I Thought I Was a Full-Stack Pro… Until This Interview Humbled Me Hard

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Have you ever walked into your technical interview, convinced you’re about to crush it – only to leave feeling like you just got schooled? That was me recently. I thought I was solid on full-stack development, ready to impress, and totally up for the challenge. Turns out, I wasn’t as ready as I thought, and I learned the hard way. Here’s the story of how my first technical interview made me rethink everything I thought I knew about being a “full-stack” developer.

Walking In With Confidence

I’d done the prep work. I had a resume full of projects, years of hands-on experience, and a genuine passion for building stuff from front to back. I’d built scalable applications, worked with React, Java, Python – you name it. This role seemed like the perfect fit, with their mission to make healthcare accessible (huge plus for me), and I was confident I’d be able to help them do it.

But then, well… then came the questions.

The Interview Reality Check: Here’s What Caught Me Off Guard

They started simple, and I was handling it just fine. But as the questions went on, I started stumbling over concepts I thought I had locked down. Here are some highlights (or lowlights, depending on…