I interviewed with TripleByte (or let's say any company). They asked me 3 questions and expected perfect, clean, and optimal answers in the interview. Ok, and then they told me their codebase is like crap right now, and asked me whether I'd like to join. Should I join? #swe #interview
Everyone thinks their codebase is crap. You'd at least be working with someone you know is honest, lol I would still count it somewhat against them, but it wouldn't be a disqualifier for me personally. Depends on the TC they're offering, and what your alternatives are
It's easy to fool yourself into thinking that you can just go and fix a crappy codebase with your ninja coding skills. After all, you are great at Leetcode and they seemed blown away by your ability to reverse a tree and design twitter. But you would not be so confident if you knew the horrifying truth about companies with crap codebases. Generally companies with crap codebases choose to have crap codebases. They may not admit this in so many words. They may say instead things like "we have more important things to do than clean up the code". But it is a choice they make. The folks who wrote the code probably don't think it is crappy. They probably think it's fine. Just like people think their babies are beautiful and their farts smell like perfume. And they will resent you criticizing their beautiful baby whose farts smell like perfume. They will hate you for suggesting that they are not super rock star programmers. They will despise your arrogance for insinuating that your judgment is better than theirs. Soon you will have a deadline, and you will have to make the crap code do something differently. You'll have to figure out what all the incomprehensible undocumented classes and functions are supposed to do, and how the awful tools are supposed to work. And the folks who built the crap will watch you struggle, and they will be happy, and they will laugh when you fail. Because you dared to tell them their baby was ugly. You fool. Companies that have crap codebases don't care about you. They don't care if you are happy or sad, or whether you live or die. They'll quickly forget you after you leave, just as they forget everyone else like you who came before. Never, ever, ever join a company where they admit to having crap code. Never. Ever.
That seems like too much text for a clearly oblivious take.
I imagine that's what they'd say at Citadel, when reviewing your proposed changes to the style guide.
That is every company.
There are worse problems than a crap codebase like a manager who hates you