How did you get into frontend?
- Bring code to life, create awesome user experiences
- Social networking
- Opportunity to work with designers, creative solutions
- Intuitive, easy to use, accesibility
- Imagine and create new kind of experiences
- Create new visual things like animations, games, using effects, physics, keyframes, etc
What do you do right now?
- Frontend Team Lead
- Situation: Being the leader of an amazing team.
- Task: My goal is to support them in building solutions and solving complex challenges for leading companies.
- Actions: My leadership style tends to be informal, accessible, transparent.
- Results: I’m humbled to lead an amazing group of folks to achieve the mission of building the best software products for the world.
- Open Source Contributor; I have a lot of passion and love for the products I'm building right now.
- Mentor in CodeYourFuture
- Speaker in MedellinJS
- Help other Developers in StackOverflow, Slack, Discord, etc
How many people use it (Product in your company)?
- Platforms/Devices
- Android
Monthly 2k, Weekly 1k, Daily 586
- Galaxy S9 - 5.6%
- Galaxy S10 - 3.9%
- Galaxy S8 - 3.7%
- Galaxy S10+ - 3.6%
- iOS
Monthly 13k, Weekly 10k, Daily 5k
- iPhone 11 - 12.2% - 1.7k
- iPhone XR - 10.9% - 1.5k
- iPhone 11 Pro Max - 8.9% - 1.2k
- iPhone 5th gen - 6.9% - 939
- Android
Monthly 2k, Weekly 1k, Daily 586
- Audience/Adoption
- Session duration 1m26s
- Active users:
- v3.4.0 - 5412 (21.25%)
- v3.0.4 - 7969 (31.29%)
- v3.0.3 - 12082 (47.44%)
How do you justify working on this kind of stuff? How do you sell your manager on this work?
- Research about possible vulnerabilities and advantages of using a NoSQL database for intensive workload: https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer#sql-or-nosql
- Creating MVP/PoC with hybrid mobile technologies to reduce time to market and code sharing for web
- Research about limitations and validating dependencies using third party services.
- Creating documentation; listing technical risks, with their impact, probability, alternatives to mitigate the issues with a contingency plan and defining responsible.
- Giving internal talks, sharing that knowledge with another teams.
How do you measure that this was achieved (Product in your company)?
- We use New Relic, AppCenter Analytics, Google Analytics, AzureApp Insights
- Checking number of sessions, session duration, reporting taps/clicks, checking workflows, User retention, referral traffic, heatmaps.
- The opportunity to work with a distributed high-performance team (Canadá, New Zealand, Seattle).
- Working remotely and the opportunity to travel.
- A more challenging project because it was a multi-partner project, multi-tenant architecture.
- Using hybrid mobile technologies.
- Keep improving my communication skills in English.
- USA StartUp
What do you find enjoyable about working at your current company? What do you find frustrating?
- Share with other teams, developers
- Weekly meetings to discuss about technology, architecture, contribute to core projects
- Give talks with the rest of the company and share it from YouTube
- Social networking
- Not traveling, english is not used all the time
Who was the most difficult person you have had to work with?
- Bad environment, gossip atmosphere, particular situation:
- Situation: Once I was working as a Team Lead, and I was talking with my boss about the status of the project and I said to my boss the assigned tasks of the team and that a co-worker was waiting for a response from the client. Few seconds later that co-worker complain me because he was gossiping and he understood something different, something like I had said that he was not doing anything.
- Task: Coordinate meetings with him and also with the team, including the boss.
- Actions: I spoke with him in private, in order to clarify that I was helping to prioritize the tasks with the boss and I said he was blocked with a task because he's waiting response from the client. Then we had a meeting with the rest of the team to be transparent, discuss any concern and help to improve our communication.
- Result: I tried to change that environment by being friendly with others, discussing everything with the team and commenting on aspects of improvement, giving them feedback on this situation and suggestions. Also I wrote an email for the team, inviting them to ask anything, in order to generate a safe environment for all, helping to develop confidence having a better communication with the team, to avoid gossip and conflicts between co-workers.
