Saviour Armstrong's first job as a land surveyor earned him 18,000 naira ($13). Today, as a senior software developer at Dayforce, he earns between 2 million ($1,400) and 4 million naira a month ($2,900).
The two figures, though substantial in the Nigerian job market, are a product of years of building, a hefty school fee, and a decision to never settle for less.
His story, and that of freelance software engineer Oluwatoyin Garber, are the kind of success stories that make a tech career look like an easy route to money: learn a tech skill, and the money will start rolling in.
To be fair, both tech professionals agree a tech career pays, but it comes with a price most people don't tell you, which makes their experience a useful reality check for anyone planning to learn a tech skill or get a tech job.
David Adubiina
From Land Surveyor to Software Developer
In Nigeria, earning between 2-4million ($1,400-$2,900) a month puts you among top-tier income earners, usually in the top 1%-5%, according to the Guardian report, but Armstrong never meant to end up here.
"With what I read in school, I am supposed to be in the construction field mapping out lands," he says.
His discipline in school was Surveying and Geoinformatics, and while it provided him the avenue to go to the field, going there never brought him the satisfaction he wanted.
"I was always too lazy to go to the field. I prefer to just do the data work and let my colleagues go to the field," he explained, but even then, he already had interest in software engineering, building small Windows Forms projects on the side.
"Even my final project in school," he added, was a piece of software to assist with computing. That moment, he says, is when he realized land surveying was not for him.
So, rather than stick with mapping out lands, which paid him 18,000 naira ($13) a month, Armstrong chose software as his escape point. But because there was no clear path into it, he opted for the next best thing: working as a tech support engineer at a firm that handles support for Microsoft, for 150,000 naira ($112) a month.
This, he said, he did for almost a year before quitting.
"Every company I applied to, they would like my work, they would like my presentation, but then there was no backing," he says, adding that he had no qualification to show.
The ₦3.5 Million Cost of Learning
In finding a backing that could give him the certification he needed and the credibility to show he is a software developer, Armstrong chose the Decagon Institute, and getting in was not like picking a course and clicking enroll.
Applicants are given an aptitude test including a basic programming test and a problem-solving assessment meant to show whether they can actually learn the craft. For this, he paid a sum of 3.5 million naira ($2,600), covering tuition, housing, feeding, and Wi-Fi for six months.
Of all the things he expected after enrolling, what the money bought him was isolation.
"Decagon has this kind of system where they cut you off from society," Armstrong says. "The only thing you have to do is code. You're not bothered about anything outside of the Decagon environment."
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