A production bug
Reported by a user, reproduced from a vague description, fixed without breaking three other things.
Real projects, real work
You inherit a codebase somebody else built, with the decisions they made and the debt they left. That is the point.
Not tutorial projects
The work you have never been given
No blank folders. No finished specifications. No projects that exist only to be finished.
A legacy refactor
Code that works and nobody wants to touch. Change it without changing behaviour.
A feature request
Written by someone who is not an engineer, and missing the three details that matter.
A performance problem
Something got slow. Measure before you optimise, and prove it got faster.
Testing debt
A module with no tests and a history of regressions. Decide what is worth covering.
An architecture decision
Two reasonable options. Pick one, write down why, and defend it in review.
An incident simulation
Something is broken now. Diagnose under time pressure and communicate while you do.
Technical debt
A shortcut somebody took, and the argument about whether now is the time to pay it back.
Reviewing someone else
Reading code you did not write and finding the useful thing to say about it.
The gap
You learned React. You built projects.
Nobody taught you how software teams actually work.
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
The requirements are complete and unambiguous.
The ticket is ambiguous, and asking the right question is the job.
You start from an empty folder.
You start in a codebase somebody else wrote, with its own conventions.
You are the only person who will ever read the code.
A senior engineer reads every line and asks why you did it that way.
It works on your machine, so it is done.
It is done when it is reviewed, tested, merged and did not break anything.
You decide what to build and when.
Work comes from a backlog, gets refined, estimated and committed to a sprint.
Nobody disagrees with you.
Someone disagrees with your approach, and you have to make the case.
You don’t need another tutorial.
You need experience.
Applications are read by a person, and places are limited by how many pull requests we can review properly each week.
Apply to Barmaj