Agony of an African Programmer (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Agony of an African Programmer (2014)

iafrikan.com

92 pointsiafrikan83 comments

As an African I often wonder if we are solving problems in the right sequence. The Internet makes it easy to feel like one is connected to someone in SV but the reality is we live in very different environments. I presume most people in SV have running water and pretty reliable electricity, decent roads and hospitals (yes I know there are issues with healthcare funding but the hospitals are there, in Africa we don't have the building). As a developer in Africa you have to contend with the underlying infrastructure issues and keep up with the latest JS framework :-).

One of Africa's greatest technical achievements was going "out of sequence" to go all-in on cellular Internet and mobile apps, skipping landline rollout to the home.

wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

Is this an achievement of the locals or an achievement of Orange, Vodafone, MTN and Maroc Telecom, eg mostly non-african mega-corps vampirizing the market? Mobile networks are notoriously much more monopolistic and efficient at keeping out small actors and regulations than cabled telcos. And: mobile devices themselves also are much more blackbox-like than laptops and desktop boxes. No wonder OP laments about people not understanding "what's going on inside the tech" if the only thing they get exposed to is something based on vendor lock-in, with no file browser or text editor. (note that the same phenomenon is currently going on here in the west)

Absolutely! I think there is also room to skip the traditional coal fired electricity generation and head straight to renewable like solar and wind. It isn't so easy to skip other infrastructure such as roads, hospitals and running water. The physical stuff.

This touches close to home :')

The "moral of the story" is hidden in a non-linebreaking long paragraph formatted as pseudocode. Most of the content of the essay is there, yet you can't read it unless you think to inspect the source code.

You probably missed or didn't take the time: ---

System.out.println (“ It's not easy being an African software developer. Don't give up and always Ask God for directions. Use the right technologies for the right tasks. The future of the African software industry lies in enabling the scattered bunches of individual hobbyist programmers. Those people who would be coding even if it didn't pay because that is what they like doing. People like that should be given a chance, should be given work to do, encouraged to stick it out. When there are enough programmers around and working as a programmer is a viable occupation that can buy a car and build a house, the industry will have grown up. Until then, it is dog eat dog -- monkey go work, baboon go chop... “);

-------

... I really want to find something positive to say.

This is why we need to be supporting open and free hardware, everything else is some form of compromise.

EDIT: Kodos for the moral, I'm on mobile and couldn't read it since the formatting is a little off, and my iPhone can't easily inspect element. See what I mean?

Skimming, the salient point to me was that the perspective of people there is "hardware comes in a box" rather than (in my words) "coming from the ingenuity and hard work of engineers, who are just normal people with experience in building things."

It's easy to overlook, though I can point to that moment for myself when I realized this was something I loved doing: 10-year-old me going to a camp where they showed us how we could use qbasic plus some breadboards to build security systems, launch rockets, make a musical instrument -- with electronics. That's what showed me both that people make it, and that I could make it too.

Whether hardware is totally open or not, if you don't have that spark, the moment that connection forms, it doesn't matter. The technology that got me going was far from open, ti was some 1990s era Compaq with a parallel port break-out most likely. I think Arduinos are 10X more powerful for getting people into this world than an open computer they couldnt even begin to understand. That's learning to sprint before you can crawl. Both matter, though.

> A web and software developer in Africa earns from $10,000 to $20,000 dollars per annum whereas their colleagues in Europe and the US earns at least $100,000 dollars per year.

This is nowhere near true for Europe, the floor is more like $30,000, probably less in some areas.

Lots of software developers (mainstream ones, but even someones that deserve way more) make no more than that in LATAM.

what is LATAM? You mean the airline?

LATin AMerica

off topic, but "latam" means "I am flying" in Polish, so it's a good name for an airline!

Not true for the US, either. I wish it was! Maybe in big coastal tech cities, and there are exceptions even there.

The median Web developer in the US earns close to $70,000.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

$100,000 however is definitely not all that typical for Web developers. You have to be in the top quarter or so. The line for the top 10% of Web developers begins at $124,000.

For software developers in the US on the other hand, the median pay is up to $105,000 for 2018. The line for the top 10% (roughly 125,000 people) starts at $167,000.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

This matches my personal experience. Developers in fully-developed countries like France, Italy and the UK are typically well under $100k USD per year on average, with a few outliers above that, at least for most companies, and falling very rapidly when you start talking about Poland, Estonia and so on. After tax incentives some of these areas are amazingly inexpensive.

