In a bid to keep bringing you top quality interviews, DevChronicles has been a bit inconsistent in publishing. For that, we apologize. We can assure you though, the wait was not in vain. In today's episode, we are proud to introduce Nzeako Kosisochukwu Anthony to you. Enjoy.
Hello Kosi, thanks for being here. I hope you've been having a nice day?
Hello, my day has been awesome, and I hope it gets better with this interview.
We hope so too. Tell us about the journey that has brought you to where you are.
Whenever I am asked this question, I am always overwhelmed by the feeling of inadequacy. All the same, I’ll try.
I would say my interest in computers started way back as a kid. There was this desktop at home which I and my siblings had access to. I dominated it though, as the first born. My dad saw my interest in computers, and decided to invest in me. He hired a teacher to take me computer lessons, lessons I found boring and eventually abandoned. He would also give me money to go to a cyber café to browse the internet. At that time, my sole aim of getting into computers was to build my own game, a dream my dad used as bait to get me to become more serious with my studies. He told me I needed to be good at math to make computer games.
I wrote my first line of code at about 11, just before secondary school, in visual basic. But in secondary school, I took a major break from coding related activities. I was just too obsessed and my mum also assumed I was always playing games. Anyways, while I wasn’t actively coding, my love for computers was still apparent, and my teachers noticed that. I became more or less an assistant computer teacher.
I currently study Electronics Engineering at UNN, and I have to say, my journey since I started university has had numerous turns. I picked up Arduino programming in my first year. Working on electronic projects and such was fun, but the turning point happened in my second year when Roar Nigerian Hub was established. I attended their first meeting, and from then on, the hub became my second home. Around that time, I also got Andela’s scholarship for Android development in ALC 1.0 and as a result, I met other people in the ALC program and we connected. Eventually, I also applied to be a mentor on the android track which I did for two sessions. That concludes the early part of my journey
How were you able to manage being a developer with school work?
As I stated, the hub was my second home. While I was busy at the hub, I somehow managed to always scale through in school. If there is one thing that gave me problem, it was lack of money. I was always buying courses, buying data, and man also had to eat too. So, one way or the other, the business part of my brain activated. I started building apps for people, some at ridiculous prices. I once built an app for someone and charged only eight thousand Naira. I eventually became known as the tech guy on campus, and people started bringing jobs to me. Even jobs like building websites which I knew nothing about then. What I did was to get someone who would do the job, and split the pay with him, we eventually became something like a team. I would take on the role as a project manager/android developer while he would function as the web developer. I was okay with this arrangement till my partner showed me a contract that was executed by some guys for 750 thousand naira. It was then I knew I had to think bigger. Huawei academy came to UNN and they subsidized the cost for enrolling into their program. I failed the first exam I wrote, but I passed the second one. We got a one month all expense paid trip to Abuja to study all areas of networking, security and storage by Huawei. During our stay there, I discovered something about myself - I get my best ideas when I am hungry. There was this time I had overspent the allowance allocated to me for the previous week, and the allowance for the current week at that point in time was delayed. So, I sat with a friend and we brainstormed a couple of business ideas. One of them, VARSCON. After that, I became more daring, taking on projects I wouldn’t normally do. This new state of mind opened me up for the role of DSC lead of the facebook developer circle in UNN, which I got. I volunteered to help create a facebook bot for an onboarding party. It was a great risk because I hadn’t done such a thing before. After research and study, I was able to get it done.
What would you say is your most memorable experience as a developer?
I have had a lot of memorable experiences; a memorable experience would be when I launched my app on playstore. It’s a dead app now, but it was our first app. During the pitch of the app, it was a business pitch during tech fest, organized by diamond bank then. It was organized in Lagos and there were lots of businesses from all over the country. Funny thing is that we were the only student group there. We pitched in front of 10 thousand people and we were the first runner up
You mentioned your company, VARSCON. Tell us what brought it about
In my network, I noticed something - Nigeria has a lot of tech talent, but everyone seems to be running on vibes. There are lots of hubs and startups, but everyone seemed to just be cloning each other and no one seemed to want to do the hard work of researching what the country needed. Another thing I noticed was that a lot of companies outsourced building of their software outside the country and paid heavily for it for quality that could be achieved at home for a more affordable price. On investigation, a lot of them were under the notion that developers in Nigeria were “unprofessional”. I saw two needs that I, through VARSCON could help meet. A lot of these companies trusted me, and I had access to good developers in the community. So basically, Software Engineering As A Service
Looking back, what would you currently say was your big break?
