Welcome to a new series of blog posts to shine a light on the amazing people in our community. For our debut post, we’re excited to introduce you to Happiness Ncube!

And yes, that’s his real name! 😄

Meet Happiness

Happiness comes from Domboshawa, a small village 40 km North-East of the capital city of Zimbabwe, Harare.

He spent 15 years as a Zimbabwe Republic Police Officer before becoming a software engineer. He joined GitStart in 2021 and has been a part of our community ever since, working on various projects in Flutter, Kotlin, Java, and C# and taking the mantle of Project Manager, leading a team of 7 developers from 5 different countries.

Getting to know Happiness

We had a chat with Happiness to learn more about his journey, his biggest achievements, and his favorite projects at GitStart.

Tell us a bit about your journey. How did you go from being a policeman to a software engineer?

I spent 15 years as a Zimbabwe Republic Police Officer 👮‍♂️. After some years I started teaching my self Java and Android programming. I taught myself using books and videos. I practiced by developing some hobby Android applications and APIs. I then attended college where I got a Diploma in Computer Engineering. I started working on the country’s Traffic Accident System, where we developed our system using C# on the .NET core framework. I joined GitStart right after this as a software engineer, and one and a half years later was promoted to Project Manager!

When did you know you wanted to be a developer?

The First time I played FIFA on a computer, I was so amazed that the players were programmed to play the way they did. This fascinated me, and I decided to learn how to do it myself.

What has GitStart’s impact on your life been?

Incredible! I have built really cool stuff for international clients and I’m working in a super diverse team (7 team members from 5 different countries!). I have learned and grown a lot at GitStart.

Biggest Achievement in GitStart?

Being promoted to Project Manager, by far. It gave me the confidence that I was doing some good work and a lot of joy knowing it was being noticed. It’s a source of great pride to know that tens of thousands of users around the world are using my code! Also, this journey led me to create my first open-source project, which has received some stars, marking another significant milestone.

What tips do you wish you could give your younger self?

First: never stop learning. Then, always ask why. Thirdly, always plan your work before opening the IDE. Fourthly, there is always a better way. And lastly, fully understand the problem before solving it.

Meet other members of our community

If you enjoyed this post, stay tuned for more stories from our community. We have a lot of amazing people with incredible stories to share!

“In Afghanistan, it is not common for a girl to own a laptop. I really wanted one so I sewed clothes with my mother until I saved enough.” - Get to know Wajiha’s story.