About Rhymium
Built for the round you have to pass
A free system design curriculum, and the machinery for turning it into an offer. Neither has shipped yet, and this site says so on every page that mentions them.
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Tracks, from the network to the negotiation
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Modules, each ending in a drill
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Systems worked end to end
What this is built on
Four rules. The third one is why several sections of this template were deleted rather than filled.
Free is the default, not the trial
The whole curriculum is free permanently. There is no chapter that stops halfway and no account gate in front of a paragraph.
Trade-offs over vocabulary
Knowing the word "quorum" is not the skill. Choosing R and W under a failure schedule and defending it is, so that is what the drills make you do.
Nothing invented is presented as real
No testimonials, no placement statistics, no graduate count, no stock photographs captioned as staff. Where a section could not be made true, it was deleted.
Say what has not shipped
Every feature carries a status, and today all seven read "in development". No page implies otherwise, because the badge is generated rather than written.
Goal and measure
Learn it free. Pay only to get hired.
All 8 tracks, 41 modules and 41 drills are free. Pro, at $5,900 once for five years, is the interview machinery — and that price is a placeholder until there is something to sell.
The goal
That you can be handed an unfamiliar system, scope it in eight minutes, draw something defensible, and argue for the parts of it that are load-bearing.
The measure
Offers, at the level people were aiming for. There are none yet, because nobody has taken this course — /outcomes has the longer version of that.
The community
System design is the one subject you cannot learn alone
Because the thing being tested is an argument, and an argument needs someone on the other side of it.
Peer mock interviews, from both sides of the table
Design reviews on diagrams you actually drew
Study groups working one track at the same pace
Negotiation clinics before the offer conversation
How this works
01. Start where you actually are
The first track assumes you can write code and nothing else. If you already know what a quorum read costs, skip to track four — every module lists what it expects you to know.
02. Read a little, then argue
Concepts are introduced briefly, because reading about consistency is not what makes it stick. The drill at the end of the module is where the learning is.
03. Work the case studies out loud
Six systems, worked end to end. Do them narrating, at a whiteboard, against a clock. That is the format you will be tested in, so it is the format to practise.
04. Run the loop
Question bank, mock rounds with the community, and a tracker that remembers what each company asked. The last track is about the forty-five minutes themselves.
There are no success stories here
The template this site is built on closes its about page with a slider of video testimonials — named people, job titles, quotes. Nobody has taken this course, so there is nobody to quote, and that section was deleted rather than filled with stock footage.
The same goes for the mentor grid that sat above it. When there are real mentors and real outcomes, they will appear with their own names and their own consent, and not before.
