What drove me:

I didn’t just want to code; I wanted to control the architecture, make tough calls, and be the one solving high-stakes problems instead of just catching bugs 🔥😎. I knew it was time to step up, lead, and take responsibility not only for my own work but for the whole damn team 🚀💼.

Interviews:

The tech interview? Pure chaos 💀💥. They hit me with a monster task: design an order management system with insane requirements—from caching strategies to fallback methods for service crashes 😳🔧. Every tiny detail was dissected. Then came the algo interview, where they tested optimization skills on rendering for weak hardware and slow internet. Miss a beat, lose points 😱📉.

Cons of being Lead:

Now, every mess-up, every bug, every oversight in the team? It’s on me 💀. If a project starts crashing, everyone looks at me as the one to blame 👀🔥.