

Ask HN: Have you had any success with African developers? - yawboakye

In a mainly white male dominated industry, it may be okay if recruiters do not look at Africa for their next hire. There&#x27;s not a lot of good programmers here. I still want to know:<p>1. Are you open to applicants from Africa?
2. Have you hired an African developer or do you work with one?
3. Do Africans apply for jobs at your place?<p>I am a young Ghanaian programmer who is looking for a job (preferably in the US). I don&#x27;t have any material job experience yet.
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3am
I've had colleagues from Nigeria, CER, S.A., and several other countries in
Africa.

I don't think you'll find any resistance beyond the intrinsic difficulty of an
H1B hire, and that might be complicated by the absence of a bureaucracy in
your country that is as mature as some of those in Europe/Asia (Czech
Republic, Ukraine, India, China). If you don't have material job experience
yet, it's really unlikely that someone will put the expense into that hiring
process to bring you on. My (non-expert) advice would be to try to go to
school in the US and work under that visa or to build the relevant work
experience at home, possibly contract work for US companies. Best of luck.

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RougeFemme
I've worked with African developers and an currently working with a couple.
The ones that I know started out with an agency and then eventually gained
green card status and were able to get hired independently of the agency. The
potential problem with going the agency route, as I informally understand it,
is that no matter how disatisfied you may be become with your agency, you are
stuck with them until you are able to apply for a green card - and that could
be a pretty long time.

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phantom_oracle
I've worked remotely for a US firm before, but not writing code explicitly.

Africa is generally a shit continent to be a developer. You need a degree to
get a job or show that you're a Zen master at coding. I assume it's because
the IT firms are in limited supply and can have their pick at the cream of the
crop.

If you want to build up your rep without experience, you either find a local
internship or you start building up and open-source profile.

I'm doing both, but frankly, by the time I'm coding decent large-scale open-
source projects, I'm probably going to build my own things (no sense being a
code-monkey and making someone else a millionaire, unless they're paying
$80k+).

What is your stack? I may be able to help you with coding up open-source stuff
(if you're interested).

~~~
yawboakye
Yes, working remotely works for me. Freelance is a good thing but I wanted to
be part of a company to learn and understand organizational structures and how
hierarchy really works at software companies. I've read a lot about these
things. I want to experience them and learn through my experience.

I'm interested! I would love to do open source stuff. I program in Python,
Ruby, JavaScript mainly. I know pretty decent Java, Scala, SQL, and shell
programming.

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egor83
You could start with remote job (Elance/Odesk) - I see African developers
there from time to time (Kenya comes to mind at least).

No paperwork needed to get started, you'll get real experience and some good
contacts/references in the West if you've done a good job.

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phantom_oracle
Also, the guys who said that NewME accelerator is only for Africans in the USA
are wrong.

Here is what their site says:

"NewME is a mission-driven company, changing the status quo by accelerating
underrepresented entrepreneurs around the world."

www.newmeaccelerator.com/about/

I would consider the virtual accelerator then.

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enterx
Heeeey, isn't this a racism? :)

Make a list of 50 companies in your area of interest and just prove that
you're better then 90-95% of their developers.

Thats how you get the job. Period.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRHkAccUyqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRHkAccUyqM)

~~~
yawboakye
I guess that works well when the 50 companies know what the fuck they're
about. There are only 2 or 3 companies that have pragmatic programmers because
they do real stuff. The rest on the list pop the champagne at mediocre
results. No thanks, that's not what I'm looking for.

I'm looking to challenge myself with something worthwhile. I'm not looking at
fat salaries. No!

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eranation
We have a developer from Africa (Cameroon), and another one who just left
(from Nigeria), both are/were great and came as students initially (student
visa then H1B). If someone can code I don't care where they came from. Your
main barrier is the immigration status, more than country of origin.

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petervandijck
1\. Of course. 2\. No. 3\. No.

To get experience, you could do freelance work.

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banerjee
the newme accelerator is not for africans. it's for black people in america,
which is different. the latter group is of african descent but live in
america. if Yawboakye went to the newme companies to look for a job he would
still face the same issues that he would have faced with any other american
companies. my advice is to do elance/odesk until you can get what you want.

~~~
1dundundun
I'm pretty sure that NewMe Accelerator network could be a good network for him
eventually but the main thing that he'd need to do regardless of race/culture
is to get some experience under his belt.

I agree with others. Freelance to get some experience and if possible, get to
the states for school and work your way from there.

~~~
yawboakye
I'm very aware I need experience. That's why I'm looking for a job. Okay so my
main reason for looking for a job is because I want to grow and learn as much
as I can while being on a team at my workplace. There are very few good
programmers here (in Ghana) compared to the US or Europe. I can only grow so
much if I don't get a job in the top 2 or 3 companies in Ghana. IMO it's
different with the US where there are millions way better than me and there's
tons of good companies. It's easier to find the opportunity and environment to
grow to become a better programmer.

I can move on afterwards.

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davidsmith8900
\- Yawboakye, check this ~>
[http://www.newmeaccelerator.com/](http://www.newmeaccelerator.com/) It's like
YC for people of African descent. Here are some startups where you can get a
job at ~>
[http://www.newmeaccelerator.com/startups/](http://www.newmeaccelerator.com/startups/)
.

