14/03/2021
As an experienced front-end developer, have you dabbled with e-commerce and are now ready to get serious with Shopify theming?
With over a million Shopify stores worldwide every business owner and their grandma is looking for Shopify developers - and they're paying some stupid day rates to get them.
My nerdy friend, those stupid day rates can be yours... if you can get through the interview process.
As the technical director of one of the larger e-commerce agencies in Australia, right now I literally cannot find enough competent Shopify developers to get the work done.
So if you’re an aspiring Shopify theming guru, there’s never been a better time to bone up on your Liquid skills and land one of those high paying contracts that are popping up all over the place.
Here are the main questions you’re going to wanna nail in the interview:
- How do you edit your Shopify themes?
The absolute incorrect answer is “I use the editor in the Shopify Admin” - Saying this means the interview is now over and you’ve consigned yourself to Upwork hell where you’ll be selling your soul for $2.50 per hour.
I’ll probably smile and nod for the rest of the interview, and it might even seem like I’m listening, but really I’m now figuring out whether for lunch I’ll order the cheeseburger with spicy onion rings, or the buttermilk fried chicken & beer battered chips.
The correct answer here is “I use Shopify’s Themekit to auto-magically download/upload theme files, and edit my code in [insert whatever IDE floats your boat]”
For extra kudos say you use Visual Studio Code - every coding hipster loves it. If your interviewer is old (like over 40), say you use Sublime - that’s brownie points right there.
- What’s your git branching strategy?
Cloning the live theme in the Shopify Admin and then working on the new one is not a branching strategy - I’m prepared to acknowledge it’s better than nothing, but just barely.
The correct answer is anything that sounds like “I use the Gitflow branching strategy”.
It’s also passable to say something like “Oh you mean Github? Yeah that’s where I store all my code” - This answer tells me you probably don’t know what a branching strategy is, but heard the word “git” and took a punt. I can live with that.
If you’ve never heard of either Github or git branching strategies I suggest you do some serious Googling before the interview.
- How do you compile your Javascript & Sass files?
A wistful look followed by a blank stare into the distance is not your friend here. The correct answer is “That’s easy man, I just use a task runner like Webpack, Gulp, or Grunt”.
Considerably more frumpy is “Slate handles all that for me” - which is true, but seeing as Shopify themselves deprecated Slate over a year ago, and you can’t use any javascript above ES5, that’s a very unappealing “mankini” style answer.
“Oh I don’t do all that fancy new Javascript, I just use jQuery” (actual quote) is a superb way to be shown the door for an early exit. No true coder uses jQuery anymore. It’s like PHP or Angular - if you still use those you’re probably old and past it. Like 40 something years old. Ancient. Like a gnarled old tree stump. Venerable.
Modern coders use Node, Python, React, & Golang. That’s it.
- How do you test your themes?
“Uhm… I just preview the theme in the Shopify Admin, and then check what I’ve done”.
And yeeees.. while this is technically true, you’re not gonna score the chocolates with this answer. It’s kinda lame. Like white chocolate, your answer is a pale imitation of the good stuff.
The correct answer is to casually drop “I use Cypress.io for all my testing”.
Use the words “regression” or “smoke” in your answer and I'll probably swoon, and maybe even pass out. If this happens, show yourself the door, go home, make yourself some mocktails, and return to our offices at 9am on Monday morning, because you're hired.
- What is encapsulation, and why is it so important?
Your interviewer has now revealed themselves to be a tosser and you should leave immediately. No-one asks this question anymore. It’s right up there with “How should one implement the Sieve of Eratosthenes Algorithm for Prime Numbers?”.
Only wanna-be Google fanbois force candidates to answer these sorts of questions - avoid like the plague. Any interviewer wearing a “Ride it like you stole it” t-shirt should be similarly avoided. You just don’t need that sort of thing in your life.
All that said… make sure to look up encapsulation… it actually is kind of important, even if not all that relevant to Shopify theme development.
** The Technical Test **
With any luck, the tips above help you get through the initial interview where you’ll be afforded the opportunity to do a Technical Test. While I hate doing these myself I confess to making every candidate do one for me. Maybe it’s like a reverse karma thing. Not sure.
Either way, here is where you get to show your Shopify theme development chops. It’s your turn to shine brightly. To demonstrate you’ve got what it takes to make it in this crazy world.
My advice? Well... I’ll cover this in my next post. :)
Hope this was useful, message me if there's any way I can be of assistance, and here’s to your new career as a Shopify theme developer!
