Back when one of Kenya's big telcos launched their fintech service, we were among the first hired by a super-dealer to register customers - which meant updating SIM cards and collecting data. When I think about how freely we collected people's personal information back then, I honestly shiver.
After a while, we discovered the dealer was earning about 100 bob (roughly $1 USD at the time) from the telco for every customer we registered. Meanwhile, we were on a fixed retainer - no commissions, no bonuses.
Naturally, we tried negotiating with management for performance-based pay. You know, something fair that reflected our actual output. Management's response? A hard no.
Fortunately, we had Kiriungi Kimotho on the team, a senior statistician-turned-health-advocate who did exactly what you'd expect a numbers person to do: he developed a mathematical model.
The model calculated fair compensation based on registrations completed, factoring in weather conditions, day of the week (weekends brought more people to town), and other variables. It was smart - balancing our output with fair pay while still being reasonable to the company. Perfect equilibrium, right?
Guess what happened next?
We were discontinued shortly after. 😂
