Impact Masters Podcast
#34 IMPACT MASTER ABEL MASILA: A JOURNEY FROM RURAL KENYA TO SOFTWARE ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE #africa #tech #podcast #softwareengineer #inspiration
Navigating the tech industry can feel like a Herculean task, but Abel Masila's story proves it's a climb worth making. Imagine starting from a mixed primary school in rural Kenya and ascending to the heights of software engineering — that's exactly the odyssey Abel takes us on. We traverse the peaks and valleys of his early education, through the fires (quite literally) of high school, into the self-taught world of tech mastery. Abel's tale is one of unyielding persistence, a flashlight guiding us through the sometimes obscure path of career growth in a burgeoning African tech landscape.
When Abel speaks of transforming from a joker to a top student, the power of personal accountability hits home. His journey embodies the essence of mentorship and the importance of aligning one’s career with passion, not just opportunity. With Abel, we explore the practicalities of job searching, the joy of finally being able to splurge on clothing post-success, and the nuanced realities of life as a developer, including the ones that don't feature in the glossy brochures. His narrative offers a clarion call to current and aspiring software engineers – your background doesn't define your future; your drive does.
We close the chapter on Abel's inspiring story by pondering on the future of African tech talent. His experiences serve as rallying cries for the African tech community to foster a nurturing environment for emerging engineers. From corporate hackathons to international collaborations, Abel's insights paint a future where Africa's unique challenges are met with home-grown, innovative solutions. Join us to uncover the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of a Kenyan software engineer who's blazing a trail for the next generation.
Subscribe and show some love. Ubuntu.
Navigating the tech industry can feel like a Herculean task, but Abel Masila's story proves it's a climb worth making. Imagine starting from a mixed primary school in rural Kenya and ascending to the heights of software engineering — that's exactly the odyssey Abel takes us on. We traverse the peaks and valleys of his early education, through the fires (quite literally) of high school, into the self-taught world of tech mastery. Abel's tale is one of unyielding persistence, a flashlight guiding us through the sometimes obscure path of career growth in a burgeoning African tech landscape.
When Abel speaks of transforming from a joker to a top student, the power of personal accountability hits home. His journey embodies the essence of mentorship and the importance of aligning one’s career with passion, not just opportunity. With Abel, we explore the practicalities of job searching, the joy of finally being able to splurge on clothing post-success, and the nuanced realities of life as a developer, including the ones that don't feature in the glossy brochures. His narrative offers a clarion call to current and aspiring software engineers – your background doesn't define your future; your drive does.
We close the chapter on Abel's inspiring story by pondering on the future of African tech talent. His experiences serve as rallying cries for the African tech community to foster a nurturing environment for emerging engineers. From corporate hackathons to international collaborations, Abel's insights paint a future where Africa's unique challenges are met with home-grown, innovative solutions. Join us to uncover the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of a Kenyan software engineer who's blazing a trail for the next generation.
Subscribe and show some love. Ubuntu.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Welcome once again. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. If you have not subscribed to our channel, we're already on YouTube and rolling On Twitter. It's Impact Masters, or Africa's Talking HQ. We're on Spotify, apple Podcasts, google Podcasts and everywhere else that you're in. This is Impact Masters Podcasts, collaboration with Africa Stalking Podcast, or well-known as Retold Podcast, and today, today's a beautiful day. Check out Africa Stalking africastalkingcom.
Michael Kimathi:Powering communication solutions across Africa with simplified access to telco infrastructure. Developers use our platform SMS, ussd, voice, airtime and payments APIs to bring the ideas to life as they build and sustain scalable businesses. Impact Masters, changing status quo across Africa and telling authentic African stories from Africa tech movers and shakers. And today we are blessed to have Abel Masila. Abel is a proficient software engineer who has focused on full stack and front-end development with React and JavaScript for six plus years and kicking With excellent problem-solving skills and experience, enhancing applications performance, implementing data visualization tools and integrating designs. As an expert at delivering projects within strict deadlines, abel also has experience coordinating deployment with AWS, handling databases and working with React, react Native, graphql, typescript, web 3.0, nodejs and Redux.
Michael Kimathi:Abel, how are you? How are you, abel? Yeah, I'm okay. Yes, yes, nice, nice, nice, happy to be here with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So welcome once again, abel. This is where we tell our stories, and the best way we start is by telling who we are, not the Abel we know right now, from where it began, you know, and with the focus of ensuring that you are featuring you as Abel and ensuring that whoever hears about Abel, they can learn one or two things. So please take us all the way back. Habel, where do you come from?
Abel Masila:Oh man, my story starts from way back. Yeah yeah, way back means I'm very old. I come from Kenya, the eastern side of Kenya, a place called. Mboni in Makueni County that's where I come from like any other typical kid went to primary school. Not fancy but it did the job, did well in my primary exams. I don't think I had known about computers back then what a minute here.
Michael Kimathi:We see the way it is. Abel, so you are in primary school in Boni. Yes, what's the name of the primary school?
Abel Masila:the primary school is called in the money boys in the money, boys.
Michael Kimathi:Was it just a boys' school?
Abel Masila:Surprisingly, it was a mixed school?
Michael Kimathi:Ah, a mixed school. But why was it called Idemboni Boys?
Abel Masila:Idemboni in Kikamba means a place where you go to worship or something like that. The school was close to it's still close to a Catholic huge church. Okay. So a long time ago our old folks used to have these huge trees, the mugumo trees. They would go and make sacrifices there. So the school is close to those big trees.
Michael Kimathi:That's why it's called. Itemboni Okay.
Abel Masila:So, basically, itemboni is a place where you make sacrifices, prayers and whatnot in the old, old, old culture. Now that has not happened. That's how the name Itemponi came to be. It's a good primary school, if you ask me.
Michael Kimathi:But why boys, if it's a mixed school?
Abel Masila:Back then, the concept of only boys and girls schools was not so big. So, due to lack of many, many other schools around, they decided to bring the boys and girls together in the same school Even this other school called Temponi Girls. It was still mixed.
Michael Kimathi:So you mean there were not so many girls going to school?
Abel Masila:There was not so many compared to boys. Okay. Of course school was paid, but then the government started having free primary education. That's when we started having many, many girls coming to school, and then the school grew. It's still growing. They have not separated the concerns to still mixed boys and mixed girls today. For the sake of having many kids come to school, Instead of limiting one to be a boy's school and now be a girl's school. They still keep it to date that way.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, yeah, so you did all your primary school at one school, right?
Abel Masila:I did transfer twice, not that I was, I was a.
Michael Kimathi:There was no criminal case the indisciplined case. I was not indisciplined.
Abel Masila:The Mboni school had a history of giving and producing smart kids, so my mom thought that if I go to that school I would be motivated to learn and maybe perform better.
Michael Kimathi:So in which class did you join? Idemboni Class?
Abel Masila:6. Class 6.
Michael Kimathi:Where were you previously?
Abel Masila:I was in a nearby school called Mutitu Mutitu Mutitu Primary School.
Michael Kimathi:This is Mutitu and A no, no, no, okay, another Mutitu, yes, ah, imboni. Imboni is not close to Mutitu. Yeah, it's quite far.
Abel Masila:Now, not that Mutitu was not performing well, but compared to Mboni, you can see that the figures were quite different and the number of kids going to high school from Mboni were quite many compared to Mutitu. So, of course, associating with smart kids who are motivated to learn, my mom thought that I would also. The bug would bite me and I'll learn a little bit more.
Abel Masila:Stop playing around and get the marks, but that time our family was going through a turbulent time. My mom got divorced so, being the firstborn, I was taking care of many, many other things apart from going to school. Make sure that my sister goes to school. Well, If there's food, make sure that my sisters get the food first, before I get it. If we have clothing, they should.
Michael Kimathi:And you're still in primary, yes, still in primary, and you could, you know, play the figure.
Abel Masila:I could cook for them. I could cook for them when my mom was out hustling, basically being the bigger brother.
Michael Kimathi:You are the firstborn.
Abel Masila:Yes, I'm the firstborn. Okay, the family of three.
Michael Kimathi:What did you learn from that experience?
Abel Masila:of three. How? What did you learn from that experience? This thing I still carry today uh being a responsible person okay comes with a lot of sacrifices, and you should. You should not be expecting to be paid back. I don't look at, uh, the things which I've done for my family or my sisters as any form of, or expect any form of payment or any from them. I'm doing this wholeheartedly, giving all my heart to it.
Abel Masila:This is family for me. I'm the firstborn, I have to take care of things, and me just being now the man in the house and with my mom and these little girls, step up a little bit. You'd be surprised. I used to go to school with my mom's shoes feminine shoes. No, I used to go to school with my mum's shoes Feminine shoes. So what I did?
Michael Kimathi:No, I'm not surprised. I have my story. Well, not my mum's shoes, but ladies' shoes.
Abel Masila:My mum could not really afford me some nice fancy shoes, so she would give me some of her shoes and I would wear them when I go to school. Because the boys were laughing at me. I would hide them across the fence and walk to school with no shoes. Yeah, up to class eight wow, wow.
Michael Kimathi:And this is now the bonnie bonnie, bonnie primary school, school now yeah, yeah, so that's. That's interesting. I didn't know this about you, abel, and I've known you for a couple of years. Something else about primary school were you always a performer, or at some point you felt like I need to perform?
Abel Masila:so between class 6 and class 7, as I told you, we had family issues going on that did take a toll on me in terms of dedicating time to learn, even prep work. I would say I missed a lot of that. Yeah, I've always been a performer, but during that time she did not show well even the marks which I got after the the end of a primary uh evaluation was not.
Michael Kimathi:That is kcp. The kcp, yeah, the max which I got, I think I could have done better, which I got.
Abel Masila:I think I could have done better figuring, ignoring the fact that we had some issues for a year or so. But it still surfaced. I still got a chance to join a high school.
Michael Kimathi:So, if you don't mind me asking, now that you are a grown up man, now you have your own family and what not? How do you, now that you understand everything that went on in terms of divorce and everything, how do you think that affects a kid at that stage?
Abel Masila:It has got a negative impact, especially emotionally, the kid. You will not be at 100%, your energy will go down your moral to do. Things will go down self-esteem service team and also the fact that there are kids who know that your family is going through this stuff there may be some.
Abel Masila:They look down, look down on you, uh it, it it really affects yeah one a lot, and there's not ways about it. There's no straight guide on how you can navigate that. You just have to live through it. But now, being a parent right now, if that happened to me, I'll know what to do to my kids bring them closer, give them emotional support so that it doesn't affect them.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, give them hope. So the chief, the the okay, your dad just cut ties and that's it. Do you want anything to do with you guys? Yeah yeah, that must be traumatizing the story is long.
Abel Masila:Yeah, it's not. It's not. It's not one of the stories you would want to hear no, no, please.
Michael Kimathi:If you don't want to tell it you're not ready, there's no problem. Yeah.
Abel Masila:But that man is just that man, not so many good things to say. It affected us a lot.
Michael Kimathi:So you have never met him afterwards? No, no.
Abel Masila:I know him, I have met him. He's quite old. Dealing with the old age, yeah. But that time really brought, did bring the best out of me. I realized that I am on my own most of the time. And I have people looking up on me. And I cannot afford to mess up, even when I went back to class eight ready for the exam it was very clear. I'm not even ready for myself now.
Abel Masila:I have a mom here who is hustling trying to get some money for us, trying to get some school fees, the best I can do is just give her hope, and that's how it's been ever since Just giving my family hope and, being the bigger man, be the man of the house.
Michael Kimathi:Yes, so now you have more responsibility on your table. You do kcp, yeah, and you performed. Are you like top 10 in the country, top one, top five?
Abel Masila:you know I got three 312 312 marks. Yeah, out of, I think, 500 yeah, it was out of 500. Yeah, yeah yeah, compared to what other kids got, that was not the best so you could have easily scored 420 410.
Abel Masila:okay, but circumstances yeah, but I don't regret any of that, because I got some nice offers for schools around the larger company schools around the larger company. One was just lost with them, bonnie. I did not like it. It was still a mixed miss secondary school with day and body. I did not like that aspect because that means I would be going home every day. Yeah, it was not as expensive as other schools which I got.
Abel Masila:I was lucky to be called to be called to attend, uh, the introduction meetings for a school called massey high school I know mercy is in massey town, and back then the school was not known for good things, so there was some resistance from people who were willing to pay my school fees. Like some of my relatives, they thought that if I go into that school I'll end up not being a good kid. But my mom had this conviction that if this is what the government is offering, we don't have many, many choices like we would want to.
Abel Masila:She believed that I can still go out there and do good things and perform better and be a different kid, even even if even though we have kids who are not doing well, yeah, got into drugs and whatnot yeah she had the conviction that I I could go there and be a different kind of person yeah and that's it. That's how I go to myiha High School.
Michael Kimathi:So you went to Masiha High School for Form 1 to Form 4? Yes. So how was that experience in Form 1? You had new shoes, new uniform it was fine.
Abel Masila:I got to Afinity. For the first time I have my own shoes with Kiwi.
Michael Kimathi:I have my own box with some blue bag, some shopping there, shopping in there.
Abel Masila:Yeah, f, there Felt very, very well. My relatives came in for us. They pulled money for us. There was some harambees here and there I was taken to school.
Michael Kimathi:I would say it was a good experience, so your mom was really happy that you were able to perform with all this responsibility.
Abel Masila:Yes.
Michael Kimathi:Did she encourage you to really show up for the family and yourself?
