This post is about a phone interview I had with a Fang company for a front end engineering job.
I did not pass to the next level with Fang after this interview and I hope I can help others by telling my story. Not sure where I failed but after thinking about I have some ideas. I will disclose those at the end of this post.
Using my network
I have been working at connecting with people at Fang to get this opportunity.
Back in October I reached out to an Fangian who I met at a tech conference using Linkedin’s messaging service. If you have a Linkedin premium account you can send up to 15 private messages to any member per month. I used this service to write the following.
Hi,
My name is Jim Bailey and I met you at DevFestDC September 13th. You and your colleague made a call for applicants interested in Fang. I was out of town during the fair in Arlington so I am reaching out to you here.
I founded a small startup three years ago called Jimmysoft LLC. My main product, EmbroideryWare is a .NET product sold at www.embroiderywaresoftware.com .
In May I resigned my position in biotech to learn full stack development. I have finished my studies and created www.myagilestory.com. The server is provisioned on heroku and the static front end is on a2hosting.
I also have finished my Fang cloud course. I still have to take the exam. To prepare for that I will be playing around in Fang. I think I will explore Lamda functions and replace my current API and maybe use it to render the static pages.
I am really having a blast with this technology, and I would love to work for Fang. My resume is attached and you can see my portfolio at www.jimmysoftllc.com . If you could give my some advice on the next steps to take I would really appreciate it.
Jim Bailey
He responded to me and we emailed back and forth a couple of times and finally had lunch. During that lunch he asked me a lot of technical questions. After that he recommended that I apply to a front end position only after I have studied react, algorithms and data structures.
So for the next few months I did just that.
After I finished my studies I reached out to a colleague of his who was a front end engineer. That colleague recommended me for a front end engineering position. This got me a phone interview.
Preparing for my phone interview
I scheduled the phone interview out 2 1/2 weeks to prepare. I answered a lot of behavioral questions and practiced all sorts of toy problems. It was a grueling 2 1/2 weeks of work. Little did I know at the time that the coding question would be really easy.
The Phone Interview
Once I got on the the call, we introduced ourselves and the interviewer started by asking me to tell him about myself. He did not ask a followup question.
The next question he asked was to tell him about something I love about code. I proceed to say I love spread operators and middleware functions. He asked why is that? I give him a geeky explanation about how I like that spread operators give you the opportunity to do a shallow copy of an array. I then told him I like middleware because I found it easy to refactor myAgileStory.com’s backend to use JWT tokens. He then asked a follow up question about JWT tokens.
Then he asked me about hash tables and why would I want to use them. I explained how they are used to store and retrieve data fast. He asked some followup questions about that too. The key learning here is to expect followup questions and backup your answers with further details.
The behavioral question
Then came the big behavioral question and it was “give me an example how you handled criticism”.
I told him about when my boss criticized my data analysis in a meeting and I told him I would do more testing. Then I did the testing and discovered a new design idea that was much better.
Then he asked how did the criticism make me feel and I said sad. I then explained how going back to get more data allowed me to discover an alternative which gave me hope. Then I added that the lesson I learned was have to an alternative plan to present if the current plan wasn’t going to work.
The coding assessment
I felt pretty good about my answers to the behavioral questions and we moved on to the coding assessment. This is where I where I think I messed up huge.
The coding problems were really simple. I won’t disclose the specific question here but very similar to the easy questions you might find on leetcode or hackerrank.
Both of the problems were really simple and I choked.
I started to solve the first one by jumping into coding. He stopped me and asked me to explain what I was doing. I explained it and then I decided to change the code to another direction. We proceeded down that line and he said “I think we have done enough on that one”.
We went to the next one and I totally blew it. I took a very complicated approach and he asked me questions along the way of how it would work. I started changing my mind and could not explain my reasoning acceptably. I did not have a solution that would work.
Final questions
So time was up and he asked me if I had any more questions and I asked about the division I would be working for and I stressed how I felt I would fit in into that organization. I talked too long and he had to interrupt me and said he had other candidates to interview so we had to wrap it up. I think I knew at that time that I probably blew it.
So I asked one last question and that was how long will it take to know how I did and he said two days.
So after the phone screen I thought about the second question and sent a followup email with pseudo code with the correct answer.
The result
The result of the phone interview was that I did not pass. I found out on the morning of the next day. Fang lets you know very quickly where you stand.
I don’t know for sure where I failed but I am pretty sure it was during the coding assessment. My big mistake was I should have written pseudo code first and talked it out with him and then code it out.
I knew the coding assessment would be graded on how you think and solve problems not so much on how you write code. I knew this before going in but I got so nervous I just started coding.
What I could have done better
Delaying the phone interview two weeks out was a mistake for three reasons. First the Fang company was eager to speak to me and putting them off set off the momentum. Second by putting them off other candidates could have got the to the next step before me. And finally I put two weeks of stress on my self trying to prepare for what ended up being a pretty easy interview.
I could have done better on the behavioral questions. I should have realized the “what I love about code” question was not a technical question at all. It was a customer question that I should have worked the end customer into. For example when I said I love middleware functions I should have said “I love middleware functions because they allow me to add JWT authentication to my api requests which improves the security of my customer’s data. Keeping my customer’s data secure is a number one priority with me”. I completely forgot to focus on customer and tried to show off my coding knowledge. Lesson learned don’t show off, think about the customer first.
I definitely could have done better on my coding challenge. I needed to write it out pseudo code first. I then would have an outline to code to.
Going forward
This was my first experience interviewing with a Fang company and I learned a lot. I hope I will be better at this the second time around.
Fang has a policy that they will not consider you for the same job type for 6 months. You can apply to other job types before the 6 months so I might consider a full stack engineering job, which has been my focus anyway. However I believe that position is even harder than the front end engineer position.
I put a lot of hope into this and I am obviously disappointed. I have aimed really high in my job pursuits. It has been very targeted. I know I have to cast a wider net in my job search but I have not found any company as compelling as Fang. I use the Fang cloud service for a lot of my projects for JimmySoft LLC so I have fallen in love with it.
Instead of spending a lot of time on job search I prefer to write code for my business. I have done several new releases of EmbroideryWare over the last few months and I have made my customers very happy. Unfortunately, EmbroideryWare does not completely cover my bills. I either have to create other money making products or get a job. It’s been a tough journey.