Tech

I've spent the last few years helping teams set up and manage container orchestration systems, and Kubernetes often comes up as the go-to solution. It's powerful, ubiquitous, and backed by a massive community. But every time someone mentions deploying their app to 'the cloud,' Kubernetes is the first thing out of their mouth. Here's the thing: you might not need it. In fact, rushing into Kubernetes can complicate your life more than it simplifies it. Let me walk you through why, drawing from a few projects I've worked on where scaling back actually moved us forward faster.

I've spent the last few years helping small businesses in Lagos migrate their operations to the cloud, and every time, I run into the same thing: a mix of excitement fueled by flashy ads and outright confusion about what it all means. Cloud computing sounds like magic - infinite storage, lightning-fast servers, all without buying hardware. But strip away the marketing gloss, and it's just a way to rent computing power over the internet. No sorcery, just practical engineering that can save time and money if you use it right.

I've been in the trenches of production incidents more times than I can count, and let me tell you, nothing tests your debugging skills like when the system's crumbling and everyone's staring at you for answers. One particularly memorable meltdown happened a couple of years back at a previous gig. We were running a high-traffic e-commerce platform, and right in the middle of Black Friday sales, our payment gateway integration started rejecting every transaction. Pages were timing out, customers were furious, and the ops team was pinging me every five minutes. The entire business was on fire, metaphorically speaking, and my laptop felt like it was overheating from the stress alone. In moments like that, you can't afford to panic or chase every rabbit hole. You need a workflow that cuts through the chaos. Over the years, I've honed a debugging approach that's saved my sanity - and more than a few deadlines.

I've been tinkering with side projects for years, and one of the biggest decisions I always wrestle with is where to host them. Back in the early 2010s, self-hosting on a cheap VPS felt like the rebellious choice - you got full control without Big Tech breathing down your neck. Fast forward to 2025, and the landscape has shifted dramatically. Cloud providers have made deployment so seamless that self-hosting often feels like swimming upstream with rocks in your pockets. But is it still worth the hassle? Let's break it down based on what I've learned from launching a few apps myself.

I've been part of small engineering teams where building the product felt like a constant race against time. Security? It often got pushed to the bottom of the to-do list, right after that last bug fix or feature tweak. But then something happens - a minor vulnerability report from a scanner, or worse, a real breach in someone else's app that hits the news - and suddenly everyone realizes ignoring it isn't an option. As a developer who's bootstrapped apps in startups, I know the drill: you can't afford a full-time security engineer, but you can't afford to skip basics either. The key is a pragmatic approach - focusing on what actually protects your app without overwhelming your small team.

I've spent a good chunk of my career building software that has to run in places where the basics aren't always reliable. Think about it: in many parts of Nigeria, power cuts happen multiple times a day, internet connections drop like they're allergic to stability, and even the hardware can feel like it's on borrowed time. A few years back, I was leading a team on a mobile banking app for rural users. We launched with all the bells and whistles, but on day one, users in the north couldn't even log in because the network decided to ghost everyone. That failure taught me a hard lesson - resilience isn't a nice-to-have; it's survival in unreliable environments.

I've been working remotely as a developer from Lagos for over three years now, and it's changed my life in ways I never expected. Back in 2019, I was stuck in the daily grind of commuting through Lagos traffic, dodging potholes and okadas, just to code in a stuffy office with unreliable power. Then the pandemic hit, and suddenly, remote work became the norm. For many Nigerian developers, it's not just a trend - it's a lifeline to better opportunities. But let's be real: the reality is a mix of freedom and frustration that doesn't always match the glossy LinkedIn posts.