Post by @bonaogeto

Some of the best software engineers I know started out as teachers. Day 338 I have three friends who studied education at university. They wanted to teach, and teaching was still something they cared about. But they also looked at the reality around them. There are thousands of trained teachers competing for a limited number of opportunities. Getting placed can take time, and in the meantime, many graduates find themselves taking small gigs that might pay KES 10,000-12,000 a month. So they asked a different question: “What else can I learn while I'm waiting?” They discovered tech. They started learning how to code, building projects and developing software engineering skills. One of them eventually landed a software engineering job paying around KES 50,000 a month. And I remember him asking: “Wait… people actually make this kind of money?” This isn't a video about saying teaching is a bad career. It isn't. It's about understanding that your degree doesn't have to be the only skill you have. If you're a teacher, you can learn software development. You can learn AI. You can learn data. You can learn digital skills. You can even combine education + technology and become a coding instructor, EdTech founder, curriculum developer or build products for schools. And the beautiful thing is: learning another skill doesn't mean abandoning your first one. Your education degree doesn't disappear because you learned to code. You simply become more versatile. So if you're a teacher waiting for employment, a graduate struggling to find opportunities, or anyone who feels stuck because the career you studied for isn't moving fast enough: Don't just wait. Use the waiting time to build another skill. Sometimes the opportunity you're waiting for isn't the one you need. Maybe you need to build another door. And that's exactly what we help people do at McTaba Labs, build practical technology skills that can open up another path. Your degree is one skill. It doesn't have to be your only one.