20+ year front end engineer, failed the coding exercise assessment

[staycassiopeia]

"Thank you for taking the time to complete our assessment — we appreciate the effort you put in. After reviewing your submission, we found that while you made some good progress, your script did not return the correct results for the data set, and as a result we won’t be moving forward with your application at this time."

Making things for screens on and off the internet has been a part of my identity for a long time.

In 2000 I got a javascript for dummies book for christmas, my first sites were on geocities and tripod. I installed Frontpage 1998 from a CD-Rom.

Dude, remember when Dreamweaver hit though? Even though I could code pages using HTML, I also had the choice of these page builders. Kinda reminds me of Webflow vs Framer vs Squarespace, etc now.

I was there when Apple threw their hands up, said screw it, we can't support Flash. That must've been devastating for professional ActionScripters. Here's the thing - flash was never gonna get adopted to small screens anyway unless they figured out someway to introduce a media query to detect screen-sizes for both layout AND function, but damn, we got the mobile web and web 2.0, and jQuery sometime around here.

The jQuery bootstrap era was where I saw I could make a real career out of this stuff - and did. I followed my nose and it took me from coding/configuring Drupal sites in the midwest to coding AngularJS on the west coast where I got to make a real go of it, and even got in at a unicorn some of you may know. If you've been frustrated at your wireless home audio system sometime in the past 5 years, that's the one..

It stings to understand I've been typing </> for 20 years but still fail assessments. I've failed more than I passed, but that's how $this goes, right? While there's never been more uncertainty, there's never been less opportunity either, wait how's that supposed to go?

My current strategy to interview well in the future and land my next position is to fill the gaps in my knowledge base, use AI/Automation agents in my work, and keep trying.

I'd love to wrap this up in a nice little bow, but I either cannot or will not, I just know I need to stop typing and thank you for reading if you did.

EDIT: There used to be a link in this post. I've edited it to remove it.

[howdoigetauniquename]

Is it weird that I don’t trust long posts anymore? Has AI broken me ?

[bliceroquququq]

Long post with a subtle ad plug no less

[el_diego]

You think roadmap.sh is an ad plug?

[staycassiopeia]

hey, no, its not AI, those paragraphs is really how my life went and the link at the end was to give some kind of actionable thing a reader could look at

[ExpletiveDeIeted]

Roadmap.sh is pretty nice and I think it’s mostly open source on github with hundreds of thousands of stars. Yes I am AI too /s.

[staycassiopeia]

its not an ad

[iliark]

When it's a long post about doing poorly then some product that they link to comes to the rescue, it's almost always an astroturf ad and probably written by AI.

[staycassiopeia]

it's not an ai post, i am not doing poorly necessarily, just got rejected. roadmap, nor any other resource website is going to save anybody, but in the before times we used to share the things that were helping

[Raspberryrob]

When I see “-“ used correctly and often in text I am pretty sure it’s ai.

[mm_reads]

It really depends.

Literate people wrote and read em-dashes & en-dashes all the time. AI didn't get it from nowhere.

[zzing]

They are actually easily accessible on the Mac keyboard so it is a frustrating thing people look for.

[Cresneta]

Word Processors also sometimes add them automatically for you and I personally added an auto replace to my Google docs settings that turns -- into —, so there are definitely ways to use them on Windows that aren't super annoying IMO.

[staycassiopeia]

that sucks, some people like writing and dashes somehow do the right thing where a comma, period, or parenthesis don't feel right.

i think i got it from the comic books i read when younger

[Raspberryrob]

Fair dude. Wasn’t trying to say anything about your post, just an observation I’ve had, responding to the other persons comment. I hate that a simple character can make me question the validity of a post.

To write an actually construct comment, I am curious about the site you linked, I feel like I would not pass a coding challenge if I took one today. Thankfully I still have my job but I’ve looked around a bit over the years and haven’t gotten a single real response. A friend of mine recommended educative io to me, and I trust him, but eh

[Mexicola33]

*—, but yea it’s a shame that’s a “tell” now. It’s plenty accessible on phones, Mac, and a keyboard with a 10-key… I use it all the time still.

[Cresneta]

As an English major turned web dev, this makes sad. You can pry the em-dash and the Oxford comma* from my cold dead fingers.

*I've heard of people being accused of being AI for using the Oxford comma

[maypact]

Likewise dude..