Abel Masila:So when I go to high school I was a joker the first time.
Michael Kimathi:You got comfortable, I got comfortable.
Abel Masila:I started doing what other boys are doing in school just playing around sleeping during prep time. Yeah, not really doing the most, yeah. So what happens after first term? Is you do? Is you go home? And then you come back and do an exam. So once you do that exam your parents will be called. You'll see how the form the four months are doing now after first time in school yeah this is the second time and they have done an exam yeah out of 264 kids yeah I was number 250.
Abel Masila:what? Yes, that's how bad it was.
Michael Kimathi:How did you take those news? That is first time, first time.
Abel Masila:So I had not seen the results first. So the parents would walk into the gate, then be given the form one list look for your kid there then go and talk to the kid.
Michael Kimathi:So you guys used to be picked by your parents from school.
Abel Masila:No, they would come to the gate. It's a boarding school. So be picked by your parents from school. No, they would come to the gate. It's a boarding school, so when they're visiting they come to the gate. At the gate, there are some desks there with the list of the kids who have done the exams.
Michael Kimathi:You guys used to do clinic days, yeah yeah, that is a clinic day now.
Abel Masila:So when my mom walked to the gate got the paper, looked at the top I'm not there.
Michael Kimathi:Perused got the paper. Looked at the top, I'm not there.
Abel Masila:Reduced 250 kids is a lot of yeah, so I was at around 250 out of 264. She was not happy now. She had come to visit me with food, good food. She had come with my uncle well dressed, nice chapos and beef come to see their kid who is high school. That is something for which which parents come to see their kid who is in high school. Yeah, that is something for which parents love doing. Yes, so they got I saw them working.
Michael Kimathi:They were not quite happy, yeah.
Abel Masila:So did you get to eat the food or the story? The story should be waiting. The story should be waiting.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, this is interesting.
Abel Masila:So they caught up with me. We went and sit down and sat down at the field. Actually, we went to talk to the class teacher. The class teacher said that you know, this kid has good potential. Blah, blah, blah. I was doing quite bad.
Abel Masila:So they gave recommendations of things I could do, books they could buy for me, and so now they had time to talk to me. So we walked out of the staff room, went to the field, they unpacked the food, and now I think this is my point of change in life. So my uncle was not quite happy. He did tell me things and my mom did tell me things, and they were not good things. They were speaking from a point of bitterness and seeing how the hope they had in me Is constantly declining and there is no. They can see no hope at this point. Yeah.
Abel Masila:So I did not even get a chance to eat this food. The words which came out of their mouth, that is what changed me.
Michael Kimathi:So you're like I'm squandering an opportunity around this place like they did speak sense to me.
Abel Masila:Yeah, I carried the food, gave it to my friends. Yeah, and that was the last time my mom ever visited me to school with food. That is how I fumbled that, that, that day a point. Yes, she came to school with water and money for pocket. That's it, that's it, and she made clear that, so I went back to study.
Michael Kimathi:And you know when your mom in African culture doesn't feed you that says a lot, man.
Abel Masila:like you see other kids having nice food there just chilling talking to her. No food for you, it's not a good thing, yeah. You know, you're also a kid, True true. You feel bad about it. So I went back to class, started studying. We did the midterm exam. I had moved up.
Michael Kimathi:But what was the strategy? What did you decide to do?
Abel Masila:What I did. As I told you I was a joker, I would actually wake up at 5 am. As I told you I was a joker, I would actually wake up at 5 am to go to sleep in class. Until Porridge time, 6.30. When kids have woken up to go and study, I would wake up and go to sleep in class. I have a chance to sleep in bed, but I want to go to sleep, that's how bad it was.
Abel Masila:So I changed that. I woke up earlier, 4.30. I started reading like crazy, catching up, catching up with things which I had not known, writing notes which I had not even written, taking some exams from the library and trying to challenge myself yeah and just learning and learning, little play.
Abel Masila:I'm not into sports, so during the game time I'll basically be washing my clothes, then planning on how I'm going to do the evening preps. I befriend most of my teachers, especially the ones which I had interest in the subject. Chemistry was one, mathematics was another, physics was another.
Michael Kimathi:Because that's why you flopped a bit.
Abel Masila:Yeah, I think I got mathematics. I think I had a clean 38.
Michael Kimathi:In first term.
Abel Masila:Yes, 38 out of 100, bro, that's really bad.
Michael Kimathi:Well, comparatively, I've seen people get zero something, but still it's bad. It's really bad.
Abel Masila:So that was my strategy Get the resources, study time, write notes. There's power of this. I usually tell people there's power in writing notes and I think that I got that.
Michael Kimathi:So you started taking notes on things that are not familiar. Consulted the teacher on those things.
Abel Masila:I was very serious about that Then you started now expanding your knowledge.
Michael Kimathi:Yes, so by term two, mid Expanding your knowledge.
Abel Masila:Yes, so by term two, midterm exam. Oh, midterm exam Moved up to number 23.
Michael Kimathi:That is a second term, midterm, midterm.
Abel Masila:Okay Moved up to number 23. Okay Went home happy. My mom was not happy.
Michael Kimathi:You can do better than this Can do better than this. You're not cooking for your siblings, you're not fetching anything for your siblings, you, you're not fetching anything for your siblings, you just need to study.
Abel Masila:She even told me don't do anything.
Abel Masila:Just read. You have no responsibility in this house. Sit and read, that's it. Midterm is usually like one week, so I spend most of the time reading and doing just my exams and revising and whatnot. Came back to school. End of term exam. Bro number three Went home. She's not happy you can do more she even enrolled me to attrition program for the whole of the month, which which we, which went, we went, we'd gone home to the rest. Yeah, that's how serious it was. She paid money, she looked for money yeah and paid those teachers, yeah.
Abel Masila:And then I developed a huge, huge interest in mathematics and physics and chemistry. Why I found them to be interesting. I did not like reading notes or history reading agriculture notes A bit boring. Yeah, they're not fun. They're not fun I would say they were not fun for me. I was not kind like that. I wanted to do challenging stuff. I really wanted to go to the computer lab. I was not taking computer studies.
Michael Kimathi:When was the first time you interacted with the computer? Is it in high school?
Abel Masila:In high school.
Michael Kimathi:Form one, form two, so they had a computer lab.
Abel Masila:Yeah, yeah, I was not actually taking computer studies. I was taking agriculture. In computer In high school.
Michael Kimathi:Okay, I did not take computer studies.
Abel Masila:But now the story is quite long about how we got there. So I loved mathematics a lot and I even became friends with senior mathematics teachers in the school. Okay, so fast forward. I managed to keep on. Number one, number two, number one, number two. Yeah, so fast forward to form two. Form two is usually a deciding point for most of the people.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, you get to choose subjects which one want to Selective subjects Selective subjects.
Abel Masila:Back then, biology was not mandatory for our school.
Michael Kimathi:So you could choose Two sciences.
Abel Masila:Two sciences, so I picked physics. Of course, chemistry. There was a big problem, though at that time of selection I was a very good student in most of the subjects. It was not easy for me to decide what I want. I could easily pick up geography and still perform. I had already figured out agriculture. I was actually the best agriculture student. But then I was also equally good at biology, so it was not so easy for me to decide. And then the teachers who were teaching me this stuff. They are my friends.
Michael Kimathi:So you don't want to disappoint any of those teachers and the teacher teaching biology.
Abel Masila:The teacher teaching agriculture. They would want to have me in their class. So the decision was made I picked up physics and dropped agriculture and geography and biology I dropped them. And geography and biology I dropped them. So that's how I started developing lots of interest in tech and stuff. But there was a story in Form 2 which happened For the first time our school had a chance to organize a mathematics contest. I did top that up the whole area. So I started developing interest in this thing, Passed 4th to Form 3.
Michael Kimathi:So at this point no, girlfriend, nothing.
Abel Masila:Ah man, I was a boring person. I was reading a lot. They used to call us bookworms. I was not fun, I did not know how to dance the guys.
Michael Kimathi:You got girlfriends in school they're good dancers.
Abel Masila:My type of funky will be the math contest, the science, science contest, the ones which they go for debating the journalism club and whatnot yeah um, there's a bit of my high school which I've missed. Um, when I was in form one, I was not a prefect. When I was informed, too, I was a routine prefect, the bell ringer, okay so I was always on tours with the time. Okay, that was. That helped me a lot okay, um.
Michael Kimathi:Were you appointed to this? Did you run for office?
Abel Masila:people elect you for these things, so there you had elective positions yes, yes, people would vote for you, and then you get it did you have to campaign? Yeah, campaigns were there, but I did not do it a lot because I was performing well. I told you, I taught mathematics for the region it was so easy for them.
Michael Kimathi:That is in form 2. Yes, it was so easy for them.
Abel Masila:That is in Form 2. Yes, it was so easy for them to know we have somebody who's into books. Maybe they will keep time for us. Okay. Let's give it to him. But when it got to Form 3, things started happening for me. People started seeing me differently. They started seeing a bigger person in me.
Michael Kimathi:That is your colleagues in class, the classmates or teachers, even the teachers. Okay.
Abel Masila:In time two. I started having chest problems and I had to sleep through preps, and this story is quite interesting.
Michael Kimathi:But in Bwamni it's a bit warm.
Abel Masila:No, it was cold season, time two, you know, time two is.
Michael Kimathi:July, like right now, yeah, like right now.
Abel Masila:I started developing some chest problems. I had to sleep through preps. Some idiots who had been fired. They decided to burn the dorms. I'm sleeping in one of the dorms, Actually at the edge. You're in this dorm. Yes, I'm in this dorm, You're not feeling well.
Abel Masila:I'm not feeling well, so I started hearing something flowing through my ear, smelling it's petrol. Not feeling well, I'm not feeling well, so I'm hearing something flowing through my ear, smelling it's better. They had the pot petronius, so they are pouring the outside the dorm. They are pouring through the windows to the mattresses and then walking, so the dormitory was sleeping. There were two dormitories, so sleeping at um at one of them, at the edge.
Abel Masila:So the way the domes are built is you have one door, which only, which only open from outside yeah and then we have another door at the end which can open from inside so if I want to open, if I want to go out, I have to walk through the dome, then go and open and move out. I can't just move out through this door. It's already locked yeah so these, these guys started pouring petrol. It is their last dormitory, so after this they will touch the building. So I woke up feeling boxers. I'm still sleeping.
Michael Kimathi:Not feeling. Well, I'm not here.
Abel Masila:So just a shirt, boxers and no shoes. So I started running. Then they just touched the dorm from my bed.
Michael Kimathi:From the side that you're sleeping or from the side you're supposed to go out?
Abel Masila:The bed where I'm sleeping. So I have to run through and go and open and there's fire running through the bed.
Michael Kimathi:Because Petro also lights very quickly. Did they know there's someone inside, or they assumed there's no one?
Abel Masila:They assumed there's nobody. So I ran out, opened the door, went screaming to the field. The kids heard somebody screaming. They came back. They put out the fire. The only two dormitories got burned, instead of many others it would have been many, so they wanted to clear all the dormitories. So essentially I did save the whole school from an inferno and from that. So the DCI, the police, came, they're taking statements from me. Of course I did not look like a suspect, because I'm always a good kid.
Michael Kimathi:There's no point to doubt me.
Abel Masila:So the police came with statements. I was traumatized. For all that time my uncle and mom and relatives came to pick me up, go home to relax a little bit and unwind and feel better. So when I went home, it was time when the kids were supposed to elect their prefects and new better. So when I went home, it was time when the kids are supposed to elect their prefects and new leaders. These guys elected me.
Michael Kimathi:So were you suspended because of that incident? No, not suspension.
Abel Masila:It's just going home and relax and come back.
Michael Kimathi:So you asked to go rest.
Abel Masila:Actually, the school bought me everything back A new box, new shoes, new uniform, new mattress. They gave me everything back they gave me everything back. My mom did not have to pay anything. As I've told you, I was not a suspect. I actually saved the school. So they just told me to go home and relax and unwind because I was also traumatized from the event. Coming back, these guys elected me as a school captain. I did not campaign.
Michael Kimathi:You just came into a position.
Abel Masila:Yes, I did not campaign for this thing. I had even not shown interest.
Michael Kimathi:But did you guys know who was trying to burn down?
Abel Masila:the dormitories. Yeah, the guys would be fired. So the school had received a new principal. So the principal came with new changes.
Michael Kimathi:And some guys didn't like it.
Abel Masila:Yeah, so some guys were.
Michael Kimathi:At this point you're in Form 3 or Form 2? Form 3. Form 2.
Abel Masila:Okay Form 3, form 2. Yeah, so I'm the head boy with no information about how I'm supposed to be the head boy and I even don't know the prefects I'm supposed to run this thing with. These guys did campaign, I did not campaign. So the people who know them, I even don't know these people. Okay, but they say, this guy can lead us.
Abel Masila:Yeah, we want that guy who saved the school to be the head boy. Okay, you know I love studying. It's not a thing for me. I'm not into power battles and whatnot. Yeah, so I especially I would not say I was the best head boy they ever got. Yeah, I'm not the kind of guy to walk there and look for people are breaking rules and punish them. Take them to clean glasses. I was not. I was not good like that. I. I would basically give you a warning to go to class. Yeah.
Michael Kimathi:I do know that's not how I was supposed to work, so they say leadership is an in-between love and fear, yeah, so you have to balance both to be a really good leader, but my deputy head boy was into it. He knew what to do.
Abel Masila:He loved doing that. He actually put me into very awkward situations too.
