Agabî㊙

[Kierra | Data Conversationalist🎙 @iamKierraD]

If you’re wondering how to pivot or land a new role, check this out:

[Tamale @256Rootyherman]

Drug Sniffer dog doing it's intern on airports in Mexico

[Rufybaba @Rufyb]

The popular understanding is that rent is “wasted money”. Well, there are other considerations.

Indeed, rent is not cheap. At 15% annual rent growth, someone paying ₦3.5mm annually today could pay over ₦70mm in rent over 10 years and may still not own anything at the end.

However, buying a house comes with a relatively steep cost as well. And the real question is the opportunity cost.

Say a house costs ₦60mm+. If the person invests the money for over, say 15 years, the return could range between ₦700mm+ to ₦2bn, depending on the asset class invested in. House value will only rise to roughly ₦400mm.

Therefore, in this context, it might be better to rent. However, there is an important caveat. And that caveat is that renting and investing only works if the person actually invests the difference. If the money is spent on lifestyle inflation, buying wins because a house implicitly forces savings discipline (it’s an asset too).

[Michael @OladejiTosin15]

Lesson 2: Growth sometimes comes with fear

Transitioning from one level to another sometimes comes with fear. The higher you go, the less your work depends on the technical depth you’ve built over the years, and the more it depends on new skills; leadership, business development, client management, and balancing competing interests. That shift can feel uncomfortable, especially for someone whose core strength has always been technical.

5yrs ago, when I was about to step into a management role, I was genuinely scared. I kept asking myself:
How do I engage in sales?
How will I build client relationships? (shy boy like me)
How will we meet budget? (I dont have connect oo)
How do I take responsibility for the careers of others? (I mostly give positive feedback. For example, if you tell me your answers after an exam, I’ll say you got it right, even when I know for sure na F you write.)

A lot of questions were running through my mind, even before I officially stepped into the role. Fast forward 2 years later, we significantly exceeded budget back-to-back.

The same business development and client management I was initially afraid of became areas I was thriving in.

Then came the next step: Senior Manager.

Now the stakes were higher, bigger budgets, more leadership responsibility, and greater expectations.
I still remember the first time I sat with the team to discuss our budget and what we planned to achieve. As I walked them through the numbers and targets, I could almost read their faces “Ah, here we go again.” We faced the fear again as a team.
Again and again, we exceeded the targets.
Not because of me alone, but because of the fantastic people I’ve had the privilege of working with.
One of my biggest learnings over the last decade has been the fact that People make the difference.

Even now, two years in as a Senior Manager, I’m already a bit scared of the next level.

Tbh, I fear a lot. But I don’t run away from it.
I’ve come to see fear as a natural response. It shows up when we face new challenges, not because we’re incapable, but because we’re stretching beyond what is familiar. And that’s where growth happens.

My advice to anyone stepping into a managerial role (or any new level)
If you feel scared, it’s normal. Many of us felt the same way. Embrace it. You don’t need to have everything figured out. You just need to keep moving.

Sometimes fear is useful, it pushes you to act, to prepare, to step up. But it becomes a problem when it holds you back from doing anything at all.

Side note
I see many people who genuinely love their work and are doing exceptionally well. Some of you are clearly built for this path as the next generation of Partners and Business Unit Leaders in consulting.
Don’t let fear, external pressure, noise, or even money pull you away from where you’re meant to be. 😎

#CareerLesson

[Michael @OladejiTosin15]

Lesson 3: Linear careers, exponential moments

Most careers grow in a fairly linear way, through experience, skills, and steady progression across levels (entrylevel → midlevel → Manager → SM → executive roles). This is typical in matured industries like banking, insurance, consulting, engineering, etc.

Within these paths, a few people experience non-linear jumps, usually driven by timing, circumstances, or key events (e.g. new business lines, market cycles). We’ve seen cases where people move from Manager/SM to Partner, or become GM/Director in their early 30s.

