Timothy Owolabi

Building and shipping real AI-powered systems, backend, architecture, and everything in between. building

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

@alexxubyte interesting.. in which case would you use one instead of the other?

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

@asemota learnt this from one of MyronGolden’s video on YouTube, 9 is completion and truth, everything always comes down to the truth, and the truth cannot be corrupted.

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

@elonmusk I hope you are not about to do what I am thinking 🙂🚀

[Puneet Patwari @system_monarch]

I've been a backend Engineer for 12+ years. Today, I'm a Principal Engineer at Atlassian.

I've designed systems that handle millions of requests. Sat on both sides of system design interviews.

Reviewed more architecture docs than I can count.

Starting today, I'm breaking down the fundamentals of scaling for the next 25 days.

If you're learning system design bookmark this thread, you're going to get a lot of learning from this.

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

Genuinely grateful I went deeper execution plans, query optimization, understanding what the DB is actually doing. It changed how I think as a backend engineer.
Looks simple on the surface. Serious depth underneath.

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

SQL is not a beginner skill. Most people just stop at beginner level.

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

Saving this for later 📌

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

@sama Cancer cure

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

Does anyone else get irked when someone starts a suggestion with "at my former company"? Why should that carry any weight? The name of your old employer is not an argument. If the idea is good, prove it on its own merits, show the results. That's the only credential that matters.

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

@Its_Nova1012 On a more serious note, go beyond the engineering.

Learn the domain you work in deeply. Communicate clearly. Understand how the financial numbers connect. Position yourself as someone who truly gets the business, speaks to stakeholders, and sees the full picture.

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

@Its_Nova1012 Backup plan: Standup comedian 🙂

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

"We have logs" is not the same as observability 😂

My week almost started terribly, but a proper monitoring setup caught the issue before it became a crisis. Alert fired, fix deployed, users unbothered.

Logs tell you what broke. Monitoring helps you stop the break. Set it up 🚀

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

@r0ck3t23 I don’t think anyone should still be spending time wondering whether AI will affect their field. That time is better spent learning how to use it. No matter how physical or human-centered your work is, AI can still help you work smarter and more effectively.

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

My friend and I were talking about this recently, some people now leave all the thinking to be done by AI, forgetting that no matter how smart AI becomes it should only be seen as a tool. The real brain is still the human mind built from all your mistakes & experiences lived.

[Dami-Defi @DamiDefi]

The CEO of Anthropic just admitted AI could make humans stupider. Here is exactly what he said and what to do instead.

Dario Amodei did not dodge the question.

Asked directly whether humans will become stupider as a species from outsourcing thinking to AI, the Anthropic CEO said yes.

If deployed carelessly, absolutely yes.

He also said de-skilling in coding is already showing up in their own studies.

This is not a critic of AI talking. This is the person building it.

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

Asking questions is how you protect the project, earn the room's trust, and build confidence at the same time.

I'm curious, how did you find your voice in technical meetings? Was there a moment, a question, or a person that helped it click?

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

Earlier in my career I struggled with speaking up during technical discussions and meetings, especially when we were talking about a new system or feature.

The shift that changed everything for me? Asking questions.

Here's what I learned…🧵

[Timothy Owolabi @sunkylab]

Staying quiet feels safe. It's not.

Every assumption you don't challenge in the room becomes a constraint you inherit in the code.

The rework, the missed requirement, the "we should have caught that earlier" it almost always traces back to a question nobody asked.