If you think of the best software engineers, a probable assumption is that they had an exciting introduction to the craft, trying to solve a complex problem or another.
But Fanan Dala’s story is unlike this. Dala was 12 years old when he began writing code, and like the average 12-year-old without a computer, he learnt to code by writing on paper.
“I grew up watching a lot of sci-fi movies, cause my dad loves Star Wars and Star Trek. So, I grew up with a strong affinity for technology.” Dala tells Techpoint Africa.
“By the time I was eight, I already knew that I wanted to build things, and I wanted to automate a lot of things. Because I felt automation was the future, and if we could automate a lot of things, it would lead to a better standard of living.”
With this love of automation and having overcome his initial trouble with mathematics, a young Dala decided to work on a project that would simplify mathematics for his classmates.
“I had friends who had a bit of an issue with maths, and so I wanted to work on a website like Khan Academy to help teach people maths. I also chose to volunteer at a secondary school during one of my holidays, and it was there that I got my first internship at a real estate company.”
Automating systems is the first step
Dala’s tech journey started with an internship at a real estate company. He describes it as one of the places where he could make an immediate impact.
“It was a real estate company, and they were uploading listings, and there was a bottleneck with uploading the listings manually. At the time, combined uploads at 10 employees came up to 100 listings per week,” Dala says.
“I automated the entire process, and we were able to get to 1,000 listings per day from 100 listings per week.”
Dala’s goal in joining Realtor.ng was to understand what being a Software Engineer in a professional environment looked like. He was curious about what it would take to be a Software Engineer.
It was during this time that the desire to work at one of the MAANG—Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google (formerly FAANG) — companies began to fester in Dala’s heart.
Dala notes that he wanted to join one of these companies because it would be an excellent opportunity to validate his skills and provide him with enough room for growth.
“We are talking about the highest volumes of data and billions of users. I had optimised the system when at Realtor.ng, which was pretty impressive, but I wanted to know how well I would do when I was with millions and billions of data,” Dala says.
The second step is to keep moving despite the nos.
Dala describes his first attempt at getting into Meta as “way harder than I anticipated.”
At a time when anti-immigrant sentiments were rising in North America and Western Europe, a Nigerian’s dream to get into a global company hung in the balance.
“I already got the sense that this was a four or five-year journey. I made a tweet about it when I was about to graduate, that I am about to start my five-year journey of getting into a FAANG, because I had heard stories about it,” Dala says.
After graduating in 2019, he began a series of applications to Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other global tech companies. But he kept getting rejections.
“I couldn’t understand because I felt that at the time I had built a lot of really great things, and I had shown that I had strong technical capabilities. Yet I kept getting no and no and no. I also had a first class in electrical engineering, so I couldn’t really understand why it was so hard for me to get in.”
But Dala kept moving. Instead of wallowing in the pool of rejections, he decided to build projects that could be deemed undeniable successes and would prepare him for his eventual entry into a MAANG company.
“I put in the work where I could. I made sure that I was always doing very excellent work I also tried to contribute to open source projects and I would write a bunch of articles,” Dala says.
With his philosophy of doing excellent work, Dala, alongside his friends, built two startups: Akiddie (featured on CNN) and Flok. He also worked at prominent startups like Tix Africa.
“Working on these projects helped my journey because I was the lead engineer on all of these projects; it pushed me a lot to figure out how to do challenging and technical tasks. It also helped give me a bit of visibility.”
As if on cue, in 2022, Meta, Amazon, and several other global companies reached out to Dala without requiring an application.
The rollercoaster of finally getting in
In a movie, this would be the crux of the protagonist’s story after a series of rejections. But, for Dala, it was not as straightforward.
After scheduling an interview with Meta, rumours of a hiring freeze within the company began to spread. Eventually, the rumours materialised and Dala’s interview was cancelled.
Dala recalls being devastated.
Shortly after, he got an offer from Lemfi, where he worked as a senior software engineer for two years.
“I took the job because it was my favourite programming language, and I felt I would get a good opportunity to process huge amounts of data because it is a financial tech company.”
In 2024, when Meta came calling again, Dala was ready. He spent months on several rounds of interviews and tests, and finally got an offer a week after his final interview.
“I was ready. I had the experience and the proven impact at all the places I had worked. So all of that just came together, and I think from then on, it’s been looking better and better,” Dala tells Techpoint Africa.
