01Context
Talentech operated a legacy internal desktop system that users relied on daily. Workflows were baked in over years; every click was slow; the codebase had grown unmaintainable.
I joined to lead the rebuild — a hybrid desktop app that worked online and offline, replaced the legacy system feature-for-feature, and felt measurably faster.
02Challenge
Two challenges in parallel. Technical: build a desktop app that syncs reliably between offline state and a cloud backend, with real-time updates between users when they're online.
Organizational: do this without breaking the workflows users had relied on for years. Every removed click had to be justified, and every added feature had to come with a migration path.
03Approach
- Electron shell with Angular as the UI framework. Fabric.js for the canvas-heavy surfaces — diagram editing, visual layout work.
- Node.js + Express on the backend, bridged to a Laravel legacy system during the transition period so old and new could coexist.
- Socket.io for real-time updates between collaborators.
- MySQL with carefully designed schemas; offline state stored locally and reconciled on next sync.
- Linux deployment with systemd-managed services.
On the team side: ran code review, distributed tasks, and mentored junior developers. The team stayed small — typically 2–3 engineers including me.
04Outcome
Shipped the replacement platform. Migrated the user base off the legacy system. The team grew from solo to small, and back, across five years.
05What I'd do differently
Start the offline-sync strategy earlier in the design phase. We retrofitted it once the online flow was stable, and that retrofit took longer than building it in from the start would have.