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Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

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

#31

Post by hawkharris »

One problem is that many people associate front-end development mainly with HTML and CSS. HTML and CSS are not programming languages.

I say this a front-end developer who has to write HTML, CSS and JavaScript on a daily basis. Yes, strictly speaking, HTML and CSS may be considered programming languages, but they lack control structures, design patterns and other interesting tenants of computer science. Like the author, I'm much more drawn toward the CS-related tasks of the job such as writing JavaScript.

To be clear, I have an enormous amount of respect for people who enjoy the design aspects. Writing CSS, using Photoshop, etc., requires a lot of skill. My point is simply that there is a divide among those front-end developers who are drawn toward programming and those who are drawn toward layout and design.

As more sites gravitate toward complex JavaScript-driven web apps, it may be useful to ditch the general term "front-end," differentiating C.S.-oriented front-end developers from those who prefer visual design.

This might make the expectations of a front-end development position much clearer, allowing for a simpler interview process.

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

#32

Post by millerm »

camus2 wrote: post #21

A bit off topic,but is there a website that gather common computer science interview questions with solutions ? thanks.

I saw this on Reddit yesterday.

http://www.grokit.ca/spc/computer_science_review/

So, perhaps this can get you started.

I plan on getting a copy of: http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-... too.

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

#33

Post by steven777400 »

We were hiring a non-senior full-stack developer recently and I noticed there were no "frontend" questions on the list, so I added what I thought would be a question that any developer with frontend experience could answer, and would also pave the way for some more interested discussions for an advanced candidate. The question was something to the effect of "In JavaScript, what is the value of 'this' in a method?"

I would have accepted an answer as simple as "The value of 'this' depends on how the method is called" or even "The value of 'this' confuses me because it's often not what I expect."

It was a disaster. We may as well not have asked the question at all. Nobody seemed to even be aware of anything about it.

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

#34

Post by Bahamut »

greghinch wrote: post #25
Bahamut wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we are also seeing the rise of the frontend developer, where they spend most of their time on JS, with maybe some time in HTML and CSS - at least, that is what I do for work, although I am fully capable of excelling at CSS as well.

My career as a developer has been coming up through the role of front-end engineer, really from when that was first being defined as a separate role (2004-2005, around then). In hindsight now, I would never hire myself. Either you're a developer, in which case you should be able to traverse that stack (so for example JS as well as PHP/Ruby/Python) or you're a designer, and you can traverse that stack (so you design,…

It gets necessary at some point - it's not cheap finding highly skilled full stack developers, and they're not the most common beasts around. Everyone wants them, but they have their pick of jobs. It's far easier to hire for the positions separately, and if your company is in need of rapid expansion, I'd say almost necessary given the market.

While I term myself as more of a frontend developer currently, I also know CSS pretty well (I sometimes fix bugs the UI team can't figure out), and I am currently transitioning to doing some backend work at my current job as well.

All developers should strive to be full stack, and designers should strive to know code more, but realistically speaking, not everyone is there yet of course, so you have to focus on developing the talent or hiring it.

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

#35

Post by lgieron »

usingpond wrote: post #14

Similar in NYC. I remember an interview where I was asked to bit-shift in Javascript, for the sake of itself. I've also had good experiences though--I liked one where I had to build certain UI components and get my code evaluated in real-time.

Since it's just *2 (right shift) or /2 (left shift), I'm pretty sure they wanted to quickly test how are you with general programming knowledge.

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

#36

Post by sigsergv »

hackinsack wrote: post #26
nhangen wrote: post #2

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.

Nothing against you, as I don't know you or your work, but "shipping product" does not equal doing good work. People ship crappy, buggy code every day. Just because one "ships daily" doesn't mean that what they're shipping is worth anything or means they know what they're doing. I've seen people that have no clue how to write code copy and paste crap they find all over the internet into a file and ship it. It's a slo…

Software engineers make product, not code. I'd prefer talented developer with good practical experience in “releasing products” rather than an algo-geek who can only solve stupid hiring quizes.

Slow buggy ugly WORKING RELEASED product is a much-much better than ideal clean and effective thing not yet ready for release for a few years in row.

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

#37

Post by michaelochurch »

I'm almost entirely backend, but I can relate to the travails of interviewing in the Bay Area and dealing with unprepared interviewers.

The engineers were like anywhere else-- and a fair proportion of them were very good-- but there are just a lot of arrogant people in the managerial ranks of the Valley. After you get an offer and you get to the negotiation phase, most Bay Area firms try to lowball you because-- even if you're from an objectively better place like NYC or Austin-- obviously everyone wants the privilege of working in California. (Expensive housing even in the suburbs, nightmarish traffic, and the most aggressive homeless population in the U.S. Where do I sign up?)

Then there was one silly game company (which, presumably unrelatedly, is now being sued) that wanted me to sign a full NDA just to do a coding test. Not an NDA over the material of the test (which I would have signed) but one that included a one-year non-solicit covering all employees of that firm.

I could be generalizing negative experiences, but it seems to be like they didn't prepare for your interview (recognizing that you were a front-end engineer) because of that obnoxious (and completely false) assumption that, if you were any good, you'd already be in the Bay Area. Obviously they had enough interest to take time out of their day, but not enough to prepare.

In New York, there are a lot of startups that are of low quality; but the arrogance of Silicon Valley is unparalleled. Wall Street's reputation would have you expecting it to be worse but, by and large, it's not.

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

#38

Post by byroot »

steven777400 wrote: post #33

We were hiring a non-senior full-stack developer recently and I noticed there were no "frontend" questions on the list, so I added what I thought would be a question that any developer with frontend experience could answer, and would also pave the way for some more interested discussions for an advanced candidate. The question was something to the effect of "In JavaScript, what is the value of 'this' in a method?" I…

I always include something around `this` behaviour in my interviews if the position is Javascript related. You cannot possibly have a decent experience in JS without have been bit by this.

And I'm always amazed by the amount of developers that just do not understand how it works, and bind every possible methods.

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

#40

Post by vikas5678 »

steven777400 wrote: post #33

We were hiring a non-senior full-stack developer recently and I noticed there were no "frontend" questions on the list, so I added what I thought would be a question that any developer with frontend experience could answer, and would also pave the way for some more interested discussions for an advanced candidate. The question was something to the effect of "In JavaScript, what is the value of 'this' in a method?" I…

Yes, interviewing developers for front-end positions has been a nightmare for me too. I interviewed about 40 developers to fill 3 new positions. Yikes. "This is how its done in JQuery" is not a acceptable answer! I expect atleast some basic knowledge of DOM manipulation without using a library.
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