Macbobby (Ghostmac) Chibuzor’s journey in tech shows the power of curiosity, persistence, and learning on your own. In this second part of our AMTES Alumni Series interview, he talks about how he balances school with building real-world skills, handles challenges in the fast-changing world of DeFi and blockchain, and solves problems in high-pressure situations.
He shares how he managed infrastructure worth millions, built tools to solve his own problems, and learned to grow through communities and smart habits. Macbobby also gives advice for students and early-career engineers on gaining experience, building a reputation, and aiming to compete globally.
If you missed it, check out the first part of this interview here to see how Macbobby started his journey into Mechatronics and self-directed learning.
The next question that I want to ask is about how you balance your academics with learning tech, but I think you’ve sort of answered that already because you said you prioritize your career over academics, but do you think you still want to answer that?
Yeah, there are different ways to balance it. I think it’s a matter of personal behaviour. If you understand yourself very well, you would know how to balance it. What has worked for some people I know, like myself, is doing our work in school. Some of us would take our laptops to school, so any small free time we have, we work. Then, when any class starts, we pause and continue with the class. I remember somebody who left the exam hall because they had a work meeting.
Wow!
He already had his laptop, his MTN Mi-Fi, and everything in class. He just submitted early, and then he left. I remember somebody from my set who also asked me this question. What he did was, during the holidays, he would focus on tech, then during the session, he would postpone tech to focus on school. He was an A student and really good. The problem with that, though, was that when he came back to tech from school, he wouldn’t remember some of the things he’d learnt. It was a repetitive cycle for him. He came to me for advice, and I told him to pick one master. We can’t serve two at the same time.
We found a middle ground, which was for him to have assigned times for what he wants to do. We found he could study at midnight or immediately after a class. Afterwards, he’d just focus on tech and then go back to class the next day. After class, he studies everything again, and then he goes back to work. He found his own balance.
What worked for me was befriending the smart students. They helped me write summaries of classes. I attend classes. I don’t miss classes because having at least 70% attendance is important, so I don’t miss my classes. I attend, I pay attention, I do tests and everything.
Sometimes I pay to get my assignments done. I also pay somebody to draft a reading timetable for me. When he drafts it, he would give me the resources and the things to read. I don’t take notes in class; I use the smart people’s notes. And then I force them to come around towards exam period to read. I provide food, and generator, and everything.
We’ll read and they’ll drill me. By morning, I’ll remember everything. That was what worked for me. It’s a last resort kind of thing; it’s not really the best, but I end up reading towards exam period instead of like 2-3 weeks, one month before exams. So I think it’s a personal thing.
I’ve gotten similar answers from some of the past interviewees as well. I think one of the other alumni I interviewed, MKM, said something similar as well regarding doing what works for you. And he also gave an example of someone who would wake up in the morning, do tech for a bit, then go to school. In between classes, he’d do tech-related stuff. When he gets back home, he’d read for a bit, then do tech. So yeah, as you said, it varies between people.
About what you said on academics, bringing your friends over, providing what they needed, and them helping you with your studies, it also reminded me of something one of the past alumni I interviewed, Bisiriyu Babatunde, mentioned. He graduated with a first class, and said that one of the things that helped him achieve that was having financial security. I’ve had people who said something similar, so that’s understandable. Do you have something else to add?
The only thing is, I experienced challenges with mine because there were times when I would take a month off from work to read and write exams. Next thing, I’ll hear something like you’ve already shown us that we can work one month without you, so there’s no point moving forward with you. And then they’ll just drop me off later. It happened twice. It was really bad. I could not list them on my CV because I worked with them for five months before exams.
Ouch. That’s crazy.
Yeah.
Okay, this is question 6. The call is supposed to be for an hour. I just want to confirm if you still have free time, and we can go over time for a bit?
Sure.
Okay. The next question is, working in DeFi and blockchain comes with its own set of challenges. What have been some of the most exciting or difficult problems that you’ve had to solve?
One challenge is that the DeFi space evolves a lot. You are not only keeping up with the engineering side, which is growing so rapidly, but you’re also keeping up with the user aspect of things. The traders, everything. You’re keeping up with everything else. So you’re learning the new stack for engineering, you also have day-to-day work, you’re learning new tools that are released, you are thinking of how to integrate them into your existing stuff, the things you have to remove, replace, fix and all of that.