Our biggest break came in working for a company based in Lagos, an e commerce application. Their initial application was outsourced to developers outside the country and it lacked scalability. This caused the company to spend a whole lot more than necessary and the difference in geographical location made it almost impossible to hold anyone physically accountable. When we took over the project, things were all over the place. So, we had to renovate the whole project. When we looked at the source code, everything was a mess, a lot of parts were already malfunctioning. I had to write a detailed report on everything that was wrong with the application. And coming from a point of disadvantage as Nigerian students, we were not really held to a high esteem. Things were tough.
I remember a particular incident, I had a date on this particular day, and two hours to the dinner a call enters telling me that the application was crumbling. I wanted to cancel the date, but I held on. I hopped on a call with my team to brainstorm, and we discovered an issue with the DNS. It happened a while ago, but even now, I breathe a sigh of relief when I remember how we discovered this issue. We eventually fixed the problem, wrote a report on the issue, clearly stating how it wasn’t our issue, and made recommendations. The following three weeks was me waking up to traumatic calls from my team mates of things crashing and bugs crawling. Eventually, we got the application running perfectly. This earned us a lot of trust and more importantly, recommendations.
So how do you keep a work, life balance.
To be frank, I don’t think I have a life outside tech. I have even lost a relationship before due to my excessive time at the hub. It sometimes gets so bad that when I am watching a movie an IDE would most likely be open in the background. I would say I love to party, but I hardly go to parties.
I have been trying to change though. I currently have a personal assistant that takes care of a lot of stuff, and I also decentralize the work given to me.
In your own words, describe yourself.
My most appealing characteristics is that I am the kind of guy that would see light in a black whole. I am very optimistic. It could be a problem though when I see things that aren’t there.
How would you describe the Nigerian tech space, and what do you think should change?
I would say that Nigeria has a lot of talent scattered everywhere, but I think we lack a philosophy in Nigeria. When you hear Silicon Valley, you think of a place where dreams come true. But the Nigerian tech space currently seems a lot like an escape route from poverty. My dad would always say there are survivors, and there are, I can’t remember exactly what he called them, but let’s say - normal people. A survivor would be extremely loyal as long as there is benefit in being with you. But at the same time, a survivor would not think twice about eliminating you if you are a hindrance to him.
Currently, it seems like everyone is going into tech just to survive. Even startups, it seems as though there is a template store from where people are getting their stuff from, no one seems to be trying to solve the Nigerian problem. They just want to hit it big and get flown abroad. So, in summary, there is a lot of tech activity going on in our ecosystem, but the impact is not being felt as it should. While survival cannot be ignored, solving real life problems needs to rise up in our list of priorities. Apart from this, the tech soil needs a lot of manuring. Internet and power infrastructures need to be erected, and public sensitization should be done. I saw a survey that stated only 60% of Nigerians use digital banking. Its hard to wrap my head around, but this just shows how much work there is to be done. I commend Opay for their marketing. They publicized their product, and taught people how to use it. Within one month of coming to Enugu, I saw old men booking rides with the app.
Opay's marketing truly was commendable. In conclusion, what advice would you give someone that wants to come into tech?
When people meet me to mentor them, I ask questions to have an understanding of their motivation. Hunger or passion. Some people aren’t here for either of that. They are here for the "swag". Depending on the reason given, I give advice. But one thing is common irrespective of your reason – if you want to thrive in tech, you must consciously or subconsciously be a problem solver, if you aren’t and you still want to enter the tech space, you must learn to solve problems. Do not see tech as the solution, it is barely the tool needed to solve the problem. See the problem, imagine a solution, and the rest, either using a tech tool, or writing the code to solve the problem can be learnt. There are already so many solutions without a problem. Have the mindset of solving a problem or improving a solution to a real problem.
I have to say, talking to you didn't feel anything like talking to a youth. It was an honor. We wish you continual success in all you do.
Thank you very much
That marks the end of this episode. Conversations like these are what DevChronicles is about. Exciting, intriguing and enlightening. For more, watch out for our podcast interview with Akintunde Sulatan. To follow up on Kosi, his details are provided below
Twitter: twitter.com/nzeakokosi7
Linkdin: linkedin.com/in/nzeakokosi7
Website: kosinzeako.me/#home