Had a great interview experience recently for a front-end role. Naturally, I was asked about singletons, dependency injection, and Big O notation because nothing says "React front-end development" quite like deep dives into object-oriented design patterns I’ve never once used.
I explained that my entire career has been in functional programming, primarily with React, and I’ve never touched OOP. The interviewer looked at me like I said I write JavaScript with a typewriter.
At some point, I started wondering if I had accidentally applied for a back-end systems architecture role or if the interviewer had just read one too many articles on how to prep for FAANG interviews and thought, “Yeah, this is the standard for everyone now.”
Lesson learned: next time I’ll brush up on abstract factory patterns, dependency injection frameworks, and maybe a little quantum computing… you know, just in case I need to center a div.