Thanks for sharing your experiences in such detail. I recently went through a similar recruiting process as the one from the company that you finally chose. Although I had multiple first talks with recruiters that probably would have lead to real interviews I rather chose to go with only one. The one that looked the most promising and concentrated on it (I still had a full time job and family next to it). Bringing your own work was new for me and felt a bit like cheeting to be honest. You know the code and usually can talk about it with ease. I did enjoy the technical talk as it made clear that they know about the topics and the questions made sense (I could not answer all of them but did explained why which was probably ok). What I wished I had done like you was to ask if I could meet the team as this is indeed the most important factor (for me). I did accept the offer (I can't yet say if it was a good choice as it starts early next year. Regarding your choice, I hope you will enjoy working for the company. Personally I would have been cautious regarding the fact that the pair programmer wasn't very skilled (at react) and that you are the frontend reference but as you said that you can gain knowledge about backend that might make for it. The main reason for me to quit a job is if I feel that I won't learn much from my colleagues (anymore). Anyway, good luck and have fun.
It shouldn't feel like cheating, imo. On your every day job you're rarely asked to work with code you know very little about and I think there's much more to learn from discussing something that's well thought through!
I am a bit scared about the BE challenge and being the only FE-experienced person in my team. But I trust this type of work methodology enough to know it's the best scenario for a situation like that!
I'm starting early next year too! Thanks for the good wishes and good luck to you too!
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Thanks for sharing your experiences in such detail. I recently went through a similar recruiting process as the one from the company that you finally chose. Although I had multiple first talks with recruiters that probably would have lead to real interviews I rather chose to go with only one. The one that looked the most promising and concentrated on it (I still had a full time job and family next to it). Bringing your own work was new for me and felt a bit like cheeting to be honest. You know the code and usually can talk about it with ease. I did enjoy the technical talk as it made clear that they know about the topics and the questions made sense (I could not answer all of them but did explained why which was probably ok). What I wished I had done like you was to ask if I could meet the team as this is indeed the most important factor (for me). I did accept the offer (I can't yet say if it was a good choice as it starts early next year. Regarding your choice, I hope you will enjoy working for the company. Personally I would have been cautious regarding the fact that the pair programmer wasn't very skilled (at react) and that you are the frontend reference but as you said that you can gain knowledge about backend that might make for it. The main reason for me to quit a job is if I feel that I won't learn much from my colleagues (anymore). Anyway, good luck and have fun.
Thank you!
It shouldn't feel like cheating, imo. On your every day job you're rarely asked to work with code you know very little about and I think there's much more to learn from discussing something that's well thought through!
I am a bit scared about the BE challenge and being the only FE-experienced person in my team. But I trust this type of work methodology enough to know it's the best scenario for a situation like that!
I'm starting early next year too! Thanks for the good wishes and good luck to you too!