Hi everyone. I’m a third-year software engineering student. I’ve learned web development by myself on FCC for 2 months and finished all learning projects and the 2 first Take Home projects.
Currently, I’ve applied for front-end internship at a company. In the interview, my interviewer said that FCC projects was too small, they’re not even worth mentioning. I was sad about his words.
What do you experts in the field think about his opinion? Thank you!
I think just take the feedback openly and keep your chin up. As blant as it may be , depending on the company you apply for most businesses do not have time to closely guide you.
Some companies like my company i work for have to self reliant to be able to adapt. So understandably they have to be transparent about it.
Use this feedback as motivation to improve build projects outside fcc projects and opportunities will definately come. Its better than they hire you and you cant do the job.
I’m not an expert, but speaking from my own experience doing the FCC curriculum, interviewing for jobs, and in general teaching myself, there’s a LOT to learn even if you’re just focusing on front-end development. I’d also agree with the interviewer—your post wasn’t very specific about how much of the FCC curriculum that you’ve completed, but if you’ve been in it for 2 months, that’s not really long enough to be job-ready yet. Although for an internship, that might be different, but even then, 2 months still feels short.
As far as projects go, the projects on FCC are just the beginning, especially if you’ve only done the first two Take Home projects. Unfortunately those particular projects are pretty small and very basic - completing those only shows that you can write basic HTML5, CSS3, & ES5 JavaScript, and know how to consume from an API. But in the current job market you need to know quite a bit more than that. Ideally, for most entry-level front-end jobs, you should know: CSS media queries, a CSS preprocessor (Sass, Less, or PostCSS), CSS Flexbox or Grid, basic accessibility rules, ES6 JavaScript, Git/GitHub, Node.js/NPM, Chrome devtools, and one of Angular, React, or Vue. Inevitably this means that you should know how to write a basic SPA that’s responsive without the help of a CSS framework (like Bootstrap for example).
If you’re not at that point yet, I’d suggest building more projects until you know how to do that. Then you’ll certainly be ready for at least an internship at most companies! Just stick to it and keep going at it, and remember that you have to be in this for the long haul. There’s no short, easy path towards learning web development.
@OtterB8 Hi, I’m also not an expert. Not to belittle FCC Projects in the same context as yours, our projects here are indeed small. I believe they’re meant for practice, like when you first try to ride a bike, or dribble a basketball, or the early days of learning to write your name on a piece of paper. Although I think they’re still worth including in our portfolio, they shouldn’t be the main focus. I believe we should have bigger projects that we made ourselves. Some examples I could think of are:
In fact when I’m done with the challenges, those are the things I’m looking to build first for my portfolio.
Best of luck to you! 
Thanks for all your really helpful advice. I appreciate your taking the time to share what you’ve learned from your own experiences. I’ve learned a lot from them.
I’ll keep moving and learning day by day in order to improve myself.
Once again, thank you very much for your kind support.
There is quite a wide difference between saying things like “This is garbage” and saying “The job you are applying for requires more skill than demonstrated by theses projects, they look good but you need to build bigger projects to learn the skills needed to work here”.
I am an engineer who has hired (successful!) junior people.
Your interviewer’s attitude was unacceptable, especially for an internship position. Hiring for junior positions should always emphasize interest, autonomy, and capacity to learn. Skills can be taught but enthusiasm cannot. It is important to remember that interviews are also for you. Ask yourself “would I want to work on a project with this person?” If a technical person is on your loop, they are almost certainly going to be a teammate.
I am sorry to hear you had this experience, but that interviewer saved you the miserable experience of working for/with that person.