My first real C++ job involved a bug in a largely technical indebted codebase, lines of code in the millions.

I spent two months asking one guy who knew about it for help. I really understood the concept of "hostage taker" in a software team. It's the guy you cannot fire and will constantly arm-wrestle everybody where there is a problem, never really helping, and continuing to write bad code that allows him to keep his job.

Fortunately they did not hire me.

I never was so discouraged in my life.