I think people overestimate the compensation outside the Bay Area and India due to lack of experience, and even those in 2nd tier regions (US-TX, US-NC, ...) still overestimate European and Canadian compensation whereas they likely know very accurately what compensation for India and China looks like.

I'm still regularly surprised at how underpaid programmers in western Europe often are. I mean, it's a solid job, but if you want to make more money, you have to become a manager, and that's really sad. Working freelance makes it a lot better, and demand for our skills is sky-high, but when I read about American salaries, I still wonder we we're being paid less.

If African programmers make $20k, that's not that much less than what I made when I started out, nearly 20 years ago.

I used to wonder why salaries were so low in Canada considering that, at one time, Canada had a pretty decent industry (QNX, Nortel, a lot of NMS/EMS companies, etc.). At least with Canada, the basic answer IMHO is that the country doesn't value software technology or perhaps even technology in general. It is basically a resource extraction economy that has killed off most high technology over a long period (including aerospace).

In contrast, there does not seem to be any ready answer for the UK and continental Europe and so it's a mystery to me. Germany had just as big a small computer boom in the late 1970s and especially the early 1980s that gave rise to my generation in the US so why didn't a huge industry come out of it? The UK had a similar setting and a similar outcome.

Some would say the elites in Great Britain simply don't have any respect for scientific knowledge -- this has been argued going back to CP Snow's "Two Cultures" essay. Everybody in power did PPE or whatever and being an engineer is low-status. This could be the case in the rest of Europe.

Netherland seems to be mostly a management culture. Managers, even bad ones, get paid more than programmers. Careers that people choose for money are manager, physician and lawyer. Economics is popular since it's assumed to lead to a management career. We do get some good tech, but it's not rewarded the way it is in the US.

Yeah, 6 figures USD as a minimum basically describes SV and NYC, and that's it.

Texas also.

No, I wouldn't even say Texas is close to 100k starting. Lower end of the bell curve is closer to 65-70k in Austin. Average (across all levels of seniority for software engineer) likely falls somewhere in the low 100s. Just basing this on a quick search and my personal experience working in Austin around 2012-2015.

Were you working downtown?

No. But like I said just take a peek at any job site that lists aggregate salaries. Starting numbers in Texas are not at 6 digits.

They are in Houston and Dallas, in the proper industry as SW dev.

Seattle pay is in that same range, but I agree, a few coastal cities.

Fresh grads are getting 100k in Chicago as well

Summer interns are getting paid the equivilent of $100K in the bay area now.

Before or after taxes? 30k before seems rather low for western Europe

That's not unheard of for an entry level position in Berlin.

If someone is willing to pay 30k to take my teenager from gaming all day long they can have him.

That's a decent mid-level developer salary in many parts of western europe.

That's just over €2.2k per month (after USD->EUR conversion). It's on the low end for junior devs in Berlin but not unheard of (although even among entry level positions many would start higher than that). I earned less when I just started working as a programmer (albeit awhile ago).

However, after a couple years you can expect to earn significantly more: within about ~15 years I went from ~€2k/m to ~€6k & I'm pretty sure I haven't yet reached my salary ceiling.

I'm sure in "bad" markets (Southern Europe and/or smaller towns) you will have worse pay but I would bet in most or all major (North-)Western European cities my experience will not be untypical.

I think the main issue is that the term "Western Europe" couples the badly paid south with the better paid north.

Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece - interestingly, better the weather, worse the wage :)

In many parts of Eastern Europe $20-30K USD a year is considered a fairly good salary... but then again there you can rent a place for 300 euros, and everything else also costs a lot less than in West, so that needs to be taken into the account - because after all a profit is income minus expenses, not just the income...

Adjusting for purchasing power of earnings in their home countries flattens out the numbers too. In South Africa, PPP is 1.63$/$, so that's actually a range of $16,300 to $32,300 in purchasing power. In Nigeria, PPP is 3$/$ so that's closer to $30,000-$60,000 in purchasing power.

In Canada the average software developer gets paid $70,000USD, which is $59,500 in purchasing power.

