🚀Entering Tech #78: What drives career switches?

While the US does not take ownership of its failed experiment, our first guest, Titilola, says her winding career paths have all been experimental. Only product marketing has stuck.

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She started out writing flash fiction, then moved into brand copywriting and content writing, motivated by her desire to make money. Soon after, she had a brief stint in product design and another year learning software development.

Titilola had graduated from Olabisi Onabanjo University in 2022 with a degree in Biochemistry, and even before she wore the university’s navy blue convocation robes, Titilola knew she would never wear a medical lab coat. 

“I think I needed an escape. During the COVID lockdown, I would catch up with my friends and they’d tell me what they were up to; I was so scared and thought the world was ending, so when my hostel-mate introduced me to sites that paid me to write, it felt natural because it was something I enjoyed.”

Titilola started her career writing for Opera News—her first real paying gig. Later, she worked at a digital marketing agency, learning SEO, writing blog posts and sales copy for client brands. She called this her “first taste” of product marketing, though she didn’t know what it was at the time. She worked at the agency until she graduated, and then product design caught her attention. 

However, her lack of interest led her to admit, “I was bored of writing, so I decided to try it. After two months, I didn’t know what I was doing in design, so I left it.”

Despite her inclination to experiments, Titilola says she knows “when to tell herself the truth,” and she feels this is important for anybody transitioning careers. In 2022, she joined HNG Internship as a sales and marketing intern, where she got her first proper marketing experience. 

In 2023, she fully transitioned into product marketing, after taking courses and completing internships. It took her six months to land her first role.

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Olatomide’s career path, on the other hand, is anything but ordinary. It all started with a spark of interest he got as a kid when he first saw an MTN flyer. That curiosity grew into an obsession with computers.

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He entered tech as a self-taught web designer because he wanted to build his friend a website that sold pirated music like naijaloaded.com at the peak of its popularity in 2012. He soon scratched that idea. Design and sales, brand and communications, and fashion design were a few other adventures that Olatomide went on to try. 

After a brief stint learning how to design websites, he decided to focus on design. It took him a while to establish himself, but as soon as he did, he went from graphic design to marketing and communications in the space of seven years.

He started designing in 2013, though things didn’t take off until three years later when he volunteered to be on the design team that hosted the GDG Lagos event in 2016. This, as he describes it, was the first time he designed professionally or worked on anything big.

Yet, it was the lift-off he needed. Between 2016 and 2019 during his undergraduate days, while his job description stayed as ‘designer,’ Olatomide ran ventures of his own, notably he won a Campus Hult Prize competition, started a failed t-shirt printing business for crypto bros, and even learnt fashion designing.

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Olatomide landed his first major role after graduating in 2019, courtesy of an employer he met at GDG.

While building an agency on the side that provided design services to small businesses on the side, he noticed that businesses faced a unique problem: they didn’t know how to sell.

“I was charging them ₦50,000 for design, they’d pay once, and never come back. I thought it was my price, but I soon discovered that these businesses were not making sales, so they were not coming back. This was when I switched to sales and eventually, the thought of marketing kicked in too.”

This was 2021. He continued learning internet sales to expand his agency services to include copywriting and became a consultancy business. But he did not give transitioning to marketing any serious thought until 2023.

When he did, he landed a brand and communications analyst role. He also worked in social media and was heavily involved in marketing campaigns; one of them included an influencer campaign where his company hired former Big Brother Nigeria star Cross to become a brand ambassador.

Yearning for more, Olatomide took that experience to Middleman, an e-commerce startup where he interned this year, and transitioned fully into marketing. Currently, he works in marketing and comms.

Olatomide’s career mood is to grow and be known as the guy who delivers results.

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Of the three techies we interviewed, Peculiar had the most unconventional journey. She graduated in 2019 from Alex Ekwueme Federal University with a degree in Applied Geophysics, ready for a career in the oil industry. But her passion shifted, and she found herself drawn to digital marketing instead.

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Peculiar started as a content and SEO writer, freelancing to help brands and startups boost sales. After working for four years in marketing since 2018, she decided to give back knowledge to newbies who wanted to learn the ropes of digital marketing.

In 2022, she joined SideHustle, an online training school, as a digital marketing instructor where she mentored over 30,000 students.

Peculiar was recognised for her expertise and dedication, building a reputation as a top mentor who simplified complex concepts and inspired many to start their own marketing journeys.

Yet, despite her achievements, Peculiar wanted a challenge—and software development fit the bill.

“I think coding is harder and offers better work perks. And I liked the idea of remote work. In marketing, I had been working on-site, and I thought tech bros always had that choice of working remotely.”

The work perks were one thing, but the compensation was another.

“I’d say money was a motivation, too,” she said, laughing. “I know these days, there are marketers that say they earn $10,000 monthly. But when I was doing my own marketing, I didn’t see this $10k. When I checked Google, I found that developers made more money than marketers, and that was a factor.

To transition quickly, she decided not to take the self-learning path. Instead, she wanted to learn with peers and enrol in a program that offered online, self-paced courses due to her marketing job at the time. So she joined AltSchool Africa and learnt software development for one year.

Only one month after completing the program, she landed her first engineering job. Peculiar says she hopes to be in a position where she can teach and bring more people into coding again as she did with marketing.

All three techies we interviewed said they have now found their right fit in tech. Finding yours may not always mean sticking to one path. With the expansion of tech roles, there’s something out there for everyone.

What is important is knowing when to be patient or not, understanding what is working for you—or not—and knowing if, and when, you should make that switch.

The answer often lies within.

P.S: Did you like this edition of Entering Tech? Would you like more like this or less? Share your thoughts by responding to this newsletter or sending an email to newsletter@techcabal.com. 

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