- Problems: My boss wasn't very down to earth (Unrealistic requests).
How did you bring up the code quality issues to this person?
- Commenting merge requests to identify areas for improvement.
- Giving talks about critical aspects of the project.
- Brainstorming, Listing with the team important aspects for the project.
- Adding more reviewers to our Merge requests, in order to delegate responsabilities and share knowledge with the team.
- Getting pair programming sessions in order to improve our code and also creating unit tests to prevent code quality issues.
- Configuring linter for our pipelines and also for the common scripts of the projects.
In your ideal role, what would you want to do?
- Work with creative people, creative environment
- Good/Safe environment (Keep growing)
- Work with talented professionals
- Share in Community, Give talks, be an international speaker
- Open source contributor, working with people around the world
- Meet people, help solving problems (Technical Interviewer)
- Be a community builder (Speaker)
- Research about new technology
- Facing new challenges
- Open-minded attitude, constructive environment to have a voice and question everything (constructive criticism)
Did you have an opportunity to do this at your current job?
How would a career at COMPANY_X help you grow as an engineer?
- Building a better, more connected world with the products we create
Tell me about a situation when you failed. What did you learn from this?
- Perfect is the enemy of good:
- Situation: The project's deadline was set in stone, delayed with one week sprints
- Tasks:
- Perform concept tests and technology assessments (Justify architectural decisions).
- Elaborate architectural baseline for Reactive applications and integrate existing solutions for a Suite of products.
- Help the architecture team to integrate the existing products together with the new services to meet the deliveries stipulated with the client.
- Coordinate and plan each of the deliveries together with the Director and the Architecture team.
- Evaluate new solutions for the agile development of the system.
- Actions:
- Research and compare Frameworks for reactive apps, define advantages and disadvantages, limitations and risks.
- Use a commercial theme to reduce time to market and create a simple dashboard for reusability in a crucial time.
- Upgrade the commercial theme to use the last version of MeteorJS in our products.
- Results:
- I spent a lot of time updating the theme to avoid code refactors in the future, in the end it was a success but I was tired and bored because I had invested a lot of my free time, incluiding weekends, replacing deprecated libraries and fixing the new structure of the project.
- I updated the baseline for the development of applications through the use of new technologies for rapid prototyping with MeteorJS and NodeJS.
- I developed quickly and under pressure the functionalities defined for each of the deliveries agreed with the client.
- I configured continuous integration for new projects through cloud services such as Azure and Visual Studio Team Services.
- I compared new technologies such as MeteorJS, GraphQL and Apollo Server with respect to the existing base lines in the company.
- Problems:
- Difficult to decompose a feature into small enough pieces to be consumed on a weekly basis.
- Individuals in the team need to be good at managing their time and not letting it get consumed by meetings, tangential discussions etc.
Tell me about a time when somebody changed your mind
- Good is better than perfect:
- Situation: I used to be a perfectionist in my work, because there's trade-off between being agreeable and being execution oriented, when you move fast, you can be aggresive and frustrate the people who want to get things done too.
- Result: I learned that you can keep iterating and make it better as well as you need instead of trying to make everything perfect the first time, to avoid frustration because nothing will ever truly be perfect.
Tell me about a difficult problem you solved in the last six months
- Fixing non-scalable code (SmartAssist)
- Fix database transactions locking the database
What's the most difficult/challenging problem you have had to solve?
- Improve performance in a maintenance project with classes of 30k lines of code
- Situation: Starting working in a maintenance project for a Software of more than 10 years, having classes with more than 30k lines of code, commented code and comments in Japanese.
- Task: I had to find how to improve the performance of an exports generation tool and they didn't know business formulas of the excel files generated by that tool.
- Actions:
- Investigate Open Source and commercial tools with better performance
- Discuss with QA team about business formulas used in these exports.