With 20000 USD you can have a very comfortable middle class life in India.

One interesting thing to note is that India has among the highest divergence between Nominal GDP and Purchasing Power Parity numbers.

Replace Africa with MiddleEast and it's the same, $8500 is the average salary, only a few private companies actually pay a reasonable salary, bad education, no training, expensive electronics/internet, and non-techy bosses/clients (the worse!!)

Thinking of « Africa » as one place is just as poor a decision as thinking of « Middle East » as one place.

I’m sure things vary drastically between Israel, Iran and UAE.

Israel, Iran and UAE all have good infrastructure, health care and education levels. There probably is a lot of variation in the region but I don't think those three countries would capture the full range.

Africa and the Middle East are 10-sigmas.

Not sure about Iran, but Israel got support and kind of an open market with silicon valley and it's an isolated part of the ME anyway it's not like an Iraqi dev would casually go to Isreal to work lol, UAE not really special, most of the working force in tech is imported talent so the local circumstances are irrelevant.

> Iraqi dev would casually go to Isreal to work lol

Why not? Do they not have work visas like America does?

I mean considering how many undocumented people make it to America from the middle east I can't imagine it would be too hard to get into Israel.

You must know enough of the politics and history f the region to realize how unlikely it would be for an Iraqi or Iranian of any profession to simply "go work in Israel"

Politics my dude

I live in Tanzania and a salary of 10-20k USD is a pretty lux life here. You could get a housekeeper, gardener, and a gated property and still have a lot left over. Moreover, no income tax! The problem is that imported goods have a 50% tax on them, so laptops and stuff are pretty expensive.

I moved from NYC to Tanzania to help run a school that my wife founded here and Tanzania is a long long way off from becoming an information economy. I teach a computer science class and am regularly shocked by the lack of basic information my students have about technology and the world.

I'm not sure what to do about it, and really try to get my students interested in the world and ask questions. But it's hard to ask reasonable questions when you have no books and no/limited access to information.

Moreover, there aren't any unlimited data bundles and almost no one has computers at one. When I first arrived in Tanzania and began teaching I thought the solution was simple: provide free access to information via a community library we built with always on computers and internet. Unfortunately, the library became the go-to place to watch youtube videos all day long. So I had to turn the internet off and just have it when I or another teacher is there.

The approach that has worked best is guided computer use. Something like "give me a list of questions you have about something and then go find the answers in a 2 hour period."

If I was going to hire a Tanzanian developer (and I hate to say this, but I probably wouldn't), I would judge him just on his raw intelligence, not his skills. Skill/knowledge-wise, even the smartest Tanzanians are at a huge information disadvantage. You gotta just find the smartest guys (and there's a lot of untapped talent just sitting around) and train them yourself.

tl;dr: when you have a group of people who are systematically information disadvantaged, you will always be disappointed by their knowledge/skills. Instead judge them on pure smarts, and realize you will have to make a big long-term investment in them.

Highly theoretical: in your position I'd set up a library and teach English rather than IT if that's the limiting factor. Books and peers are just as useful as direct teaching.

My wife teaches english, but computers and internet are a big part of the reason that any kids are here in the first place. We aren't a licensed school (getting licensed requires bribes and a lot of bullshit) so we focus on pre-1st grade (theer's no state preschool or kindergarden) and after school programs for older kids. Because of this, we need to attract kids, and computers are a good draw.

Cool! Can I send you some cash somehow?

Email me at sturm@cryptm.org. Unfortunately we aren’t a registered charity in the US (we are in Tanzania though) so you won’t get any tax breaks.

mail sent.

What’s wrong with people using your library to watch YouTube videos all day long?

Can you tell me you’ve never done that? There’s nothing wrong with it, even if it wasn’t the intended purpose. Maybe one of those kids would stumble upon a video that gave them so critical knowledge or sparked their passion in something?

As long as the kids weren’t displacing others or damaging the equipment I don’t see what’s wrong with it.

Not OP but I can only guess being from Africa. 1) Data is expensive and watching videos uses up a fair amount of data. 2) Usually, the number of computers is limited. Someone can watch videos for the whole day whilst other people wait to use the computer. I get it that there is some useful information on Youtube but if left unchecked people tend to drift towards the trending views, music videos and so on.

