Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#1

Post by d_j_s » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 3:46 PM UTC

Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco
css-tricks.com

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#2

Post by nhangen » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 3:49 PM UTC

I'm a PHP/WordPress dev shipping product every single day, but I think I'd probably fail questions like these if I was asked in an interview setting.

I don't really worry about functions like these until a need arises, and when it does (and I don't know how to do it), I learn until I do.

This is an absurd way to recruit front-end talent and partially explains the so-called talent crunch.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#3

Post by seivan » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 4:00 PM UTC

I'm sorry you had to go through that bullshit.

That generally sucks when you're interviewed by assholes who have no idea that the specific platform that you might work on requires.

Consider most front-end engineers ALSO to be designers, and I'd suspect thats where I would drive the interview. I would wish the same treatment.

Also lol that the interview questions are basically EITHER memorizing formulas and remembering why something was that way or trying to cram down a solution on the whiteboard in the little time you have.

The latter is more admirable, but depends on the situation at hand. 5 minutes, white board, using your fingers as eraser.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#4

Post by bjryan » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 4:10 PM UTC

I am honestly a little shocked by this. I am a university student and this past semester I interviewed with around 10 companies in the Bay area, all of which were for Front-End engineering positions. I can only think of one company which did not give me any 'front end specific' questions. I was asked everything from hoisting and closures to explaining how Webkit works and various ways to improve page load time. Are you free to elaborate on what companies you spoke with?

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#5

Post by ckorhonen » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 4:11 PM UTC

This seems fairly typical, and I understand the rationale on both sides.

In any kind of engineering role, not just front-end, having domain experience/expertise certainly helps you be more productive from the get go. In a previous company we hired developers with good CS chops but no iOS experience to build our iPhone app - they picked it up, but it took a couple of years and numerous rewrites to get an awesome product. Thats a huge opportunity cost. You'll end up with a better product right off the bat if you hire an expert, especially with technologies which have a ton of quirks and nuances.

So why wouldn't you want to hire a front-end expert? In a lot of smaller companies flexibility can trump expertise - having an engineer who is smart and can work across the entire stack is essential in smaller teams. That doesn't mean they won't be primarily doing front-end development, but its helpful if they know their way around the back-end to some extent without hand-holding from other engineers. A good candidate needs to be smart enough to quickly pickup new tools and techniques, and it is important to determine this in the interview process.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#6

Post by codingdave » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 4:16 PM UTC

It could have been a sign that they trusted your front-end skill. If I know someone has a skill, I don't waste my time interviewing them to prove it. I try to figure out what else they can do, where they can grow, and how well they would fit in with the team.

So I'd pose the question back to you -- did you provide them a portfolio or any code samples that would have made the front-end questions redundant?

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#7

Post by mgkimsal » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 4:17 PM UTC

"I'd rather hire a smart person and teach them X then hire someone who knows everything about X but lacks creativity, logic, and reasoning."

False dichotomy. How about a smart person who knows a lot about X and is creative and logical? They do exist.

I feel like many interviewers want to categorize someone in to one of those two categories from the outset - "this person already knows a lot about XYZ, therefore, I'd rather look for a smart person who doesn't know XYZ and teach them". Sounds crazy writing it out, but it's the impression I got years ago interviewing. It's also the impression I get from friends of mine who have interviewed in the more recent few months.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#8

Post by potench » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 4:19 PM UTC

A coworker and I wrote a script that's been through a few iterations based on feedback and tailored to whatever company I'm hiring for. Based on the participants self-rating (1-10) you can ask increasingly more nuanced questions in each area of CSS, HTML, and JS. Here's the front-end interview script I use: https://gist.github.com/potench/e71e09c882628054c119 So far it seems to do a good job at promoting conversation and identifying thoughtful and talented FE developers.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#9

Post by philipwalton » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 4:20 PM UTC

bjryan wrote: post #4

I am honestly a little shocked by this. I am a university student and this past semester I interviewed with around 10 companies in the Bay area, all of which were for Front-End engineering positions. I can only think of one company which did not give me any 'front end specific' questions. I was asked everything from hoisting and closures to explaining how Webkit works and various ways to improve page load time. Are y…

Maybe offline. I'm not interested in publicly calling out any companies. I mainly wanted to shed light on the process and my experience.

I will say that when interviewing for previous jobs in the past (at smaller companies), I got asked a lot more front-end questions. Maybe it's just a big company problem.

Re: Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

#10

Post by mackey » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 4:20 PM UTC

ckorhonen wrote: post #5

This seems fairly typical, and I understand the rationale on both sides. In any kind of engineering role, not just front-end, having domain experience/expertise certainly helps you be more productive from the get go. In a previous company we hired developers with good CS chops but no iOS experience to build our iPhone app - they picked it up, but it took a couple of years and numerous rewrites to get an awesome produ…

I was just thinking about the similarities in iOS development. I have worked on a project where the original authors weren't iOS developers but were very competent front end developers, and it wasn't pretty. It doesn't just affect the code, but also things like the build environment and documenation.