Our techie this week, Joshua Adegbala is living proof that if Plan A doesn’t work, there are 25 more letters in the alphabet.
Though his childhood aspirations soared towards the sky, but as reality set in, Joshua’s path took a fascinating turn, leading him to a fulfilling career in tech.
Read on for Joshua’s inspiring journey to becoming an IT Support Specialist.
This publication focuses on sharing experiences and narratives on how ‘Techies’ have gotten into tech, highlighting their challenges, motivations, and valuable insights on how they have navigated the tech landscape from different starting points. If you would like to share your tech journey please fill this form.
Hello Joshua. How would you describe yourself in three sentences?
Joshua: As an IT Support Specialist, with a knack for problem solving and a deep passion for learning new technologies. I’m particularly interested in Network administration and security and that’s the only aspect of tech I really see myself thriving in. I’m a home buddy too. The “there’s rice at home” kind of person. 😂
What do you do and what does your day to day look like?
J: I’m an IT Support Specialist and a typical day at the office for me starts with checking on all our backups, making sure everything is as it’s supposed to be. Then getting into my to do list and seeing what spill over tasks I have from the past day/week and adding new ones where necessary. The rest of the day is then based off of that list. If it’s a slow day, I focus on my freelance gigs and try to get my clients their jobs on time.
What freelance gigs do you do?
J: I do audio and video editing on the side.
It’s giving work and work balance.
J: 😂
So from your perspective, do you think it is typical for techies to not have a work life balance. Because I remember I spoke with a techie a few weeks back and he is able to do movie production even while being a software engineer.
J: Well, I would like to believe that it’s because of the kind of environment we find ourselves in. If it were to be in, say, saner climates, for example, Microsoft in the UK, work-life balance exists. Imagine you go into work, get your tasks done, attend whatever meetings you have to and then you go home and then you have time for the gym, you have time for family, you have time to go see a movie or something but in Nigeria, everybody is just trying to maximise their earnings. So for a tech bro or tech sis, you usually see them juggling three or four jobs to earn what somebody that works at like a Microsoft or Oracle would earn just doing nine to five. So you would see that in such a scenario for techies in Nigeria, work-life balance might not necessarily exist. So that guy that you spoke to, it might be that he has a passion for production. So it might not seem like work to him. It would feel like he’s just chilling. But it depends on the person, the individual, and also depends on the environmental factors involved. That is how I see it. It’s not really a black and white situation.
Right, so let’s backtrack a little bit. When you graduated from university, what was the next thing for you?
J: I’ve always been into tech right from secondary school, to be honest. Right from primary school, actually.
Look at that, a man that knows what he wants
J: 😂From time, I wanted to be an astronaut but then I realised it’s not possible in this kind of country. So I switched to piloting. I was going to become a pilot, but the restriction was the funds. Where would my parents get about 20 million in that time to send me to aviation school in Nigeria? So I was like, okay, what is the next best thing and what do I know? That thing that if I do, I’m going to feel fulfilled. I’ve always loved tech so I decided to take it seriously. From secondary school, I knew that plan A and plan B had already failed, so I thought, let’s do plan C—tech.
Since you always wanted to do tech, what was your dream company?
J: Well, so just recently I put it up on my WhatsApp status that I would love to work at a Data Center. Where there’s rows and stacks upon servers. I think that would be like a dream job for me. Just safeguarding the world’s data. If I have my way, I would definitely work at Microsoft.
So why don’t you think you have your way?
J: Well, first of all, I don’t think I’m skilled enough yet and I’m working on that. If you want to work at any of the big tech companies, you have to bring your A-game because you’re going against global standards. And if you are not the best of the best, nothing for you.
As an IT Support Specialist, what kind of challenges do you face at work?
J: I work for an investment company called Mainstreet Capital Limited. We usually deal with customer funds and anything that involves money, usually in business, is critical. So imagine your firm loses connection to the outside world. This is the internet for like a whole day, there’s money being lost. There was this period where we had an issue with our network. For some reason we came in the morning and there was no internet in the office. Business critical applications were down. It was as if it was Armageddon. And believe you me, we troubleshooted for the better part of two working days for us to get our systems up and running again. And what happened? It was a misconfiguration of one of our switches. It was so eye opening! I was like, wow! We even had to bring in a consultant and then at the end we figured it out, of course without the consultant’s help. We just brought in that guy for nothing 😂. But yeah, we figured it out and then we were back up and running.
Haha. Wow. How often do you experience challenges like this?
J: Not so often
So I have a very random question from what you’ve described so far. It sounds like IT support is a bit like cybersecurity. Are they linked?
J: So usually, people who are going down the route of maybe cybersecurity or networking typically start with IT Support. It’s like what you do before you even pivot to other areas. It’s the bedrock. They are essentially linked because usually when people ask for five years experience, 10 years experience in something usually for the better part of those years, they expect you to have fundamental knowledge of IT support. With IT support, you deal with almost everything.
Can you explain how that process was like looking for a job and getting one in IT support? What was your first reaction?
J: It was during NYSC that I got into IT support. I was even chasing a software engineering role, which I’ve now come to realise I’m not a fan of. I don’t think I did any job hunting. Somebody calls me up and is like there’s a role available at Mainstreet Capital Limited. Are you interested? I say, yes, of course and then I send my CV over and like a week later I’m called up for an interview. And after the interview, I got the job and here we are today. It wasn’t really an intentional move in that direction. It was just… I was thrust into it.
Seeing as IT Support was not what you intentionally wanted to do, how did you approach the learning phase of understanding what it entailed?
J: Well, I wouldn’t say there was a learning phase, but I feel like I’d prepared all my life for that role. So in school, I was always a go-to guy for any issues relating to computers. By school, I mean secondary school, university, up until I graduated. So that was, I think – for me – my learning phase. I was prepared for the role. I see it as a divine orchestration 😂
I think this just shows how much of a divine orchestration it was especially as you were prepared for it. Any advice for someone who wants to get into IT Support
J: You know you can never go wrong with the basics to be honest. IT Support is a little of everything. So you have to know how to code to some extent to solve certain issues. You have to know networking to solve certain issues. You have to know, sometimes even project management. You essentially have to be like a jack of all trades when it comes to IT support and my advice is focus on the basics. You never can get the basics wrong. It’s your foundation to anything. If somebody comes to you with an issue on their motherboard, if you don’t understand how a motherboard works, how it operates, you might not be able to solve the issue the person has. So, yeah. Keep your head down and learn the basics and you can always build on top of that. And another thing I would say is, if you are asked, do you know how to do something? The answer is always YES. You should never say NO. You might not know how to do it, but just say yes and then go back and learn it. Because when people see you, they see you as the solution guy. You are the go-to guy for all things computers. And if you say no, I don’t know how to fix it. Then your credibility will drop because it would look like you are not reliable.
That’s great. Thank you so much for sharing. So one last question before you go. Are you reading or listening to any podcast about tech that you can share with us?
J: Yeah, I would highly recommend Darknet Diaries to anybody that is going into tech. Darknet Diaries, the Vergecast, and Techstuff. Those are the three podcasts I listen to.
Thank you Joshua!