Frontend Interview - Journey begins 🌅

Evgenii Ray

Well, is it time to start? 🚀

Hi! I'm starting my preparation for interviews. Every two weeks, I'll try to post a report on the work I've done. I'll be keeping a full log of my progress in a Notion document, which I'll share later.

Why am I doing this?

My main goal is to find a new challenge in my career. I still enjoy solving complex technical problems for businesses and building strong teams. However, I don’t see myself as a manager just yet. I want to continue growing along the Senior Staff Engineer track.

What sector am I considering?

I have experience developing multiple products, as well as working with infrastructure and internal teams. Now, I plan to explore high-performance tools for trading.

The reality is that while the rest of the world has long moved on to modern web standards, the financial industry is only now starting to migrate its outdated Windows/Java terminals and applications to the modern web. It seems like there's still a lot of untapped potential in this space. For me, this is an exciting opportunity—to influence the industry and see it from a different perspective.

Why make this journal public?

Publishing notes like this always carries some risk. My blog is already quite well-known, colleagues at work reference me often, and sometimes I even get recognized in interviews. But the main value for me here is the benefit to the community.

If people openly share their successes and failures, it will help others learn, set ambitious goals, and grow professionally. In the end, everyone wins.

My "Plan"

Goals should be specific. I estimate that my preparation will take 2–4 months, and I aim to finish by mid-spring.

Everyone's time situation is different, so if you decide to follow this plan, it might take you more or less time. Since I have a full-time job and training, I've chosen to prepare in the early morning hours on weekdays.

Schedule

Weekdays:

06:00 - 06:30 – Wake up + Quick Coffee
06:30 - 09:00 – Preparation time
09:20 - 10:00 – Commute + Breakfast
10:00 - 18:30 – Work
19:00 - 20:30 – Gym
20:30 - 22:30 – Spare time

Weekends:

07:00 – Wake up + Quick Coffee
07:00 - 11:00 – Preparation time
11:00 - 22:30 – Spare time

Preparation Topics

I've mapped out the key topics I consider important for interviews.

Preparation Structure

For my interview prep, I'm using the sandwich model. The core idea is to structure preparation in layers—starting with one layer and gradually adding new ones. This helps keep every stage of preparation “warm” in memory. Naturally, as you move forward, you'll spend less time on previous layers, but the goal is to keep as much as possible loaded into RAM—just like a well-optimized system.

Stage 1 – Coding Practice (1–3 months)

Solving coding problems. Coding is partly a game of luck—even the best developers can struggle in interviews for various reasons. The key is to get hands-on experience with different types of problems so that the brain becomes ready to tackle any variation.

Stage 2 – System Design (0.5–1 month)

Pretty straightforward—deep dive into system design concepts.

Stage 3 – Behavioral + Refresher (0.5–1 month) + Mock Interviews

At this stage, the focus is on behavioural interviews while regularly revisiting previous topics. This is also when I’ll start mock interviews with friends and begin scheduling real interviews.

Stage 4 – Interviews

Show up, do your best, and try to apply everything you’ve learned.

Progress Tracking

Posting updates every 1–2 weeks in the channel.
Keeping logs in Notion.
Sharing interesting, non-obvious problems in the channel.

What if I fail?

Failures are part of learning. The current job market is one of the toughest in recent years. The higher you climb, the harder it is to keep going. If things don’t go as planned, I’ll analyze my mistakes and adjust my strategy.

At the end of the day—you won’t know unless you try. :)

Collaborating with the Community

Think that’s all? Not quite! While I won't have the time to fully moderate a study group, stay tuned for an announcement. I’m planning to launch a series of mock interviews on the channel. We'll form groups based on expertise and regularly run practice interviews over a few weeks.

Thanks for reading this long read!

Stay tuned. 🚀