Long story!!

In an interview, I was asked to narrate a really tensed sitiation and how I navigated it.

I remembered my NYSC days, I lived inside Letmauck Cantonement, Mokola Barracks, Ibadan. Year was 2008.

The wife of an Army Officer( a Major) hired me to tutor their three young kids after school. Unknown to me, it was the woman that needed tutoring on how to read English(she couldn't read nor write). She spoke only pidgin.

We agreed the fees (weekly), and I started. She would later open up to me that she needed tutoring as well. For a relatively long time, I didnt meet the Major himself. I would have left before he returned from work. I was a teacher at St Luis Grammar school just behind the barracks.

Long story short, I started teaching the woman too after she increased my weekly fee. But I noticed the woman would rather gist with me than learn. Being a student of emotional intelligence myself, I reckoned she needed someone to gist with in that ghostly environment like the Officer's Quaters. A full time house wife and in that environment. The other end of the barrack where soldiers ans corpers live was more fun and populated . As long as I was paid, we would gist all afternoon. We soon became friends. I even stopped teaching the kids. They were super sharp, intelligent, restless and troublesome. But every Friday, she never missed my payment.

One faithful Friday afternoon, the Major came home early, that was the first time I ever saw his face. I rightly assumed all the money I was being handsomely paid came from him since the wife was a full house wife.

I stood up to greet him but I couldn't tell if he was angry, sad or just being his military self. He didn't bother to respond, he just went upstairs. His wife followed him immediately.

After about 15 minutes, he came back to join me. He asked how much I was being paid, I told him. He asked if his wife mentioned why she needed to learn how to read, I told him I assumed it was for self improvement. Meanwhile, I had been collecting money weekly for several weeks and this woman could not read jack. We would rather chat, gist and laugh.

The Major went to the TV area and gave me a card, it was their wedding invitation card in 2 weeks time. He mentioned that they never got married before the kids. In short, at the wedding, the woman would be required to read a long vow or something like that. It was a Methodist or Anglican church along Bodija.

He said, given his status both in the church and in the army, he must not be embarrassed by his wife's inability to read. That was the whole reason for the lesson that we turned into chatting sessions. He said it was mandatory that I attended to witness the result of my tutoring. The whole conversion lasted for about 10 minutes and it sounded more like subtle threats and one man trying to dominate another man.

How did the woman not mention her wedding and the real reason she was learning how to read? How could I make her read in two weeks? Should we just memorize the whole text of the program? My mind started racing. I lived at the other end of the barracks, the Major knows where I worked as well. No way I could escape. I had collected a lot of money already and I was 100% certain he would be embarrassed on that day.

I did what I could in two weeks. Attending the wedding for me was like a cow going to the slaughter. My heart was pounding and was literally in my mouth. I knew the woman could not still read even after practicing the texts many times.

It was a beautiful military wedding. I sat at the back, then two guys came and said something like "O boy, oga say make we sit beside you". Which oga? They said "Major". I knew I was in deep shit. Prior to that time, a corper colleague had to be locked up in the guard room for dating a soldier's sister. Ordinary soldier. This was a Major about to be embarrassed in front of his friends, colleagues, juniors and church members. Of course, he wouldn't beat his wife, I figured I would carry all the blame and possibly return every penny I collected.

Sitting through the wedding was the most tensed period of my entire adult life. Gruelling 3 hours!. Second was waiting for my HIV test result. Of course, she fumbled, woefully at that. It was a disaster. That moment you want to hide under the seat. The officiating minster had to take charge of the situation to save face. I'm sure he wasn't aware.

As they where matching out of the church through the guards or what do they call them. Those guys that carry sticks and couples pass under them. I was seriously looking at the Major's face. His facial expression would inform me of my likely fate. His face was always expressionless but today, it was important to read those expressions so as to know my next line of action. Either to pick the next available bus back to my state and never return or something like that. But again, there's the problem of the soldiers beside me.

Conclusion.

The Major didn't have my time on that day, I guess he was occupied with the guests and all. I got lost in the crowd but never returned home directly. I slept at a colleagues room like 10 blocks away from ours. I could remember, ours was block 36 Engineering block. The soldiers sent to sit next to me also probably didn't know the reason and we all dispersed. My room mate and other corper colleagues that knew the background were waiting for the full gist of what happened. That night, I was waiting for that "gulf 3" visit. Gulf car was reigning at the time. They used gulf to pick you up to treat unofficial f**k ups.

The next day, I received a call from the Major's wife to come down to the Officer's Quarters. She didn't thank me for attending the wedding or for my tutoring or say anything that I could draw conclusions on about the mood of the situation. I was too paralysed to even congratulate her. Why would she be the one to call me given what happened at the wedding? I had heard all sorts of stories about what happens in the guard room, true or untrue, I never wanted to experience any of it. I put myself in the Major's shoes. No man should experience what he passed though in those few minutes at the altar. The Church became very quiet. Some people could not even look up.

Approaching the building, I saw the Major and one of the soldiers from yesterday and behold, the Gulf car!!.

