commit a1b2c3d
I Google things while I code.
Apparently that disqualifies me.
I've shipped real products. Features real people use. Bugs I tracked down at 1am by reading docs, checking Stack Overflow, asking a teammate who'd seen it before.
Then I sit down for a "coding exam" and none of that counts. No Google. No docs. No team. Just me, a blank editor, and a clock — tested on whether I memorized syntax I'd normally look up in ten seconds.
That's not how I work. That's not how any working developer works. So why is it the thing deciding if I'm good enough to get hired?
You shouldn't need 5 years of experience to prove you can do the job. You should need to show what you've actually built — and how fast you got there.
No spam. Ever.
// what actually happened to me
Lost the role to someone who grinded practice problems for months, not someone who's actually built things.
Applied for a role, got auto-rejected for "not enough years" — HR never saw the apps I already shipped.
Debug production issues for a living — "no Google allowed" turned my brain off.
Read docs and pick up new stuff fast on the job — nowhere does the interview test that.
// the other thing nobody talks about
Experience is counted in years.
Not in what you shipped.
Job posts say "5 years minimum." I had 1 year — and a GitHub full of real apps that real people use. Didn't matter. The form rejected me before any human looked at my work.
That's not a skills gap. That's a visibility gap. The work exists. The hiring process just has no way to see it.
// what I'm doing about it
I'm building an app to fix this.
Not just a landing page — an actual product. Still early, still shaping it, but the direction is locked: stop judging developers on memory, start judging them on how they actually work.
// early look
Here's roughly what I'm building.
Two things the interview never checks — how you actually solve problems, and what you've already built. DevFlex shows both: an open-book assessment where docs are allowed, and a real GitHub profile so your actual work speaks for itself.
tap a tab below to switch screens
task 2 of 5 · debugging
Fix the broken pagination in this endpoint
Users report page 2+ returns duplicate results. Find the bug and fix it — Google, docs, and Stack Overflow are all fair game.
1def get_orders(page): 2 offset = page * PAGE_SIZE 3 # bug: offset math is off by one page 4 return db.query(Order) 5 .offset(offset).limit(PAGE_SIZE)
Juan dela Cruz
@juandelacruz · GitHub verified
sari-sari-pos
Offline-first point-of-sale for small stores.
Kotlinpaluwagan-app
Group savings tracker with auto reminders.
JavaScript// the part that bugs me most
These are different skills.
Hiring only checks one of them.
// why I'm building this
I'm building DevFlex to actually fix this.
Stop testing developers like it's 2010 and Google doesn't exist. DevFlex is the app I wish existed when I was getting rejected for the wrong reasons — one that judges you on how you actually solve problems, not how much syntax you crammed.
I'm building it in the open, starting with this page. Join the waitlist and you'll be first to try it — and your input will shape what it becomes.
You already prove yourself by shipping.
The hiring process just hasn't caught up.
I'm building the app. Join now and you'll be using it before anyone else.
No spam. Ever.