Bill Gates, Steve Jobs & Mark Zuckerberg all
they have two things in common founders of largest IT franchises and all are
college dropouts. Yes I repeat “college dropouts”. While we are focusing mainly
in Universities and Colleges we forgot that, there are so many potential minded
people moving around in our streets with their innovative ideas. Wither its Kariakoo, the busiest place in Dar es Salaam or the busy streets of Kampala you will definitely find these tech guys in the street hijacking modems, fixing phones and formatting people’s computers. surprised with what they can do and the tools they use to accomplish those tasks nobody knows where they get them they are just creative.
I remember one time I told one of them I will give him money if
he could just tell me the software he is using to hijack our phones and remove
the passwords. He refused to tell me, he actually said “it means you don’t want
me to fix your phone anymore where did you want to me to get my daily bread?”
actually these guys they make a lot of money and they have the entrepreneurship
mind that a graduate will never have all the years he will spend at school.
The main different between them and the students “they know what pays in the tech industries while the students
understand what to study to get paid quickly”. Actually over 50 percent of these
guys performing tech in the streets has no college or university knowledge of
tech, , but still they can make a lot of
money out of it, understand me there is no justification to quit college, not at all. But we have to learn something from these guys. How would the knowledge
that we have help us at least to attain the daily bread in our life before
start thinking on employment in the reputed tech companies in our countries or
in a certain post in the government office.
“Study what pays quickly”, actually
I did BSc. computer science and Electronics I don’t see anywhere “the C++
header files or Java overloading concept” to start paying me any time soon. But for
the guy who specifically paid the money in the local institutions to learn Web
Designing using Dreamweaver or Magazine designing using Adobe InDesign CS4
would quickly make out his good cash if the opportunity came, that is what I mean.
It is the time the tech guys from the colleges start to have the minds of
the street geeks.
The street geek is like a doctor he only give that what is
prescribed for the patients. They
only know few things, software installation, antivirus updating, unlocking
mobile phones, cracking modems and formatting hard drives but it is enough to
make good cash for them to survive in their business and make good money.
From these small shops they own, they are learning a lot of
things, just yesterday I was at Kariakoo Aggrey Street, one of the famous
street for small time mobile phone sellers. Actually they have more knowledge
on the phone than us. “Did you lock the phone and put IMEI number so that we can call the
service provider to track it just in case someone inserts a new chip?”
Hint, The IMEI number is used
by a GSM network to identify valid devices and therefore can be used for
stopping a stolen phone from accessing that network.
The mobile
phone shop owner was telling the guy who’s “Samsung S2” was stolen on the local
bus on his way back home. You can
imagine for someone who didn’t go to school speaking about IMEI number. Actually personally,
frankly speaking I don’t know how to insert a new operating system in the phone but it was among the services the guy
providing at his shop. He realizes what people want and give it to them, this
is the challenge graduates, professionals and college tech guys we should take
are we ready to learn from them? Or we
are just going to wait for the job opportunities from the big companies to
come.