It will be difficult to ask Local companies to compete with international companies. But there is a way out. Local companies should learn to compromise on certain things. The biggest issue with local companies is poor management. Sometimes international companies allow you to work remote so they can pay less. Or ask for 20hrs a week from developers so they can pay less. No good developer like to leave a project incomplete. So when employer pay for 20 hrs/week, trust me, the developer will work more than that hours. So why are local companies not using the same idea. They demand you are always in office. They can contract someone far away in India but allow someone in same state with the company to be remote, they refuse.
Most times it is not about the money. Local companies is full of top staff with Nigerian mentality. A developer is delivering good work but a stupid manager is there giving him query for not coming to office as early as 8am. Managing developers require a set skills and mindset that many local companies do not have. What you find there are mostly people trying to show superiority.
Project Scope: If you have ever worked with a local company, what you must have noticed is the erratic change in project. Planning is very bad. They start project with no clear idea of what they want.
Ridiculous expectation: Local companies will ask you to build Facebook in two weeks. Iām not exaggerating. You pay so cheap and you want the developer to spend day and night working.
People skills: You wonāt believe what most international companies do to keep developers happy. It is in this country that an entrepreneur think/believe he/she is doing developers a favour. Tech companies out there value developers so much and they show it. It is not the same here. Developers need be valued.
Money is not biggest issue here. Developers have peace of mind when working for international client vs working for a local client. Local companies have to address these issues first
Exactly @Jimi Nigerian forget that we as a nation have lot of trust issues going on. The competition out there is so high that even when I post jobs on site like Upwork for $500 I donāt even see Nigerian developers as a recommended choice to pick from. Rather I see Indians, Eastern European what does this tells me. That Nigerian developers donāt have good ratings on these sites.
Good rating on freelance website mean
Lots of job
Good feedback
Solid portfolio
Before anyone tell me about getting paid world class money then you better have word class projects to show as an example of your capabilities when bidding on the job.
Itās better to do 3 wordpress jobs in a month for $250 each than waiting for $2000 project to come through.
The reason people hire freelance developer is to save cost and for full time itās save cost and control over the 8 hours a day because if you canāt develop a substantial amount of work in 8 hours then I wonder how world class the developer is.
The problem I have with the term ādeveloperā in almost all its usage on this platform is that it is not ranked. So thereās nothing like a junior developer or a senior developer? Every so called ādeveloperā in Nigeria wants to earn a high income even the ones that can only write HTML/CSS! Ask them what theyāve built they will show you a WordPress site.
How many entry level jobs in Nigeria actually pay N250,000 per month? And why do we compare our salaries with other countries including developed countries? Do you know how much, say a medical doctor, in Nigeria earns compared to his/her foreign counterparts?
Income follows skill and level of experience, adjusted for the local economy you are working in.
In a blog like this, the easiest way to spot someone you should not work with or hire is the one who is always talking (almost complaining) about salaries and income.
Also, I suggest we have an objective way of ranking the level of skills and experience of developers.
If my work is worth N250k per month, it is not a generous offer, I am been paid the worth of my work.
It will be wrong if you feel you are being generous by paying someone a certain amount of money for his/her work. I will take that to mean that the work been done is not worth that amount, but you just want to pay that much because you are a good man.
This is very subjective/ relative.
Student population isnāt the same in both institutions, and Iām sure its easier for a Private school to include an activity or a course into their curriculum than a public institution.
Well Iām surprised not a lot of people on this thread get his point, what he means is that you start from somewhere, I donāt expect a good Dev to have not done small projects before self.
Heās just trying to say Nigerians want the money too fast , according to what I understand and again, our companies can only pay subjective to how much they are making .
I canāt start a local tech company today and be paying my devs averagely 500k monthly because I want them to feel good or because I feel they are the best ,Iām not saying devs are not worth more than that generally but this is Nigeria,
I hear of Nigerians Abroad with CCNP earning about $80/hr , but how much do u think average CCNP holders earn in Nigeria? I think itās averagely 200-350k excluding oil and gas. Does that mean that other Nigerian companies shud pay their network engineers around $80 per hour? .if we understand that, we wonāt be blaming our companies, itās the Nigerian market. Most times many people in Nigeria are underemployed
However, the problem with the training centre is 'who will pay for it?". Itās not cheap to train developers. And charging the appropriate fee might exclude the best talents you really needed in the programme. That is the conundrum that Andela model seems to be solving.
There are no easy answers here. But its good that we are chewing itā¦
