Help interviewing developer

Jobs / Freelance
1

Hello,

I’m in the process of interviewing a couple of junior developers to join my team and help me with my Bubble Apps. They have no previous experience with Bubble but are Full Stack Developers with 2-3 years of professional experience as devs.

Any here have suggestions or feedback on the best way to do a technical interview? Should I ask for some sort of exercise or exam? What type of technical questions should I ask?

Thank you in advance!
David

2

Past work.

You want someone who can show their experience. Everyone has built personal projects using bubble. Are those personal projects incredible or okay? Have they worked for clients? Can they demonstrate their past work and talk about it? What’s something they tried to to in bubble and couldn’t? What’s a problem they’ve run into using bubble and how did they solve it?

If someone has difficulty answering some of these basic questions they probably don’t have much experience.

Also - Programmers are weird. Filter our your applicants’ anxiety when you speak with them and focus on their work.

3 Likes
3

@thedew

  • Check their Bubble Forum stats. Watch for contributions. Ask if they participate in other dev groups (Slack, Discord, others) or how active they are about discussing dev topics in general … anywhere (Twitter, etc).
  • Ask to model a simple project management app. Watch for excessive use of direct relations for lists (example: list fields housing in excess of 100+ entries) vs indirect relationships (better here). Watch for decisions when to use an object vs an optionsSet. Objects should be used when the app needs dynamic creation of entries. Options sets for categorization purposes for the most part. Big plus if they add attributes, where appropriate, to optionsSets.
  • Ask how they troubleshoot front and backend workflows. Watch for their approach. Big no-no could be that they do not use Bubble logs or their own logEntries. Watch for their decision/s when to process something on the frontEnd vs backEnd…
  • Ask them to explain you ways to build recursive logic. Kudos if they can explain using lists and not only counts.
  • Ask them to model a marketplace app. One of the many aspects to watch for could be on how they handle userRoles and access to the app’s pages based or not on roles and permissions.
  • Ask them to provide you with basic concepts about security. Watch for how they explain privacy rules, securing API calls and endpoints. At least these.

The above is a sampling of topics that should be able to provide you with a good understanding about their knowledge.

  • You could also ask them for their Bubble Dev Certificate but I would not refrain from using something along the lines of what is listed above as well. :wink:
4 Likes
4

+++
The apps I audit that have had inhouse developers often don’t have privacy rules configured (even with hundreds of thousands of users…). If you check they understand security, then even if they’re shit at least they won’t leak your customer’s data across the internet. A low bar to clear but you’d be surprised…

2 Likes
5

Hey @thedew you’ve mentioned they don’t have any Bubble experience, so you’ll have to judge them on their previous full-stack projects and their technical aptitude (both design and coding chops).

From there you’re best investing some time in their training through Bootcamps and Petter’s books on performance and security.

All the best

1 Like
6

Something’s not adding up. You apparently have decent full stack developers who could be making $100k+ a year applying to an entry level Bubble position without any Bubble experience?

I’ve got to ask, why aren’t you hiring people with experience? And are you certain these developers aren’t exaggerating their skills because I can’t help but feel like they could to a lot better for themselves than an entry level no code position if that makes sense.

3 Likes
7

This is why I spend more time developing apps off Bubble. I code in React/Typescript. There is nothing as comparable in my opinion in terms of responsiveness and efficiency (not to mention the fact that you can do anything). I ideally code applications outside of Bubble that demand high-traffic and need very fast loading speeds (Bubble is best for apps, not front-ends).

I must admit, plugins are fun though. Learning the “Bubble way” is essentially learning a sub-language. It’s quite interesting. I do like the challenges I face at times.

I am also a “full-stack” developer, and I have worked on both ends of the stick. Bubble is its own niche, so you really want to make sure if these “full stack” devs are what they claim to be, they should be able to catch on pretty quickly, but the fact is that Bubble is not meant for “full-stack” developers, it’s meant for people that want to create and design a working MVP less than the time it would take to actually “code” the application.

Since I’ve worked with Bubble, I have learned that developing Bubble apps is completely different than creating a stack. Bubble takes care of the front-end and back-end for you. All you have to do is design and plug workflows in.

As a developer coming into the Bubble work, I was actually baffled on how simple it was for me to learn, but after trying more advanced workflows, creating databases, managing api’s, and so fourth, my “full stack development experience” basically walked out the door. It wasn’t ideal with the “Bubble way”.

Like @DjackLowCode had said:

You’re basically going to invest in them learning the fundamentals of Bubble. Their development experience won’t really come into effect until they actually learn how to develop plugins in the system. Other than that it’s all logic, and the way you handle your workflows (which is a whole different story). You’ll need to make sure they learn how to build responsively, and efficiently (building workflows that use the least amount of WU).

Also utilize what @cmarchan has brought up. He’s been around a while so he understands.

To sum things up: I charge less for my work on Bubble (cause its generally easier and less tedious), and more for actual coding.

2 Likes
8

Thank you everyone for the feedback. A little more context:

I have built several Apps, mostly internal tools (ie. ERP) to enhance the related business, so the App is not necessarily the thing I’m selling. Bubble has worked great for me specially with the speed of iteration.

I’ve got to the point where I can no longer maintain all the Apps so why I’m looking for a developer which I can offload some of the work.

The developer is based in LATAM so not a great pool of talent with previous Bubble experience but I’ve found a couple of candidates on the junior level with “full stack” experience. I’m in the second round interviews and need to ask more logic and technical questions to get a good grasp of their mindset and knowledge.

I’m aware Bubble is a whole different “tech stack” but from previous engagements I found that a dev should learn the tool with ease and I will provide several courses to speed things up.

So the question was more around feedback on best way to conduct the second round interview to get a good sense of their capacity as a developer even though they will be building on Bubble.

Thanks!