For example, in Big 4 firms, the current average time to Partner may be ~15 years today. But in the past, when the system was in the growth phase, some people made Partner in ~7 years (with averages closer to ~10 years). That kind of acceleration is much harder to replicate now, not necessarily because people aren’t working as hard, but because timing and industry maturity have changed. We saw similar patterns in banking as the industry evolved.

And the people who benefit most from those moments are usually the ones already operating slightly above their level before the opportunity arrives. Readiness isn’t just I’ve done my job well, it’s I’ve been stretching into the next role’s responsibilities before anyone officially asked me to.”

So why then should I keep putting in the hardwork?

The value of sustained effort isn’t that outcomes will equalise, it’s that it improves your readiness and positioning for when those non-linear moments show up.

That said, it’s also perfectly rational not to pursue extreme levels of effort if that’s not your path. Working very hard comes with real life tradeoffs. Choosing a more balanced, steady path is not a compromise, it can often be the better choice depending on what you value.

And this applies beyond careers. Timing may be outside your control, but readiness isn’t.

Keep putting in the work… you never know when your moment will come.

[The Air You Breathe 🌬️ @BlehisBack]

The noise is surprisingly nowhere near as loud as it was during the Chibok girls’ abduction under the GEJ administration.

Do you understand how horrifying this is???? Teachers, students, and children are being carted away and slaughtered like animals.

No one with a conscience should be silent about this.

The Federal Government is complicit. The Oyo State Government is complicit‼️

[Uncle Ruckus @Emarged]

There’s rice at home.

[gst @wearegst]

Despite producing double the cement Nigeria needs, three companies control the market and have hiked prices to 15,000 naira per bag, making home ownership an impossible dream for you.

[👑 Elizabeth🦋 The Product Babe❤️ @_La_bebee]

My take is to know your purpose especially for those who are building a career…there is a difference between a career and a job.

Be truthful and ask yourself, what phase are you in currently? Are you currently chasing knowledge, experience and trying to build capacity? Or you are chasing the bag? If you are chasing the bag, do you have the skills and knowledge needed to earn the money you want in your industry?

Because it doesn’t make sense to job hop frequently without being grounded in your skills and capacity. Also be strategic about the company you choose to work with, except if your company provides growth and promotion, maximum to stay should be 3 years.

[Michael @OladejiTosin15]

Let me share what I have done in the past as a PmP mapped into the 5 steps from @DrOlaBrown's article.

Quick background so you understand where I'm coming from. During my YCT days, I used to work in some plastic factory hence the reason for my hard palm 😀😅. I also had to borrowed money to pay my first UNILAG school fees. I was visibly pako😀

disclaimer: Me, I’m not trying to be as rich as Dangote or Otedola 😅. far from it.
In fact, I’ve said before that once I hit my personal target of about $2m liquid assets, I’ll probably disappear to Igbotako for community development work and a quieter life.

Also, I am not rich yet. but we thank God

Now, lets see how the steps in the article fit into what I have done ... of course there are other things and steps that help

Step 1: Get into a good university.
I didn't stop at polytechnic. Even at YCT during my ND, I pushed for UNILAG. Finished with First Class in Accounting. BGS in both the department and faculty for both institutions. Over 20 academic awards.

I knew early that my CV has to scream for me given that no one could make the calls for me.

At my Sahara 2016 GMT programme final interview, they projected my CV to the chairman and other board members present at that interview - ND Distinction, First Class, BGS twice, ICAN, ACCA, 20+ awards.

The Chairman and the entire board couldn't even ask me a question. He just said: "Do you have any life? Did you have fun in school?" I can see how impressed and couldnt just say know...I knew I already got the job.

Step 2: Work in financial services.
I moved into consulting, focused on financial services and a very niche complex area (actuarial and quant). And I don't just deliver on client engagements. I want them to see the difference.
Two of the biggest insurance companies CEO in Nigeria wrote to Partner about how exceptional I was on a projects..That actually added more case to a back to back double promotion

I have slept in the office because of client deliverables. not once, not twice as a Senior and as a Manager.
There is no substitute for hard work. I keep telling younger ones this. You cannot shortcut excellence when you don't have connections backing you up.

