I had multiple remote interviews via Zoom and completed the coding challenge. The whole interview process emphasized technical ability to the point where they asked really specific React questions in the job application and in the initial phone screen call.

The phone interviews went fairly well, but the coding challenge just left me feeling really down on the whole experience. I have successfully completed and graded many coding challenges over the years, but this one felt like I was set up to fail. There was a four-hour time limit, and you were required to complete it in one sitting, which was difficult to schedule when I still had a day job and stuff to take care of at home on the weekends. I was asked to build a React application that interacted with an API and displayed the data on multiple pages. I wasn't allowed to use any component libraries (such as React Router), and it was clear that I wouldn't get any benefit from writing tests or paying a lot of attention to actual code quality.

The whole challenge felt exclusionary. I turned it in and didn't feel good about my work. Intentional or not, I left the experience feeling like their idea of a "real programmer" was a dude in his basement who could hack something together in four hours that was untested and barely functional. I think the rejection was a really fortunate thing, actually.

How would you explain React to someone who has never used it before?

How do you optimize a React component to prevent unnecessary re-rendering?