> I'm honestly quite into front end development — web technologies, UI/UX, web design and stuff. But with there being more and more accessible to new developers (create-react-app, parcel and such), I just can't help but wonder if these skills are sufficient to survive in the tech industry today. Not that it's a bad thing! Lowering the barrier to entry for programmers is always good. However, for those like myself who would like to pursue front end development as a career, I'm just wondering if having these skills are enough.
Interesting question. I've wondered the same question to myself before but convinced myself that I'm probably fine just dabbling in Front End development for now. 😌
I love to code. Personally, I would love to shut off all communication channels and focus entirely on coding if I could. However, doing that will probably have disastrous effects. Communication is super important and I learnt that the hard way when I first started at Facebook. In my first year at Facebook, I made a few painful mistakes related to communication. I changed the project plans and timeline without informing my tech lead, resulting in my teammate having to cover me at the last minute and do the work I reprioritized without telling anyone. In another instance, I didn't communicate that I was going to do some work that my teammate had planned to do, resulting in wasted efforts. From then on, I made a mental note to myself to communicate broadly and early wherever possible and seek alignment. I'd err on the side of over-communicating rather than under-communicating (though sometimes I still forget).
A number of students from the Project Intern group have been asking me questions related to Facebook internships, working at Facebook, and my personal journey. I decided to write down my answers in the form of a blog post so they can be shared more broadly and I can point people to this blog post in future whenever I get asked similar questions.
**_I am not a recruiter and I might have answered some of the recruiting or internship-related questions wrongly, so take them with a grain of salt. Opinions expressed are my own and do not represent the views of my employer._**
### My manager told me that currently it's a bit hard to define requirements & expectations for higher tier / higher Individual Contributor (IC) level for Front End engineers in the organization. Since you are working at Facebook, I am wondering what are some requirements & expectations for higher IC level there for Front End engineers (maybe around IC4, IC5 and above if that's kinda the level you use there)?
For smaller companies that might be true, but it's still possible if you don't limit yourself to front end work. Going up the levels is all about scope and complexity. IC3s (Junior Engineer) work on tasks, IC4s (Software Engineer) work on features, IC5s (Senior Software Engineer) work on projects, IC6s (Staff Software Engineer) work on huge projects spanning across teams, IC7s (Senior Staff Software Engineer) work on projects spanning across the org, IC8+s (Principal Software Engineer) work on projects spanning across the company or even influencing the industry. If you're able to show that you can handle scope of that magnitude, there shouldn't be a reason not to be compensated at that level. That said, the rough guide I proposed here is for a company the size of Facebook where we have 10s of thousands of Engineers. Doing work that impacts an entire company of 10 people likely won't be IC8 level work. For reference, React core team is mostly made up of IC5s/IC6s and one IC7. Flow has a number of IC5s and IC6s as it's technically complex and affects how the entire company writes JavaScript. GraphQL has many senior engineers and the creator of GraphQL is currently a director (IC8 equivalent).
Applying for front end engineer roles is very similar to software engineer roles, but the interviews can be quite different. In my experience, for each company, there tend to be between 3 to 4 sessions. Most of them will be testing on JavaScript and discussion around web development technologies, and the rest on algorithms or behavioral.
As I mentioned in my post on [coding interviews frameworks](https://www.zhenghao.io/posts/framework-for-coding-interview), I have been interviewing a lot for the past year - not conducting interviews, I was the candidate being interviewed. Most of the interview processes I had with big tech companies consisted of 1-2 system design rounds depending on the level of the role. Unlike traditional back end-focused system design questions, for which you can find lots of prep resources online such as the famous Grokking System Design Interview or System Design Primer, I didn't know what to expect for a front end-focused system design interview as there are very few resources out there talking about this type of interviews.
Yangshun
3 years ago