Step 3: Realise it will take longer.
I play the long game. One reason I stayed back in Nigeria is because I can see the massive opportunities ahead in the space I work in.
The difference in my earnings over the last decade vs now is significant and it's still very far from what's possible.

Today I told some LASU students if they could imagine that some folks earn ₦30m+ per month in this Lagos?
The good thing about the path I chose is that seeing those numbers ahead is always comforting. The ceiling is high. You just have to be patient enough to climb.

Step 4: Grow your network.
Naturally, I am a very shy person. Extremely introverted. But in the last 5 years, I've pushed myself to connect with clients, colleagues, and people outside my comfort zone.
We've won engagements just because of a presentation I did for some years ago.

I make myself available for some pro bono work. My last IFRS 9 video took over 12 hours to produce, even though you all see 4 hours of content.
Some clients call me outside work hours. I focus on how to make them look good with their boss too. Networking is really just giving.

Step 5: Be aggressive about self development.
This is the biggest one for me.
ACCA. ACA. CFA. FRM. SCR. And now actuarial exams IFOA and SOA. Passed 14 papers across both in 3 years. Also failed 10 papers in that same period.
Failing is part of it lol. I'm quite aggressive.

Last December, I was in the office from Dec 26 to 4AM on January 1st writing a 96hour SOA assessment. I actually spent over 80 hours on it.
That means I literally started the new year in the office.
Extreme? Yes. I don't encourage anyone to do that. But that's what it took.

Working your way out of poverty comes with massive tradeoffs. And it's perfectly rational to decide not to do it that way. But if you choose this path, know that momentum compounds.
The early years are the hardest. The loneliest. But every exam, every late night, every relationship you build, it stacks up.

May be when I buy my AMG G 63😎, I will come back and confirm that yes it's possible. for now lets keep trusting the process.

I'm not even rich yet. But I'm always thankful for how far I've come. Grateful for everyone that has been part of my joinery...friends, family, colleagues , scholarships companies, bosses etc

TBT to my 2020 birthday...one clown had to remind me how I be pako for undergrate

[Habeeb @techyprince]

You tech people, normalize staying true to your path. I remember when friends would see me after a long time and asked "you still dey work for that company for Ikeja? And I said yes. They be like " you like that place o" in my mind, I had no reason to jump, I just remained, no need changing something just cos others are doing it or it's the trendy thing. I was there for 4 years 8 months. When the time was right, I left. Guess what, I returned again to spend another over 2 years before migrating. Good relationships and doors always open.

You need to understand that the vast majority of people are bad at decision making, they make bad decisions and then justify it. And for some, they truly needed the change because their situations demand it.

You need to figure these things out on time, no let them deceive you.

[Akintola Steve @Akintola_steve]

Was just thinking yesterday…

Do you know X probably processes hundreds of millions of dollars every 2 weeks?

Across multiple countries.
Different banks.
Different currencies.
Different payment rails.
Different settlement systems.

And somehow we barely ever hear:
“Payment didn’t arrive”
or
“Global payout issue”

That’s actually insane engineering when you think deeply about it.

Because moving money at such scale is just something else.

Moving it reliably, across different banking systems worldwide, without the whole thing turning into reconciliation issues ?

I genuinely want someone from the payments infra side to explain how systems at this scale are even designed.

How on earth are systems like this even designed?

[Akintola Steve @Akintola_steve]

When building distributed systems, people don’t realize they’ve already shipped something that might give them a crazy production issue.

For instance, you save data to your database, then publish an event to a message broker. Simple, right?

Until it isn’t.

I'll break down "Transaction Outbox Pattern" using a real-world example.

With all today's Twitter gbasgbos so I'll use the same e-commerce to explain the pattern;

So, imagine you’re building an e-commerce system. A customer places an order:

You write the order into your database.
You publish an “OrderCreated” event to Kafka (or RabbitMQ).

