[bjryan]

I am honestly a little shocked by this. I am a university student and this past semester I interviewed with around 10 companies in the Bay area, all of which were for Front-End engineering positions. I can only think of one company which did not give me any 'front end specific' questions. I was asked everything from hoisting and closures to explaining how Webkit works and various ways to improve page load time. Are you free to elaborate on what companies you spoke with?

[philipwalton]

Maybe offline. I'm not interested in publicly calling out any companies. I mainly wanted to shed light on the process and my experience.

I will say that when interviewing for previous jobs in the past (at smaller companies), I got asked a lot more front-end questions. Maybe it's just a big company problem.

[auctiontheory]

It's true on the business side as well. Small companies ask relevant questions because they have to - their survival depends on finding someone who can do the job.

Big companies, even famous ones, have moved so far beyond their scrappy "gotta survive" days that they have become quite lost in their bureaucracy and arrogance.

[csomar]

He interviewed at big co. and (I guess), you interviewed at startups. Maybe that's the difference?

[bjryan]

I interviewed at both. The larger companies were more likely to give me 'programming challenges' or puzzles (usually small mockups) for me to do ahead of times while startups tended to be more conversational and, quite frankly, didn't ask as hard of questions.