7 ms·

At 80 people it might start being the time to question whether its really everyone else thats unskilled or your approach to evaluation is wrong. Asking a pop q

At 80 people it might start being the time to question whether its really everyone else thats unskilled or your approach to evaluation is wrong. Asking a pop quiz of arbitrary tools / techniques that you happen to have remember really isn't a good way to evaluate if someone is a good developer. I am a good developer and I only just remember what clearfix is, I most certainly couldnt explain how it works.

daiwei 11y ago
Totally agree. I see front end job descriptions asking for understanding of Java and .Net but no mentioning of JS, CSS or any HTML. There could be easily a miscommunication of misunderstanding what the company want. Not saying the job description used here is wrong, just an example of miscommunication.
- pkinchla 11y ago
  I recently saw an Ad for a front end job requiring: "strong Java Scripts" skills.
  - at-fates-hands 11y ago
    Just got an email yesterday from a corporate recruiter with the line "must have strong JAVA script" skills. My instant reaction was, "You keep using that word, I do not think it means, what you think it means."
    - mchahn 11y ago
      10 points for who can name the movie that has the quote... "Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has no idea what it means to have a plethora".
  - tex0gen 11y ago
    I think that would be down to the recruitment agencies most of the time. Truth is they have a phone call and assume it's 2 separate words.
- sotojuan 11y ago
  In my experience job postings like that focus solely on JavaScript and whatever tools the company uses—HTML/CSS is usually implied, no one has ever asked me about it.
dexwiz 11y ago
Agreed. I understand missing accessibility (either you have ARIA or you don't), but what does "solid markup skills" mean? The differences between many tags is just user agent stylesheet defaults. If I wanted to be extra crazy, I could build a website using <div> alone. Or maybe I am just a bad developer.
- mkozlows 11y ago
  It matters for accessibility. Marking up headers as headers, lists as lists, etc. is valuable for people using assistive technology like screen readers. If this post were phrased as "web developers don't know accessibility" it would be obviously true and uncontroversial. Unfortunately.
- gioele 11y ago
  > I could build a website using <div> alone. Then my scraper that reads headlines on your website with `//(h1|h2|h3)` will not work. And I will not be able to read and linearize your tabular data. And plenty of other things. (Things you probably do not care about.) Oh, and you website will have no links (the `href` attribute of `<a>` is not simulable via CSS).
  - nevir 11y ago
    The thing is, most developers aren't targeting your scraper. At most they're targeting Google's, which can handle all sorts of whacky and not very semantic markup - and glean a decent amount of semantic structure from it.
  - tlrobinson 11y ago
    > Oh, and you website will have no links (the `href` attribute of `<a>` is not simulable via CSS). JavaScript to the rescue!
    - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
      /s FTFY
  - 11y ago
diezge 11y ago
I'd be worried they were asking about clearfix as opposed to flexbox.
- err4nt 11y ago
  I'd be worried about both! If you have to clear a float, you can do it even more cleanly in CSS by using a psuedo element. The old trick was to set `overflow: hidden` on the element containing floated items so it would always expand to contain it - but then things like box-shadows get cut off by the containing element. To get around this, you can use an `:after` pseudo-element on the element that contains the float items. This comes after the last floated item and automatically clear the float without needing `overflow: hidden`. Imagine markup like this: <main> <section></section> <section></section> </main> .section { float: left; } main:after { content: ''; display: block; clear: both; } The advantage of clearing a float this way over sticking `<div style=clear:both></div>` or a `.clearfix` class in your HTML is that when doing responsive design, my method keeps the clear in your CSS (and possibly only one @media query). With a `<div>` or class in your HTML you have to deal with that element at all widths - now do you have to specifically override your `.clearfix` class inside a @media query when doing responsive styles? How intuitive is that?
  - tlrobinson 11y ago
    This right here is why I hate CSS.
  - diezge 11y ago
    "I'd be worried about both! If you have to clear a float..." Why? I haven't needed to use floats at all since moving to flexbox.
    - lojack 11y ago
      If I interviewed anything but a junior candidate and they said this I'd immediately dismiss them. Sure, flexbox can solve most of the problems, but flexbox isn't always an option. Any candidate worth their grain of salt would know this regardless of whether or not they knew exactly how clearfixes work. I'd much rather them tell me they knew the purpose, but didn't exactly know how they worked than immediately dismiss it.
imdsm 11y ago
If "Hire for how they learn, not what they know" was followed, I'm sure there would be a better success rate than 0%.
morgante 11y ago
It doesn't even sound like he interviewed the candidates at all. > Although I only had the chance to review their personal websites or github profiles and this might of course not be a full show-off of their knowledge, it assured my lately developed opinion on web developers. Apparently because people's personal projects weren't developed with accessibility in mind he concluded that developers don't know HTML/CSS.
- jotux 11y ago
  >I only had the chance to review their personal websites or github profiles >Many are not able to [...] to explain why and how a clearfix works, or what ARIA roles are for I have only had the chance to review this blog post but this person doesn't seem to be able to explain simple arithmetic, describe the difference between something that is round vs square, or tell me what a spoon is used for.
- Fuxy 11y ago
  Personal projects are a bit questionable as a skill test. I've been planning to do a personal site for a long time and wishing i could contribute on github more but most of the time the only contribution on github ends up to be bug fixes to libraries I use at work and I still haven't gotten anywhere with my personal website. Most of my best code will never be seen by any interviewer since it's done at work. Now if any of my personal code was making me money that would be different but I have nothing like that at the moment.
  - kldavis4 11y ago
    Agreed. And on top of that, any personal projects I do actually find time to work on are typically pretty rushed (due to the lack of time) and are not going to be the best examples of my work product. Typically I am just trying to write something quick and dirty to accomplish some task and want to share it in case somebody else might benefit. I'd love to make time to go back and polish things, but rarely do I have the time.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
mixmastamyk 11y ago
Agreed on the memorization of trivia questions. I've encountered this clearfix problem and solved it independently perhaps five times over the last decade, but just had to look it up since I had no idea it was called "clearfix" ... someone's marketing term for it.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Not really a "marketing" term so much as one that became popular during the "everyone must write their own grid framework" era.
  - mixmastamyk 11y ago
    Yes, I was being facetious.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
wylee 11y ago
Or, at a higher level, maybe their approach to soliciting candidates is wrong. A lot of the job descriptions I see are sloppy. Or they're so vague that you can't figure out what you'd actually be doing (or what the day-to-day would be like). Some of them throw in peripheral technologies just to cover all the bases or something. It seems like a lot of hiring managers/companies treat a job description as an afterthought when it actually has a huge effect on who applies for a position (_obviously_). People who have more options will tend to ignore the sloppy, vague postings. The person who wrote this article seems more conscientious than this, but it's something to consider.