Michael Kimathi:Oh, he was just a passive deputy.
Abel Masila:He was an active deputy. I was not active on this thing.
Michael Kimathi:So you're the one who was passive? Yes, this guy was like this is the way to run things.
Abel Masila:He actually put me into awkward situations while at it.
Michael Kimathi:Who was?
Abel Masila:that Kids Kids had come to school with phones, so I had caught them and then took their phones. I said I'll keep them for you and then give you when you are going home. Yeah, this guy goes and tells the principal, abel is keeping phones for students, so I can imagine all the inspections in my boxes so this statement is actually turned around yeah, he's turned around against me. You know, of course I could not be suspended because I'm the head boy and nobody's voting to demolish your position.
Abel Masila:If I'm not the head boy, every other person does not maintain their position.
Michael Kimathi:Oh, that's how it used to run, like if there's no president, every other position is null and void. So we vote again, okay.
Abel Masila:So nobody was willing to vote me out. Yeah, there was no grounds for me to be voted out, so I decided to ignore the leadership thing and went on and studied. Go to Form 4.
Michael Kimathi:So who was the head boy?
Abel Masila:Or you're just there but not performing I'm still the head boy, but I'm a passive one. Like I'm still in power, I can do things which I would does, but I was not into it as much as you're supposed to be, yeah I was into books and studying and winning contests you guys went to mangu for math contests yeah, I've done that for many times I've never scored a zero, though I've scored many things in mangu, I think I also.
Abel Masila:I, what do you mean? I've never scored a zero, though I have scored many things in Mangu.
Michael Kimathi:What do you mean? You've never scored a zero In Mangu.
Abel Masila:I got presents from Mangu Contest.
Michael Kimathi:But there are people who went there and got a zero.
Abel Masila:Mangu Contest. People get zeros, bro. It's crazy hard mathematics. You know Simuturi. Yeah. Simuturi was one of the guys writing those math.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, revision books. He teaches at.
Abel Masila:Mangu. He was at Mangu. He was at Mangu. Sometimes he did prepare the questions for us. They were tough. So if you got a 3 in Mangu contest, bro, you are very smart out of 15 or 20 oh, it was always out of 15 or 20 so getting an 8, which I did it was real good and Mangu guys got what. Mangu guys used to pass a lot because their teacher 15 out of 15. No, no, nobody has ever gotten 15 out of 15. But they get lost 10 or 10.5.
Michael Kimathi:Which is extremely good yeah.
Abel Masila:That is good performance. Yeah. This Mangu contest, national contest, national mathematics contest bro it's not provincial. Yeah, national mathematics contest, bro, is not provincial. Yeah, it was crazy. So I used to love those things, yeah. So I would say my fourth year, my form four, was inventive, inventive, a lot, not being able to lead as they want me to, but still excelling in things, which makes me happy yeah.
Michael Kimathi:So you did your KCSE, kcse bro.
Abel Masila:Bro, I got a good B plus. Yeah, I passed the cut points. I think it was 72 points. Yeah. Now, surprisingly, this school. I don't know I should go there and fight some people. Yeah. I was the third performing student. Yeah. They never even called me to go and take my gifts.
Michael Kimathi:You said you got what?
Abel Masila:72 points B plus which the cut point was 72.
Michael Kimathi:The cut point was 72?.
Abel Masila:The cut point was 64.
Michael Kimathi:Okay, but you feel like it was not fair.
Abel Masila:It was fair, but the school usually have celebrations for people who have passed the exams. Me being the third best performing kid in the school was supposed to be called for that. But, since I was not a good head boy, they did not even call me for the celebrations and receiving gifts. But you know, god has his own way of putting you in good places when time is right. So I got my B+.
Abel Masila:But now, when I was in high school, I told you not to take computer studies at all. The crazy part is I used to attend computer practical sessions after classes, to a point that during KC time, the computer studies teacher thought that I was one of the students and was wondering why I was not taking the exam.
Michael Kimathi:What did you used to do at the computer study lab?
Abel Masila:I used to go there and learn Excel, bro. I think I wrote vbnet visual basic.
Michael Kimathi:Self-taught.
Abel Masila:Yes, I was just self-teaching myself. I would pick books for computer study students, the textbook Go and go practice on my own. There was no restriction on who can go to that?
Michael Kimathi:why didn't you join computer studies?
Abel Masila:I uh, yeah, in form one you don't get a chance to choose. You are divided into, into lots like so these guys are gonna take agriculture. I think, guys, you're gonna take computer so it's not a choice there was no choice, but I was lucky to get to take French, though.
Michael Kimathi:Okay, so you're good in French. No, no, no.
Abel Masila:I did that for one, just for one, and the teacher went back to France.
Michael Kimathi:Was he originally from France?
Abel Masila:He's Kenyan, but he was.
Michael Kimathi:He got a job in France he got a linguistic job in France. And of course he's well paid.
Abel Masila:So the school lost a French teacher.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, and then that's the end of it.
Abel Masila:But I can do a little bit of it. I say hi to people.
Michael Kimathi:Bonjour. How are they supposed to respond?
Abel Masila:You can say bonjour, monsieur.
Michael Kimathi:Bonjour, monsieur.
Abel Masila:That means.
Michael Kimathi:I'm very fine.
Abel Masila:Sir, madam Comment ça va. How are you? Ça va bien bien Ah nice. Nice.
Michael Kimathi:That's knowledge which I don't even use Very nice, very nice. Did you get an invitation from the universities?
Abel Masila:No, I was done very well.
Michael Kimathi:What had you selected in your university selection?
Abel Masila:I did the revision for exactly two weeks. I had to go there every day because I was not sure what I wanted to pick, pick, it pick, computer science, business with IT, education with IT. Like I was so confused.
Michael Kimathi:I ended up picking, so no one guided you through this process.
Abel Masila:Nobody my mom, of course. My mom doesn't have knowledge on these computer things. So she would even be telling me to take law, but I did not have the points for law.
Michael Kimathi:But did you get to go with that form at home?
Abel Masila:Yeah, I would go download the courses and the points. You know they have the points, like if you want to do this course you have to have minimum of these points. I had, I think, a cluster weight of 38 or 39 someday. So there are very few courses you can take with that. You can't take medicine, for instance, you can't take law, you can't take these heavy courses. Kaka, that gives me some idea how you performed.
Michael Kimathi:So, yeah, there's some subjects that you really did well and others really bad.
Abel Masila:See, I told you I don't like these things.
Michael Kimathi:Languages.
Abel Masila:I failed terribly in Kiswahili and history and English. I got playing in mathematicsiswahili and history and English. I got a place in mathematics, physics and chemistry.
Michael Kimathi:That's a problem. You're in a very big fix.
Abel Masila:So I did not have many, many options here. I had to pick a course which is between which my cluster points only require physics maths and chemistry which mostly are computer science and even then, actually you are the mercy of Jap. Yeah.
Michael Kimathi:Because they select the best guys and then they tell other guys okay, there are some guys here. Do you want to pick them? They don't know English. That's how you got picked by Meru University.
Abel Masila:I had applied to join J-Quad Back then. Meru was still not chartered. It was still under J-Quad. But by the time they were sending the letters they had been chartered. So I went straight to Meru University Bachelor of Science in Information Technology. I wanted to change to Computer Science, though, but I did not see the point. I believe there's nothing which I lost, which I did not learn, which computer?
Michael Kimathi:science guys have done which I have not taught myself. Maybe you missed some math. In computing, math is crazy bro.
Abel Masila:We only did it to class 2,. They did it to class 3, probably to 3.
Michael Kimathi:Discrete.
Abel Masila:Discrete math we don't do in IT.
Michael Kimathi:That's why I'm telling you you missed that part, since you are good in math.
Abel Masila:I had friends who were teaching me this. I had a friend who was doing Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and. Computers.
Michael Kimathi:That is, in Meru University.
Abel Masila:Yes, Meru University. He was my friend. He used to love math so we'd go to class, learn, let's say, district math and when we meet up with him, he would be showing me things that I've learned in class which I'm not learning in my own course.
Michael Kimathi:By the way, how was that experience now moving from you know, being a captain high school, you perform well to university?
Abel Masila:I'd say, of course the responsibility was growing on me. My mom is still seeing a bright future for us. The government is going to pay some of my school fees. I'm going to apply for help, so it was almost certain that Things are hardening up. Things are hardening up, but still the ball is on my court. I can't be getting supplementary exams back there in uni.
Abel Masila:My mom was very clear about it Go there and learn. I know university, she told me she knows. University is a place you can hang around and never do anything serious. But she told me this is not the end of it. Go and just work hard. So the transition was quite smooth. I had no problems at all. My mom had prepared me quite well. She also had gotten hung over a job, so she had some chums here and there to pay for things.
Michael Kimathi:But where did she go? To university herself?
Abel Masila:My mom did not go to university. She did up to high levels. All levels, all levels. Yeah, but she used to work for UN, for Oxford.
Michael Kimathi:So she had some idea how universities operate and all that.
Abel Masila:Yeah, she used to work for Oxford in UN a long time ago. That's how she knew about university stuff.
Michael Kimathi:Ah, nice, nice.
Abel Masila:So, going to first year, I knew I needed to study.
Michael Kimathi:So I did study. So I did study. Did you stay in school or you On?
Abel Masila:and off, on and off. First year you get a chance to stay in school. After that you are big people. You start fighting for space.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah.
Abel Masila:If you have money to pay you pay to pay. You pay If you don't, you get some bedsitter somewhere With a friend, I'd keep on paying.
Michael Kimathi:A studio for those who are listening A studio house, yeah.
Abel Masila:So I was on and off in campus for accommodation, but in campus I would say I was a weird person. Most people did not get it, but now they do when I go to first. I did not go to first year with a laptop, let's start there. So I spent the whole of my first semester just learning theory and going to the computer lab and practice there. Not have a laptop in second semester.
Michael Kimathi:First year and going to study in a lab. I understand also the university laptops are firewalls so you cannot install anything. You cannot try to install Linux or something that actually you could learn from. You just read documents there.
Abel Masila:Just read documents and notes.
Michael Kimathi:And if you want to install something like Adobe, you have to ask the lab technician to come and install it for you. It was hectic, but at least I got to learn, you know install something like Adobe.
Abel Masila:You have to ask a technician.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, I mean, he stole it for you.
Abel Masila:It was hectic yeah, at least I go to learn basics of things which I love, mm-hmm, developing test in OS. Just the OS itself. Yeah, not specific to Windows or Linux. Yeah, how the OS works. So I would keep on pestering the lab technician on show me how to install Windows, show me how to install Linux. What is Kali Linux?
Abel Masila:Back then we had Backtrack, not Kali Linux. He had shown me so many things. So when I got to second semester, my mom brought me a small laptop Samsung laptop, small ones, the notebooks but it was quite poor it was a core E3. Yeah, oh nice. Back then people had plenty of hands, yeah, so I started now doing stuff on my own. Yeah, guess what I did.
Michael Kimathi:But how did you hack the first few exams? Or you guys didn't do coding, no, First time is actually communication skills.
Abel Masila:Introduction to mathematics application skills mathematics, programming, writing a little bit of C code, so basically writing whiteboard code. No practicals at all. So the first semester was quite easy, just getting to know what is programming, what are loops, things like that, basically introduction. So second semester, I have a laptop, guys from iLab, you know iLab.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, I know, ilab, that was Strathmore University, strathmore University.
Abel Masila:They had come. They said that they would come to Mary University to do a boot camp on USSD and SMS in PHP.
Michael Kimathi:Ah, was it Africa Stalking? There's a guy who is really good with Africa Stalking products in Strathmore, I think it was AT, it was AT, so I think it was 18.
Abel Masila:So, I did not know. I studied PHP, so tutorials. I told my mom I need 2K to register for a bootcamp here. She tried and got me the 2K and then I spent some time learning PHP so I knew PHP. When I got to this bootcamp, I was not floating. They were showing us how to do GSM. They begged me to learn PHP. I started doing php. Yeah, when I go to this boot camp, I was not floating.
Abel Masila:This was showing us how to do uses dsms yeah the back bit, bro, I learned php I started doing projects in php in first year, second semester nice by the time I got to second year, I already started thinking which year was this second. Yeah, this was 2014-ish. I go to uni in 2012. Yeah, first semester, first semester, november to January. Then from 2013 is second year, 2014, and year 2015.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, cleared campus. Yeah, because then Africa Stocking was written in PHP. Yeah, and then, with the scale and the demand the customer demand to scale across Africa it changed to Scala.
Abel Masila:Yeah, scala is quite powerful, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Michael Kimathi:So you are the initial developers of AT, that's nice, there was no sandbox, bro.
Abel Masila:We were testing with some Chrome extension. Ah, there was no sandbox.
Speaker 4:Which you guys are enjoying right now. Yes, of course, yeah, yeah.
Abel Masila:There was a Chrome extension which you could test your SSDs with. Yeah. I think it's been duplicated. We have now many, many sandboxes we can test with. Yes.
Michael Kimathi:Do you know? At is the first telco API in Africa. Nice, I did not know that.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, it was the first Before you could just go, you know, book a meeting in the telco you know, know how it goes. They ask you for the company registration. All those details which people don't usually have all the time as a developer, the first thing you think is it building the solution or registering a company. And maybe nowadays developers are more entrepreneurial and all. But even then registering a company was not easy, especially in Kenya. Things have just started improving not so long ago.
