From Balance Sheets to Sublime Text
Every time any of my friends or co-workers learn that I have an educational background in Financial Accounting, they are often surprised. I do not know why but the ‘surprise’ amuses me especially when they go “…whah!!! Soo you actually studied Accounting?” And I be like “Yeah, in another life.” *insert laugh here please*
A couple of them have said, “Hey, why not write about it, you know, share your experience and journey.”
I am like “Eh, well, okay, maybe… someday, but me I can’t write o.”
Fortunately, my ‘excuse’ didn’t deter persistence, so here I am on Medium forming ‘writer’ all thanks to my new ‘6th Floor’ friend Habeeb A. Adebisi — the ghost writer.
Photo by Ilya Pavlov on Unsplash
Two things led me to study Financial Accounting in the university. The first was my acuity in Mathematics during my senior secondary school years (our equivalent of ‘high school’ here in Nigeria) and of course as is typical, everyone expected me to do Sciences because I was ‘good in Maths’. But I vehemently refused. Yes, my Maths is good any day any time — and that’s where the love ends. Physics and Chemistry just weren’t romantic enough to lure me in. Even the Biology I had to contend with as a high school student was enough headache already. Reading long literature (except I’m reading lines of code of course) *please insert big grin here thank you* just isn’t my strongest suit so the Arts class was an automatic “No, No”. Commercial class was it for me and in I went with my ‘ninja Maths skills’. *you can ‘yimu’ for me here — is allowed*
The second thing was I had this ‘uncle’, an older family relative who was a Banker (or better said, worked in a bank) whom I really admired and decided to follow career-wise because as a kid I had concluded in my mind that everyone who worked in a bank was an Accountant. *silly me, yeah, I know* Imagine my shock upon getting admission into the university to study Financial Accounting only to realize that first, my uncle-the-role-model actually studied History (not Accounting) and that I didn’t even require to study Accounting to work in a bank — this was my first official ‘heartbreak’… ooh, the betrayal! *kindly insert rolling eyes here please* But I ploughed on anyways and Financial Accounting is a truly an awesome course to study for the ‘numbers-oriented’ mind that is.
It wasn’t until after NYSC (the National Youth Service Corps) when I started working (and I was lucky to start out early enough) as an Accountant that I began to realize Financial Accounting was truly not ‘my calling’ in this life. You see, I have always been a ‘geek’ of sorts and everyone saw it except me. Computers and computing had always fascinated me while growing up although I never really did anything serious with them, but understanding it came naturally for me. Shortly after NYSC, I had attended an event in 2015 called The Edge Series Student Summit (TESS) where Iyinoluwa Aboyeji who was a panelist at the event spoke about how he helped build Andela (he would later move on to build Flutterwave) starting with his knowledge of tech and coding skills and I was so inspired. There were several amazing speakers at that event and I was in awe all through.
After attending this ‘eventful event’, it finally hit me.
I seriously needed to try my hand at something else other than Accounting and now was the time to do it. So I applied to Andela Nigeria Fellowship via their website and at the same time started learning how to code on my own through PDF tutorials and youtube videos — boy, what a ride! I applied over 10 times to Andela Nigeria but never made it through each time. Every new cycle, I would apply, same result but I continued to learn on my own while working as an ‘Accountant’. It was hard to do because I had office work to do and no prior knowledge at all but such was the inspiration and determination I got from the TESS event that I wasn’t going to let anything stop me from learning how to code.
(the hard-life struggle of getting affordable decent internet in Nigeria is not for the faint hearted and definitely not a tale sweet to tell so I’ll skip that, thank you).
Photo by Émile Perron on Unsplash
Somewhere along my self-taught learning journey (how I began that journey, my learning methods, first language, bla, bla, bla, is gist for another day) and tiredness of the accounting job, I heard about ‘CodeCamp’ by Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB) and half-heartedly applied for it, not expecting to be selected. But lo and behold, I was!
At this point in my life, I was besides myself with joy at the opportunity to be part of the ‘CodeCamp’ programme. I knew I needed to dedicate time, resources and concentration to achieving success at the code camp plus, I really wanted to code. And so without a promise of a paid job after the code camp programme, I resigned my accounting job and immersed into the programme. If you had asked me then what next after the programme, I’d have said “I don’t know.” and really, I didn’t. I just wanted to code and I enjoyed every minute of doing it.
The CodeCamp programme was quite a challenging one and I gave it my all 100%. To ‘graduate’ from the programme, we were to present a completed project — that presentation week was like the busiest week of my life, when I look back now, I still don’t how I survive it. I didn’t know so much yet, I still felt like a novice but with perseverance and dedication, I submitted and ‘graduated’. As if this wasn’t enough, just around the time Code Camp was wrapping up, Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB) hosted its first hackathon event with Interswitch Nigeria tagged ‘The Interswitch Hackathon’ and we the participants of CodeCamp were literally thrown into the competition. And as much as it was weird for me at the time, it was also a fun experience of what it would be like to be working as a ‘coder’.
About a week after the CodeCamp and the hackathon, while in the CcHUB premises furthering my knowledge and skills, I am causally called into one of the offices. It was for a job interview! I was a nervous wreck but coming out of a grueling code camp programme like the one CcHUB organized was a huge boost and Kene Udeze ‘‘my ‘oga’ at the top” one of the facilitators (and CcHUB staff at the time), was a pillar of moral support. I got the job and as we say, the rest is history. I will never forget my first few weeks on the job — a period of constantly running helter skelter trying to fix things code-wise. But it was (and still is) with an amazing Product Team of people at Co-Creation Hub who have grown to be family and I am learning and growing better everyday myself. I am always happy to remember that I got a chance to work with an amazing Designer like Kene Udeze for up to a year and I am still working with another awesome Designer Early Attoh one of the awesome members of my Product team.
My life isn’t perfect, not even close, but I get to write code and work with amazing team members and professionals everyday and that is okay.
