Why You Should Hire Me

What I can do

I build backend systems — job queues, auth libraries, rate limiters, a scripting language with its own interpreter, a Git implementation, an HTTP server built straight off TCP sockets. Some started from tutorials or AI-assisted builds. None stayed there. I push until I can explain and defend every design decision, not just reproduce the steps.

What I can't do

I haven't worked on a large engineering team yet, and I haven't shipped anything at scale under real production traffic. Barrage tells me where my own systems break. That's not the same as production traffic finding the breaks for me — real users, real edge cases, real cost pressure. There are gaps that only real team experience fills: code review from senior engineers, working inside someone else's architecture instead of one I designed myself, and coordinating with people instead of just AI agents. I haven't had that yet. I'm not going to pretend otherwise — I'd rather you know going in than find out later.

Three reasons anyway

• 1. I don't trust code until it's tested — including mine.

  I write unit tests as a default, not an afterthought, and I stress-test systems under simulated load before I call them done. I've built things complex enough — a tree-walking interpreter, a distributed job queue with a stale-job reaper, an auth library that detects refresh-token theft — that untested code would've broken immediately and silently. It didn't, because I tested it before I trusted it, not after something broke.

• 2. I know how to work with AI, not just talk to it.

  Planning a build with an agent, deciding what it should own versus what I should own, catching when it's confidently wrong before that mistake ships — that's the actual skill now, separate from knowing how to code. Most people either refuse to use AI on principle or use it uncritically. I do neither. I use it deliberately, and I stay responsible for the result either way.

• 3. Circumstances don't stop me.

  I wrote my first code on a phone, before I owned a laptop — no proper keyboard, no multiple monitors, none of the setup people assume you need to be productive. If the setup's not ideal, I adapt. I don't wait for ideal conditions to start doing good work, and I won't wait for them on your team either.