Lazy Bird Project

A repository of intentionally broken systems designed for learning performance optimization through hands-on practice.

About

Many software engineers face interview rejections due to lack of hands-on experience with specific problems they understand only theoretically. Lazy Bird addresses this by providing complete, realistic systems with intentional performance issues across the full technology stack.

Available Broken Systems

Database Domain

Query Performance

• 01-employee-directory - (Easy)

More systems coming soon across 8 technical domains: Database, APIs, Caching, Events, Concurrency, Architecture, Security, and Monitoring.

Getting Started

Option 1: Clone a specific exercise directly

git clone https://github.com/br-lazy-bird/database-01-employee-directory.git
cd database-01-employee-directory
docker-compose up

Option 2: Clone via main repository

# Clone main repo
git clone https://github.com/br-lazy-bird/lazy-bird.git
cd lazy-bird

# Clone specific exercise
git submodule update --init database/01-employee-directory
cd database/01-employee-directory
docker-compose up

Option 3: Clone all exercises

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/br-lazy-bird/lazy-bird.git

Learning Approach

Each broken system follows a consistent pattern:

• Single issue focus - One specific performance problem per system
• Complete stack - Frontend, Backend, Database showing real-world impact
• Hands-on practice - No solution code provided; learn by doing
• Standardized guide - DETONADO.md provides diagnosis, verification and solution steps
• Docker environment - Consistent, reproducible setup

For Hiring Managers

Lazy Bird systems make excellent technical assessments. Share specific exercises with candidates for standardized evaluation.

Blog

The development is being documented, along with other stuff, in this blog: https://dbrevesf.github.io/

License

GPL-3.0 License