Techie walks out of interview after being asked to draw Indian flag using CSS. Viral post

The woman quit the interview after a point. (Representational)

A frontend developer with a decade of experience recently took to Reddit to share her frustration over an unusual job interview, sparking widespread discussion in the tech community. The developer, who has worked extensively with Angular, JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, and CSS, described how she walked out of an interview after being asked to draw the Indian flag using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)—a task she found irrelevant for her level of expertise.

In her post, the techie explained that she attended the interview because the company was located near her home. However, what unfolded left her questioning the entire process. “I have 10 years of experience in frontend technologies,” she wrote, “and generally, at this experience level, people ask more real-life scenario-based questions or coding skills to test logical thinking or advanced concepts.”

But this interview took a different turn. Instead of being asked technical questions that aligned with her expertise, the interviewer—who was a woman—focused solely on theoretical CSS questions. The breaking point came when she was asked to create the Indian flag using CSS.

Despite her frustration, the developer complied, completing the flag, including the Ashoka Chakra in the middle. But when asked to add the intricate spokes inside the Ashoka Chakra, she hit her limit. “There I lost it,” she said.

Confused by the nature of the task, she confronted the interviewer, asking for the rationale behind such questions. “She told me she wanted to test my knowledge,” the techie shared, clearly unimpressed by the justification. “Now if you are a frontend developer, you will see such questions don’t make any sense. In fact, we used to get such questions during college practical exams.”

Fed up with the absurdity of the situation, she decided to end the interview then and there. “I got really irritated,” she admitted. “And I quit my interview.”

Interviewer asked me to make Indian flag using CSS and i am 10 years experience in frontend. byu/sabki-bajaungi indevelopersIndia

Her post quickly went viral, with many fellow developers chiming in to share their thoughts. Some questioned the interviewer’s knowledge of frontend development, speculating that she may have misunderstood what the role required. “Maybe she thought frontend people only do drawings but using code,” one commenter mused.

Others, familiar with the complexities of frontend development, admitted they would also struggle with such a task. “I’ve been doing frontend for 10 years at this point,” another user wrote, “and I’ll be honest, I would not know where to start with the spokes inside the Ashoka Chakra.”

A number of Redditors found humour in the situation, with one sarcastically suggesting, “Thank your stars she didn’t ask you to hoist the flag in CSS as well.”

The post also raised questions about the relevance of interview practices in the tech industry. Many respondents felt that outdated and irrelevant interview questions, like the one the developer faced, fail to accurately measure a candidate’s skills or experience. “Don’t you think it’s time for interviewers to enhance their skills and ask relevant questions based on skills and experience?” the techie asked in her post.

One commenter asked: “What is the pay? They seem to not care about money given that they pay money for their employees to make jokes out of interviews. They also seem to bear quite incompetent employees.”