From the application to your first merged pull request, and everything the loop repeats after that.
How it works
Most of this is unremarkable to anyone who has worked on a team. That is exactly why it is worth doing before your first role rather than during it.
Tell us where you are and what you have built. A person reads it.
A short technical exercise, so squads start at a comparable level.
A small engineering environment with a mentor and a real backlog.
A ticket from the backlog. Ambiguous, like every real ticket.
Question the ticket with your squad before writing any code.
On a branch, in a codebase with conventions you have to respect.
Written so a reviewer can start without asking you anything.
A senior engineer responds within one business day.
Address the feedback, get it merged, and see it land.
Every merge adds to a record of how you actually work.
Inside the workspace
There is no editor here and no lesson player. You work wherever you already work; what Barmaj gives you is the everything-else.
Reported by support
Acceptance criteria
Estimate
3 points · agreed after two rounds
First human response
in 4h 12m of business time
Round 2
Counted. Never targeted.
Covered the timeout path unprompted
Asked before assuming
Argued a point, then changed the design
Levels, never percentages. Each one links to the pull request behind it.
The engineering experience
This is not a syllabus. It is the loop a professional team runs every sprint, and you run it from the inside.
Real work, written as tickets — bugs, features, debt.
Read it, question it, find what the ticket does not say.
Estimate independently. Nobody sees a number before the reveal.
A committed scope with a start and an end.
A branch on your own fork of a codebase you did not write.
Described well enough that a reviewer can start immediately.
A senior engineer responds within one business day.
It ships when it is right, not when you are finished.
What you did well, what to change, and why.
An attributed record, linked to the work that proves it.
Then it starts again, with a harder ticket.
The gap
Every rejection email says the same thing in different words: we were looking for someone with more experience. The gap is not knowledge. It is everything that surrounds writing the code.
Tutorial world
Real engineering
Applications are read by a person, and places are limited by how many pull requests we can review properly each week.
Apply to Barmaj