Abel Masila:You can now do a business registration online, but then you could not yeah yeah, so it was quite limiting for developers. I think even people are people. I still have that, that, the file, the ussd file we did on github, but I see people commenting on it to date nice like I'll, I'll send you that link please please yeah it's a link, please. It's quite old, basically it's a SD card, and people are still interested in that PHP code we still support PHP.
Michael Kimathi:Nothing much in terms of how the core code used to work, but of course it has improved with support with other languages. Now the SDKs and APIs, things have really improved. So you learned the USSD. Did you learn to do SMS?
Abel Masila:Yeah, those guys did teach us a lot. It was fascinating for me to be able to do ASTAR.
Michael Kimathi:Nice and see it respond, because then I remember Nokia was still big.
Abel Masila:We're still developing. Symb applications, uh, for nokia apps. But the the usd thing felt like network, that felt like magic, bro. You know people could dial.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, five of us for safaricom but they had no idea how that happened yeah, so we have guys who are teaching you abroad.
Abel Masila:Do you think that changed the way you view so?
Michael Kimathi:we have guys who are teaching you. Do you think that changed the way you view software engineering?
Abel Masila:I realized that. So much abstractions. If you are not keen, you still feel like it's magic, but it's still within your grasp to understand what's happening and that moment of me being able to interact with iLab guys. I took a couple of contacts. They did send me many, many books on PHP and SST. I developed lots of interest in web development. I did PHP for quite some time. In second year I did Laravel. I started taking projects for four years now.
Abel Masila:They were paying me small monies Five thousand, four thousand. So this is the end of course project I'm doing for you and I'm in second year, so I'm getting some little money out of it yeah then something happened that time 2014, 2015 yeah. Android was coming up quite well. Yeah, and we did not have developer tools back then.
Abel Masila:People were using Eclipse and something called ADT Android developer developer tools. Back then people are using eclipse and something called edit android developer tools. Yeah, I said, building mobile apps. Make a small laptop. I I'm among the first people who used android studio better yeah, but now with this small laptop.
Michael Kimathi:I know android studio is really heavy. How was that experience?
Abel Masila:I used to wait for gradual for like 10 minutes. I, I, I, I ate. The zeal to learn. The laptop was limiting me, but it was not stopping me from doing it. I'll share the screenshot of the application with you, I did not have money to pay for Play Store, I deployed it to a store called Mobo Genie. It's a Chinese store. Then you deploy your application, somebody will clone it and make it theirs, and then you no longer own the application.
Michael Kimathi:Wow, okay.
Abel Masila:It was bad, but at least I could send you a link to download and install.
Speaker 4:Ah, nice, nice, I did a little bit of Android, the apk, yeah, I did a little bit of Android.
Michael Kimathi:That is now in second year, second year, third year, yeah, and is all this for fun, or also you're making money out of it?
Abel Masila:I was only making money by doing projects for four years only. Oh okay, I would go to class. Then there was a spot in Maryville University called the discussion room. It had good, quite fast internet, but land cable, not Wi-Fi. If you don't find me in that spot, you'll find a friend of mine, and when they leave I'll be.
Michael Kimathi:So you guys 24-7?
Abel Masila:24-7. I do not go home most of the time to sleep. I would spend the night there downloading tutorials.
Michael Kimathi:Can you tell the Meru computer science and IT student that statement again, because they have never invited us for they're still, I think, interested in us going and doing something there. But I don't see the zeal. And I tell them I know a guy from this school, this very, very school is doing really well, but the zeal the zeal.
Abel Masila:But Mary University, I think back then, was not as good as it is. It was not as good Even when I joined campus. The library could only fit like 50 people and we still got a chance to learn and read within those limited resources. Right now, merlin University has got one of the biggest libraries. They have an innovation center, bro they have no excuse, they have more connection ports than we had back then.
Abel Masila:Imagine we are holding one LAN connection port between people who are known very well. Like you'd know, if you don't find Abel there, you're going to find Alfred there, you're going to find Steve there, Like there are people who you'll always find there.
Michael Kimathi:And all these guys did real well.
Abel Masila:Bro. Steve is working for Microsoft. Alfred is in the UAE doing quite good. He's actually building courses for Udemy. Ah nice, the guys who used to hang out together at that point. They are all doing good.
Michael Kimathi:I would say they have aced their careers yeah yeah, and these guys can make to Chuka University to come and learn some new stuff.
Abel Masila:Bro, I think kids nowadays are built different. They are not self-motivated stuff. I think kids nowadays are built different they're not self-motivated.
Michael Kimathi:I think they need it. Do you think there's that I'll say reluctant to find something that you want?
Abel Masila:nowadays, I think there's so much information right now flying by. It's not so easy for new up-coming engineers to find a niche and stick with it. You find one doing React today, the next one day doing Vue, the next day doing Angular, the other day doing Android. They have not yet decided what they want to do, and by the time I was leaving Mary University I'd already known what I wanted to do.
Abel Masila:I'd tried Android. I'd tried React no, not React PHP. I'd tried Nodejs. I tried C Sharp. I wanted to be a web engineer. I did not want to be a mobile engineer.
Michael Kimathi:So anything web, you could pay some attention and learn it.
Abel Masila:Yes, and that's why I was very good at PHP and C Sharp. Even my first internship after university at Software Dynamics Limited, I was doing a piece in SPNET and C Sharp and crazy databases in Microsoft SQL this is after you graduated, but how did you perform along the way? I got a second class upper. I failed in my project, my further project.
Abel Masila:The judges wanted things out of this world which is not give them what they want wanted projects which were beyond the scope of a project Plus, there was no time, so you're doing like you are the one judging. Everybody did not like that. I think that's only here. We did not have a first class in our program because of the projects. They brought some new lecturers who were trying to experiment on how hard they can push us to come up with the project. Okay, did not work, we were the guinea pigs, but I did very interesting.
Abel Masila:So I did a project, a web project for locating blood banks in Meru County in a Google Maps right now. Google maps api is quite good back then, yeah it was not as good as this and and it was real time you could update the, the letters you have. You could zoom in, maybe get a map from a place, the direction from where you are at yeah it's an interesting project. I'm still failing it, but in class I was a student, b student, a student I have never got most of the units I've never gotten supplementary.
Abel Masila:I've never gotten a d. I think I have a couple of c's, not more than three. I did, I did well in uni. I would say yeah my my mom used to ask for transcripts for me every semester, unlike most kids which wouldn't give their parents their university performance grades yeah my mom used to ask for that. She still has the record.
Michael Kimathi:She has kept all of them. Nice, nice, nice. So you would say in a large, in a nutshell throughout your education, your mom held you into account.
Abel Masila:My mom. I think without my mom pushing me and making sure that I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing, I would be a nobody. I would be riding bikes here making noise hanging out buses, maybe a mkanga at out you never know, but she did push me. I'm always grateful for all the efforts which she has put to make sure that I do what. I'm supposed to do Today. We would sit and smile about and laugh about things but it was serious but it was serious, bro.
Abel Masila:My mom used to beat me when I was in high school. How many kids are getting beaten when they are in high school? They say that they are big. They can't be beaten by their parents. Mom was disciplined. That was tough disciplined and studies and I think it's gotten to my sisters my sister who is just behind me, she's a medic. Our youngest is a clinical officer.
Michael Kimathi:Doctor or.
Abel Masila:She's a clinical officer. Okay, the youngest is taking a course in the University. Ah okay, what are the odds?
Michael Kimathi:Your guess is as good as mine, so you graduate. Now you come out here, bro. The land of Nairobi is not for the weak. You meet the J-Quad graduates and the UN graduates. Even MIT are in this town. Stanford graduates are in this town. Bro, I can tell you that's when I met you actually.
Abel Masila:Or maybe just before. We met before when I was making noise a lot in a Microsoft group.
Michael Kimathi:Then you were in school.
Abel Masila:I had just left school, so I was doing an internship. Which company was that Software Dynamics Limited. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
Michael Kimathi:So when you met now, you suffered one year, nine months Bro, from what I see here.
Abel Masila:Bro, I went through a lot.
Michael Kimathi:And you had some If you presented these skills and you are really good C-sharp NET, net.
Abel Masila:Core. Bro NET Core was fresh in 2016. Ms.
Michael Kimathi:SQL Server 2012. Aspnet MVC. Do you know, by the way, if you present these traditions today?
Abel Masila:Do you know? People were hunting me down for Microsoft related jobs Years after I stopped working on Microsoft Stack. They look at my CV.
Michael Kimathi:they're like we want to yeah, it's on demand Also at Africa Stocking right now. We would use these skills as you speak In 2016,.
Abel Masila:Net Core was just being released. It was in better stages. I had figured out a way of building web apps in NET Core even before people did, I think. I have a record of building a stored procedure of more than a thousand lines yeah just a database source procedure. Yeah, I'm fresh from campus. It's not like I've been doing rps all my life yeah, I'm still figuring out. What is a store procedure or the database function? Yeah, how do you build apis? What is so? What is rest then?
Abel Masila:we havenet core. Here we have MVC, we have something called IIS for deployment for Microsoft Stack. Then we have Microsoft Dynamics. There were so many things happening while I was working at Software Dynamics Limited. I'd say I learned most of the things at NET that company and also learned so many things about how to run a company when I get it. It was not the best experience from a human resource point of view.
Michael Kimathi:But, chief, you know how ironical that is. You built a human resource management system which is currently used in Kenya, ethiopia, uganda and South Africa. Yes. But the human resource aspect of things towards you.
Abel Masila:It was not the best, I'd say. I'd stayed without payment for almost six months.
Michael Kimathi:Six months Was it a startup.
Abel Masila:That company is not a startup. It's not a startup. I'm making a belief.
Michael Kimathi:He just decided to welcome you in Nairobi.
Abel Masila:Yes, the problem with being a junior engineer is you don't know when to stop.
Michael Kimathi:Oh, there were other senior engineers. Yeah, yeah they. But the problem with being a junior engineer is.
Abel Masila:you don't know when to stop. Oh, there were other senior engineers, yeah, yeah, they were getting paid, those guys.
Speaker 4:They were working on projects, they were getting money. We had 100 projects.
Abel Masila:We had guys doing a new Salesforce application. They were getting money, yeah, but us developers were doing in-house deployments for these platforms, training users. There's no money for you. There's no money for you, no money for us. Uh, of course, this is not my company so software dynamics africa?
Michael Kimathi:to get the context, was it like a dev shop?
Abel Masila:it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a I'll say a microsoft affiliate company microsoft stack okay, that development or erps or selling microsoft.
Michael Kimathi:So it's more like a microsoft partner.
Abel Masila:He is a a partner, so they also have in-house development, which we were doing, and they also did sell Microsoft ERPs. But it's not my company. I would not blame them for not paying. It's just a lesson to learn. It could have been worse, but now it got worse because at that time my mom got sick.
Abel Masila:My mom developed arthritis at this point in 2016, 2017 each time she needed urgent medical care and not making money. Actually, even though I was giving my salary to girls in Nairobi, I'm suffering. I have walked from Chaka place to town because I can't afford 20 shillings To pay a bus.
Abel Masila:To pay fare for the KBS buses to Nairobi. One year and nine months Straight Walking. Actually, I have a running joke with one of my friends to Nairobi one year and nine months Straight Walking. Actually, I have a running joke with one of my friends. We used to attend Atlassian events at Bishop Magwa. They had money to pay for the bus, but since I don't have the money, we have to walk together. They have the 20 bob, I don't. So it was that bad. And you're still employed. You have a title of software engineer. What kept you going chief?
Abel Masila:I still felt like there's more to software engineering than what I'm getting, and somebody motivated me. It's a guy who used to work for the company too, but he was a consultant. That guy had figured out he wanted to work in 2017.
Michael Kimathi:Back in 2017?
Abel Masila:No, he was a consultant that guy had figured out to not work in 2017.
Michael Kimathi:back in 2017.
Abel Masila:he was a ruby engineer he still, he still is yeah, this guy is buying a macbook new one yeah what an iphone. It was the hit thing. Yeah, he bought a samsung phone. Yeah, later on he bought a premium. Bro, like I, I want to make money like yeah, show me the way he told me. He asked me what the what the highest amount of money have you ever received? Yeah, told him 20 000. He told me I think I was making more than 200 000.
Abel Masila:So back then, yeah, that's a lot of money, yeah he told me, if you can get to at least 60 000 with with your skills which you already have, and keep going, you would see a difference in your life. The quality of life will improve, the salary you're getting will be better and you also get motivation to learn new things. Stop doing things which you are repeating every day here, and I think at some point I decided you know what I made a same decision.
Abel Masila:In 2017 October. I decided to go to work without being paid to learn React 2017, october.
Michael Kimathi:And then, very fast, you got senior front-end developer at Sinbad Insurance.
Abel Masila:In February of 2018. Yes. Bro, do you know what I did? I decided to suffer and learn. React.
Michael Kimathi:How did you suffer?
Abel Masila:I'm not getting paid, but I'm coming to work.
Michael Kimathi:Which company is this?
Abel Masila:Still Sovereign Dynamics? I don't want to shout, I was less of a, less of a employee at this point yeah, I'm not getting paid, yeah, but I'm still coming to the office just to use the company wi-fi what I made that.
Michael Kimathi:So you have decided okay.
Abel Masila:Yeah, the only thing I'll do is just learn something I had already started learning react before, even like a long time, but I had not paid so much attention. I had to build a couple of projects, but I I thought I would. Uh, I would. I would get some money from a friend of mine who was working at the same company, so dynamically limited, and stopped doing the data and started doing not just so we realized maybe this is the thing yeah, yeah, he's doing nod, he's doing react for company called optometrics.
