/sample-interview-qs

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SBI Technical Interview Questions

General

  1. What do you find most frustrating about product development?
  2. What are some new technologies that you’re excited about?
  3. What are some resources you often use to learn and grow as a developer?
  4. Give an example of something you majorly screwed up. What did you learn?

Front-end

  1. Of the things you’ve built with JavaScript frameworks/libraries, which is your favorite? Tell me about that project and what made it so memorable.
    1. Here you’re looking for how they describe their work, as much as what they built. As is probably already known: you need someone who can break down technical jargon.
  2. What are your favorite and least favorite parts of implementing a designer’s ideas?
    1. This is definitely a soft skills question and is a good question to ask anyone expected to do front-end development. The dev who loves CSS and backend is a 🦄.
  3. How do you feel about type safety? Burden or blessing?
    1. Good answers will provide thoughts on certainty in coding and predictability in maintaining it. Great answers will include negatives, and could mention any of the following: hurdles to speed of development, pain points when working with native APIs, etc.

Architecture

  1. What is the most complex project you’ve seen or worked on? What made it complex? How would you reduce that complexity?
    1. This is obviously a loaded question. The last part assumes that the candidate will know how to simplify a complex problem. Watch for typical bad candidate things: passing blame on others, etc. If the candidate can’t identify something concrete in the project that was complex, this is a big red flag.
  2. What’s your dream tech stack? (<- This isn’t a great question, but it could give you good insights.)
    1. “It depends” is probably a really good answer here. Another non-answer that could be really good is “I don’t think it matters that much.” Or “What’s the problem we’re solving?” Stuff we’re using that would be a plus: React, TypeScript, Node, serverless functions, Postgres, etc.
  3. It’s your first day on the job and you’re able to get into the codebase. What’s the first thing you want to do?
    1. Some possible good answers: run it, look at tests, get a walkthrough with Crema, set up the pipeline (CI/CD), break it.
  4. At the end of the day, what will you know about the codebase?
    1. Again, loaded question. This assumes the candidate has lived in unfamiliar codebases before, and knows what to expect. Any answer that shows some sort of contribution is a good one. “Nothing” isn’t automatically a wrong answer, but should be probed.