MoneyStory: This 23-year-old Developer Earning 450k/mo Sent 63 Applications Before Discovering Why Nobody Was Hiring Him

Age

23

Occupation

Frontend Developer

Location

Undisclosed

Housing

₦250k

Monthly Income

₦450

Current Savings

₦500k

What is your earliest memory of money?

My father would buy me a pack of six notebooks at the beginning of every school term. He would look at me when he handed them over and say, "Go and use these first, manage them." I was maybe eight or nine. Not that he would buy me more later on; no, I had to manage those six for the rest of the term for all subjects.

We were in Benin City. My father worked for a telecoms company doing technical support. My mother sold provisions from a small shop in front of our compound. Between the two of them they made something work.

What was the house like financially?

It was not comfortable, not desperate. There was always food, and school fees were paid before the deadline, even if it required some arrangement I was not told about. My parents did not discuss money in front of us in detail, but you could read the temperature of the house.

My father was very particular about education. Every discussion about money eventually returned to it. He believed that education was the thing you could not lose once you had it. He said that enough times that I eventually stopped hearing it, the way you stop hearing something that is always in the background.

When did you first earn money?

It was after secondary school. I was at home during the lockdown. A man in our compound had a small business printing event programs and flyers. His computer had constant problems. He knew I was always on computers. He started calling me when things went wrong. I would fix whatever it was, virus removal, reinstalling software, setting up a printer. He would give me ₦1k or ₦2k depending on how long it took.

It was not serious money but it was the first time I understood that knowing how a computer worked was something people would pay for.

How did you end up going further with tech?

I got into university in 2021, to study Computer Science. I had imagined that the course would teach me practical things quickly. The first year was mostly theory and mathematics. I understood why it was structured that way, but I was impatient. I wanted to build things.

In my second year I started watching YouTube tutorials. Frontend web development at first, HTML, CSS, JavaScript. I followed roadmaps I found online. I would do my coursework and then spend evenings and weekends building practice projects.

By 300 level I had moved into React and started learning a bit of backend. A friend in my department and I would review each other's code. He was better than me at the time. I used that as a reference point for how much I still needed to learn.

When did you start applying for jobs or contracts?

I started in earnest in mid-2024, during my IT days, because I was mostly free. The reasoning was that if I could land something part-time while still in school, I would graduate with experience, not just a certificate. I had seen enough discussions online about how the Nigerian tech job market worked to know that a certificate alone was not going to move anything.

I built out my portfolio. Four projects, a GitHub profile, a LinkedIn page with a photo I took in my room against a plain wall. I wrote my first CV and spent a week thinking it was good.

What did the first applications look like?

Mostly startups and those foreign tech companies; I was actively applying on Fiverr and Upwork. I was applying for frontend developer roles, junior positions, and internships. Entry-level things, you know. I was confident at the time in a way that was not fully earned.

The first fifteen or so applications just disappeared. No response, no rejection, nothing. I would hit send and the email would go somewhere and nothing would come back. I told myself the companies were probably getting many applications. I kept going.

When did the rejections start arriving?

Around the twentieth application or so. A few companies started sending actual responses. Most of them were automated. "We are sorry to inform you…..." One company sent a rejection email three weeks after I applied that referred to me by the wrong name, lol.

Then I started getting to technical assessment stages. I thought getting past the initial screening was progress. The assessments were where I really started to understand the gap between what I knew and what these companies expected.

Tell me about the assessments specifically.

The one I failed first was for a remote job, for a foreign company. They sent a timed test, ninety minutes, several JavaScript problems. I knew the concepts, but the way the questions were framed was different from anything I had practiced. I finished maybe sixty percent of what was asked. I never heard back.

The second was worse. It was a take-home assessment, three to five days to complete a small feature for a fake application. I spent the full five days on it. I thought what I submitted was solid. The rejection came two days later. It said my submission showed "potential," but they were looking for more production-ready thinking. I did not fully understand what that meant at the time, and I still don’t understand it yet either.

By the thirtieth application I had failed six technical assessments. I started going back and looking at what I had submitted, trying to understand where it went wrong. Sometimes I could see it. Sometimes I could not.

What was happening with money during this period?

I was in final year, so I was not working. My parents were covering my allowance and my hostel. ₦30,000 a month from my father, which was meant for feeding and transport and small expenses.

I was spending money on data constantly because everything I was learning and all my applications were online. On some months my data bill alone was ₦15,000. I was eating once a day on the days when money was tight at the end of the month. I told my parents I was fine because I did not want them to increase my allowance when I knew they were managing.

There was a period in early 2025 where I borrowed ₦10,000 from my roommate twice in the same month. The second time he gave it to me without me finishing my explanation. I think he already knew.

What was going on in your head around application forty?

I had started to develop a theory that something was wrong with me specifically. Not with the market, not with the process, with me. That the people hiring could see something in my profile or my submissions that told them I was not serious or not capable.

