I applied for CS2 Frontend heavy at Adobe.
YOE: 8
Current: Tier 1 Product company
College: Tier 3
First 4 rounds were technical and the last round was Directoral.
Round 1: DSA (6/10)
Round 2: Domain (9/10)
Round 3: System Design (8/10)
Round 4: Hiring Manager (8/10)
And then comes this final round, Round 5 with director.
He came with a prejudice mindset that Frontend Engineering is the weakest part of software industry.
After explaining about my past projects, he asked me about my interview expereince, I informed everythign and that DSA was average but I went ahead and learnt it after interview.
He started asking me how I learn DSA, that I didn't focus on DSA during college, went ahead asking my marks and concluded that my fundamentals were not strong.
Then asked if I knew about OS, I said in high level I know how scheduling works etc, he started asking if I have worked with memory allocation etc, which of course I haven't. He then asked which book I studied in college and if I did engineering just for the sake of degree.
After this he started asking what I know about GenAI, I informed that I have built an application using GenAI, but he wanted me to tell him how LLM and the internals work. Then he concluded that I don't have hunger/thirst for learning latest things.
He then literally told "frontend is the easist part of the software industry, you should have compensated that by lerning AI and backend?"
Later when I checked his social profile, he had just attended a AI conference (which I guess is sponsered by office) and hence has too much enthu of AI and I was victim of his enthusiasm.
In my 8 years of experince of giving and conducting interviews, I've never had such experience.
The sad part is that he made me feel so bad that even after 3 days I still can't sleep properly, blaming myself for not defending myself and the frontend.
