So I’ve started interviewing recently and am starting to realize that I’m caught in an awkward position. Let’s say I have ~4 years developing iOS (but mostly outdated knowledge, Objective-C). But I also have 2 year experience doing backend work (probably more recently), at the exact same company. Whenever I apply to a company, recruiters just see the 4 years iOS exp and automatically put me up for senior iOS interview. Problem is, I’m so rusty on iOS that I am failing 100% of these companies (I always pass all except 1 iOS interview during the onsite). I’ve come to the conclusion that phone screens suck as a measurement of onsite difficulty. Now, I could try to spin it like I’ve been doing 2years of backend work and apply only for backend roles, potentially. I wanted to get the community thought on: - do you feel that there are a lot more openings in backend than in iOS? - which domain is more valuable for the long run? - are there companies that actually value this type of mixed experience? (Honestly, the reason I learned backend was because I’m curious how things work) - would recruiters not consider me for backend anymore because I only have 2 years of exp in backend? - do recruiters force you to interview for a senior backend role because they think you have 6 years total experience? - what’s the best way to prep for a backend interview? - any other specific advice? (Should I only apply to places where they take general software engineers?) By the way, I (have been and) would like to only interview at roughly unicorn or larger places (like AirBnB, Coinbase...etc)
That’s actually really solid advice!! I think what I’ll do is actually switch. I thought about it, and honestly, I think there’s more opportunities from backend down the line. I have a wide range of interests like AI, robotics, finance and biochem and what-not. So if anything, a lot more systems server work is needed across the fields, than compared to mobile tech, which is pretty much only consumer based And definitely 100% agree on the recruiter part - they really do not have your interests aligned at all.
Never heard of any single company paying their ios dev more than their backend devs. If anything, I would strongly recommend you to specialize in backend rather than on ios since it seems much more future proof and you are not tying your future to the success of a single platform that might be obsolete in 10 years. There's also no limit to the scale of backend problems you can solve, while ios dev is mostly just client side code running on a single mobile device.
I would definitely advise studying Swift. I was in a somewhat similar position. I just spent a few weekends building apps for fun and it all came back to me. There are a lot of companies that still use Objective-C, you might consider applying to those. For example, my own job is mostly in Objective-C, but all the coding I do in my free time is Swift. You might also talk to the recruiter and tell them you don’t want to be a senior iOS engineer and that you’d be fine working for a slightly more junior iOS role. If you are getting a 100% rejection rate, you need to change your strategy.
That’s a good point and is what I’ve been kind of doing this week. Problem is, I think there’s not as many junior iOS roles. a lot of mobile companies have a small core team of like 6 iOS devs but like 30 backend devs. So they are looking purely for a senior iOS specialist I did get an offer or two, but not very sexy offers, and slightly more backend oriented, so I think in the end, ya it’s like u said - either brush up on swift and really own that, or just screw it and accept a less sexy role/comp and just do more backend instead
Why not both?
I have been interviewing for both roles - but I’m not sure what’s better for the long run though, especially given that I would probably take a slight pay hit going to backend