Ask HN: How to prepare for full stack interviews

1 fhak 1 8/15/2025, 6:20:38 AM
I’m interviewing for a new job and applying to SWE roles, some say they are full stack, some say they are more backend than frontend, etc…

I have not felt prepared for any interview I’ve done because the variance of questions I get asked is just all over the place. Sometimes it’s a really specific React question or problem to solve, sometimes it’s doing more of a system design question where I have to go pretty deep into how something like Kafka works, other times it’s just a LC hard problem. I just don’t ever feel like I can prepare enough to really ace the interview because the breadth of what I can be asked is just enormous. I don’t do poorly when answering these questions but I don’t do exceedingly well enough to confidently pass.

I also feel like this is partially my fault for not specializing more in an area. A lot of the questions I get asked seem to be geared towards someone who specializes in one thing or another and because I’m more of a generalist I don’t know the answer to the same amount of depth that someone does who has just been focusing on an area more.

Do I just pick a direction either frontend or backend and learn to be really good at this instead of trying to continue to do everything? A lot of the roles I have interviewed for have just been normal SWE roles though and I still get wildly different interview formats and questions

Comments (1)

physicsguy · 1h ago
I don’t think I’ve ever met full stack people who are equally proficient at both. Even within either of those there are various directions you can go.

Normally when I interview for FS I say I’m strong backend and can do logic work on FE quite happily but I’m not so much a visual person. Never met an interviewer who had a problem with that. If the technical task is something visual then they end up with a solution using MaterialUI or similar, not hand crafted beautiful CSS.