Nigerian Banks Hit by 'Great Resignation' of Top Tech Talent (bloomberg.com) 25
Nigerian banks have been hit by an exodus of tech talent, chief executives of the nation's lenders say. From a report: "So many of our very experienced talents especially in the area of software engineering are either leaving the industry or leaving the country," Abubakar Suleiman, chief executive officer of Sterling Bank, told reporters at the end of a meeting of bank CEOs on Thursday, according to a voice recording shared by the central bank. He referred to it as a "great resignation." The meeting came as traditional lenders in Africa's largest economy face stiff competition for talent from technology startups attracting increased funding from international investors and offering better working conditions, in and outside the country. Africa-focused startups raised a record $5 billion last year, with those specializing in digital and mobile payments and lending soaking up most of the funding. Two economic contractions in the last five years have also forced some Nigerians with globally marketable skills to leave the country, with the U.S., Canada and U.K. being preferred destinations.
Well... (Score:3)
that explains all the "Princes" reaching out to me on linkedin.
I just don't understand why I need to send them gift cards to get a resume
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Wow, you only had to do gift cards?
I had to send them $500, and give my SS# to ensure my identity was valid!!
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Nor do most white males in the United States.
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So move to Nigeria. Problem solved! (Score:1)
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Curious about the long term effects of this (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a very specific, moderately small subsection of society that can effectively work on computers; you can't really train up any random sustenance farmer and guarantee a 95% success rate of making them a productive software developer.
Once the people with the natural ability to learn to program, their skills are immediately valuable in USD at often times 2-3 times the local market, on the global market. If those people leave to go to another country, I don't know if new naturally bright kids spawn in the country to make up for the lost brain drain, or if when they leave for say the UK, they have their kids in the new country, leaving the old country at a deficit. If it's the later, this is a long term worrying trend where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I've read some reports that in March alone something like 70,000 people left Russia for other countries, without plans to permanently return. Russia has north of 100 million citizens so they can stomach that loss, but 70,000 people is a lot of highly educated people just walking out the door. ACITC in Moscow estimates there's 1.8 million IT workers, if 100,000 people leave that's 5% of their most valuable workforce going forward leaving the country. If they end up doing two or three more conflicts like this, that's a really substantial brain drain.
Russia has attempted to counter this by waiving income tax, and special low rates on mortgages, but even then people would prefer to walk out the door. How do less prosperous countries compete with western tech hubs? What is the 100 year outcome of all those successful families leaving everything behind?
Re: Curious about the long term effects of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you just now realizing that wealth migrates to the wealthy? That's how capital works in a capitalist society. The more you have, the more you earn.
On the other hand, the industry was built by the U.S. and U.K. Nigerian companies should recognize that it's the software developers transforming the business, not the managers and sales guys. Adjust salaries accordingly and you'll retain talent just fine.
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I doubt that it's just salaries. Salaries are a part of it, but living conditions may well be even more important.
Re: Curious about the long term effects of this (Score:2)
I think the more common narrative is these developers continue to stay living in their home countries. Sure, some come to the U.S., but I bet more than 95% of them just work locally in their home country for a firm with contracts with American companies.
Even the couple of times we've hired some Russian or Ukrainian dev we want to keep, we've never been able to hire them and move them to the U.S. The Trump admin made it even harder.
Because it's so difficult to get workers to migrate here, we were trying to g
the long term effect is nothing (Score:1)
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Nigeria doesn't really have subsistence farmers. Agriculture is about 18% of GDP and about 1/3rd of the workforce, but it's modern agriculture on farms where most people are employed by the land owner.
Education wise Nigeria has 138 universities, but access is uneven. Only about 70% of the population is literate and school is not mandatory. That's all ages though, among the younger generations literacy is much more common and now rivalling developed nations.
Anyway, point being Nigeria is a very unequal socie
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Russia has attempted to counter [brain drain] by waiving income tax, and special low rates on mortgages, but even then people would prefer to walk out the door. How do less prosperous countries compete with western tech hubs? What is the 100 year outcome of all those successful families leaving everything behind?
Also post-Ukraine invasion even if you've got rubles, after all the embargoes have taken effect you've got a decaying economy and nothing to spend them on.
Great timing! (Score:1)
Let's call this what it really is. (Score:3, Informative)
Exploitation is a two-way street (Score:4, Insightful)
Another labor pool realizes it can exploit multi-national tech firms for money.
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Sometimes... (Score:2)
When your country is hostile what do you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
In Nigeria, they literally had to start a campaign called "#StopRobbingUs" to get the POLICE to stop robbing anyone carrying a laptop, which they saw as an easy target. So, you can stay in your home country, get paid peanuts, and have the government/police rob you while most of the population hates you for having skills valuable enough to afford a decent life, or you can move elsewhere and get paid more.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/16/nigerias-stoprobbingus-campaign-could-spur-tech-advocacy-group-ceos-say/
Besides, doing anything in the financial industry in Nigeria is going to be... challenging unless your focus is solely domestic. The moment anyone foreign starts reviewing your documents they'll see "Nigeria" and set out to prove it's a scam. Even if they don't find any evidence, they'll probably decide you're not worth the risk. The Nigerian government could have chosen to clean this up, but the attitude that it's fine to steal from "rich" people seems to permeate Nigerian society.
Better working conditions... (Score:3)