From Worker to Owner

Here is a recording of the video on YouTube, and below is the rough script I followed while shooting it.

There are a number of things I'd like to make better going forwards.

Hello and welcome to this blog. My name is Warren, some people know me… many don't.
I'm going to use this blog to tell my “DevMoires” which is basically my Dev Memoires.
There are many twists and turns over the last 2 decades that I've been a developer and we'll explore them together.

Triumphs will be celebrated, struggles shared and losses commiserated. However, I’m not going to be naming and shaming anyone here.

Where to begin?

Let's start at the very beginning.
A very good place to start.

When you read you begin with
A, B, C.

When you sing you begin
With do-re-mi.

So we’ll be starting way back, in the 1990’s… when the TV had the “back” piece and didn’t hang on the wall.

I was around 13 years old and really enjoyed gaming (From Mario to Doom, Contra to Wolfenstein and everything in between).
We had to write an essay at school about what we’d like to become when we were older.
All the usual suspects emerged

• Doctor
• Nurse
• Vet
• Firefighter
• Pilot
• etc.

Not me… I wanted to be a “programmer” because I was going to write computer games. I’ve written two games. Both during my education period. We'll probably unpack those at some point.

Throughout my school career I focused on the things that would get me to being a programmer. I did Mathematics, Science, Computer Science, Accounting and even… typing. I played Chess (up to National level, competing at the South African Championships), I did Mathematics Olympiads.

Everyday I'm hustling

I ALWAYS had a hustle on… whether it was building up PCs out of “scraps” and selling them or fixing people’s PCs and printers.
I’ve also always been a “I’m pretty sure I can figure it out” kind of person, which has resulted in triumphs and tribulations but also a lot of money saved unblocking the drains at home instead of calling a plumber.

This same mentality kicked in when we hit Grade 10 and the teacher discussed what we’d be doing for the year in Computer Studies while handing out the theory textbooks.
The second half of the year would be learning programming.
I asked the teacher to give me the Turbo Pascal textbook so I could start figuring it out myself.

He obliged.

I ate that textbook up like a streetwise two at a traffic stop. (A streetwise two is a get out of jail free card in South Africa)

Before long I was bringing examples to class and showing the teacher… I was experimenting. There was no internet, no Chat Gippdy, it was all try and fail and read and try.

During the second half of the year I would smash out the practical tests/exams in under half the time and add extra stuff.

While writing my prelim Grade 12 Exams my mother drove me to the university to go and present a system I had built in Turbo Pascal as an entry into the “Development/Coding challenge”. As live demos go, I had to bug fix during my demo. But I still managed to win a prize for the system I had built.

University Time

I hit university; the practical stuff came easily. I didn’t even attend the first semester of our one first module as it was Excel. I did the homework and wrote all the tests and only missed scoring 100% because I spelled my name wrong (this is a joke ok… I got like 98% or something).

Our programming modules were handled in Java and Visual Basic. I’d once again finish most of the practical tests and exams in half the time required and wait for my friends outside. People would come out at the end of the time saying they couldn’t even get their programs to run/work.

While finishing up university I kicked around the idea of doing my own thing, I did what everyone does when they start a band or a business… I brainstormed logos and company names. Who needs a product/service when you’ve got a kickass name and logo right!?
But then landed a job. And the dream went to sleep for a while.
I worked on my craft. I learnt. I grew.

Side projects start

I did a couple of small projects on the side. I built a templating thing for an Industrial Psychologist friend which was awesome. He used to evaluate people and score them per section and then go find a previous report with a similar score and copy and paste their descriptive paragraph and modify it.

I automated this, put in all your scores and it pulled the paragraphs and filled in the blanks. It also had like 3 or 4 versions of each paragraph and alternated between them.

This took his time to generate a report from like 30 minutes to 20 seconds. It spat out a Word Document with his headers, footers, formatting and and and. The dream of “Making life simpler and easier with software” was born after seeing the excitement of the end user when the thing I had created was rocking their world.

That feeling of seeing a client/end user’s eyes light up when you give them a solution to their pain points has become intoxicating over the years. As a bonus… the sometimes pay you money for getting it right too!

My journey took a jump forward in 2012/2013 when a friend came to me and said “do you think you could build an android app that connects into the phonebook and call history to be able to report on that and claim back from your boss at the end of the month”. I had never done any mobile development but as always, I have never been one to back down from a challenge.

Armed with Google and sheer willpower I taught myself basic Android development and wrote the first proof of concept in like a week or two. We sold a few copies of that for something like $1 and made a little ad revenue. But we had no idea what we were doing. That app was featured in a booklet put out by Vodacom in 2013 in an article titled “Vodacom’s top 10 apps for small businesses”.

Our app was listed on the same page as Skype Mobile!

The side project that became the main project

After some modicum of success (we actually made and launched something useful) with the app that same buddy asked my to lend a hand on a sideline system he wanted to build where he need to have people sign on a screen. I helped him out with that and a few other things and then we were off to the races.

That solution had the likes of Provantage Media, Multi Choice, Engen and others using it. It grew slowly over a couple of years and I later stepped out of that business and founded OrganiCode.

OrganiCode

During my time at OrganiCode we’ve done work on systems used by Volkswagen SA, GHD International (yes… the hair straighteners, my wife is still bummed I didn’t get any discounted merchandise. Lol), Cape Town Stock Exchange and a slew of SMMEs.

I’ve had permanent employees and contract employees.

We got battered around by COVID and the resulting lockdowns and even had a big project run aground because there were global shortages of electronic components.

Something a little more personal

I’m 41 now and I’ve been a developer for around 2 decades as a professional.

Being self employed has had some crazy highs and lows, but it happened at just the right time. It has afforded me the freedom I needed to support my wife through our IVF journey (which failed). I was able to be there for her like many other partners would not have been able to.

We then experienced a miraculous pregnancy. And again, being self-employed, I was able to be at every doctor’s appointment. My wife’s doctor stopped practicing in our town during the pregnancy, and we had to drive 65km for appointments. The pregnancy was high risk, which meant a LOT of trips.

My wife was in pre-term labour in hospital for two weeks before the premature birth of our son, who then also spent two weeks in the NICU… once again 65km from home.

For an entire month I basically did no work.

And that was after the IVF anguish that we had just “left behind” us.

As an employee I would have been up shit's creek without a paddle and would not have been able to support my wife through the trials that we’ve had that came by way of failed IVF, high risk pregnancy and premature child.

They always say that your job will be advertised before your obituary hits the papers.
Many of us have found this to be all too common.

When I did have people on the payroll I strived to be different.

The one permanent employee was happy to move for the same amount that he was earning. I paid him more than he was asking for. A contractor was willing to work for a certain hourly rate, I negotiated with the client and got him more than he wanted.

I hope to one day help more people.

Thanks for tuning in.M
Every eye and ear is sincerely appreciated!
Please like the YouTube video, subscribe to the channel.
and if you could follow me and OrganiCode on all social media that would be great.
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Warren