When I prepared for my FAANG+ frontend interviews, I didn’t have a good AI study partner. I had a giant spreadsheet, a lot of YouTube tabs, and a notebook full of half-finished debounce implementations.
If I had to do it all again today, I would use AI every single day. Just not the way most people I talk to use it.
The most common thing I see is engineers pasting a question into ChatGPT, reading the answer, nodding along, and moving on. That feels productive. It isn’t. You end up recognizing solutions instead of being able to produce them, and an interview only rewards the second one.
So here’s exactly how I’d prepare in 2026, what I’d let AI do, and what I’d never let it touch.
The one rule: you go first, AI goes second
Everything in this post comes back to one rule. You make the first attempt, every time. AI only enters the picture after you have something on the table, even if that something is wrong.
Why? Because interviews test retrieval under pressure. You’re alone with... premium content.