There are also lots of users using what you are building. So if you make one slight mistake, you are going to answer for it. You are going to hear people complain. Once you make a little mistake, people notice it and complain. Guess what? They’re moving to a competitor platform.
Those are the most important challenges that I face daily: the growing landscape, growing along with it, and working on eggshells with your users.
That’s very intense.
Yeah, I’ve solved quite a number of problems. More recently at work, I handled a cost-related issue. It was one of those situations where leadership — the board, CEO, and co-founders came together to figure out a problem in the company. Maybe the company wasn’t making enough, or even when it was, the high operating costs were overshadowing the progress being made. A few months back, we needed to cut costs in engineering. The easiest way to do that would’ve been to lay off some team members. For instance, if everyone on the engineering team earns about a million naira each, laying off two people saves two million instantly. Some higher-ups see that as the simplest fix. But in our case, we’re just five engineers. Three of us handle the backend. I manage the infrastructure, another manages the blockchain side, and the last handles integrations. So firing even one person would be like losing an entire team.
I was tasked with cutting costs, and since we couldn’t reduce spending through hiring, we decided to focus on our infrastructure. There were a few things we already had that weren’t really necessary, so I started cleaning things up. I sat down and went through the entire launchpad, looking for anything I could remove without affecting how things ran. There’s a saying that a garden isn’t complete until you’ve removed everything you can, and it still thrives, and that’s exactly how I approached it. I looked for services that could be removed or merged without breaking anything, and carefully figured out how to make those changes efficiently.
At the time, I was managing infrastructure worth about $143 million in production, so I couldn’t afford to have any user complaints during the revamp. I completed the project successfully, and while I’d have to check my report sheets for the exact figure, I remember saving around $5,400 in costs.
Wow! That’s crazy.
Yeah, I was happy when we completed that project. I think I should add that to my CV soon.
You should, because I’m just here, stunned. That’s huge.
Yeah.
Wow, sorry, let me get myself together. Next question. We’re almost at the end. This is question seven. You’re clearly someone who likes to build and learn beyond the 9:00 to 5:00. Was open source something you sought out as a way to grow faster, or was it something that was natural to your journey over time as a developer?
Can I say the two are actually correct?
First of all, we’ve moved past that stage of “learn something, build five projects, and then apply for jobs.” We’re now in a space where you learn something and immediately use it to solve a problem you care about. You need a reason for learning, not just learning because you want to switch careers. If you’re switching careers, there should be something driving you. Sure, money can be a reason, but if that’s your only motivation, you’ll probably face more challenges than successes.
But when you’re learning because you have a problem you genuinely want to solve, like needing to build a specific app or tool, you approach it differently. You learn what you need and start applying it right away. And thanks to AI, that gap between learning and doing is getting smaller. So right now, we’ve moved from just learning to learning with purpose. Now, it’s not just about knowing how to do something, you mostly need to know what to do. AI can help you figure out the how. That’s the space we’re in now.
For me, open source was a way to grow. But at some point, it became less about participating for the sake of it and more about solving problems I actually had. I realized I needed software that could run a command or an app that could handle something specific. Right now, what’s running through my mind is: yes, there are thousands of to-do apps, it’s probably the most common beginner project when learning new concepts. But I can’t point to one that really integrates with my life and makes things easy.
For example, say a friend messages me on WhatsApp about plans for tomorrow. In a normal to-do app, I’d have to quit WhatsApp, open the app, type everything in, set the time, set the location, and confirm the task before it’s recorded. That’s a lot of friction. What I’ve been thinking is: what if I could just copy and paste the message into the app, leave it running in the background, and the app automatically schedules it for me?
And for tasks without a fixed time, like next week, I need to go to the bank for my BVN, but I might not know the exact day yet. I just want the app to remember it. Then, a few days later, the app could prompt me: “Do you want to schedule this now?” By that point, I know when I can go, so I just confirm. No re-editing, no hassle. That’s the kind of problem I want to solve.
To build this, I’ll need mobile app knowledge, which I’ve been learning in Swift. Once I’m done with Swift, I’ll build the app for myself. If others are interested, they can download it, and I might even earn some money. That’s why the idea of “build five projects for your GitHub” is shifting to “build a product that solves your own problem.” Once you do that, jobs come naturally. People see your work, you’re already managing a product, and opportunities follow.
That’s that. I know I’ve said a lot.
