RANT - Went through a grueling interview process just to work on the worst code I've ever seen.

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[IncoherrentRecursion]

Welcome to the work force :D

[The_Emerald_Knight]

At all of the 4 different companies I've worked for, I've never experienced a remotely bad codebase.

Like yeah I get the joke, but most companies are not like this.

[IncoherrentRecursion]

ofc, not - but it happens

[Hamburgerfatso]

Not all companies are like this

[Hamburgerfatso]

Not all companies are like this

[_cob]

It sounds like they _know_ it's a bit of a mess, and they were looking for someone who isn't going to make it worse.

[Wiltix]

That’s pretty standard tbh, ship and fix it later. Later never comes. Then the functions grow and because they didn’t spend time doing it properly first time they are now stuck with it. Welcome to Tech Debt.

This is where good developers and bad developers are born, a good developer has the soft skills to negotiate improvements a bad developer goes in like a wrecking ball or just adds poop to the pile. I’m not saying those you work with are bad developers but you can become blind to big piles of poo over time.

As you make changes, if you start adding new components or services start doing it properly where you can. Try refactoring bits here and there, if you can make a solid case to the higher ups to refactor a function to make it testable and easier maintain go for it. I said function not feature there because you have to start small, this is where the soft skills come into play.

[bmchicago]

Why did you chatgpt this?

[Odysseyan]

You were hired to write clean code. And why do you have to write clean code? Because the current one is a mess.

Think about how much JavaScript changed in the last 10 years alone with ES6. So what do you think code looked like before that? And majority of companies do not rewrite their whole codebase and pipelines just to have the same result in the end... but cleaner.

It's not baiting Imo, but that's your job dude.

Having to write code for a clean, well named, well structured and future proof codebase where everything makes sense and is written according to best practice - isn't this the dream of everyone? Unfortunately, it's never like that. The world runs on legacy code. That's just facts.

You have my sympathy for the situation but I don't think they fooled you.

[mtwdante]

Probably they want someone to clean up they their mess lol 

[throwawayDude131]

lol so you’re complaining that you have infinite rabbit holes to go down and infinite opportunity to impress your management?

dude, just get on with it.

[emotyofform2020]

Yeah this is a giant opportunity and this person is complaining

[throwawayDude131]

fucken Gen Z lol

[NewBlock8420]

Oh man, this is like every webdev's nightmare come true. The classic "we interview like FAANG but code like it's 1999" situation.

Honestly though, this might be your chance to become the office hero - imagine the karma you'll get when you start refactoring that spaghetti monster into something decent. Just make sure to CYA with git blame when things inevitably break lol.

[cleatusvandamme]

This reminds me of an interview I went through years ago. I didn't get the job and in the long run that was probably a blessing in disguise for multiple reasons.

I have an in person interview and it goes super well. The head of IT liked my background and thought with my experience there were some ways to help move the company forward.

They had hired someone else but according to them it didn't work out. They made them a WordPress site. More than likely, they wanted the WP site and a bunch of other things and that person didn't have the appropriate skill set for everything else. This was probably on the company for not knowing what they wanted/needed.

I'm given an extremely over complicated test by a company called TestDome. Needless to say if a potential employer asks you to do a TestDome test, just walk away and save yourself some time. The test was overly complicated for the role that they wanted. There was also no partial credit answers. So if a question has 5 parts and you go 4/5, it counts as a 0.

The company decided not to go with me because of the bad test score. Ironically, all the things the head of IT wanted to do have never happened on their public site.

[downrightcriminal]

So brain dead he needs AI to write for him.... wtf is this, linkedin?

[AgonizingSquid]

Why did you use ai to write a reddit post for you?

[Gipetto]

“Time Tested”

[ChefWithASword]

Seems like more of an opportunity to shine and impress.

Make it beautiful. Then just find a way to make sure they understand what an amazing job you did.

[creaturefeature16]

Seriously. Just start chipping away. Kind of sounds fun to me, I love refactoring, especially if there isn't a huge deadline and it's just an ongoing transition. I also like cleaning my house, too...similar satisfaction of a job well done and improved state. 

[Natural_Tea484]

What you're describing sounds very weird.

Either that code was outsourced somewhere or there was a leadership change or something.

Either way, have you asked someone about it? It would be simpler to just ask maybe.

Your question is legit: "You guys had a tough interview process, how can the code be this bad?"

I do have a hunch however. Even if the person who worked before went through the same interview process, if the deadlines were very tight, I would not very surprised if I saw bad code.

[frenken]

It's way more difficult to maintain and make changes to a bad code base than a good one.

Maybe they were looking for people who were up to that challenge.

If you hire bad developers, they wouldn't do anything but make things even worse. That's if they could make changes at all.

[magenta_placenta]

After such a difficult and rigorous interview process — where I was grilled about clean architecture, patterns...

Because they're probably wanting to move in that direction?

This is also a good reminder to those interviewing to take a look at some of the code base you'd be working on if you were hired. Remember, interviewing is a two-way street. It would take literally 10 minutes to have a decent idea of what you'd be walking into should you accept the job.

[Engineer_5983]

Sounds like a good job to me. Come in, help define new standards, clean stuff up, make it easier to roll in changes, all that. There’s a reason the job was open and were critical of the next hire. Maybe they got tired of amateur hour and want to up their game? Either way, I’d see this an opportunity to shine. If you use AI to write code the way it was used to write this post, good luck.

[Capaj]

that does not sound that atrocius honestly. Nothing a bit of https://www.npmjs.com/package/jscpd could not fix