The Premise (aka The Dev Confession)
“After switching 7 companies in 5 years, I’ve learned one thing:
Clean code and good architecture? LOL, that’s just Instagram bait.”
OP came in swinging with the claim that nearly every company hides broken codebases behind 17-round interviews. And he’s done joining blind—no codebase preview, no deal.
What followed was a glorious chaos of dev wisdom, sarcasm, and pure war stories from the trenches of tech.
The Harsh Truths (That Hurt a Little)
1. Most Codebases Are Trash.
- Written in a rush, patched like grandma’s quilt, and “documented” via Slack messages from 2021.
- Controllers in one team were literally scattered “from neighbor’s house to the North Pole.”
2. AI + Cheap Dev Work = Turbo Trash.
- One dev inherited 40,000 lines of ChatGPT code. None of it made sense.
- Another: “Soon I’ll be fixing bugs made by AI trained on bad code I wrote 10 years ago.”
3. You Will Not Get a Codebase Tour.
- “It’s my right to see the codebase before I join.”
- 500 devs: “Bro, you’ll stay unemployed forever.”
- Reality: code is locked down tighter than Area 51 unless it’s open source.
4. Bad Code Keeps Us Employed.
“Shitty code is job security.”
“Fixing mess is the job. You want pretty code? Go back to bootcamp.”
Working in Tech = Accepting Chaos
What developers ACTUALLY deal with:
- Legacy CMS nobody understands (hello Sitefinity
) - 1200 DB reads per request
- “AllAppInOneFrickingFileInProduction.js”
- Managers who don’t code, but demand 10 features by Friday
Career Lessons That Slap
From real devs who stuck around:
- Stay long enough to suffer from your own shortcuts.
- Job-hopping = never learning real-world tradeoffs.
- Code grows messy. It’s not failure, it’s physics.
“Seagull devs swoop in, scream refactor, shit everywhere, and leave.”
Smart Interview Questions (That Aren’t Dumb)
Forget “can I see your code?” Try this instead:
- How long does a PR take to merge?
- Who reviews the code—and how often?
- How old is the codebase?
- Can I work on something that’s not legacy soup?
Survival Tips From The Battle-Hardened
- Pick your poison: bad code or bad management—never both.
- Stop dreaming of greenfield unicorns. Even those turn into legacy after 6 months.
- Upskill quietly. Some devs do 2 hours of real work, then build their escape plan.
Favorite Punchlines from the Chaos
“You join to build a cathedral. Turns out you’re duct-taping the Titanic.”
“Clean code is like flossing. Everyone talks about it. No one does it.”
“The pope got elected in fewer rounds than your interview.”
“I’d rather debug a mess than explain to my manager what a cache is.”
Final PSA (From OP)
“I’m not joining another company unless I get a code tour.
I’ve duct-taped enough code to know when to walk away.”
The Takeaway
If you’re a dev, here’s the secret handshake:
- Everything’s held together with hope and hotfixes.
- You’ll never see clean code unless you write it yourself (and even then… good luck).
- Make peace with the mess. Or get really good at refactoring it.
Either way… ship it, patch it, and don’t cry too loud in standup.
Bonus Read: Programming Sucks – StillDrinking.org
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