Interviewing as a Front-End Engineer in San Francisco

A few months ago I started casually looking for front-end gigs in the San Francisco Bay Area. I liked my current job, but I felt I was outgrowing the tech scene in my town. I wanted to leave my small pond and see how I’d fare in a big one, with some of the best developers in the world.

When I started looking I knew I wanted to work at a place where I wouldn’t be the expert, so I only applied to big name companies. The whole experience ended up being quite valuable, and through it I got a chance to meet some of my heroes and visit the offices of some of my favorite companies.

But it wasn’t all good. In fact, after looking back on the process I can’t help but feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with the way tech companies interview their front-end candidates.

In this article on CSS Tricks, I talk about my thoughts on the process and offer some suggestions to (hopefully) help make things better.