Your responses are filled with so much value, you can take as much time as you need.
Yeah, I’ve answered question 7.
Yes, you have. The next question is, what is one part of your journey that people don’t usually see or ask about, but you feel was really important to who you are today?
Hmmm, learning how to learn. That’s something I realized is just as important as learning any specific skill. One time, I took a popular course on Coursera, even though I was already learning tech. That course taught me how the way you approach learning can make all the difference. It determines whether you’ll remember something two or three years from now, and whether what you’re learning is truly useful at the moment.
Sometimes people see that I can write in multiple languages or use different tools effectively, and they ask me, “How do you have time to learn all of this?” I tell them it’s not about sitting down and trying to master everything at once. Some things you will naturally learn over time, but you shouldn’t try to learn everything immediately. Trying to do so can actually cause problems.
For example, when I was starting out in tech, I wanted to learn back-end, front-end, and mobile development all at once. Imagine if I had put all of that on my CV. By the time I applied for a backend job, I would have been seen as a generalist. Companies want a backend developer, not a generalist without experience. If you have only one or two years of experience, it’s not enough to justify listing everything. But if you had ten years, maybe working on mobile at Apple, backend at Google, then it makes sense.
The lesson here is that some things you will eventually know, but you shouldn’t try to learn everything right now. Focus is key. People often don’t see how I pick what to learn or how I actually go about learning, but that process is very important.
I have a mentor who taught me this. When we set out to learn Rust, this guy bought a notebook. He has a laptop, a MacBook. He has an iPhone. He has easy digital writing materials. He has Notion and everything, and he knows how to use all of these things. He could also easily just buy an iPad, if he wanted to use a pen, I mean, that’s what I would do if I wanted to learn something by writing. But he goes and buys an 80-leaves note. He did the same thing with Golang. He sat down with this notebook and started learning Golang. His theory was that by the time he reaches the last page of that that notebook, he would get a job in Golang.
I learned Golang in almost a month, but for him, it took three to four months because he was working at the same time. By the time he got towards the end of that notebook, he landed a Golang job in the US. Even today, if you wake him up, he doesn’t need to review much; he’s internalized it completely. If he does want to review, he just opens his notes. Writing was what worked for him, and that’s how he learned so deeply.
When I learn, I follow a slightly different approach. I first structure everything, create an outline, a table of contents, or a framework of what I need to know. Then I show it to him and ask, “Is there anything I’m missing?” He points out gaps, and I add them. Only then do I start learning, step by step, methodically, until I finish. Sometimes I don’t even finish before I land a job in that field, and other times I complete it fully, even if there are opportunities along the way. He also sometimes ignores jobs until he reaches the end of the notebook.
Everyone has a method that works for them. My approach is unique, and not many people know about.
I learned another approach from Habib Shopeju back in university. He dedicated one hour per day to learning, and after a year, he celebrated that milestone. I thought, “Wow, that’s amazing.” After he graduated, he started doing two or three hours per day. I adopted the same method and have been using it ever since.
Some things I do go deeper than most people. For example, with CLI tools, most people learn only what they need, like Git, where some know only six commands. I added Git to my learning curriculum and went deeper. I defined everything I needed to learn, like the first ten commands to create pull requests, and so on. I go step by step until I fully understand it. That’s just how I approach learning.
Another important thing is my setup. Back in the day, my team recognized that having the right gadgets improves quality of life and productivity. They even gave me a dollar card to invest in anything that would make me more productive. So I invested in things like a camera, a chair, a monitor, a laptop, and even accessories like the best chargers.
Some people might see this as just spending money, but for me, it matters. For example, my keyboard calls me about 50% of the time; it’s what motivates me to come and work because I genuinely enjoy typing on it. These small details make a huge difference in how effectively and happily I learn and work, but not a lot of people realize that.
Wow, I’m not sure if this directly relates to your response, but while reading Atomic Habits, one point that really stood out to me was about building systems that make it easier to achieve your goals. So when you mentioned that your keyboard motivates you to come to work, it really reminded me of that idea.
I think we have two questions left. The next one seems similar to the previous, but I’ll go ahead and ask it anyway. This is Question 9. What advice would you give to students or early-career engineers who feel stuck between where they are and where they want to be?
