastructure. It created a floor for hundreds of thousands of talented Indians coming out of IIT. IITs today have evolved their talent to become startup maestros. Which begs the question in Nigeria which comes first, large scale engineering companies or engineering talent for it.
  3. Many senior execs and staff now working at large Indian startups cut ther teeth at Infosys and the clones it inspired. India doesn’t have the talent problem we do here. So long as only Konga can Afford to hire good local developers, we cannot grow as a startup ecosystem.

As you alluded to China did the same BPO thing with Foxconn (most of Foxconn is mindless assembly workers from townships btw) but look at the great companies that came out of it : Xiaomi and Mi.

End of the day - everyone has to pay their dues. We can strut in arrogance and ignorance claiming what is good is bad but we will never progress.H

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It’s a “he” and you need to understand that Andela’s clients does not see it profitable to invest in resources for the processes they outsource to Andela - be it even coding high frequency trading platforms in C. So they strip out the things with are of value and the core of their business then outsource the things that are of no value to a BPO or an educational institution. As Andela grows they will have complete this mindless tasks as fast and cheaply as possible. So after 1 year of working on day and night on C, this guy becomes a C Zombie with no clue of the bigger picture and when the contract finishes, he is totally useless as Amazon that forced him to learn C has already moved on from C. Most BPO will want to maximise the training and the MacBook that they gave to this guy and will then move him immediately to Ruby where the project is already well spec’d if the guy still has the capacity to learn.

10 years later the guy is now 32 and can expertly program 12 different languages and can not think for himself as all he did was churn out code. The BPO dumps him because he is too old and he has a mortgage with 2 kids - He is now a liability. Remember this was one of the brightest guys 10 years ago…

BPOs and all these “educational institutions” are modern day knowledge factories that have to be efficient but unfortunately their equipment are not robots but these unfortunate highly intelligent fresh graduates.

All Andela needs to do is to prove me wrong and only time will tell…

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That i think is exactly our problem as a nation; arrogance and ignorance. We don’t really know, yet we boast.

At the end of the day, no business exists solely for altruism but there is a greater good for the nation with the likes of Andela. All i see is collateral good and not collateral damage.

For the ‘storytelling’ please spin your story as you deem fit, after all Apple & Jobs sold us ‘changing the world’ and they are arguably the greatest company in the world with over $100b of nontaxable* offshore cash reserves. ( a separate matter entirely)

Therein lies your problem. Sort out your mindset and you will see the light. You have been advised anyways

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Quick question do you code?

Because if you code - you would know that especially with the plethora of resources on the internet you can easily pick up a new language so long as you understand the core of programming and software Development. We are a four year program because we want to be able to teach all these core programming concepts.

Second : all these assumptions stems from very poor understanding of our model. Our fellows work directly with their employers. We don’t have a management layer distributing crap work. So in fact they work directly on the things that matter most to the company. Most of our clients are medium sized businesses or small teams within large companies and so our fellows can see their impact.

My own advice is beyond Us proving you wrong educate yourself on our model. The press often misunderstands us and what we are trying to do but the information is out there.

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96

Learnt so much in this thread.

But @Tola, TBVH, Andela doesn’t actually have to probe you wrong.

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Of all the languages you had to choose C… C is like the mother of most modern languages… No one moves on from C/C++…

Your opinion on coding is very wrong… Most programmers can freelance and can make money easily. programming in my opinion means representing English in computer code… Programming requires critical thinking skills so I don’t know what type of coders can code in 12 different languages and can’t think for themselves :grinning:

In time they’ll prove you wrong bcos they are bringing different people into a coding niche and these people interact with each other, even if they leave Andela they’ll probably have each others phone numbers and when just one person’s “light bulb” switches on he/she may call other coders they met at Andela…

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You are joking right?

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I studied mathematics Education but along the way, i picked interest in programming. So the interest can actually come from anywhere and YES it is possible to graduate as a CS student without touching codes. i personally know alot of them!

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Would they apply to Andela though? I guess not.

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Tola you sound very knowledgeable and intelligent and following this thread has really been educating. But i have a feeling the issue you have with Andela is the fact that the offer just 1% chance of being an Andela fellow thereby taking only the brightest. The Andela dream is something i have admired for awhile now. I even dream of getting into Andela. Don’t get me wrong, i am not taking sides here. But i’m seriously wondering what your point is because your comments seems to come from deep within. On a light note, if you think E’s post was a publicity stunt, you’ve done a nice job helping him with the publicity!

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The question is how many people outside Lagos know about Andela? I don’t stay in Lagos but i came across them on LinkedIn and picked interest because i have done online programming courses for two years now and have been in search of a place like Andela were i can meet like minds. So to answer your question, yes 70% or more would join IF the are aware a place like this exist and is within reach.