YLD reached out to me regarding a Senior Frontend Engineer position. The HR representative was nice and provided all the necessary information, speeding up the process because they needed a developer ASAP. Taking into account my experience, she suggested skipping the take-home assessment task and proceeding directly to the technical interview.
The technical interview consisted of a pair programming session where I had to write a simple recursive function that iterates over object keys. The second part was a relatively easy “React quiz” where I needed to determine the order of console.log statements. Knowledge of React, hooks, and attention to detail were needed. The developers overseeing the process were nice.
I passed the technical stage, and the final meeting was with the hiring manager.
During that meeting, the hiring manager was clearly trying to lower my salary expectations and depreciate my experience. He described how complex the tax system in Portugal is, how many benefits they provide, that they pay above the market average, etc. The most unpleasant part was that he clearly stated he was "not impressed" by my technical interview results. He concluded that five React questions were more important than seven-plus years of frontend development experience and three years as a Senior Software Engineer in a large U.S. company.
Initially, HR and I had discussed a salary of no less than €70K per year; however, the hiring manager wanted to propose a maximum of €60K. They also have benefits, though the only real benefit is health insurance. Others are typically not considered benefits in different companies (e.g., budgets for tech updates, conferences, and education expenses). After this discussion, it was clear that we would be parting ways.
Overall, this is a consulting company. I would recommend applying for a senior role if you are a mid-level engineer because they will sell you as a senior to a client but pay you as a mid-level engineer anyway.