I went straight down on my knees and then on my chest, flat on the floor in public view. My colleague had told me that was the only way I could lessen my punishment. But the Officer's Quaters was too quiet and lonely to gain any public pity and possibly help. The Major looked confused. I started apologizing and promised to even refund him. His kids (2 boys, 1 girl) started laughing.

The wife came out laughing as well, but in her hands was what I would later find out to be cake wrapped in those aluminium foils for me. The Major and the soldier just looked at me as if I was less of a man, rolling on the floor without even being accused of anything yet. Apparently, the Gulf car belonged to the soldier. The poor man was not even angry at me. I died multiple times throughout the night thinking about what evil was about to befall me. But all was just in my mind.

The wife would later tell me that she warned her husband before the Wedding not to waste his money on tutoring her. She felt she was hopeless at education.

The file path "car.jpg" is wrong. If the image file is in the root directory, you need to do something like this "./car.jpg". If it's in a sub-directory, make sure you're referencing the right path.

Bro, there's no other way to say this. $800 is bad for a software engineer. Perhaps, you're talking about a different job role. Don't get me wrong, there might be people getting paid less than that, but it's exploitation. If the employer is local, might be okay in naira terms.

If you're a software engineer and you know your shit, please don't be conditioned by your environment. You can take it just to get your foot in the door but don't consider that a fair compensation. I personally know a guy who lives in Lagos and earns $4k/month as at November, 2020. I don't know about now.

tensazangetsu20:

800 USD for a junior developer who is just starting out is not that bad but the same amount for a senior or mid level Dev Is a tragedy.

Congrats bro. It's a starting point.

The currency conversion rate is usually what tricks people to think the pay is all right (which could be) until when they start comparing. The dissatisfaction sets in when you start interacting with some colleagues(sometimes junior) and they open up about their own offer. The good thing is you can always move when you're ready.

ReactJs:


Lol thanks for the input bro but i wouldn’t say i was desperate. I’m currently working so i just wanted to try getting a full time international job cuz i wanted change and new experiences.

The issue was when i converted the money i ask for in naira, bro it was like x4 of what I’m currently earning and it thought it was okay for me. If you dey earn that type of amount for Lagos , omo you’re a goddamn big boy and Buhari economy no go disturb you. It’s just that it’s a company in a lucrative industry and i was just kinda like hoping i asked for more.

Also the job came very fast. I didn’t expect to get one so soon cuz I’ve not even been applying for up to 10days.

This has been a challenge since the beginning of the pandemic. Most western companies are simply exploiting hires from third world countries. They get the same value(sometimes, better) in terms of skills for less. I work remotely with a US based tech company and I see this all the time.

Sometimes, we make it easy for these employers to exploit us as well by setting the bar too low. You already have an idea what a company based in Europe is expected to pay for your level, just simply ask for that. Perhaps, you were too desperate.

I've seen highly skilled people from African countries being offered as low as $800 per month. I even spoke to few during our paired programming sessions what their expectations are if they were to get a new offer. None of them is expecting to be paid above $1.5k whereas their counterpart based outside of Africa is demanding for $4k cos he knows what their law says.

Don't worry bro, get the experience and launch out again. And learn the art of negotiation.

ReactJs:
So i recently applied for a backend position at a company in Europe and luckily i was shortlisted to take live coding test which i ended performing well.

I was contacted a again and hopped on a video call with the other developers asking some technical questions. I was asked about my salary expectations and out of excitement i didn’t bill them well. It’s quite a big company and I feel like i should have asked for me.

I was contacted few days ago with a contract to start with the price i told them initially.

Anyways just wanted to remind my brethren here not to get too excited about jobs and always try to keep a cool head and also negotiate better.

Ganache is the go-to tool for a local blockchain. Instead of Ganache-cli, could you try the browser version of ganache?

I don't know if running your own local blockchain using ganache is compulsory for what you're trying to achieve but Remix is an extremely useful tool. You can write your smart contract, deploy it to the blockchain and interact with it without the headache of configuring a local environment. Most of the time, if I'm just testing out smart contracts, I use Remix.

If you could share the error that is being outputed, maybe I could be of help.

Please, don't waste your money. Everything you need is available in public space and the best resources out there are free. There are great video and text tutorials every where. All you need is the discipline and will(which I think you already have by creating this post).

It took me 4 months of active(frantic) learning to go from a complete novice to landing my first remote full stack developer role with a US based tech start-up. The learning continues. I hope you'll heed my advice.

Dvea:
Hello Nairalanders, I'm interested in learning about programming but I work so I cant exactly make it to regular computer schools.

I need someone who is an expert in programming languages python, C, C++, Ruby, Java and more. And also knowledgeable in back and front end programming. I am willing to learn and of course pay for it. It'll be an online thing so zoom or whatsapp and such will do.

Other option is if you know any school with a part time program for these lessons. But I'm around Iyana Ipaja so the school has to be near by.

If you have any info or you can teach it properly please just reply to this with your rate and speculated time it would take to complete a full out course on programming.

Thanks in advance.