Disqus - Latest Comments for markessien

Re: A unified postal code and street API for Nigeria

Mark Essien — Sun, 17 Jan 2016 14:45:07 -0000

The core technicals can be left to the actual developers. What I think is important is the feature-set. Basically deciding - x is in and y is not in. It does A and does not do B. That will then help to determine how the db design and the api design should look like. You should bring a bunch of people together to make that decision. Like you said, a mailing list would make sense. A mix of 'enthusiasts', 'experts' and 'developers' to hammer out the feature set.

Re: Shallow Thinking

Mark Essien — Sun, 17 Jan 2016 09:27:38 -0000

It is how you can recognize if that is where you are...

Re: Forcing cleanliness in Nigeria - a radical idea for the government

Mark Essien — Thu, 25 Dec 2014 02:20:02 -0000

This is something that will FORCE ICT usage, because there are penalties. Remember, the notifications get sent to peoples phones, so they can react from there.

Re: Forcing cleanliness in Nigeria - a radical idea for the government

Mark Essien — Thu, 25 Dec 2014 02:19:22 -0000

No it does not. If you dump tires in front of someones house, the person will just clear it away. If the person places tires, then snaps and reports infraction, this will not stand scrutiny, and you can simply mark the case as resolved (if you are the owner). If inspectors come so many times and discover that an infraction has been fixed, implying the reporter is fraudulent, he gets eliminated as a person that can report.

Re: Programmers are what will save Nigeria

Mark Essien — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 08:20:02 -0000

Ah yes actually, on that government part, it 100% should be open source!

Re: Programmers are what will save Nigeria

Mark Essien — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 08:11:45 -0000

The thing with software is that when you are good enough, you create your own software products then. You cannot create your own cobalt mine...

Re: Programmers are what will save Nigeria

Mark Essien — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 08:11:01 -0000

As we must do every day

Re: Programmers are what will save Nigeria

Mark Essien — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 08:10:10 -0000

I think it's all over the world like that. It's the best 10% that will do all the work!

Re: Programmers are what will save Nigeria

Mark Essien — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 04:55:15 -0000

What Nigeria needs is not FOSS. It's exports. That bring real money into the economy. So we need to think commercial first and not open source.

Re: The Fear Of Messing Up

Mark Essien — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 05:26:51 -0000

But nairaland is still the number one site, with incredible profit margins, 100% ownership, constantly growing in a growing market and making more money that a lot of the well funded startups. Not all businesses need to be on a path of venture capital. Some can be designed as a life-style business, and if you judge nairaland by that metric, it's a monster.

Re: The Cchub raspberry pi that powers Hotels.ng call-center

Mark Essien — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 11:38:23 -0000

A lot...

Re: The Cchub raspberry pi that powers Hotels.ng call-center

Mark Essien — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 11:38:12 -0000

Will try one of these days when I have some free time!

Re: The Cchub raspberry pi that powers Hotels.ng call-center

Mark Essien — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 11:37:40 -0000

Thanks!

Re: The Cchub raspberry pi that powers Hotels.ng call-center

Mark Essien — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 11:37:34 -0000

You are too kind :-)

Re: Why Fora Is Looking For Inexperienced Software Developers To Hire

Mark Essien — Sun, 04 May 2014 04:22:09 -0000

Hope you have a good developer managing the newbies, otherwise http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re: I Need A Developer Like Yesterday – Part 1

Mark Essien — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 13:41:01 -0000

Most developers in the WORLD are not good. Nigeria is normal. Nigerian developers ship a lot of very good code, and they are not expensive.

Re: I Need A Developer Like Yesterday – Part 1

Mark Essien — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 13:39:37 -0000

A romanian contractor will take$1500/month. Pay N250k/month, you will find a developer of his standard. A Silicon Valley Developer will take $8000/month. Pay 1.2m/month to a nigerian developer, you will find his standard.

If you pay the price, you get roughly the same quality as what you pay for. And in Nigeria, you actually get better quality than what you pay for (as compared globally).

I did not train any of the Nigerian developers I've worked with. They came with their skills.

Re: I Need A Developer Like Yesterday – Part 1

Mark Essien — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 12:00:51 -0000

Very few software developers are chasing the startup dream. Most are doing software for companies as freelancers.

Re: I Need A Developer Like Yesterday – Part 1

Mark Essien — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 11:55:04 -0000

That statement is very...unusual "You can literally create good developers in 3 months without any prior background in computer science." Really? That is a statement that is super-wrong

Re: I Need A Developer Like Yesterday – Part 1

Mark Essien — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 06:53:58 -0000

We will expand soon enough...no rush, let someone else do the legwork, I will follow the far cheaper route of being second.

Re: I Need A Developer Like Yesterday – Part 1

Mark Essien — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 06:19:05 -0000

When it comes to developing local software talent, the local companies are the only ones actually contributing to it. Konga has a 20 man developer team, all Nigerian. Interswitch does their development in Nigeria. All of the banks have local developer teams. Even us, Hotels.ng use a local in-house developer.

The foreign invested companies are the ones using foreign teams, e.g Rocket does its entire development in Europe, billing MTN for that, paid for by your recharge cards.

I cannot think of any foreign company doing software development in Nigeria. But there are thousands of Nigerian companies doing so.

Nigerians don't have faith in Nigerians, but Nigerians are some of the best developers in the world. Good development needs good project management, so the fault can lie in two directions.

Re: Nigerian Startups – Don’t Waste This, Abeg

Mark Essien — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 06:47:21 -0000

I welcome Rocket Internet, but they are too focused on Hotels.ng abeg. Just let me continue building my product, if they feel they can beat us in customer satisfaction, number of customers or revenue, then they should focus on those things. All this noise making is a distraction.

Re: The cost of running an office in Nigeria (for cchub graduates)

Mark Essien — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 04:46:30 -0000

Pre-Paid

Re: The cost of running an office in Nigeria (for cchub graduates)

Mark Essien — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 04:46:20 -0000

Emm...biz secrets eh

Re: The cost of running an office in Nigeria (for cchub graduates)

Mark Essien — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 04:46:08 -0000

Yes