Abel Masila:He's getting getting money.
Michael Kimathi:This guy is even sponsoring me and you are suffering with NET.
Abel Masila:Yes, and I'm not even getting paid, man. This guy is making close to 80 Gs. We just left this company, like a month ago. This guy is even sponsoring me now and I'm even older than him Bro.
Speaker 4:I took the challenge in I learned In learning something new.
Michael Kimathi:Do you know what that actually is? What I learned from that is that in tech and I keep saying this so many times that it changes so fast that if you're not keen, you might become obsolete.
Abel Masila:Very fast.
Michael Kimathi:Obsolete. But there is a catch If you're really good at what you're doing, really really good, opportunities will always follow you.
Abel Masila:You will never lack opportunities.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah yeah.
Abel Masila:So in 2018, January, just chilling decided. Now I have not paid rent for January. Actually, things were happening so fast. December, I did not have money to go home to celebrate Christmas with my parents, yeah, my sisters. Yeah, I just sent them the photos and which which I had in my pocket, and say that it I don't have more money, yeah. So some friends of mine took me out their place where they were celebrating Christmas. We went together their place where they were celebrating Christmas. We went together.
Abel Masila:I had some meals. That was my Christmas. Fast forward in January, bro. I have not paid rent. I am supposed to pay rent. I talked to my mom. You know what mom? It's the 10th of January. I have not paid rent and somebody is asking for the money. So my mom, being the God sent human being, had a friend who works in Nairobi. They have a company that installs POS point of sale systems to small businesses. So this guy gave me the contact he's from home.
Abel Masila:He's from Booni so he's called Vincent, gave me his contact. I called Vincent. You know, vincent, how are you doing? I'm a male, I do this and this. My mom gave me a contact. She said that you can help me make some money here and there to pay rent as I look for opportunities. Vincent told me that's fine. That's fine. As we're having this conversation, I've stopped going to Soft Dynamics Limited offices.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, so you're just chilling at home.
Abel Masila:At home just dying, eating Indomie and nothing much. So Software Dynamics Limited calls me. Bro. You know what. Come to the office, let's talk, let's see how we can work together. Bro, there's no talking we are going to do there. I got there. The CEO is not there. He has instructed the HR to take the laptop which I have been using for the company. Basically, I've been reduced to nothing and the HR has good instructions.
Michael Kimathi:let him not leave with the laptop even after not paying you for one year, nine months straight, you got zero payment for your work gave them their laptop, formatted it with all your projects and.
Abel Masila:I was not feeling so well like about it, but this somebody has received instructions. Yeah, they can't, let me go home with a laptop and it's a pc it's a. It was a hp g5. It's a powerful laptop yeah I could donet in it, so it's powerful. Yeah, yeah, it's company property, so I went home now with no laptop and here you're hoping you'll get a project, you'll get a gig. Yeah, to install POS for this guy man. So I called him, I called him the guy.
Michael Kimathi:That must be tough for you.
Abel Masila:Bro, imagine your tools have been. The tools you can use to work have been taken away, so it's just you and the skills.
Michael Kimathi:And not only tools, the tools that you have configured for your work.
Abel Masila:Yes, but then I had applied for other interviews here and there, so I had received emails to take interviews. I don't have a laptop.
Michael Kimathi:So when you go there, it's like this guy, maybe this guy must say I think this guy just killed my dream like that in a day.
Abel Masila:What so? I called this guy, vincent, who is tolling POS. I told him, bro, you know what? The company has taken his laptop. He told me, don't worry, I'll give you a laptop. The keyboard is faulty. I'll give you an external keyboard, just a laptop check keyboard. Go and install this thing. This guy sends me to Thika Michezi to install the software and hardware. He paid me 8,000. It was a single day job, not eating, just standing, taking stock, training and making sure that the printers for the resistors are working.
Michael Kimathi:Something which I'm not used to, but I should do that 8,000 in a day. You are like this is Christmas and it's already January 2,000 paid rent and it's already January.
Abel Masila:Two 8K paid rent yeah. He gave me another gig Go to K2E.
Michael Kimathi:This is back to back, or just after a week, after a day or so.
Abel Masila:Like I did. We did a job on Monday. On that day I'm going to K2E.
Michael Kimathi:Nice.
Abel Masila:The K2E gig is big because I'm not going to install. I'm going to fix something which is broken in the system yeah, it was connected with the through lan intranet yeah so the printers and the screens were not responding well yeah go to gt early, left, walk up to the. It's a big restaurant, yeah, a bar and restaurant. They have many point of sales set up so I had to figure out what point is breaking.
Abel Masila:I spent the whole day standing, not doing, not having progress making calls, configuring IP addresses, setting up printers up to 11 pm At night.
Michael Kimathi:Yes, that's when things worked, or that's when you got tired.
Abel Masila:That's when we realized that they need to do a complete installation. We can't fix it.
Michael Kimathi:A fresh installation?
Abel Masila:Did they lose their data or no, no, no, they backed up their MyScale. It was MyScale. Yeah, they backed up some data. Yeah, so the point of sale could work with previous data, so we just need to connect the database. Yeah.
Abel Masila:So he paid me good money. I started saving for my laptop. I need to buy a laptop, I need to get on to start doing interviews. Yeah, February, first part February. I had saved up around 20 Gs from this point of selling, so walked into Nairobi and one of these computer shops bought an HP Folio. A friend of mine gave me 4,000 from his help. A friend of mine said I'm supposed to pay back. I've never paid back. I've never found the value which would make this statement make sense to this person.
Abel Masila:I need a laptop. You have given me four thousand out of your help. That is sacrificing those of you Bought an HP. Folio Fast thing, fast. Cafe Deli Kwenanga Street. Ah, ah, ah Ah. It is an high-end hotel.
Michael Kimathi:Cafe Deli. Cafe Deli by the Kwenanga, that is, at night or during the day, the day.
Abel Masila:I've just bought this thing. I need to set it up and do interviews. I have like millions and millions of emails yeah, that you need to respond, to respond to and attend interviews. They take online tests. Yeah, I had the habit of going to a federally to just pay for uh capuchino 300 bob and use their wifi the whole day.
Michael Kimathi:So they got it, so they had good wi-fi though yeah, but they had gotten tired of seeing me. I'm only paying for 300 and then you spent the whole day.
Abel Masila:They actually chased me one day bro pay your coffee and leave yeah, bro, now I have money, I can go there and pay, pay, pay for the whole day and sit there. But then it was tough, they chased me bro yeah yeah, but then it is business yeah, yeah yeah so this day I have a laptop.
Abel Masila:Yeah, I have another one though. Yeah, so I need to set this up laptop for php development, be able to take php. Need to set this laptop for PHP development, be able to take PHP interviews. Set it up for NET. You know, our Visual Studio is huge. I know, man man I did. My first interview was at Laravel 1. Yeah, they needed me to have 80% pass mark. Yeah, I got 72. Yeah.
Abel Masila:Failed that one. But then, even before I started setting up the NET thing, some guy taps me On my back. I told him I'm in the middle of an interview Whatsapp. He told me we are looking for developers, looking for active developers. Kindly share with me your github profile, your CVv, your email number, your email address and your phone number. Yeah, I'll do an interview with you. Interview with you now, this is a cafe daily.
Abel Masila:The same day I've bought this laptop. Yes, uh, god bless that man. He's called fred, he's my friend. So failed interviews, sad that I did not get any job, so going home, uh, but with a laptop, yeah. So I got home and called fred fred. Hey, fred, what's up? You gave me your number you were looking for react engineers told me when. When are you free? We can do an interview. You can actually meet at cafe daily yeah I told him tomorrow, okay, saturday, yeah, and this is now fred from uh sinbad.
Abel Masila:Yes, okay, he and he's now Fred from Sinbad. Yes, he's still the CTO. So we met at Cafe Deli Saturday afternoon. He was not asking me many questions. I had given him a couple of projects I had done Redux, react 2018. I had many, many projects in React. I remember I had spent four months learning this thing he told me you've got a job Come on Monday, on the 20th or 19th.
Michael Kimathi:January.
Abel Masila:February.
Michael Kimathi:Okay.
Abel Masila:Come and talk to our boss and you can agree on a payment. Hey bro, Monday, I have no idea how I'm supposed to be paid. I've never received any money.
Michael Kimathi:I've never received Any of those guys. Traumatized you straight from the university.
Abel Masila:Go to. It's called Heron Potico.
Michael Kimathi:Maybe these guys who are graduating nowadays and they come with these attitude like ah, e-vibe, they call it. What I give, I give, I give. I give, tell them your first salary Zero, zero, one year, nine months straight.
Abel Masila:Bro, on book is 10,000, in pocket is zero. Yes, the HR is saying that it's supposed to be paid 10,000.
Michael Kimathi:But you don't receive that money. You have never received 10,000.
Abel Masila:You are given 4K.
Michael Kimathi:But you still keep pushing yes, and here your laptop is taken. Please walk.
Abel Masila:Go home. We have no use for you, then, here is an opportunity, a legit one.
Michael Kimathi:Yes, very kind people this guy yeah, hired me yeah, I took.
Abel Masila:I went to iran, portugal, I think it's on the hack. Yeah, ladies, high-end hotel, first time going there. I don't know how to how this person meeting yeah, it's called paul, yeah, he, paul. He discussed with Paul. He told him I'll give you some money.
Michael Kimathi:He mentioned Africa can you disclose maybe? Around 50 G's bro 50 G's from 0 to 50 G's. Yeah, yeah, that's good from 50 G's. 50 G's is good.
Abel Masila:It's all plus taxes.
Michael Kimathi:See that's good, if you get paid 50 G's today, you're not suffering, you can't walk from office to town.
Abel Masila:So this guy agrees, plus taxes, and then they got a little bit higher to around 60 or something. Then he started working on the same day, guess where these people have the office. It's called Pangola Flats. So it's like huge, many, many buildings, residential buildings. They have converted one to be an office and you can sleep there. Somebody will cook for you, somebody will wash clothes for you.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, don't tell me you moved.
Abel Masila:Bro, why not?
Michael Kimathi:Why are you paying rent and here is a free accommodation and you have 50 Gs. You can keep them. You could go home over the weekend if you wanted to, but during the week you can hang out there yeah they used to prepare nice meals.
Abel Masila:You know the environment was quite good. We did build a very nice platform with them I learned a lot of redux. We built an import portal for tanzania yeah, still there, yeah um a lot of redux practice, lots of react, yeah, at this time. Yeah, I learned a lot of Redux. I practiced a lot of React at this time.
Michael Kimathi:So what is this? I see you built a marine insurance, that's it.
Abel Masila:It's for the government of Tanzania.
Michael Kimathi:It's called TIDA, it's like KRA.
Abel Masila:It's like KRA for marine imports. Okay. We were building that together with Fred and some other friends of mine. We're still close.
Michael Kimathi:Okay, but these guys were kind to you. For the first time, we realized in Nairobi not everyone is here to.
Abel Masila:This person paid me 50 Gs after working for 8 days. What are you telling me? They are not good?
Michael Kimathi:people in Nairobi. You're like I've paid enough of my debts. Did you send your mom?
Abel Masila:something I sent my mom. I made sure that she had money to buy clothes and to buy food and to buy medicine.
Michael Kimathi:I put things in at this point she was not feeling so well you know, arthritis is not something you can treat you, just manage it over time so, bro, life is getting better for me.
Abel Masila:Now, at least I can save at least I can buy some nice clothes for me, at least I can.
Michael Kimathi:You can even think of getting a girlfriend at this point you have stopped being boring.
Abel Masila:At this point.
Michael Kimathi:You're still boring, but life is moving.
Abel Masila:This story gets interesting by the day. Yeah, I even don't know whether I got interesting or boring, but I know I got boring, yeah, so so we're doing. I've just worked for four months in Sinbad, bro. I've made some money. I'm feeling nice, I can treat my friend who was treating me when he had money.
Michael Kimathi:The one who was making more money, and now, at least I can buy some beer.
Abel Masila:Life was not so bad. So I'm just chilling. We're one of the backend guys for Sinbad. We're in a gig at MOOC Africa.
Michael Kimathi:It's a backend.
Abel Masila:So, he's going through the dashboard asking bro, this dashboard looks bad. Can you connect me to the company? Maybe I can help build this thing look better.
Michael Kimathi:You're like, I'm the company, he told me.
Abel Masila:I'm just consulting. It's like my first week here, but I'll talk to the project manager. He can see what to do. Mooc now was building their main platform, so this guy put a word for me.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, mooc for those who don't know is an event company, one of the biggest around here.
Abel Masila:Yeah, a ticketing platform, Quite quite big. So MOOC invites me for an interview. But the interview did not sit well with me. I'm interviewing for a React job. They want me to maintain a Laravel application first.
Michael Kimathi:So this is a situation where and you can correct me where guys hire one guy but essentially, if you could advise them, they need a whole team.
Abel Masila:Yes, they are hiring one guy, but they should be hiring many people not just one person and since they seen that I had some background and good experience with php, yeah, they thought that I would help them also support that application, all the applications which they are facing out. Yeah, and mark, you have decided I'll do react at this point. I've made up my mind. I don't want to do anything, so I declined the offer. I told them I don't want it. Makyu, I'm still being paid at Sinbad and living you're not suffering. I'm not suffering. Where would I? Where?
Abel Masila:would I go and suffer with PHP and I don't have interest in PHP anymore and you sound like you want to kill me, I decided we were not going to do this.
