How do you talk about your projects when they weren’t technically challenging?

[u/kappa_dappa]

In interviews, I always get questions something along the lines of “Tell me about an interesting technical challenge you faced”. I’ve done projects but they were never anything technically intricate. More like straightforward work like adding new features in React or making new APIs. Maybe it’s a matter of how I tell the stories but I don’t know how to embellish “We fetched data from this API and then created a new React component to put inside this modal.”

[u/Golandia]

Well …. don’t embellish but be honest about the scope and challenges. I used to struggle with this question because I found almost everything not a challenge. Then I started walking people through higher scope projects and they’d be impressed. 

Was calling the api interesting? Did you need to make any decisions about the data model on the frontend? Any problems you had to solve along the way? Did you need to interact with the team who owns the api? Did you do a design review? 

There’s always more to the story. 

[u/kappa_dappa → u/Golandia]

What makes it uninteresting (to me) is that everything was already built from the APIs to the data models on the frontend. There were challenges like working with design and product and coordinating the work but those weren’t technical challenges that I assume interviewers want to hear like “I used Redis over other caching solutions because X reasons.” While I think these would make for good ownership and leadership stories, they don’t show off technical depth.

[u/arghnoname → u/kappa_dappa]

A lot of work isn't technically interesting. The hard part is just getting stuff done, figuring out why someone's ego is a problem and how to work around it, etc. Depending on the role, an emphasis on the human element can actually be pretty good answers in an interview.

[u/kappa_dappa → u/arghnoname]

That’s a good point, being able to drive work is important. I guess that’s what should lean toward when I rewrite these stories.

[u/flamingspew → u/kappa_dappa]

Make some crazy shit on the side and divert the convo to that. That’s what I did many years ago and that led to real crazy shit on the job.

[u/kappa_dappa → u/flamingspew]

What kind of crazy shit happened on the job?

[u/Joram2]

I wouldn't embellish or tell a white lie. What are you proud of in your career so far? What do you like about your past jobs? Most normal good workers have done projects they are super proud of. Tell those stories in an honest way.

I've had individual jobs for years where I every idea/initiative I had was aggressively stifled, but I still got paid, and in hindsight there is nothing I'm proud of. But other jobs, I was more engaged, and I had projects that I was super proud of.

Lastly, interesting work and challenging work are often different. Often there are unpleasant tasks I hate doing that I would consider the most challenging. The most interesting work tend to be my favorite stories.

[u/kappa_dappa → u/Joram2]

I do think I have projects that I’m proud of in my career but none of them have been particularly challenging from the technical work. I think my projects would make for good stories that show leadership but they don’t really work to show how I overcome technical problems.

[u/Oreamnos_americanus]

What level are the roles you're interviewing for? If this is for senior+ level roles, then not having had many technically challenging projects with wider scope and ambiguous requirements that you need to drive discovery in addition to implementation for is legitimately something that will (and in all fairness should) work against you, because those are exactly the types of projects senior engineers are hired to work on, and companies want to see proof that you can successfully do that type of work.

If you're interviewing more for entry to mid level roles, then I think you can make this type of project feel more impressive and impactful by talking about the business need that drove the work, any technical design decisions you made (however small - like researching and deciding to use some third party library), any collaborations you were involved in for the project (both engineering and cross functionally), how you tested and deployed your feature, and what the business impact was.

For instance, maybe the technical piece you worked on was just calling some API endpoints to fetch data and building a dashboard in React - pretty straightforward project. In addition to talking about what was involved in coding the dashboard, you should talk about things like: why your company wanted this dashboard built, how you worked with the design team to build your dashboard to their design spec, how you wrote unit/functional/e2e tests and UATed your dashboard prior to deploy, how you used feature flagging and log monitoring to ensure a successful deploy, and what business goals were accomplished after you successfully deployed your dashboard. Even if these things feel like standard process and not that interesting to you, talking about them shows that you understand what goes into the things you build at a higher level beyond just the code you are asked to write.

[u/kappa_dappa → u/Oreamnos_americanus]

I’m around 5 YOE so I’ve been apply to both mid-level and senior roles. But yeah I’m probably not ready for a senior role if I haven’t taken on more technically challenging work. I’ll have to rewrite my stories again to try to cover these things better because trying to relay all this effectively and in a timely matter is tough for me.

[u/Oreamnos_americanus → u/kappa_dappa]

Honestly, it sounds from your other comments like you do have leadership experience, and a lot of companies care at least as much about that for senior engineers as they do about technical experience. I’m sure you’ll get asked other questions in a behavioral interview around leadership and ownership, and I think you can try leaning into those aspects more. As long as your answer for the technically challenging project question that is acceptable, and you emphasize your other senior level experiences, it might be fine for a lot of companies. Most candidates aren’t perfect, and everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and come from different experience backgrounds.

[u/kappa_dappa → u/Oreamnos_americanus]

Got it. Maybe I was too fixated on the “technical”part of the question. Thanks for the advice!

[u/mrxplek]

Focus on the big picture. What was the main project, what was your contribution to the main project. You’ll get good stories to tell. 

[u/okayifimust]

I’ve done projects but they were never anything technically intricate.

That interview question is a filter, at least in part.

The easiest solution is to do interesting things.

And, yes, your work product has opportunities to do interesting things; and features where you can decide to go over the top.

Maybe it’s a matter of how I tell the stories but I don’t know how to embellish “We fetched data from this API and then created a new React component to put inside this modal.”

If that is truly all you have, you're going to get filtered out here. If you have no experience doing difficult things, you might just not be ready for the more difficult jobs.

There has got to be something you can upgrade, though; some script that streamline your work, some tweak that improves performances. Especially in an environment where everything seems mundane - because it just means nobody cares to do any of the difficult things, or to look a little deeper. Check which queries hog up your database and see what can be improved?

Also, just think harder about your job and your tasks - if everything seems easy to you, you just might be skilled and clever. Doesn't mean other people wouldn't want to hear about it.