Although Its has been just over 4 months now, since I’ve got my first job as a front-end dev in a small-medium size company that offers digital signage solution, I’ve decided that I need to move on. Last week I’ve been told that I was successful on my interview with much bigger company and that I can start next month.
This is the gist of the “why” and “how”:
why have I left?
Although I acquired some new skills and experience on my first ever dev job, and I loved the flexibility of working from home sometime,
I’ve also found myself getting frustrated and very stressful quite often since I was the only front-end developer in the company.
Which meant for example, that I had to learn how to use Angular all by myself very quickly and every time I got stuck there was no one that could help me moving forward.
There was also a big issue with communication and organisation within the company which leads to wasting a lot of time and energy on something that could have been done much quicker if only everyone were on the same page.
And the last thing is just the fact that I don’t like the way that this business being running.
what was the process of find another job?
I’ve searched for a place that is a bit more mature and better structured.
Where I could be part of a team that being managed by someone one who is a senior front-end developer too.
One company seems to be interested and the agency who works for them contact me and ask me to complete a task which later will decide if I’m good enough to move on to the phone interview which then will lead to the final face to face interview.
The task was to build a simple “to do list” with pure javascript. I’ve spent all of Saturday building this app exactly the way they’ve asked for and spent some more time on Sunday adding more features of my own.
I got a phone call on Monday (if i remember correctly) to set up the phone interview with their recruiter manager for a 15min of getting to know me and assess my motives and personality. We set it for the day after.
5min Before the phone interview, I made sure that I’m somewhere quit, where I can speak freely.
On the actual call, I’ve tried my best to sound clear, excited and friendly. I should have learn more about the company before hand but I apologized and explain that its unusual for me but the whole process progressed pretty quickly so I couldn’t really find the time.
A day later, I got summon for face to face interview.
they guy from the agency said that they probably gonna ask me about the app, what i think wrong with it and to improve it.
I tired to spend as much time as possible preparing for this interview. Unfortunetly, sometime my laziness got the best of me.
On the day of the interview I made sure I’m looking smart and in a good mood.
On the interview they asked me a lot about myself, my travailing (india and asia) , why and how I learn code, my current job and day to day task etc etc …
they also asked me some tricky questions like rate myself 0-10 with my coding. its made me laugh. I said that I dont really know what 10 or even 9 looks like or if there is such thing but I’m at a number where I can contribute.
They explained to me about their product, the team and their day to day.
The last part of the interview was about the little app I’ve build for them. To my surprised, they didn’t ask me too much about it.
Later on this day I got the good news.
I haven’t accepted it immediately since I felt that the interview wasn’t very technical as I expected it to be. I was worried that there will be some issues later down the road when they will find out I dont really know as much as they expecting.
The agency went back to the company to explain my concerns and the company replayed back
saying that they really appreciate my honesty and that I have nothing to worry about. They liked my personality and passion and they think I’ll be a great fit for the team. They also said that the app I’ve built for the interview was very well made (I guess that the reason why they didnt asked me much about it?) and they loved the fact that I went the extra mile adding more features.
So overall, with bigger salary, bigger company, being part of a team, super nice boss and really cool offices (big kitchen, pool table, xbox one and more) I think I’m pretty happy.
the only let down is the fact that I still have an hour commute and will have to pay for parking. but at the stage I’m not doing it for the money or life style.
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