Abel Masila:So we still continue working in Sinbad. One day I'm just chilling in Sinbad, I got the call. I got this call from the person who interviewed me for MOOC, the MOOC role. I told him Abel, where are you? I told him I'm at Sinbad. Can you come at Yaya, java, we talk. So I went to Yaya. He told me I have a job offer for you we are supposed to launch in two weeks. Do we have serious, serious problems? We have things we need to baton and fix.
Abel Masila:Yeah, I want to give you a two weeks offer yeah we work together yeah yes, launch. Yeah, once we have launched, tell me you want to work with me full-time on a reactor or not. They're really discussing a bro, it was good. Yeah, two weeks. Yeah, a thousand dollars.
Michael Kimathi:I can't say, you know you're like bring it, but today, if you think about it, why are you short-tempered? I was just tense because I know, this is where the story gets interesting.
Abel Masila:I used to work for sinbad from eight yeah to five, yeah. Then move from thing but go to work for a In the MOOC offices up to around 2 am. Then come back to Sinbad, sleep, repeat. Tell me I was not boring For two weeks.
Speaker 1:Where would I get a girlfriend? Which girlfriend would understand you at this point?
Michael Kimathi:But then I had prospectors here and there, but nothing giving.
Abel Masila:That's life.
Michael Kimathi:We won't talk about that and it's allowed at that point.
Abel Masila:So two weeks elapsed. We launched Moog. Demand my pay. My pay is sent, but also the pay comes with job. And the contract is looking neat. I was to drip with the amount of money I was making back there.
Michael Kimathi:That is net or basic Net. Yeah.
Abel Masila:So it was still a contracting role, so I was not paying 30%.
Michael Kimathi:So there was no assurance of even after your contract is passed, there will be a renewal.
Abel Masila:Yeah, so I was paying the withholding 5%. It was still a good deal, I took it and left Z, but I joined MOOC.
Michael Kimathi:Senior Front End Engineer. We built MOOC. But those guys understood that this guy needs to grow.
Abel Masila:Yeah, I had even asked for money. They had not given me money. Yeah. After six months of working with them. So yeah. So joined MOOC Africa as a Senior Front End Engineer. Yeah. We built amazing things at MOOC. I can tell you we build MOOC. We made money from MOOC. We even won visa $50,000 partner that is just grant. Grant partner of the year. That's how good it was. Mooc ticketed Nyeginyegi.
Michael Kimathi:It's a big event in Uganda for the first time, nyeginyegi is, which is a big event in Uganda for the first time. Yeah, nye Ginyegi is still big.
Abel Masila:We even went to do events in Rwanda. The company grew a lot. So, towards 2019, just chilling at Mook, not applying for roles, because I'm now the lead content engineer and some money has been added to it. So I'm just chilling and a guy from Mandela.
Michael Kimathi:But before then, there are a couple of things that I want you to expound on, which is really great. So, would you mind talking about, because I see, on MOOC you did use React, of course, but you did some Redux Saga and then Ant Design and a bit of AWS.
Abel Masila:Yeah, so at MOOC I was taking care of many things.
Michael Kimathi:But where I want you to focus more is why this choice.
Abel Masila:Yeah, so MOOC initially was written in Angular and we did not have many developers supporting Angular like to support the Angular project. So when we joined MOOC, we started a Greenfield project, started from scratch, and the choice was react and there were not so many boilerplate projects for an enterprise application level like MOOC, yeah, so we picked one called react boilerplate. I think it's been phased out and it came with opinions like Redux saga and thanks and whatnot.
Abel Masila:so it was like somebody had gone out and spent some time and built this boilerplate for you, so when you pick it up, you can now continue building your own enterprise application. Oh I see. So it comes with Redux, Saga, AntDesign, a lot of.
Michael Kimathi:What is AntDesign?
Abel Masila:AntDesign is a UI library.
Michael Kimathi:Is it just naming or there is a?
Abel Masila:They have components, they have React components. Tables, sliders, navigation bar.
Michael Kimathi:Still exists.
Abel Masila:It is still there. It's bigger. I still use it today. It's for enterprise dashboards.
Michael Kimathi:What about the Redux Saga?
Abel Masila:Redux Saga is basically a way of. It's a package for dispatching asynchronous actions in your application Really maintaining things to API calls and getting that data to your application. But if you don't use sagas anymore, yeah, there are better options people.
Abel Masila:React has grown now. Back then we'd not have context API. Right now, I just do your state management in react Context API useReducer. If your application grows a little bit more, you can pick up Redux. We have many other state managers right now in React. It's not all about Redux anymore. We also have solutions where you can also survive without using state managers. Things like React Query works out of the box. Things like React Query works out of the box. So back then we did not have these things so there was a lot of boilerplate work.
Abel Masila:boilerplate caught right to be able to support some of these things Right now things are quite easier.
Michael Kimathi:And why choose AWS for this.
Abel Masila:We were deploying the application on free tires for Netlify and whatnot, but now the company is growing, the platform is growing and we need to be able to scale and also to deploy to other regions. As you can see, Nyenge Nyenge is an event which most people from Europe would want to buy tickets for.
Abel Masila:So we want to be able to deploy to Edge things like that. So we decided to go with AWS. Of course we had a DevOps guy we'd hired to help us figure out the costing, how we can cut costs in AWS. You know AWS can get expensive.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah and scale. It's good in scale, but if you don't know how to configure, it it can really get super expensive, really fast.
Abel Masila:I've seen people say that they had a toy project which was costing around 100,000 Ksh right now sitting as debt on AWS. That guy was taking care of those things. Mine was just come up with deployment pipelines and workflows. You take care of yeah, that was interesting because um towards my time of exit at mooc, the project was so big we even supported ebooks and music streaming yeah, yeah, they diversified from the event, yeah. But later on they did cut down all those things and made them ticketing.
Michael Kimathi:Just focused. Yeah, ticketing is big if you think about it, because it's just events and all that. There's so much that you could do with the event ticketing as a platform.
Abel Masila:So they figured out that they would be better off just running tickets. Not so many people are willing to buy books. You know people would rather download free books, yeah and uh, than buy the buyer, people would listen to music on spotify and mooc true there's no background playing on a web app. Yeah, yeah we did not have a mobile app for that so did not make a lot of business sense, so they stopped that tear down the application.
Abel Masila:They got a better devops engineer from who was working for a company in South Africa. He set up a nice infrastructure. And yes, we did have Kubernetes now we had dockerized most of our applications. This guy had written a lot of Jenkins pipelines for deployments. We had moved from manual deployments at MOOC before I exited, but then COVID happened.
Michael Kimathi:This is 2020. Yes, 2019, 2020 2019.
Abel Masila:So 2019 and I like approaches me do the interviews. It was one of the interview process which I did not have many opinions about um the last bit was did not check up with me. The person was supposed to interview me or a senior engineer. Last two minutes of the time. You say that they don't see if I guess. Oh, he has experience in my CV. So they canceled the interview. Essentially, I'm doomed after doing like four rounds of interview in the final lap this person feels so entitled.
Abel Masila:They don't want to interview you, mmm, so they were in jumping the experience, not the person.
Michael Kimathi:Yes, so I talked to the to my record, told him you know what, bro, I have these don't want to interview you.
Abel Masila:So they were interviewing the experience, not the person. Yes. So I talked to my recruiter and told him you know what, bro, I have this year's experience. I can send you another CV. I sent him another CV, talked to a guy in Uganda called Samson. That guy saved my career for Tandela the reason that's why I go to Tandela. He interviewed me. He interviewed me, yeah, yeah, he took. He interviewed me. He saw that I'm a senior engineer and he recommended me and I joined andela in around june 2019 as a senior engineer.
Abel Masila:Yes, good package ah, bro, that dollar was the eight thing. Bro, you give in a macbook, you have uber if you are working for a company there's dojo, but you join when they were moving to thicker road yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. They had moved to Thika Road so they had a nice cafeteria there. They had a nice office.
Michael Kimathi:So it's a whole campus.
Abel Masila:Like basically Andela was its company. It still is in different levels right now, but working for Andela at that time was the best thing we could do. You met very senior engineers there. Eugene Mutai had just exited Andela. We had other guys join Andela too. It was good being an Andelan, yeah.
Michael Kimathi:We're going to have Eugene at that seat.
Abel Masila:And you should bring Eugene here. He's a solid guy.
Michael Kimathi:So, eugene, wherever you hear about this, you know where you have come from. Maybe it's not my part to tell this story. It's Eugene's story. For some reason we cross paths and maybe when he sits there you'll tell his story. So but basically, andela was really great and, if I can remember well, since I've been the developer ecosystem for some time, most of the guys there. I knew them personally and professionally, even when they started. You know everything and things are metamorphosized properly in the tech ecosystem to where we are right now, which is good, but even then you are a software consultant at Mumu Systems.
Abel Masila:Yeah, yeah. So you introduced me to Mumu Systems and recently, mumu himself. He wanted to build a checkout platform for Jira, and back then I was so deep into Atlassian development, so we started building this thing for him. Actually, he's still using my code.
Abel Masila:The platform is still using my code, did consultancy for him for four months. We built a checkout platform for him. Working for Mumu was quite different, because I'm now working for for a tool which is integrating directly to an atlas and product. Yeah, um, so there were so many, so so many moving parts. The back end is in java. I have no experience in java, with java, yeah, the deployment is quite different, like you cannot just go and deploy the way you deploy to aws, so I had to figure out how to bundle the assets for this project to be able to work, how to figure out routing. As you know, most client-sided rendered React apps uses a router, then to file it, just one. But Jira expects you to have different files for every page. So figure out how to take care of routing for this project. It was quite, it was quite interesting. I got to use the atlassian ui library, which is quite solid, looks quite neat. Yeah, and that was good. We parted ways with mumo um systems.
Abel Masila:Yeah, quite with no issues. Yeah, with no issues, yeah. Then I got lucky. I got to work for a company, for Andela. Now, I got a placement for a company in Andela now.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, and this Mumu system. You used to work remotely. Yeah, this was remote work. This was your first experience remotely.
Abel Masila:This was my. Muku had moved to a remote kind of thing.
Michael Kimathi:so I did some experience working remotely for Muku, africa, but things so I did some experience working remotely for Mocha Africa yeah, but now Mumu was a hundred percent remote, paid by the hour yeah, that was the first experience. Yeah, paid by the hour yeah, clear deliverables, clear outline of work like there was no bullshit working with Mumu yeah pick work, set up expectation look in the work deliver, get paid yeah, that's it Nice. Do you think that actually changed the way you viewed the previous experiences?
Abel Masila:I got to see the value for money. Like you, would want to go to work more to get more money. Yeah, true true and I would say this when people are starting out as software engineers and you get frustrations in the company that you're working for, most people tend not to be less productive.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, true, true.
Abel Masila:And at this point you know you have no bargain at all. This happened for me when the first company, software Dynamics Limited. As soon as I lost morale, I stopped working for most of the company project. I have no bargain to go and ask for money, since I've also not been productive enough. So these were. I have no bargain to go and ask for money, since I've also not been productive enough.
Michael Kimathi:Ah See, so these were maybe human resources actually, especially if you're in tech. They don't understand this because in software engineering, you're more innovating, more creating, more learning as you go. Yeah, and it does not really allow you to be demotivated. Be demotivated At any point. Yeah.
Michael Kimathi:Because you want to build things that other people maybe will use and find usefulness in it. So you're not just a typical eight to five kind of guy, right? I remember even then. That's when the discussion of like I don't expect engineers to be coming at eight and I still I think most of the companies that I figured out is not one of the expectations yeah, so that's really important to mention. So at Andela, here you're having a cafe. You don't need to cafe daily in Kuinanga Street.
Michael Kimathi:You're paid really well. Also, you're working for remote companies.
Abel Masila:Yeah, this company was still work for that company. Initially it was called X2AI, building amazing platforms offering psychological healthcare. I joined it through Andela Worked for that company. It was a greenfield project too. We were facing out an old PHP application, so I was tasked with coming up with a new dashboard setting up pipelines. Setting up pipelines, really. There was no designer. There's still no designer. All the designs switch. I'm the person who has to think about how it's supposed to look.
Michael Kimathi:You mean UI UX?
Abel Masila:Yeah, yeah, so as much as I want to develop the dashboard, I had to come with a visual representation of how it's going to look. Yeah.
Abel Masila:So fast forward. We did our mvp, people loved it. It still reacts graphql yeah, deployed on nws. Yeah, um, backend is still flask and python yeah graphene uh, lots of machine learning. Initially we're using rasa, x, yeah, for natural language understanding, and then Liu. Then OpenAI was in beta, acquired by Microsoft. We started training our models in their platform. I'm surprised people are still using GPT right now. We've been using OpenAI for a long time.
Michael Kimathi:Now OpenAI has been here for a couple of times. This one thing also I've been telling I'm still in the dev ecosystem, you know as well Is that in Africa, if you see, like now, ai machine learning is big. Just know, by the time you hear about things like Chargy, pt, the technology itself has been there for more than 15 years On the minimum side. That's one of the things that actually excites me that I want to change those dynamics and reduce those years to like five and then eventually we are where the world is and we can be able to contribute fully, which actually means that if you're contributing, then we get even to build solutions that actually serves our needs.
Abel Masila:Yeah, and I agree with you Like we are actually very late on tech stuff, and especially important tech, and when we try to play catch up. It's almost lost value. We are actually very late on tech stuff. Yeah, and especially important tech.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, and when we try to play catch up. It has almost lost value. Yeah, because we will always be users. Yes, and playing catch up.
