Life after NYSC... Well I didn’t step into a well-planned career path. I took whatever job paid—just to stay afloat. Growth had to wait; survival came first as they said "survival is winning Franklin" . But in doing that, I slowly drifted from the direction I originally set out on, the x dev guy. The aspiration was still there, just buried under responsibilities and realities I hadn’t fully prepared for.
Eventually I had to make a hard call—keep settling for short-term paychecks just to get by, OR take a step back and realign with the bigger picture. The picture that looked like growth, purpose, and the version of myself I originally set out to become—even if it meant accepting less money in the meantime.
So I chose the harder path—the one that required patience, discipline, less paycheck. The one that didn’t always come with immediate rewards but was rooted in purpose
That shift didn’t make life easier, but it gave me direction. It wasn’t easy. Tech school days were gone, no instructor. Its just me, my brain+ chatGPT any my AI gang. I was thrown into real codebases—untidy, undocumented, and alive in production. There were bugs, business logic, and deadlines that didn’t care if you were still figuring things out.
Backend wasn’t my comfort zone—but the job didn’t wait for that. So I adapted even when I didn’t feel ready but I had to learn to learn on the job. I wrote code in stacks I’d only just met. And slowly, I grew—by doing, not by waiting to feel qualified.
And I’m still on that journey—more focused, more grounded, and more committed to the process than ever before.