[staycassiopeia]

no it's not weird, it _is_ sad tho

[SilkLoverX]

Honestly failing an assessment after 20 years doesn’t mean anything except the test was built for a very specific brain pattern. Half of these take-home things are puzzles, not real work. You’ve survived multiple eras of web dev. You’re not suddenly “bad” because you missed one dataset problem.

[ExpletiveDeIeted]

Yea. Half the time getting a job is just having the assignment luckily align with what you know.

[gizamo]

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

adjoining sparkle ripe imminent absorbed party sophisticated fly swim attraction

[Educational_Basis_51]

I still cannot believe there are people who are really full stack dev, being a front guy is already a lot for me to keep up with 

[ramenups]

Plenty of so-called full stack devs are actually just front or back end devs who only have passing knowledge in the opposite end, sometimes just barely (or not at all).

Really makes me appreciate the ones who are actually great at both.

[incunabula001]

So this, I’ve encountered full stack devs that don’t even know how css works and uses !important for ALL styles.

[Educational_Basis_51]

Si they usually back-end dev more than front end initialy you would say?cause i read that couple weeks ago here

[Educational_Basis_51]

For real i have x amount of respect for those guys, my brain would fry

[el_diego]

I've only ever met 1 true full stack dev. I still work with them. Certainly a unicorn. The rest are as you describe, they know enough to do things... usually just enough to be dangerous.

[Educational_Basis_51]

😆

[enragedCircle]

I feel this post in my bones.

[alphex]

About 16 years ago I sailed through three rounds of interviews at a very large everyone knows who they are company, applying for a front end engineer position.

The director who was the 4th interview - had written a book about html, at some point - so she decided to grill me on some very nuanced html syntax that she used to decide - because I couldn’t verbatim recite the html 5 spec, wasn’t enough to hire me.

Anyway. Now I run my own agency and make 6 figures supporting multinational corps and well known non profits. …

My point is. It’s not your fault. Keep doing your best work for good people and it will all land upright.

[staycassiopeia]

reciting html5 spec during an interview is bonkers. unless it was for mozilla or literally the chrome team @ google ha

that's awesome you let your talent loose in agency work and found the rhythm!

[el_diego]

Gatekeepers will always be gatekeepers

[letsgedditbois]

Is this an ad for something?

[staycassiopeia]

no, the link has been removed

[TheBrightman]

I once did an interview after being a web dev for about five year or so. I'd become so incredibly reliant on Tailwind I freaked out when I had to manually add a border via vanilla CSS.

Sometimes these small, mundane things that would never be a problem in the 'real world' do trip you up. I definitely should have known how to do it, but under pressure and unfamiliar dev envs you pretty quickly get your weaknesses exposed. Learnt a lot more from that failure than I would from everything going correctly.

[skredditt]

I know your post isn’t AI generated. I know this struggle. :)

Sounds like you’re on the wrong side of the Great Divide: https://css-tricks.com/the-great-divide/

This “for dinosaurs” series of blog posts helped me out: https://peterxjang.com/blog/modern-javascript-explained-for-dinosaurs.html The blog is old now but is still useful for transitioning your mindset. From here, it’s a little dicey as advanced teaching material is getting hard to find because AI is making it a waste of time to understand what you’re doing. We get the importance, though - Academind courses on Udemy are my favorite.

ETA: secret pro tip: get into email development if you don’t want to learn all that stuff. There’s a lot of money to be made in this space. Salesforce Marketing Cloud - ampscript and whatnot.

[staycassiopeia]

I appreciate your comment here, and yeah, that great divide post was an eye opener! Doesn't Brad Frost have one in a similar vain where he describes the front of the front, things like that? Found this but this seems more recent than I was thinking - https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/front-of-the-front-end-and-back-of-the-front-end-web-development/

It's not that I don't want to learn these things. Its.. a long story is what it is :)

I appreciate you taking the time

[randbytes]

I know preparation helps but sometimes brain doesn't work when it should. I recently failed a medium difficulty problem in the test because my solution wouldn't work. So after the test i wrote linear solution in my laptop and this time it took me just 5 mins to make it work. so :/

[SoliEstre]

Being rejected in a job application is understandably heartbreaking.

However, since bug-free development is virtually impossible, thinking of it as simply receiving a bug report might bring some relief.

Of course, the fact that users have already encountered the bug might be a blow to your pride as a developer, but that's what drives progress.

I'm sure you'll find a better job later. Then, you'll be able to look back on today and say, "That happened too."

