Thread by @cyberomin

Fintech/financial services(banks, payments gateways, switch, etc) companies play a crucial role in our daily lives. Their importance can’t be overemphasised.

In most cases, it could be a matter of life and death.

Bad things could/can happen when transactions fail.

We spent 98% of March in the hospital(story for another day) and one of those days, a family brought in a little baby(<= 1 month old). Hospital wouldn’t admit unless a deposit was made(deposits starts from N150K for most hospitals).

Family was left in the reception while they waited for a transaction to clear. They had one of those transaction declined but account debitted error.

Hospital wouldn’t do a thing - hands are tied. Baby’s father was mad confused. This was almost 5PM and a weekend.

The baby was left in the reception with a nebulizer and I watched the father stand there helpless.

I tried talking to the hospital staff(no dice.)

The man was almost going to lose his child because someone somewhere dropped the ball. It was a painful experience.

He was this close to fighting the account folks at the hospital.

I imagined that was his last cash. He probably borrowed that money from someone(we will never know.) It was painful really painful to watch him.

The man broke down(I don’t do well with tears)

So dear Engineer, SRE, PM, Designer, etc, understand that your work has cascading effect(good or bad), before you ship that new code/product, ask yourself, will this product make or break a family?