Isaac Tubonibo · Engineering · Product
Not tutorial fluff. A founder's build log from Djengo, plus architecture tradeoffs, code review, burnout, and choosing a career you can sustain. This is how I sell the work: with receipts.
What this archive covers
Founder
Building Djengo: ops software for hotels, hospitals, estates, and restaurants
Build log
Architecture, tenancy, facilities, and payroll decisions, written down
5+ years
Shipping full-stack product across web, API, and mobile
Product bar
Working releases over disposable MVPs
Leadership
Reviews, boundaries, and decisions under pressure
Start here
For years I shipped other people's products. Djengo is the first one where the whole problem is mine: the software, the onboarding, the pilots, and the operators who have to trust it.
Series · 6 parts
A founder's build log: why Djengo exists, how the platform is put together, and the decisions behind tenancy, facilities, money, and scale.
Start with part 1All articles
17 more pieces
Build logEighteen months of building Djengo, measured: where the commits went, which codebases grew largest, and what the numbers do not tell you yet.
Money & workflowPayroll runs, kitchen orders, and approvals in Djengo each follow explicit transitions. Why I treat those transitions as product rules, not implementation detail.
Data modelingHow Djengo models physical space so a hospital ward, an estate unit, and a hotel room share one engine, and the modelling mistake I had to undo.
SecurityDjengo isolates data with a composite scope of organization, company, and branch. How that scope is carried, enforced in layers, and tested with a demo tenant.
ArchitectureHow Djengo is wired: an nginx edge, a NestJS REST gateway, and domain services in NestJS and .NET 8 that talk over gRPC and RabbitMQ, plus what that split costs.
Sustainable ambitionAmbition and ownership still matter, here is how I redraw the line between high standards and self-sacrifice after learning the cost the hard way.
QualityLessons from Djengo and other builds: environments that mirror reality, previews that do not lie, and why fake-happy demos create expensive mornings.
BoundariesOn rebuilding after burnout and exit: boundaries, standards, and why picking your health and craft is the only sustainable way to keep showing up for others.
Product buildFrom guest booking to staff workspace, lessons from building Djengo as a product people actually run a business on, not a demo.
Learning systemMy loop for picking up frameworks and tools, small builds, production constraints, and learning in public without drowning in tutorials.
Product philosophyWhy “ship an MVP” became an excuse for unfinished thinking, and how I aim for a narrow, reliable release instead of a disposable prototype.
Engineering judgmentA practical filter for picking stacks: team reality, operational cost, hiring, and whether the tech serves the product, or just your résumé.
CollaborationOn collaborating with strong opinions that keep failing in production, and how to push for method without turning the room into a battlefield.
Team craftWhat I look for in reviews, clarity, risk, and teaching, and how review habits either raise a team or quietly punish curiosity.
ArchitectureHow I think about service boundaries, not as fashion, but as a bet on ownership, failure modes, and whether the team can actually run what they draw.
Career hard truthA hard chapter: giving everything to a company, warning them about burnout, having leave refused, and being judged on two bad weeks after the warning went unheard.
StackShared types between NestJS, Next.js, and React Native, and how one language reduces coordination cost when you are building product end to end.
If these articles match how you want engineering done (clear tradeoffs, operable releases, honest capacity), let's talk.