Life in the Financial Services Sector - Fun times at my 4th job

All my career, i had been open to side gigs while holding down a regular 9-5. I guess I adopted that culture from when I was in school. I would assist my coursemates with assignments/project. There are arguments for/against the gig culture, but that is another conversation. In fact, one of the big techs encourages its employees to have a side gig. I side-giged because apart from the financial rewards, it helped to broaden my horizon over the tech landscape and helped me to pick up opportunities.
While on my 3rd job (the telecoms job), I met a senior colleague (Mr. P) who was also open to gigs. He hooked me up to one of such, but because my hands were full, I lagged on the opportunity till he called it off.
** I need to do better to know when to turn down engagements when my hands are full**
After I resigned from the job, Mr P did not give up on me. He called me for another gig.
Interestingly, this gig was an official task owned by the HR department of the same telecoms company where I had just been laid off. I needed the money, and I had no ill feelings towards the company, so i took up the gig. The pay was super shitty at N25k. The task was to convert some pages of the HR portal from PHP to ASP.NET. I was new to ASP.NET, but i figured it out and concluded the task in 2weeks. My transport fare and feeding for the duration of the project was about 25k, but I hoped for a continued business relationship with Mr P, so i stuck to the task and saw it to completion. Mr P was impressed.

I label people who receive help into 3 categories.

  • Those who receive help, appreciate it, and try to pay you back in cash/kind immediately.
  • The 2nd category truly appreciate it and give you referrals based on good recommendations.
  • The 3rd category may not be able to pay you back, but pray heartfelt prayers for you.
Mr P belonged to the 2nd category. He was so impressed with my work that he gave me a referral which changed my life. For context, he had another running gig with a pensions fund administrator that needed a programmer urgently. Mr P later told me that the 1st person who came to his mind when he was told of the vacancy was me. So he submitted my CV and I was called for the interview. The role was for a Java programmer.
After trying to reschedule the interview without success, eventually i honored the invite. I was poorly dressed for the interview. I could not afford a quality shirt, so i wore a tattered shirt. I met other candidates in suit, but - of course - my confidence was unshaken.

The interview was one-shot, both technical and behavioral. I remember 3 technical questions vividly. 

  • Explain OOP concepts
  • What is the default port for Mysql
  • What tool do you use for reporting with enterprise Java
I gave spot-on answers for questions 2 and 3, because interestingly, those were the toolsets that i was currently working with on the N70k gig. The COO also asked me about my asking pay. I was broke and jobless, and i needed the job badly, so i asked for anything above N150k.
I was given an offer at about N150k, to resume in the first week of December 2011.

So I resumed a regular 9-5 job (my 4th job, 5th if you may), and my first in the financial services sector.
It was a good lease of life after the ups and downs of the previous job loss. A new departmental head was also hired a month after I joined - my best boss ever.
I blossomed on that job, and I got my mojo back.
I will never forget Mr P in a hurry

Lesson: Dont burn bridges, dont close doors, never say never.

I am still curious.. are gigs totally a bad idea? At what point do side gigs harm your 9-5?
Tell me what you think.


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