I interviewed with OpenAI as a way to study for other interviews. The recruiter told me they’re hurting for frontend engineers because they have many UI features they want to add to ChatGPT but just can’t. They apparently have only five frontend engineers working on ChatGPT.

Although the recruiter was nice, the call felt weird. It was over Google Meet, so I turned my video on, but he kept his video off.

There were two back-to-back technical screens.

• The first involved refactoring existing code.
• The second was a systems design question.

Surprise, surprise: neither of the interviewers was a frontend engineer, and the questions were generic “full stack” problems. The first interviewer asked which language I wanted to use (shouldn’t it be obvious that a frontend candidate would use TypeScript or JavaScript?). The second interviewer didn’t fully understand how the application in question would work from a user perspective.

The one positive thing I’ll say is that they are very prompt. The recruiter sent me a rejection email the day after the screens. My giant ego hurt a little, but I’m over it now. In retrospect, it’s good they rejected me. From what I know of OpenAI, our values don’t align. YMMV! 🤷🏻‍♀️

ChatGPT, but in a text area.

Make sure you think about what database you want to use!