Abel Masila:Like before, even you build your own charge GPT. We have a million of them. Why would you do this yeah yeah, so at X2, I won't talk about more on what we build there because I still work for the company, still confidential things. I should say yeah, but at x2 I I do so many things for the company. I do web, I do mobile. Sometimes I do take care of backend. I do the deployments by myself. You know there's no backend. I'm the in-frame.
Michael Kimathi:I'm full stack.
Abel Masila:I'm basically full stack for the company. Something magical happened to. So Next to we are working with a VP of engineering called Joy 12. You know an old man, 60 years old, 40 years experience bro if you've ever seen somebody who's?
Michael Kimathi:an engineer with 40 years experience kaka, I told you I met most of those guys it's one of the stories that I gave you back in 2017 yeah when guys were like you know, I made it up $200, I'm making it.
Abel Masila:I don't know $1,000 plus.
Michael Kimathi:Like dude. There are people who have been doing this for over 50 years. Since the internet started, since this, you know they have done, Pascal Kobo, all these languages. Now they are doing.
Abel Masila:JavaScript. That guy has written literally everything which you can think of. He has even written he has been an iOS engineer.
Michael Kimathi:And still he's coding.
Abel Masila:This guy was coding the backend. He was a backend engineer. Yeah, he's the one who came up with the idea of GraphQL actually yeah, so we worked with him GraphQL as GraphQL or. Graphql itself. He's part of the maintainers, or he was maintaining Python with the guys who were working on the Python project.
Michael Kimathi:You said his name is Joey Trevino.
Abel Masila:He's retired now, but in the team he championed us to use GraphQL, being that old and you still have new technology in you and you know it's important. That's something. So, this guy championed for X2 to use GraphQL on the back and the frontend. Yeah, but this guy was retiring and what was the reason behind it? It's performance-first. They were moving from a monolith PHP application To microservices. Yeah, microservices they wanted. They don't want to use REST. Okay.
Abel Masila:They wanted to use something which you can easily scale. Of course, GraphQL has always the N plus one problem, but he had figured a way of solving all that.
Abel Masila:Like he had a technical document on why we need GraphQL and he pitched it to the CEO, pitched to us, as we are just new hires to the company. We agreed and started building this stuff In 2020, we were supposed to retire in 2020 December. We were still working through Andela, this guy. One day he told me you know, abel, we like working with you, but as I'm retiring, I would want you to join the company full-time. Now that is not easy.
Michael Kimathi:And that's when Andela actually was transitioning to some fully remote, no office laying off like 90%.
Abel Masila:And they're also moving from full-time engineering to contracting engineering. This guy tells me you know what, Abel, I'll talk to Andela and see if we can buy you off. That comes with a lot of money.
Michael Kimathi:Kaka, when you say that it's really hurtful because Andela was a good vision and when it reached a point where engineers could be bought off, yeah, it sounds like slavery. Another, most people realize that what they are being paid looked good yeah but but what? And Ella is being paid. It's a lot of a lot of money.
Abel Masila:So that's story for now.
Michael Kimathi:I hope to sit down with the founder of Vandela. I would share my thoughts with love.
Abel Masila:Jeremy is usually most time in Kenya. I'm still working for Vandela. I'll tell you that story. So, this buying off comes with a lot of money.
Abel Masila:Whatever, they're going to pay you at the end of the year cumulatively. They're going to pay you at the end of the the year cumulatively. They're supposed to give andela 50 of that. Yeah, for this to be complete, okay, so I I need to sit down and figure out. So, even though I was paying me three thousand dollars, how much were they taking? Do the balance? Look at how much I can gain from this deal because you have to gain something. Yeah, you have to cover this stuff of course the managers and I can't tell you.
Abel Masila:It's confidential information. Yeah, but then I'd put it glass door and see now react engineers are being paid. I told this guy you know what I'd be comfortable with this figure. He did not discuss it. He told me that that would make you happy. Let me go and talk to the ceo. So he went to the ceo talk to you. The ceo said that they don't have a lot of money to make that purchase.
Abel Masila:They said he told the ceo don't pay me for the next four months, let's hire him he sacrificed his own salary yeah, for four months to make sure that I got to x2 as a full a food engineer. Yeah, and that's how I exited andela to which is now branded to cast air yeah yeah, I found out to be selfless and I've always wanted to give back to people like that. When you see me doing mentorship all over, you see me holding people and I'm trying to be as selfless as that man.
Abel Masila:Yeah, it's not easy for you to give up your four-month salary as a 40-year, experienced, not the old experienced VP of engineering to make sure that an upcoming software engineer gets what's supposed to be their pay and that's how you got in there. That's how I got into working for KAS as a full-time engineer, as a full-st, into working for KAS as a full-time engineer. As a full-stack engineer Full-stack, full-time engineer Contracts were drafted. I have an office at my house.
Michael Kimathi:That is the office for KAS AI, a very nice office. That's what we are getting to, by the way.
Abel Masila:That's the office for KAS AI in Kenya.
Michael Kimathi:Did they send everything, everything? They have done all the paperwork for me? No, I mean for the office. No, no, no, that's personal, that's personal.
Abel Masila:They only sent a laptop which I don't use anymore.
Michael Kimathi:I bought a new one Like I want to upgrade.
Abel Masila:But you know the Intel laptops the MacBook.
Michael Kimathi:They're not really that good.
Abel Masila:And then you know, with all the things which I'm working, as I do develop mobile apps for the company, I'll be running emulators and what not. I need a powerful app, so I just bought it for myself. I give it to myself as a hardworking person. I just bought it to keep me motivated.
Michael Kimathi:So, Abel, I know you've been active in the community since you graduated. Do you think that has helped you a great deal in the growth.
Abel Masila:As you have heard, I have no reach encore connecting me to jobs. There are people who work together. From the community, from the community, like the guy who recommended me for.
Michael Kimathi:But with the POS I sounded like. You know, that's my mom, they are friends.
Abel Masila:But that was a side gig to keep me afloat. But the guy who got me to the MOOC job, he's part of the Python community. We met there. Yeah, the guy who hired me for the Andela job, he's called Michael Gasha. He's quite vocal in the Andela spaces and also got in the gig from Mumu. It came from you Knowing you. I got to know Mumu. Yeah, the community I would say I've been built by the community. There's no day I'd say that I've been standing on my own. Of course I do get side gigs here and there. Most of them are coming from people I know, people who are in the community. I've also helped people do their interviews and get jobs, helping each other, Even recommend them for roles.
Michael Kimathi:I see them tweeting about that. But what would you tell a person who is going to the class cramming the presentations, trying to get an A in those units and they're saying you know what? I'll join the community when I graduate.
Abel Masila:No, no, no. They should be joining the community as soon as yesterday. A community is full of people with different skills.
Michael Kimathi:And opportunities.
Abel Masila:And diverse ideas and opinions. If today I was a student, I would be joining these Google programs. I would be joining the Atlassian outreaches when they go out, I would be joining AT hackathons. This way you get to learn what's important in the market. Practically you don't need to be sitting in your small studio house at Meru University or in UN or J-Quad cramming C-Sharp. Yet nobody is hiring for C-Sharp actively. But they're hiring for Rubion Race Engineer, elixir Engineer, people are hiring for senior front-end engineers, that kind of center. But you're only focused on just one thing in your small house. I think you'd step out, meet with people in the community.
Michael Kimathi:Real developers and talk to people.
Abel Masila:Developers tend to be introverted or they tend to shy off. You see, people think that I'm a god or somebody will beat you if you come to approach me. We are all human beings, and if you came to me and you asked me, abel, how did you start, that's something which I can do different to make my journey shorter than yours. See, these are tips I can only give you if we are talking together. Otherwise, we still have to go through the lap which I've gone through. It's not a beautiful one, as we've had, but I can give you tips you don't need to keep going through the same journey that you did yeah, make it shorter for you yeah it could be intuitive.
Abel Masila:So uh, don't. Somebody said don't be a bedroom engineer, come out, talk to people, show what you are building, see what people have been building yeah, it's gonna build you a lot.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, and build things and break them.
Abel Masila:Break them, because that's engineering, engineering anyway I find people right now, to students right now, to be quite reserved. The number of times I've broken my os installations in my small laptop is a million times. Trying to know how to do a dual boot. Try to know what calilinux is. You find a kid just got a laptop put on their windows and they're happy. They don't want to explore what ubuntu is, they don't want to know how to like the linux.
Abel Masila:They don't want to explore what Ubuntu is. They don't want to know how to do Linux commands. They don't want to know what Linux is, what is Backtrack? What is all these interesting things which you learn by breaking. They are afraid that they will break the laptop you break, learn how to fix and live on. But, people are quite reserved right now which is not a good thing, and we can come out of that situation by just being explore a little bit Break something.
Abel Masila:What's the worst which can happen? I've done it, you have done it, People have done it. We have come out of those situations and still growing. So I also challenge my sister to be like that, Like whenever she calls me you know what I want? To install an OS.
Michael Kimathi:I tell her go and install when you break all. Where's the worst?
Abel Masila:Where's the worst can happen. I can help you recover it. Go and try first.
Michael Kimathi:Go and try, you'll learn a lot. And, in addition, they should not forget that 20-year-old teenagers are building frameworks that we are using, and these are the same same guys. You'll be playing the same job, maybe at Google, maybe at you know, africa Stalking.
Abel Masila:People are motivated when they are young. Yeah, I, africa's talking people are motivated when they are young, yeah, yeah. I won't mention the company, but there is a company I have worked for and we had somebody who was good, who is 19 years old. He started writing when he was 16 years old bro, what are you telling me? This guy is already a senior engineer he is already a senior front end engineer.
Abel Masila:By next year he should be applying for senior roles. He's barely 21. So you're sitting at home saying I'll be 25 and then start building on this.
Michael Kimathi:This is no longer like when I used to tell you in the UK there are guys who have full-fledged companies, software companies, building mobile apps and selling them.
Abel Masila:No, this is happening here in Africa, people are doing the most.
Michael Kimathi:And in Nairobi it's even worse. It's worse. And this is where now I'll ask you what do you have to say about tech bros? I see this now and then. You're a tech bro, so I know.
Abel Masila:The notion of a tech bro right now has been blown out of proportion because people are obsessed with money, money discussions, and that's not a tech bro. Right now has been blown out of proportion because people are obsessed with money money discussions. And that's not a tech bro. That's not entirely what defines a tech bro. There's a lot of discussion in the Kenyan tech space about money.
Michael Kimathi:Which is not the best discussion to have.
Abel Masila:Which is not the best discussion. To have Bro even making a billion a month. You have heard my story there was. Have Bro even making a million a month. You have heard my story? There was a day I was not making a bob. Yes, you cannot easily say that all developers make a million a month.
Michael Kimathi:True, or they don't make, or they don't make at all at all. Is this your story?
Abel Masila:This is just my story. It stands out like that.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah.
Abel Masila:When I hear people saying that I want to be like a bell. I want to make money like first, I'm not making lots of money.
Michael Kimathi:I'm just happy. I'm content with them, and if you need for the money, then please.
Abel Masila:There's so many other things that you could do I told somebody, if money is the only motivation you have in life, you will be very poor. There is so much to take, yeah, than just the money. Yeah, um uh. There's a company I've consulted for. They have not been paying me a lot of money, but the work is meaningful. Have you ever looked forward to the next day which you're going to work Like, walk to this office and start working? That it's on motivation factor for me. I would pick that environment, the good vibe you have, over anything.
Michael Kimathi:I know these people are going to factor for me, I would pick that environment the good vibe we have over anything.
Abel Masila:I know these people are going to always support me. The work which you do has got people can see this thing. The company is making money and if there is any other day they want to give anybody a pay rise, that's going to be me. So the money is not the motivation. The motivation is the work and the meaningfulness of this work Building solutions, Solve problems.
Michael Kimathi:Let people live happily from what you have done what you have innovated and if they want to reward you, don't let it take away from the work. That is just the tip of the iceberg.
Abel Masila:Take it and keep on innovating.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, it's true, because you might think that maybe being paid 20,000 US dollars is a big deal, but there's someone who is making $200,000. Power, power, and it's not a big deal for them. They feel like they should be making more. Yeah, so it's like chasing your tail You'll never get it. There's no point you'll say this, is it?
Abel Masila:The problem with money. I found money to not give you 100% satisfaction. Yes, yes. It will give you good things, but it's not going to give you 100% satisfaction in life.
Michael Kimathi:But, by the way, let's correct this notion.
Abel Masila:We're not saying money is bad guys. It's bad yeah.
Michael Kimathi:We're not saying but it should not be the main, it should not be the main driving factor.
Abel Masila:You should not be living for the money you should be living for opinion. There are meaningful things to do in life.
Michael Kimathi:Money aids in but should not be your. It should be a means to an end, not the end itself.
Abel Masila:Of course, people driving the money conversation should be clear enough on how they got to where they are when they are saying it, I know guys who work 20 hours a day, every day, single day. They don't tell you about that exactly. I want them well I lost most of them here.
Michael Kimathi:Maybe they'll get to tell the story they should.
Abel Masila:Yeah, and everyone is welcome to this podcast.