- Discuss with the team leader and defining contracts using interfaces to extract the logic to be implemented with another tool (Factory pattern and SOLID Principles, it seeks to maintain a system decoupled from the details of implementation)
- Result: PoCs comparing performance with other tools, using an Open Source project to replace a deprecated commercial tool, contributing to fix issues with the help of the community and I was able to improve performance without a big refactor of the code that could affect the operation of the business.
Can you give an example of a valuable piece of feedback that you have received?
- 360 degree-feedback:
- Situation: Evaluate communication, responsibility, teamwork and relationships, elements which are important to be aligned with the culture of the company: purpose, autonomy, mastery and distributed intelligence.
- Task: Analyze performance and support the implementation of improvement plans.
- Actions:
- Identify patterns based on the feedback received from my colleagues.
- Support my team and compare results with previous years to guide the team's work in strengthening common difficulties.
- Results:
- I identified opportunities to improve the quality of my communication; assertive communication verbal and nonverbal,
- I identified good communication aspects:
- I keep the team updated on the work I do.
- I've a good communication with the client.
- I request help in a timely manner when I have problems advancing in my work.
- I identified good teamwork aspects:
- I suggest solutions/ideas to the team.
- I request clarification when I do not understand something.
- I offer help to the team voluntarily.
- I show a good disposition to collaborate with others.
- I identified relationship aspects:
- I have a good impact on my work environment.
- I regulate my emotional reaction to difficult or stressful situations.
- I have a good reaction to the suggestions or criticisms that the team says of my work.
- I identified responsibility aspects:
- I admit my mistakes.
- I do well the work that I have in charge.
- I proactively seek technical information that allows me to do my job better
- I proactively seek information to help me make better decisions
- I comply with the delivery times with which it is committed
- I lead initiatives within the team. (Manages information and effort of a group of people, is responsible for the results obtained from a project).
- I provide additional value to the work I deliver.
When did you receive constructive/negative/difficult feedback? How did you act upon this?
- Anonymous feedback:
- Situation: To achieve the best version of myself it is important to recognize the aspects in which I must improve, identify opportunities for our own improvement and provide ideas to our colleagues so they can perform better.
- Task: Give feedback anonymously because it's usually more direct, since we are withdrawn from taking it personal when we are criticized.
- Actions: Perform communication exercises. Define and execute actionable of the retrospective meetings.
- Results:
- I identified I need a more persuasive, clear and structured communication.
- Taking trainings to be concrete; Identify fillers (remove repetitions).
- Give some context and ask the other to know when to give more context.
- Request little time to clarify an idea (Give me 2 secs, let me think, draw the problem).
- Corroborate how much my interlocutor wants to know about the subject I am presenting.
- Taking training sessions to generate a plan to avoid making the same mistakes.
How would your co-workers describe you? Who is your favorite co-worker?
- Good aspects:
- Constantly improving: Juan, I really highlight your willingness to collaborate. You are supportive, you have an admirable interest in learning and constantly improving on a technical level. I also want to highlight the effort you make to be understood and the humility with which you share your knowledge. You bring harmony to the team and you worry that there is a good atmosphere, you are participative and you take the voice when no one else seems to want to speak. You look for challenges and you are constantly expanding your comfort zone. You receive feedback with a very good attitude and you try to implement it. You care a lot for others (not only for your team but for people in general) and you have a great motivation to add value from what you do. Your level of self-awareness regarding what you can improve has increased considerably and I have shown progress regarding the strategies you have. I have seen improvement in your way of communicating and I recognize the effort that represents you.
- Aspects to improve:
- Defend a position: Sometimes I think that you take things very personally when talking about a situation in which you are involved, remember what is being talked about is to improve the team, not so that you always go out to defend a position.
- Effective communication: The challenge you have in your communication skills is to implement the strategies and be persistent because they require significant time for more effective communication styles to be automated. I have the impression that you privilege the use of your time to grow as a developer and that you see communication as something "additional" or "desirable but not fundamental" and by not seeing direct results so soon, your conscious effort decreases progressively. Your habits can improve a lot and I have the impression that you don't put in so much effort because you consider it secondary; But since we've discussed it so many times, this is vital for you to achieve even higher performance.
