Many Balls in the Air
After writing my entry last night, I spent some serious time doing a deep-dive on the company that I had an interview with this morning and then moved on to section 19 of Neil Cummings' "Build an app with React, Redux, and Firestore from scratch." This section spanned almost 3 hours and was a serious marathon. After completing this section, my app is really starting to take shape. I also had a persistent error that I couldn't pinpoint, but has now been alleviated by some improved code from this section. This was seriously starting to bother me, and I actually have a feeling of relief to get this out of my app.
I realized about halfway through this section that I've gotten in over my head on this course. I thought the last course was difficult; this course seems to make it look simple. At this point, I'm no longer soaking up the information as much as I'm just following along to get a working app. I hate to admit it, but I'm constantly on the verge of being lost on this course. I only have about 8 hours left in this course, and I definitely want to finish it, but it seems the more appropriate thing to do at this point would be to revisit it when I'm more prepared. Also, there's a pressing need to be more fluid in JavaScript, not only so I understand this codebase better, but more importantly for technical interviews, which leads me to my interview today.
After getting off of the video conference with the CEO of the company I was applying for, I didn't feel confident. I can't put my finger on one thing in particular in this interview that went poorly; I just felt as though my answers to his questions were poorly formed. It may have been due to being held at 5:30 in the morning, or that I'm not used to video conferences, or maybe I just wasn't on my A game. The interview was only 15 minutes long and, if I'm being honest with myself, I don't think I did anything that would separate me from the pack. I may be completely off on this, but my intuitions are telling me it's going to be a "no." If I were to make it past this interview level, the next step would be a technical interview focusing on JavaScript and React. It would likely be a quick turnaround for this interview, leaving me little time to prepare. I think the appropriate thing to do at this point is to prepare as though I passed the interview, which means I need to start Andrei Neagoie's "Advanced Javascript Concepts," which is about 25 hours long. If I start this course tomorrow, I think I could complete it by Tuesday or Wednesday next week. At that point, I should feel pretty well prepared for the interview, and whether or not I get it, at least I'll have gained some vital information for future projects and interviews.
Until tomorrow!