Okay, I should have prepared for this question. I skimmed through the first few questions before joining and didn’t see this one. The advice I’d give is simple: do, don’t just plan. Don’t just sit and think; take action. If you’re deciding whether to go into front-end, back-end, or something else, just start with one. Often, by the time you begin, you’ll figure out what actually works for you.
It’s also important to build your reputation while building your skills. In software engineering, for example, one hand is writing code and pushing to GitHub, while the other is sharing your work on LinkedIn or Twitter. You have to put yourself out there; now isn’t the time to be humble.
I remember a friend of mine whose bio lists Go, Rust, Python, Head of Engineering at XYZ, founder of ABC and a lot of things. I asked him why, and he said, “I need to advertise myself. I have to be loud about what I can do.” That exposure works. You’re building skills, but you also need to let people know what you’re capable of.
Another thing I tell students is that you can start gaining years of experience while you’re still in school. In engineering, for instance, programs like SWEP, SIWES 1, and SIWES 2 let you build practical experience. If you’re smart about it, you can accumulate 2–3 years of hands-on experience even before graduation.
The way I approached mine was strategic. I saw SWEP as an opportunity to double down on both software and a bit of hardware, I was doing both at the time. I established that I was in mechatronics, connected with a lot of people, and made sure they knew what I was working on. During SWEP, I attended the practical sessions at least twice at each location, and if I really liked a place, I’d go all five days. At the end, everyone still got similar scores. I think it was an A or B, I don’t exactly remember.
By the next year, I had already made enough connections and gained enough knowledge in mechatronics to start applying for internships. For my SIWES 1, I got placed at Centurion Systems through a contact I had made the year before while networking with other mechatronics people around Nigeria. That opened even better opportunities.
For SIWES 2, IT, I didn’t even have to apply widely. I simply reached out to someone at the internship placement office, and they placed me somewhere. I only had to physically go there twice. Dr Durodola should not catch me. It was mostly virtual. They were paying me a stipend, not much, 75,000 naira, but I knew others in IT got similar or even lower amounts. Some people in mechatronics were paying to do their internships, some paying as much as 960,000 naira.
I did this for about two months, and during that time, I got a job offer to become a lead software engineer. The founder of the company that had been paying me for IT even advised me to switch. I took that advice, and the little blockchain knowledge I had gained there ended up helping me secure the role I got after graduation. Everything just seemed to fall into place.
So my advice is: don’t wait for school to teach you everything. Learn on your own. Plan your path and aim to get at least 2–3 years of relevant experience before graduating from FUNAAB. Lock in that experience. If you choose to serve for NYSC, do it strategically. The main benefit is placement opportunities. If you’re skilled and land in a good organization, you might even be retained as staff after your service. That’s really the only value I see in NYSC.
Most of us who were fortunate enough to get early work experience didn’t even care much about NYSC when we graduated, even with the fees rising from N33,000 to N70,000 or more.
Another piece of advice is to think globally. Become a global competitor. Even while you’re in Nigeria, aim to compete with the best worldwide. Build skills and experience that make you competitive on an international level.
For example, if you’re at FUNAAB, it’s easy to just see yourself as “a FUNAAB student.” You might not realize that, in a sense, you’re an apprentice preparing to join a professional body like COREN. Most students don’t see that. They think, “I’m just studying here,” and only after graduation do they realize that becoming a licensed engineer requires passing through COREN.
But if you adopt that mindset early, seeing yourself as someone preparing for COREN from day one, you start taking your studies and experiences more seriously. You think long-term, and every step you take becomes part of building your future as a competent, professional engineer. Then you would position yourself properly for it. In terms of networking, in terms of knowing the minimum requirements to start, like everything. Your perspective will change when your goal changes. So becoming global is more than just being focused on how to graduate from FUNAAB. That’s not your main goal. Your main goal is not even getting a COREN engineering position or something. No.
It’s about aiming higher. Asking yourself, How do I get a job at Microsoft or other top tech companies? When you realize that there are people from India or even smaller countries in the third world working in those companies, you see that it’s possible. That should become your target: to compete at that level and make your skills and experience globally relevant.
I have a friend from FUOYE who studied mechatronics. He enjoyed his time there, but he was also aware that some of his peers were at MIT. He set his sights higher, finished his BSc in four years, and then moved to MIT on a scholarship for his master’s.
The lesson here is that you shouldn’t just focus on graduating or even graduating with first-class honours. Instead, think about the bigger picture. Graduating with a first-class or graduating well might just be one requirement to reach a much larger goal. So my advice is: think bigger, aim broader, and set your eyes on what’s truly possible.
