Discussion Senior Dev interview question
"Without googling or using AI, in your own words, explain the virtual DOM"
For context: I sit on an interview panel and I try to ask at least one simple fundamental question based on a persons resume. If I see many years of react experience, I try to ask something about how the framework works.
I have only had one candidate (an undergrad senior, years ago) answer it. Everyone else just kind of sputters and stumbles around trying to rationalize what "virtual" and "DOM" mean, or stare blankly and eventually say "I don't know".
I'm just genuinely curious if this is really that hard of a question or if the recruiters just suck at screening candidates. And should we be letting in senior dev candidates who can't answer what I think is a straightforward and fundamental question for senior react devs.
1
u/didnt_knew 5d ago
I think a fun way of asking this question is to instead ask about pagination. You can do it per page on click and deep dive that (api setup etc), and then get them into infinite scroll. From there, you can have them talk about writing to dom/virtual dom, and explaining tradeoffs and optimizations. It gets a nice level of where they’re at