I was contacted about the role, by a recruiter, almost a month ago. The job description threw me off because the company stated they were looking for someone with JavaScript framework experience, specifically Angular 2 which I have been learning on my own for the past few months. After expressing my concerns to the recruiter about not having any practical experience with JS frameworks, they informed me that I could ignore that part of the description. Teradata had set up 3 different salary tiers, in which there was the opportunity to come on board without the necessary experience. If you had the experience they were looking for, you'd fall into the "Senior" salary tier. Anybody else would fall into the "Junior" or "Mid" tiers. I'm a Senior Front-End Developer with a clear background of building custom WordPress websites from the ground up, with unfortunately not a whole lot of vanilla JS being used except for jQuery, Modernizr, and other very small libraries. BUT...I've desperately been wanting to do more complex JS coding than what I get at agencies due to the type of client projects coming in the door.
2 weeks went by without hearing anything. Finally, last week, I heard from the recruiter that the hiring manager would "love" to speak with me and was "eager/excited" to do so based on my front-end skillset alone. We set up a time for the phone interview, and spoke a few hours ago. The interview was pretty standard to what I'm used to, talking about my background, my current skillset, and expressing that I would like to be doing more practical JS coding in the future. I felt things were going great and the hiring manager even sounded pleased with what I was saying, until the last 2 minutes of the interview when I'm asked about my vanilla JS skills. I was honest about not really using vanilla JS o
projects and that I've only dabbled in very basic vanilla code and nothing along the lines of every-day down-and-dirty JS. I was then asked if I've used any frameworks before, other than jQuery (which I have extensive experience with). Again, my answer was no because of the lack of projects requiring that kind of scripting. I quickly saw where the conversation was heading, and it ended with the hiring manager telling me that I wasn't a good fit for what they are looking for. They need someone with previous JS framework experience. That is not what I was told, but I respected her honesty.
When the call ended, I called the recruiter and explained that I was told by hiring manager that the position did in fact require prior JS framework experience and that misinformation was communicated by someone (recruiter or hiring manager). The recruiter informed me again that they had held conversations with Teradata to explain how difficult it has been to find an expert Front-End Developer with previous Angular experience, and that Teradata was open to the idea of bringing on a quality FED willing to learn Angular 2 "on the job". That's the whole reason I pursued this opportunity, only to find out that wasn't the case. I spoke with 2 different recruiters about this position previously, and they both had told me the same thing. So I tend to believe the recruiter on this one because I know how difficult it probably is to find such a rare unicorn. Sure they exist, but are hard to come by. If it's so easy, then why have I seen this exact opportunity floating around on LinkedIn for the last couple of months before being contacted about it?
I should've listened to my gut, and a friend who used to work there and left a year ago because of how difficult it was to have his designs implemented. The company's front-end skills on projects were described to me as being a "horrible" experience. Those executing his designs complained that features weren't possible or they ended up being coded/styled incorrectly and it was just a lot of brick walls and hurdles to jump, between designers and engineers. "They really need a true FED to bridge the gap between designers and engineers." I had worked with this designer at a previous employer and they were/are one of the top designers I've had the privilege of working with to this day. They definitely understood what was possible and what wasn't, when designing for the front-end. That is also hard to come by for FEDs. At the end of the day, I'm somewhat relieved. I truly believe my skillset, high standards, and appreciation for a quality front-end would have been under-appreciated and I don't think I would've meshed well or enjoyed working for the company based on these outside experiences. For that, I cannot recommend Teradata to anyone. So cheers to rainbows and unicorns!