Also, remember that what’s worth doing is worth doing well. I mentioned my mentor earlier. One thing I really admire about him is how he goes in-depth when learning. His approach is intense. Last month, he told me about something he did recently. He joined a group of low-level engineers, like kernel developers, embedded systems programmers, on Discord.
He was working on a project: building something for a gaming device contracted by a major gaming company, I think Ubisoft. They were paying him $16,000 for the work. At one point, he got stuck. ChatGPT and other AI tools couldn’t solve the problem, even though he could afford all the premium AI tools; they just didn’t work.
So he turned to the Discord group. That’s where someone, using a pseudonym like “Muppet Master,” helped him figure out exactly what to do. Through casual discussion and guidance from that person, he solved the problem. He didn’t know who this person really was. It was just chit-chat at first. So afterwards, he asked the person, How? How many years of work experience do they have that give them the knowledge to be able to figure the problem out?
The person said, “First of all, I’m a girl, and I’m in my second year of university.” In that moment, he felt completely humbled. This is someone who, when he visited my place last month, I had to attend a party, and my YouTube history became full of maths and physics videos. He would solve Calculus problems for fun to improve himself, and he’s a graduate. He’d simulate problems in C++ just for the fun. Yet here he was, wowed by a second-year computer science student. His brain was just scattered.
So, whatever you’re doing, let’s not deceive ourselves. One important piece of advice: avoid over-relying on AI as an upcoming professional. AI is a junior intern that you tell to do something, and then when it’s done, you review what it did and accept or reject it. But when you’re a junior intern yourself, you’re now delegating the task to another junior intern, how una wan do am? AI is a tool, a genuinely useful one, but it’s your assistant, not a replacement for your own understanding. You can use AI to research concepts, but make sure that by the time you close that prompt or chat session, you can do the work yourself.
Your worst enemy is becoming dependent on AI. It can do a lot for you, but if you rely on it too early or too heavily, you’re not truly learning. Use it as a guide, not a crutch. At the end of the day, the knowledge you internalize yourself is what truly matters.
The main thing is you have to, you have to be very good at whatever you choose to do. Very good. Very, very good. Especially now that AI is coming and replacing jobs. There are no junior roles anywhere. You can’t really see internships in software engineering like before. I’ve not seen internships in software engineering, except with the Nigerian ones where you have to go there and donate yourself to them to use you and not pay.
I think I should just end there for number 9 because this advice thing, with the little experience I’ve got in this space, I can continue talking to you for for hours. Let me just stop there.
Actually, they are very valuable. I don’t think I can stress how valuable everything that you said today is.
So, the final question, if someone could learn one thing from your story, what do you hope it would be?
Doings. Have doings. I don’t know how to explain that. From everything I’ve said, it’s just a matter of doing. Do more. If you think you’ve maxed out what you can do, there’s still a little bit more. A while back, if someone asked me how I was, I’d say, “I’m fine, but there’s room for improvement.” That’s the mindset. There’s always room to grow.
Just do more. In terms of your studying, in terms of getting better at what you do, everything. We grow up being told different things. Some of us are told we’re special, some are told we’re not, and some aren’t told anything at all. Being special is something that you earn, and you don’t just end it once. This is something that becomes past glory quickly.
You earn specialness, and then you continue earning it. You don’t just earn it once. You have to keep showing up and keep doing more to achieve that specialness. It’s an achievement, a recurring achievement, and success is the result of accumulated advantage. I think that’s all I can say.
I’m speechless. I think I should put this article behind a paywall, so people would have to pay before they get this content that you’ve dished out here. Oh my goodness, cause it’s premium content.
Thank you so much. I feel like words cannot even express how much value, like I said earlier, and gratitude that I feel for having this interview with you. I’m so pumped to just like start writing it and just like put it out there.
This is very amazing. Thank you for not holding back, for being very free and giving from your wealth of experience. Just thank you.
You’re welcome.
Macbobby’s story shows that growth comes from doing, not just planning. By taking on challenges, learning from experience, and building good habits, he turned curiosity into real results. His journey reminds us that determination and the people you surround yourself with can make a big difference.
This is the final part of our AMTES Alumni Series interview with Macbobby.
From all of us at AMTES, we celebrate you!
You can connect with him on LinkedIn