Challenging FrontEndEng Interview at Coinbase: Tackling Blog Post Rendering

Software Engineering
,
1

Coinbase | FrontEndEng | Interview Experience

Interview Date: Not specified
Result: Not specified
Difficulty: Not specified

Interview Process

The interview lasted 90 minutes and consisted of four stages focused on building a page to render blog posts.

  1. Stage 1: The post data is stored in a local JSON file.
  2. Stage 2: A text area is added to the page, allowing users to submit new posts to the local state, which updates the page to display the latest submitted post.
  3. Stage 3: Posts and user information are fetched from an API. Each post’s author name is replaced with the author ID, and the author’s name must be retrieved using the API. The current user’s posts do not display the username but instead show “you.”
  4. Stage 4: Posts are sorted in descending order based on the number of likes. A delete button is added for the current user’s submitted posts.

Technical Questions

  1. Render Blog Posts (ReactJS, State Management, API Calls, CRUD Operations)

Tips & Insights

  • There were several challenges during the interview:
    • Initially selected React TypeScript, but faced package errors and had to switch to React JavaScript.
    • Experienced a sudden freeze during Stage 3, resulting in loss of work that had to be rewritten.
    • The IDE lacked features like auto-import completion, which made development challenging.
  • The entire interview required the camera to be on and screen recording, with restrictions to only one screen and one browser page.