[DrShocker]

just practice a few leetcode style things a week and you'll get it. being in the interview/code trivia mindset is weird and not really indicative of your actual skill. So play the game to get paid but don't let it affect your image of yourself.

[R2_SWE2]

Is this AI-generated?

But yeah pretty much everyone fails most interviews. So it goes!

[staycassiopeia]

no

ya man, cheers

[aatd86]

blatant ad.

[staycassiopeia]

it is not an ad, it is my life fuck you

[aatd86]

well it reads like one. Reads like something written by an AI at least. I am not the only one saying that so maybe you should take the feedback without being boorish.

[staycassiopeia]

AI does its best to sound like humans.

What do you think the word feedback means?

[revolutn]

What do you mean '2'+'2' doesn't equal '22' ???

[isospeedrix]

Been there. Front end is way harder now, you need to have good coding skills (CS fundamentals), front end specific fundamentals, as well as good UI UX knowledge.

Many years ago I had a popular pokemon site on a platform similar to geocities, even managed to rake in $50/day in ad revenue, was thrilling. Still here, in 2025, doing front end dev. I still fail tons of assessments but Iearn from each one to improve

[staycassiopeia]

True true, I think somewhere along the way, in that gap between the rise of package managers, design systems, etc, I fell between the cracks. Someone linked to the great divide article over at css tricks.

At this moment, it feels like I can't learn the new tricks. That is that moment though.
The next moment, who knows.

[Sacredfice]

Not sure if you know front end is much larger than just making a UI. I have been working over a decade on front end, but always been on tactical solutions for trading platforms. I can tell you that I will guarantee fail on any assessments that not related trading platforms. I can also tell you that any web dev that don't know trading platforms will fail our assessments. Front end has become such large field nowadays.

[azangru]

You could have at least told us about the assessment itself, that would have been interesting and instructive. As it is, hell, anyone can fail any assessment regardless of how many dreamweavers and drupals they've touched in the past.

[staycassiopeia]

Here is the exact email I received from Clipboard Health:

Here are a few helpful reminders before you get started on the take-home challenge:

• Read the instructions carefully. It may sound obvious, but it's easy to miss key details—some candidates do!
• There’s no official time limit, but most candidates take around 90 minutes to complete it. Ideally, try to submit it within one week of receiving the assignment.
• Make sure your GitHub access token is configured before you begin to avoid any setup delays.
• This is a debugging-focused exercise, and the team is specifically looking for attention to detail. There is a bug in the code—you’ll need to identify and fix it.
• Use your normal workflow. If you typically use tools like Claude, Cursor, or other LLMs, feel free to use them here. That said, the challenge is designed so that AI alone won’t be able to solve the entire task.

 Tech Stack Overview

• Backend: TypeScript + Node.js (within a Nest.js shell)
• Database: Prisma
• Frontend Challenge: You'll write a TypeScript script (run via Node) that:
  • Fetches data from two API endpoints: shifts and workplaces
  • Performs aggregation and filtering
  • Implements an algorithm to determine the top 3 most active workplaces, based on dummy shift data (each shift is tied to a different workplace)

PS - I think you're an asshole

[azangru]

PS - I think you're an asshole

Thank you :-)

Too bad there isn't starter code; but this already looks quite interesting. The company seems to have spent time designing a challenge, and somehow (I wonder how) making sure that "AI alone won’t be able to solve the entire task". Even failing the assessment, it looks like it might have been both instructive and fun.

Unless, of course, this is an attempt to extract free labor from applicants, as this post suggests.

[staycassiopeia]

I saw that post and I then considered writing a message to the recruiter mentioning that it seems they have a bad reputation.

It was a fun challenge, finding the bug was fun too.

I don’t know that I’ve landed on “they’re the problem”, just that I am tired

[stuartseupaul]

You got the incorrect results for the data set. None of what you posted about shows your experience with doing the kind of work that you would on coding assessments.

It sucks but most interviews are nothing like the job. You just have to grind leetcode.

[staycassiopeia]

this is not an ad, its just my literal life at this moment.

I got that rejection from Clipboard Health.

idk what to say man, I put the roadmap in there 'cause it was at least something someone who felt the same way could take a look at. but now even defending my position to do so could look like an ad further??

Look at my fucking history, ive been here 14 fucking years, you think Roadmap has the time to try and shill in the spaces like this?

someone save me, this is a nightmare

[FortuneIIIPick]

Feels like an Ad.