Imagine Tinder on university mainframes of the 80s. Imagine everyone could just go there and use the computer, taking control of its very limited resources and do whatever they want. I guess hacker culture would have had a hard time in such an environment.

I wonder if it also has to do with the possibility that the students would just go to the library, and not go to class at all; that there isn't any kind of "punishment" for doing that instead of learning?

By "punishment" I mean everything from truancy enforcement to "societal disapproval"; it may be that in some cultures this isn't looked down upon?

That's all just a WAG, though...

> So I had to turn the internet off

I'd suggest making a white list of allowed sites (wikipedia, wolfram alpha), and create a quick contact point (if there is somebody there at all times) where students can ask for whitelisting a new site.

Do you have any thoughts on the way more and more software is accessed through the "cloud"? Do you prefer offline apps? Do cloud-based apps cause problems?

We have Khan academy and some other resources on a local server so we can minimize internet usage. Internet is expensive here, and every GB that we can save really counts. I don't like cloud apps (never really did, honestly), and being in Tanzania just has made that dislike even stronger.

Mambo vipi? I just got back from two years in Tanzania teaching Python/SQL/web to secondary schools students in the Arusha region[0]. Interesting some of the things you say about resources, the library -- your experiences mirror my own. You're right that there is a huge information accessibility gap. I gave my top students as much self-directed access to compute and Internet resources as possible, with several successes (one could write Python programs independently, another could set up Linux, and so on) but bottlenecks (such as my time, cost of Internet, power, tragedies of the commons, etc.) prevented more of my smartest students from going as far as they otherwise could have.

I'm curious -- what region are you in, and what is your organization? I'm back in the US now, but I keep in touch with the NGO I used to work for and it's a small wazungu world over there. If you don't mind putting some contact info here I'll send you an email, otherwise I'd enjoy hearing from you -- my email is on my profile.

[0]: https://mattjquinn.com/edu/

Safi! Karibu tena!

That’s great! Our school is in Arusha, Kijenge specifically. Would love to hear from you!

sturm@cryptm.org

Aside from the lack of load shedding and decent access to cheap technology and loads of bandwidth...

I feel everything else is the same for anyone outside SV. Can't meet deadlines (but that's because everything takes longer than you think it will, even when you account for hoffstadter's (sp?) law) and trying to bootstrap stuff in your spare time is next to impossible. Not impossible, but It's right up there with the most difficult things you could try and do.

As an African, I think everything laid down in this article is applicable to any job. The main problem here imho is the economic system. Africa cannot capitalism like its Europe or Latin America. Private firms and investment will not solve our problems, this has been demonstrated for more than a century now. We just get predated over our natural resources. We don't have other countries to sack or attract a lot of qualified work from other countries. Nobody invests in Africa and if they do, intermediaries and corrupt governments steal most of it to live lavishly. And most of the highly qualified Africans just run away to have a decent living somewhere else. I feel very sad about my continent, the cradle of humanity :(

At 20K a year it would seem African developers would be a competitive outsourcing option for wealthier nations. Is there a reason they're not a well known name in outsourcing?

I'm guessing it might have something to do with infrastructure, when countries like India and China can compete at these prices but have the infrastructure to support working remotely.

TLDR; Being a developer in Africa means paying 2X-4X in hardware prices, no viable Internet packages, hard to build team, unreliable electricity, no angel investment, 10X lower salary compared to US, hard to find learning resources, ban from PayPal.

I was reading in the section about power cuts, and I was wondering if there are any data centers in Africa?

I remember reading about Cloudflare setting some up?

Lagos for sure, Johannesburg, and maybe some others I'm forgetting?

There are some in Tunisia

Azure recently announced South Africa datacenters are available.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-south-africa...

2014? Would be cool with an update

$20k per year in Africa is balling out of control.

Africa is not a monolith. This is an absurd statement in the very areas where there even is a software development industry. See j'burg, akkra, lagos, nairobi, etc.

$20k is a lot of money is Lagos, and Lagos is more expensive than Accra & Nairobi

It is not. Source: African.

Unless of course you're comparing software developers' lifestyle to the refugees, nomads and slum dwellers? In which case $20k in San Fransisco is also balling out of control, when compared to the homeless guys living on your porch.

Even the homeless in SF cost the city $40,000 a year.

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