If you’ve ever seen a woman pull a laptop out of her handbag at a restaurant and thought “that can’t be normal”, Elizabeth Olagunju shows us just how normal it is. Elizabeth’s laptop has been to more date venues than most people’s situationships. Ice cream spots, a car park in Ikeja even a restaurant bathroom, on one occasion because her team lead needed her on a call.

Elizabeth was in 300 level, when she decided that waiting to graduate before earning was a plan she wasn’t interested in. Her first check came from interning at a marketing and advertising company. After her internship, she decided to make a full move into tech product management before completing her degree.

Now 24, she already has years of product management experience across FinTech and MediaTech. Her current role as a Product Innovation Associate at a venture building and capital firm has her working directly with start-up founders. Elizabeth’s day-to-day includes running user research, writing product documentation, sitting in stakeholder meetings, and removing whatever blockers are keeping engineers up at night.

But before you start romanticising the trajectory, Elizabeth wants you to know what the path actually looks like up close. Here are five things she’s learned about working in tech and product management that nobody really warns you about.

1. The Job Doesn’t Clock Out When You Do

For Elizabeth, the “end of the work day” has always been more of a suggestion than a rule. An 8:30pm call from her team lead on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday. Saturday morning messages arriving with the urgency of emergencies. Sunday evening pings showing up right as she’d finally exhaled. Late night meetings with developers that nobody thought to schedule at human hours.

She absorbed all of it from her very first startup job, and young enough that the chaos became her normal before she had time to be shocked by it. “I’m not unfamiliar with how chaotic, exciting and sometimes unstructured working in a startup environment can be,” she says. Startups move fast and Elizabeth moved with them, even when moving fast meant always being on.

2. Your Personal Life Will Feel The Effects

This is the part Elizabeth tells with a laugh, because what else can you do?The first story involves a guy she’d been trying to meet for a while. They kept scheduling and the schedule kept collapsing because of work, which was a very clear preview of things to come. They finally locked in a date at Hans and René on a weekday evening, after work hours. Surely after work hours would be safe territory. It was not safe territory.

A meeting got scheduled and stretched well past when it was supposed to end. Elizabeth sent apologies from her screen while he waited in his car outside for three hours. When she finally got there the place was nearly closing, they squeezed in anyway and got their ice cream. He ended up taking a work call during the date too. Just two tech people, doing their absolute best.

The second date had a different energy entirely. She was already mid-conversation with someone when her team lead called and needed her in a meeting immediately. Elizabeth excused herself, and joined the call on her phone. Then realised she needed her laptop and went back to her bag and date. Elizabeth returned to the table about forty minutes later with apologies. He was understanding. She was grateful. The laptop was completely unbothered.

3. Work-life Balance is Going To Need A New Definition

Elizabeth used to be a loud advocate for work-life balance back in school. She talked about it often and she meant every word. She’s since updated her position, not reluctantly but realistically.

“Nobody needs to tell me there is nothing like that,” she says, “especially if there is a certain level you want to get to.” Weekends started looking like weekdays. Rest became something she had to schedule rather than something that just arrived on its own. The version of herself that kept strict boundaries between work and personal time quietly stepped aside. Now, she’s made room for the version herself that was actually trying to build something.

She’s clear that this isn’t a complaint. It’s just the honest cost of being in a fast-moving industry. And she went in with her eyes open.

4. The Mental Load is its Own Full-time Job

The meetings and the late-night messages are the visible parts. What Elizabeth describes underneath them is a constant background hum of work that doesn’t switch off even when her laptop is closed. Checking messages first thing in the morning just to confirm nothing is on fire. Testing the product before the day properly starts to make sure everything is still working. Her head is a live map of every team she works with: Engineering, design, customer service, stakeholders, all running at once. And she has to know which one needs her attention at any given moment.

“People management is not easy at all,” she says. The job of a product manager is as much about holding people and priorities together as it is about the actual product. That kind of work lives in your head long after you’ve logged off.

5. You’re Allowed to Enjoy Your Money

This is the part Elizabeth wants young Nigerian women to actually hear. She takes herself out, buys herself things and plans annual vacations. She approaches it the same way she approaches any product goal: with a target, a timeline, and full intention to see it through. “Enjoy the money you’re working for,” she says. “Life is too short not to.”

The conversation around ambition for young Nigerian women tends to focus heavily on sacrifice and the grind. Those things are real, but the permission to enjoy what you’ve built is just as important. Building and enjoying aren’t opposites. Locking in at work and treating yourself well can exist in the same life. Elizabeth is proof of that.

For the Girl Who Wants This

If you’re watching Elizabeth’s career from the outside and wanting it, she’d tell you to want it fully, laptop dates and all. The path is worth it and the learning curve is steep. It will ask something of you. Your time, your weekends, and sometimes a version of your personality you were attached to. Go in knowing that.

The rewards are real too. You’ll learn fast, meet people who matter, and do work you’re genuinely proud of. You’ll build something that belongs to you, and when the money arrives, you’ll have earned the right to feel every bit of it.

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