I went back and looked at my portfolio projects and started to see them the way I imagined a technical reviewer would see them. They were basic. Not broken, but basic. The kind of thing that showed I had learned the syntax without showing I understood how to think about building something real.

That was painful to admit because I had spent a year building those things and I was proud of them. Realizing that pride was partly ignorance was a difficult few days.

Did you think about stopping?

Yes. Not stopping tech entirely. But stopping the applications for a while. Taking a break from the rejection and the silence and the assessments that came back negative.

My friend, the one I used to review code with, had already landed an internship at a fintech company. He got it around application number twenty for him. I was at forty-five by the time he started. We did not talk about it directly but it was present.

I remember sitting in the hostel one evening after getting a rejection from a company I had really wanted, a proper product company with a good reputation. I had made it to the final interview stage. Video call with a senior engineer. I thought it had gone well. The rejection arrived four days later saying they had gone with a candidate whose experience was a closer fit.

I sat with that one for a few days. I had no applications pending that week so there was nothing to do but sit with it.

How did you rebuild from that point?

I changed what I was building. I stopped making portfolio projects that demonstrated that I knew the tools and started building things that solved actual problems, even small ones. I built a simple attendance tracking web app for a department in my school. I built a basic inventory tool for my mother's shop. I was not paid for these but they looked different on a portfolio than a weather app.

I also started writing about what I was learning. Short posts on LinkedIn and Twitter about specific problems I had solved, specific things that confused me and how I figured them out. Some of those posts got engagement from people in tech I had not spoken to before.

My applications also changed. I stopped applying broadly and started being more specific. Smaller companies, companies where I could find the name of a hiring manager or an engineering lead and address the application to a real person. Response rates improved.

How many applications before it happened?

Sixty-three in total. Some of those were repeat applications to companies I had applied to before under different roles. The sixty-third was a contract position at a software agency that did work for clients in logistics. Frontend development work with six months contract and a possibility of extension.

I applied on a Tuesday. I got a response on Thursday. Assessment on Friday. Call with the team lead the following Monday. Offer on Wednesday.

Nine days from application to offer. After a year of mostly silence.

What did that feel like?

Anticlimactic, and I did not expect that. I was in the library when the offer email arrived. I read it twice. I replied professionally, which took me about twenty minutes to draft. Then I called my mother immediately.

She started praying on the phone. Long prayers. I held the phone and let her finish.

That evening I called my father. He said, "I knew it would happen." I did not argue with him about the timeline.

What does the work actually look like?

I am working remotely, which is both what I wanted and something I underestimated in terms of discipline. Nobody is checking whether I’m at my desk. The work is reviewed through code submissions and deadlines. In the first two weeks, I was working from 7 a.m. to past midnight because I was nervous about every submission being good enough. My team lead told me after the third week to pace myself. He said burnt-out developers make mistakes, and mistakes cost everyone.

The work itself is interesting. I am building actual features that real users interact with. When I spot something in production that I wrote, something small, a button that does what it is supposed to do, that still feels different from anything a practice project ever felt like.

What is the contract paying?

I earn ₦450k a month, and I was provided with a work laptop since my old one couldn't handle the type of work I'll be doing, and its Windows version was outdated. It's truly a blessing! It is not the number I imagined when I first started learning. I had seen figures online, people talking about remote contracts paying in dollars, developers earning seven figures. I know those exist, but I am not there yet.

₦450,000 for someone in their first real tech role, still in the process of finishing their degree, is something I am trying to see clearly for what it is.

What does your spending look like?

I moved out of the school’s hostel when I got the contract. I am in a single room apartment now. Rent is ₦250k.

Food and feeding is ₦80,000. Transport and some small things like fuel for the hostel generator when there’s no electricity is ₦30k. Data: I use a lot; ₦70k. Software subscriptions and tools for work: ₦50k. I send ₦50k home to my parents every month; my father said I did not have to, but I wanted to. Personal care and miscellaneous, ₦70k. Savings, ₦100k.

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Are you still in school while doing this?

Yes. Final year. I have a project to complete and my final exams. My supervisor knows I am working because I asked for his permission before taking the contract. He said it was fine as long as my project did not suffer.

Balancing the two is the current difficulty. Some weeks the work has deadlines that stack with academic submissions and I am just moving from one thing to the next without much room between them. But I cannot complain about it. I chose this. And the alternative, no job and just school, is a version of 2024 I do not want to go back to.

What do you want the next two years to look like?

I want the contract to convert to a permanent role or lead to something more stable by the time I graduate. If that does not happen, I want to be a much stronger candidate than I was when I was sending those first applications. Someone who can get to a final interview and not lose it on technical questions.

I also want to be earning enough that I can properly support my parents. My mother's shop is fine but it is small. My father is a few years from retirement. There is a version of things where I am in a position to help in a meaningful way.

How would you rate your financial happiness right now?

7 out of 10. The income is not big. But it is mine. I earned it through a process that took longer than I wanted and cost me more than I had. That is worth something that does not fit into a number.