Michael Kimathi:so I was as long as you are in tech and you're around africa and you have a story, and you're okay to tell your story. Because, at the end of the day, the reason why I started this podcast is because I realized that rarely do we tell our own stories, rarely do we, and when we get to our story to be told, it's just truncated into like seconds or minutes, which takes away from the really true nature of things.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, and of course, as you know, mainstream media is quite polluted. There's not much there, so I said, why not? I feel like I should be the guy seated there getting to learn. Also, other people get to learn along the way.
Abel Masila:Now, this podcast is quite interesting. I've watched many, many people you have hosted. I'm always learning something. I was listening yesterday. I was listening yesterday. I was listening to Namin and she had quite some insights both for the girl child and also the boy child, which are sensitive conversations. Is there a point you can talk about that?
Michael Kimathi:Chief, this is where we say as it is, you can have a lesson, you can always criticize and, by the way, guys, if you have not subscribed, please show some support. Go down to the comment. Let people know what you are learning. These are safe space, and we want everyone to thrive, everyone to succeed, and we are not perfect. All of us at our down time, we are still learning. Some of us may look like we have made it, but you have barely scratched the surface as Africans. There's a long way to go, and most of us here will not rest until we're able to produce solutions that are used globally as we consume the global solutions Right In the open source space. We are doing really well, and I think you are a big contributor right there. I see you guys sharing your GitHub contribution and whatnot. How is that experience, though?
Abel Masila:Open Source teaches you many things. It teaches you things which you can only see there not in other places. Right now we have been able to have projects run and built by the community. We have an upcoming conference and the website is built by people in the community. You get to learn new coding like the best coding practices. Learn how to give feedback.
Michael Kimathi:Because most of the developers are open source contributors.
Abel Masila:You also learn to get feedback and receive.
Michael Kimathi:But have you in Abel? This is my experience. Have you ever realized that the better you become, the really good you become? There's always this notion that you really want to give everything back, Because, ideally, how you get good is because of others giving and giving back.
Michael Kimathi:So anyone who is out there, I'm not saying because you're not contributing, you're not really good, but it will be good to share what you learned, Because even the way you learned what you learned is because someone else shared. And forget about the graduate degree or the course that you took on Udami that you paid some dollars in it. There's people out here who actually show you the way, Even in the working industry in the day-to-day, that actually go out of their way to make sure that you understand what you understand. But if you don't feel like giving, please don't Just do you and I usually tell people you- can't feel like giving, please do not.
Abel Masila:I usually tell people you can't give in many, many ways. You see, everybody has got a passion. As a techie, there is always something you have always wanted to build. Maybe you never had the time to bootstrap it and make it on twitter. Let people help you build this thing. Build it together with your friends. Let friends join into your meetings. Ideate together. There's a tool I use called Altair. Altair is a graphical client.
Abel Masila:It's built by some guys in Nigeria and Ghana. It has got more than 60 contributors. It's an open source project. I think it's one of the de facto graphical clients we have it's cross-platform. It's been built by Africans. It's been built by many, many contributors. The person who built it is just maintaining the project. If this person decided you know, I'm going to build this.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, it would never have been built.
Abel Masila:Everybody who's doing GraphQL on the front end. They will need a way of testing the endpoint. If you don't have a playground. That is a perfect placement of a playground. It works 100%. It's an Electron app, all JS typescript. I see people contributing. It's beautiful. Whatever excites you as an engineer and you feel like you can build something for engineers or for other people, put it out there. Make noise about it, do poc. Less people see the value it brings.
Michael Kimathi:They'll help you build it yeah, but they that's a very powerful statement right there. Uh, there's some discussion. I see some really brilliant mind across africa uh, having on, you know social media, you know linkedin and all these places. Yeah, and it's a, it's a good encouragement. You can actually start a project that other people can contribute to and we can actually talk about it, instead of these tech brothers, sister brothers.
Abel Masila:It's nowhere near there.
Michael Kimathi:And, of course, we all grow from that. We all grow from that. But, chief, I have to ask you something about boot camps, workshops, hackathons and also even companies Now starting with these trainings led kind of experiences. Do you think we need to improve on the experience and the offering that we have there?
Abel Masila:I think right now there's something which is happening at Africa's Talking which I like a lot Africa's Talking is coming to the community now and the community sees Africa's Talking and I wish every other big company could do this. I've seen Africa's Talking, organizing quite some solid hackathons, yeah, and people enjoy that yeah, I've seen africa stocking, hosting events for techies yeah and even if you don't work for africa's talking you have interacted, that people are talking about other people who don't work for africa's talking and africa's talking, yes, and you have learned a lot.
Abel Masila:This company has gone all the way out to fund all these things and I would really wish for other companies to maybe chip in and try to bring communities together. I see WorkPay doing the same thing. They want to start doing this thing. Workpay is a big company in Africa. A long time ago, we did not have these initiatives. You would have to take money from your pocket, go to hire, buy people snacks, look for speakers. If you have a knock-on, you need to. Lots of logistics happening. Some people are curious like I need you to host these things for us. It's a good gesture If we can keep on doing this.
Abel Masila:I think we can bring more people on board. As I told you, developers try to be introverts in many, many ways. There are people who are not really outgoing but when they see there's something happening at Africa, stalking and some of their friends who are close to them.
Abel Masila:Have attended, they have even won some money. They start coming out Africa Stalking will experience them. Have attended, they have even won some money. They start coming out Africa's talking will experience a huge, huge influx of good engineers visiting their space. If you are a corporate company, you can help build this beautiful thing. You can even head-hunt quite nice engineers. I don't think you will find many, many job offers right now in the tech space, but you will easily get a referral offers right now in the tech space.
Abel Masila:In the tech space but you will easily get a referral true true, if you're in the community, yeah, and if you're, if you're corporate and you'd want to have the best, where do you get the best from the community? It's not on twitter it's not on youtube, it's not on linkedin, it's not. There are people who are attentive.
Michael Kimathi:And they build solutions. You see, them build solutions.
Michael Kimathi:Yeah, I've seen guys build Guys by the way, maybe you don't know this, but guys have been hired on the spot, on the spot. Okay, guys, most of these are kind of what Abel is talking about and maybe to chime in, is that we are open for collaboration. In case you want to be part of this, reach out to us as long as you know we, this. Reach out to us as long as you know we align and you know you want to achieve something. You're not looking for one off. You're not looking for a guy who is willing, or maybe partnering, to just hire. We want someone who is in the long term, is in this journey, not only to hire but also to build the ecosystem, because for this ecosystem to thrive, even for the existing companies that really are doing well, yeah we really need a pipeline of engineers.
Michael Kimathi:The reason why actually one of the things that made Andela fail sorry to disclose this, but most companies came in and I see this mistake happening, you know, repeated again and again is that they don't care about the pipeline. You come and find a cohort of engineers who are really good but you don't care to know.
Michael Kimathi:There are people who spend time to train these guys, to shape them, to expose them to different platforms that teach them best practices, because engineering, again, is about best practices. Even if you talk about structural engineering, if you don't follow the best practices and do it practically, you're nowhere near there. So this is required in the ecosystem and not only in Kenya. The good thing with Africa Stalking we are in over 23 countries and we are planning to expand in 54 countries, even where we don't have an office, to have a community running there doing hackathons. And please, if you are in these 54 countries in Africa, please, and you want to run some of this with us. We are open, we'll guide you and we'll help you get things started. We'll work with you in this journey together and any other partner in terms of companies as well as institutions of engineering. These are something that we can do together to succeed.
Abel Masila:Yeah, I find that to be quite the way. We should have done this thing a long time ago. Maybe we'd be quite far in terms of having tech communities which are sound and producing nice talent out here.
Abel Masila:Maybe we would even need Andela to do all these things you know that if you walk into an etiaca zone, there's a very chance that, uh, all you need is in there. Yeah, all the resources which you need as a developer, you're going to get them. Yeah, some companies are out there putting resources in. Yeah, it's not like it is stretching all the way out on its own yeah it's. It's a good starting point we hope you're doing it.
Michael Kimathi:Do you know what our mission is? Empowering developers across africa. So for us, it's because you know what our mission is Empowering developers across Africa. So for us, it's because we are a bunch of engineers who believe Africa could be different with more engineering. So we're happy, you know, and also we enjoy doing it seeing guys building solutions, solving problems for Africa.
Michael Kimathi:But beyond that, beyond that and this is really big for any serious tech companies across Africa is that we realize over time the different crop of engineers and tech. Every other single second tech is changing. So one of the things that we can really catch up very fast you remember me saying that I want to reduce 15 years to some real-time contribution is that if we don't do it right now and do it en masse you know Africa's talking can only do so much. But if we all come together, including telcos, including government I am proud of what Rwanda, you know, does with the tech If we all come together and run around this and be intentional about it, even two years is enough to really do enough amount of time. Egypt is doing really well by the way.
Abel Masila:Think about it. Egypt is doing good.
Michael Kimathi:But now it looks like a Europe market Europe-focused more than Africa-focused. But we can always synergize. Even if you're in Europe and you know US, you're welcome to this move Like right now. We're partnering with TADAC I don't know if you know TADAC and they've been doing hackathons across the world Some of the winners in March. This hackathon happened in Florida, miami. There were Nigerians who participated in Africa's Talking Hackathon. They built a voice solution. So this shows you that in Africa, not only do we have the talent, we have the best talent.
Abel Masila:The best talent.
Michael Kimathi:It's only that the platform really are minimal in terms of how we offer them. So I can only insist on this enough. We encourage everyone to be able to travel. Senior engineers listening to this, please come and teach us your ways, guide the upcoming engineers. Come and give some CTO roundtable, which we are starting soon. Opportunities are enormous, so it's yours for the taking. But as you close, abel, what would you like to tell African tech community across Africa?
Abel Masila:Yeah, there's so many things I will tell you guys. But Africa is for us and we are the people who can build Africa. There's nobody coming to build Africa for us. True. Moving out there, going out there, you still need to develop home. If you can spend some time, grow your your territories together with fellow Africans yeah put in the work, solve the solutions which we, which we have the problems which we have in Africa, instead of us going all the way out to look for solution out there yeah would put us in a very good situation, a very good place To the upcoming software engineers.
Abel Masila:your skills are as good as you put in the effort. Nobody is going to come and push you to be best at what you do it's all your own initiative, it's all your own move. If you want to be the best, you have to put in the work. Nothing comes easy as an engineer. All the flashy things you see in tech, it's all work and sweat yeah, sometimes blood.
Abel Masila:Yeah, but you have to work really hard. Yeah, uh, to all the experienced players in the space please be kind to help bring up the upcoming talent and help bring up the upcoming talent and the communities. They will be taking care of things. When you are old enough and not active as we are right now, it doesn't need to die with us. We can always let the candle continue burning when you are retiring, when you are chilling, by nurturing upcoming talent for all of us to cooperate. Um, I think it goes without saying if you guys of course, some of you guys are already supporting the communities. You're already helping out here. Yeah, going all the way out. Yeah, you can rally in and and build this, these communities, together. I think. I think we'll have a better Gen Z what they call the youngins.
Abel Masila:Better Gen Z, which is solution-focused, goal-oriented, not lazy, because we are pushing these guys.
Michael Kimathi:True, true. So lastly, abel, and maybe next time we get to meet we'll delve more into this there's some tech engineers in the ecosystem that are a bit. I should not marry fast. I should not have a family, if you don't mind. Do you think having a family is also something good, as you know, as you contribute to the ecosystem?
Abel Masila:um, I'll talk from experience. I have a family of kids. I have partner.
Abel Masila:This has helped me look at life differently yeah it's not party all day, it's not just work all day. There's more to this than just the work I would encourage, if you have a chance to be with somebody, to start a family, if you have the ability to, please go ahead. It's not all the time that you're going to have the energy to raise kids. I know as engineers we want to keep on writing code, less distractions but uh, me having having a daughter who comes to me from school happy even if I'm having a hard, hard time at work they would make me smile a little bit more yeah than if I was just chilling and drinking gin in my own workspace, hoping that I figured this bag yeah they would come at my workspace, they would make some jokes and they have made me happy maybe I'll get a solution.
Abel Masila:Yeah, yeah, that's my own experience. Yeah, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's all right to do it. Yeah, if you can. Yeah, uh, you're. So you're also gonna be a responsible person. Yeah, yeah, people looking up to you yeah you have siblings.
Abel Masila:You have small, uh toddlers you're bringing up. They're always looking up to you. You have siblings, you have small toddlers you are bringing up. They are always looking up to you. You cannot afford to fuck these up. You have to put in the work, build a strong background for them. This comes from good work. You have good work ethics. It teaches you so many things being in that position. You can't learn this in a book you have to experience it thank you so much, abel Masila.
Michael Kimathi:That was Abel Masila, senior front-end developer, or ninja as I like calling them. This was Impact Masters Podcasts, available in all podcast platforms, such as Google Podcasts, apple Podcasts and any other podcast out there. Check us out. It's Impact Masters or Africa's Talking Podcast, or, as it's known, retour Podcast. On LinkedIn is Africa's Talking and Impact Masters CEO. On YouTube is Impact Master CEO or Impact Masters Media. It's yours to Michael Kimathi or MK, if you want. And at this point, check out Africa Stalking, where we provide a variety of communication and payment API products that are everything you need to build our impact mobile engagement solutions. Africa's Talking platform allows you to work on building superior customer engagement experiences without the complexity that comes from working directly with mobile operators. Sms uses, devo voice airtime and our awesome API gets you up and running real quick. And with Impact Masters, we are featuring different movers and shakers in Africa, people who are solving problems. Check us out on our platform at impactmastersio or impactmastersco. Until next time. Thank you so much.