Now here’s the problem: these two steps are NOT atomic.

If your DB write succeeds but your event publish fails:

1. Your system now has an order that other services (inventory, payment, shipping) don’t even know exists.
If your event publish succeeds, but your DB write fails:

2. Other services react to an order that was never actually created.

This is how systems quietly corrupt themselves.
And no… wrapping both in a single transaction is not possible because:

1. Your database and your message broker are two completely different systems.

2. Distributed transactions (2PC) are slow, fragile, and rarely worth the complexity.

So what do you do?

This is where the Transaction Outbox Pattern comes in.
Instead of trying to write to the DB and publish an event at the same time, you change the flow:

You write your business data (e.g., Order)

In the SAME database transaction, you also write an “event record” into an outbox table

Now, both operations succeed or fail together. No inconsistency.

Then separately:
1. A background worker (or polling service) reads from the outbox table

2. Publishes events to your message broker

3. Marks them as processed

Now your system becomes:
Eventually consistent,
Fault-tolerant,
Retryable without duplication (if done right),
Real-world example:

Say you’re running a marketplace like Jumia.

When an order is placed:
Orders service writes to the orders table
Same transaction writes to outbox table →
{
type: "OrderCreated", payload: {...}
}

Then a worker:

Picks that row
Publishes to Kafka
Updates status → “processed”

Is Kafka down?

No problem, the event stays in the outbox and retries later.

If your app crashes?
No problem, the event is still in the DB.

This pattern solves:

Lost events

Partial failures
Inconsistent state across services

It’s one of those patterns that looks like it's stressing you out until your system scales and you realize it’s the only reason things aren’t falling apart.

In the next threads, I’ll show:
What the traditional (broken) approach looks like visually

What the outbox pattern flow looks like
Why one silently fails while the other survives real-world chaos

[Agabî㊙ @Agabi_ML]

@Akintola_steve Dem no dey tell person, Me wey still dey think of entities and attributes to add since our last class on Saturday 🥲

[Akintola Steve @Akintola_steve]

Flutterwave lost over ₦21 billion in one glitch back in October 2023.

Not pure hacking.
Not just fraud.
A quiet technical mistake at NIBSS, combined with issues on Flutterwave’s side, turned into a massive exposure.

This true story still teaches every Nigerian engineer and founder hard lessons in 2026.

Let’s break it down properly.

[Ben X @Benn_X1]

Yes. You still can't build Jumia in 2 weeks. It does not matter the AI tool you use.
Jumia evolved into the complex system it is now through many years of iteration.
A small component like the order return or cancellation process cannot be replicated in 2 weeks.

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system" - John Gall

[Morris Monye @Morris_Monye]

I saw this performance for the first time as a child in the early 90s and was so mesmerized that I thought he wasn’t human.

Imagine those that saw it in the 80s.

[Chisom Agbafor @ChisomAgbafor]

Honestly, I didn’t expect this when I started drafting wills.

Writing a will for a Nigerian woman is different from writing a will for a Nigerian man.

Women are usually thinking about protection, how to protect their kids, even the rebellious ones.

Men are more direct, they’re focused on who deserves what. For them, it feels more like Judgment Day.

[Agabî㊙ @Agabi_ML]

@Akintola_steve Thanks for the feedback! I work in e-commerce operations, so I just listed things based on how our website works at my job. I'll do better next time.

[Agabî㊙ @Agabi_ML]

@Akintola_steve Cart:
Quantity per item, product subtotal per item, cart total and

User:
Name, phone number, email address, ID and full address.

Payment:
Amount paid, payment method, Payment status (successful, failed, pending) and payment date.

[Agabî㊙ @Agabi_ML]

@Akintola_steve E-commerce system- Entities and attributes

Order:
Order number, delivery date, order status, order note, customers history , payment method, total amount and shipment method.

Product:
Price,quantity, product name, product description, product image and product review.