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Ask HN: Have you had any success with African developers?

13 points by yawboakye ↗ HN
In a mainly white male dominated industry, it may be okay if recruiters do not look at Africa for their next hire. There's not a lot of good programmers here. I still want to know:

1. Are you open to applicants from Africa? 2. Have you hired an African developer or do you work with one? 3. Do Africans apply for jobs at your place?

I am a young Ghanaian programmer who is looking for a job (preferably in the US). I don't have any material job experience yet.

14 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 42.0 ms ] thread
petervandijck
1. Of course. 2. No. 3. No.

To get experience, you could do freelance work.

3am
I've had colleagues from Nigeria, CER, S.A., and several other countries in Africa.

I don't think you'll find any resistance beyond the intrinsic difficulty of an H1B hire, and that might be complicated by the absence of a bureaucracy in your country that is as mature as some of those in Europe/Asia (Czech Republic, Ukraine, India, China). If you don't have material job experience yet, it's really unlikely that someone will put the expense into that hiring process to bring you on. My (non-expert) advice would be to try to go to school in the US and work under that visa or to build the relevant work experience at home, possibly contract work for US companies. Best of luck.

egor83
You could start with remote job (Elance/Odesk) - I see African developers there from time to time (Kenya comes to mind at least).

No paperwork needed to get started, you'll get real experience and some good contacts/references in the West if you've done a good job.

RougeFemme
I've worked with African developers and an currently working with a couple. The ones that I know started out with an agency and then eventually gained green card status and were able to get hired independently of the agency. The potential problem with going the agency route, as I informally understand it, is that no matter how disatisfied you may be become with your agency, you are stuck with them until you are able to apply for a green card - and that could be a pretty long time.
banerjee
the newme accelerator is not for africans. it's for black people in america, which is different. the latter group is of african descent but live in america. if Yawboakye went to the newme companies to look for a job he would still face the same issues that he would have faced with any other american companies. my advice is to do elance/odesk until you can get what you want.
1dundundun
I'm pretty sure that NewMe Accelerator network could be a good network for him eventually but the main thing that he'd need to do regardless of race/culture is to get some experience under his belt.

I agree with others. Freelance to get some experience and if possible, get to the states for school and work your way from there.

yawboakye
I'm very aware I need experience. That's why I'm looking for a job. Okay so my main reason for looking for a job is because I want to grow and learn as much as I can while being on a team at my workplace. There are very few good programmers here (in Ghana) compared to the US or Europe. I can only grow so much if I don't get a job in the top 2 or 3 companies in Ghana. IMO it's different with the US where there are millions way better than me and there's tons of good companies. It's easier to find the opportunity and environment to grow to become a better programmer.

I can move on afterwards.

eranation
We have a developer from Africa (Cameroon), and another one who just left (from Nigeria), both are/were great and came as students initially (student visa then H1B). If someone can code I don't care where they came from. Your main barrier is the immigration status, more than country of origin.
enterx
Heeeey, isn't this a racism? :)

Make a list of 50 companies in your area of interest and just prove that you're better then 90-95% of their developers.

Thats how you get the job. Period.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRHkAccUyqM

yawboakye
I guess that works well when the 50 companies know what the fuck they're about. There are only 2 or 3 companies that have pragmatic programmers because they do real stuff. The rest on the list pop the champagne at mediocre results. No thanks, that's not what I'm looking for.

I'm looking to challenge myself with something worthwhile. I'm not looking at fat salaries. No!

phantom_oracle
I've worked remotely for a US firm before, but not writing code explicitly.

Africa is generally a shit continent to be a developer. You need a degree to get a job or show that you're a Zen master at coding. I assume it's because the IT firms are in limited supply and can have their pick at the cream of the crop.

If you want to build up your rep without experience, you either find a local internship or you start building up and open-source profile.

I'm doing both, but frankly, by the time I'm coding decent large-scale open-source projects, I'm probably going to build my own things (no sense being a code-monkey and making someone else a millionaire, unless they're paying $80k+).

What is your stack? I may be able to help you with coding up open-source stuff (if you're interested).

yawboakye
Yes, working remotely works for me. Freelance is a good thing but I wanted to be part of a company to learn and understand organizational structures and how hierarchy really works at software companies. I've read a lot about these things. I want to experience them and learn through my experience.

I'm interested! I would love to do open source stuff. I program in Python, Ruby, JavaScript mainly. I know pretty decent Java, Scala, SQL, and shell programming.

phantom_oracle
Also, the guys who said that NewME accelerator is only for Africans in the USA are wrong.

Here is what their site says:

"NewME is a mission-driven company, changing the status quo by accelerating underrepresented entrepreneurs around the world."

www.newmeaccelerator.com/about/

I would consider the virtual accelerator then.