What would you do if you see a lower-performing engineer in your team?
Tell me a time when you went out of your way to help someone
Describe a time where you had a disagreement or conflict within your manager or colleague
Can you describe a situation where you had to work with a decision that you didn't agree with?
Describe a technical mistake you have made recently? What did you learn?
If things aren’t going to plan, how do you move yourself/your projects forward?
When you did you set a goal? how did you achieve it? can you describe a time you didn't achieve it?
How do you seek out opportunities? (we really like candidates who are proactive in fixing/improving things)
How do you communicate, both within your team and with other teams?
How do you work in an environment if you had no manager or guidance? Describe how you would get your project/task done?
What motivates you?
Where do you see yourself in 2-3 years? (career growth)
What were some of the best things you have built?
what are you proud of?
What could you have done better?
What were some excellents collaborations you have had?
Tell me about atime when you advocated for and push your own ideas forward despite opposition?
How do you deal with conflict?
How do you like to give and receive feedback?
What kinds of technologies are you most excited about?
For questions like these, you want a story that illustrates your ability to work with others under challenging circuntances. Think team conflict, difficult project constraints or clashing personalities.
Talk about a time when you have to work closely with someone whose personality was very different from yours.
Givem e an example of a time you faced a conflict while working on a team How did you handle that?
Describe a time when you struggle to build a relationship with someone important. Howdid you eventually overcome that?
We all make mistakes we wish we could take back. Tell me about a time you wish you'd handled a situation differently with a colleague.
Tell me about a time you needed to get information from someome who wasn't very responsive. What did you do?
If the role you are interviewing for work with clients, definetely be ready for one of these. Find an example of a time where you successfully represented your company or team and delivered exceptional customer service.
Describe a time when it was especially important to make a good impression on a client. How did you go about doing so?
Give me an example of a time when you did not meet a client's expectation. What happened, and how did you attempt to rectify the situation?
Tell me about atime when you made sure a customer was pleased with your service.
Describe a time when you had to interact with a difficult client. What was the situation and how did you handle it?
When you're working with a large number of customers it's tricky to deliver excellent service to them all. How do you go about prioritizing your customers's needs
Times of turmoil are finally goo for somoething! Think of a recent work crisis you successfully navigated. Even if you navigation didn't feel successfull at the time, find a lesson or silver lining you took from the situation.
Tell me about atime you were under a lot of pressure. What was going on, and how did you get through it?
Describe a time when your team or company was undergoing some change. How did that impact you and how did you adapt?
Tell me about the first job you've ever had. What did you do to learn the ropes?
Give me an example of a time when you had to think on your feet in order to delicately extricate yourself from a difficult or awkward situation?
Tell me about a time you failed. How did you deal with the situation?
In other words, get ready to talk about a time you juggled multiple responsibilities, organized it all (perfectly), and completed everything before the deadline.
Tell me about a time you had to be very strategic in order to meet all your top priorities.
Describe a lonn-term project that you managed. How did you keep everything moving alone in a timely manner.
Sometimes it's just not possible to get everything on your to-do list done. Tell me about a time your responsibilities got a little overwhelming. What did you do?
Tell me about atime you set s gosl for yourself. How did you go about ensuring that you would meet your objective.
Give me an example of a time you managed numerous responsibilities. How did you handle that?
You probably won't have any trouble thinking of a story communication questions, since it's not only part of most jobs; it's part of everyday life. However, the thing to remember here is to also talk about your thought process or preparation.
Give me an example of a time when you were able to successfully persuade someone to see things you way at work.
Descrbe a time when you were the resident technical expert. What did you do to make sure everyone was able to understand you?
Tell me about a time when you had to rely on written communication to get your ideas across to your team.
Give me an example of a time when you have to explain something fairly complex to a frustrated client. How did you handle this delicate situation?
Tell me about a successful presentation you give an why you think it was a hit.
A lot of seemingly random interview questions are actually attemps to learn more about what motivates you. Your response would ideally address this directly even if the question wasn't explicit about it.