daiwei 11y ago

Totally agree. I see front end job descriptions asking for understanding of Java and .Net but no mentioning of JS, CSS or any HTML. There could be easily a miscommunication of misunderstanding what the company want. Not saying the job description used here is wrong, just an example of miscommunication.

pkinchla 11y ago
I recently saw an Ad for a front end job requiring: "strong Java Scripts" skills.
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  Just got an email yesterday from a corporate recruiter with the line "must have strong JAVA script" skills. My instant reaction was, "You keep using that word, I do not think it means, what you think it means."
  - mchahn 11y ago
    10 points for who can name the movie that has the quote... "Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has no idea what it means to have a plethora".
- tex0gen 11y ago
  I think that would be down to the recruitment agencies most of the time. Truth is they have a phone call and assume it's 2 separate words.
sotojuan 11y ago
In my experience job postings like that focus solely on JavaScript and whatever tools the company uses—HTML/CSS is usually implied, no one has ever asked me about it.

dexwiz 11y ago

Agreed. I understand missing accessibility (either you have ARIA or you don't), but what does "solid markup skills" mean? The differences between many tags is just user agent stylesheet defaults. If I wanted to be extra crazy, I could build a website using <div> alone. Or maybe I am just a bad developer.

mkozlows 11y ago
It matters for accessibility. Marking up headers as headers, lists as lists, etc. is valuable for people using assistive technology like screen readers. If this post were phrased as "web developers don't know accessibility" it would be obviously true and uncontroversial. Unfortunately.
gioele 11y ago
> I could build a website using <div> alone. Then my scraper that reads headlines on your website with `//(h1|h2|h3)` will not work. And I will not be able to read and linearize your tabular data. And plenty of other things. (Things you probably do not care about.) Oh, and you website will have no links (the `href` attribute of `<a>` is not simulable via CSS).
- nevir 11y ago
  The thing is, most developers aren't targeting your scraper. At most they're targeting Google's, which can handle all sorts of whacky and not very semantic markup - and glean a decent amount of semantic structure from it.
- tlrobinson 11y ago
  > Oh, and you website will have no links (the `href` attribute of `<a>` is not simulable via CSS). JavaScript to the rescue!
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    /s FTFY
- 11y ago

diezge 11y ago

I'd be worried they were asking about clearfix as opposed to flexbox.

err4nt 11y ago
I'd be worried about both! If you have to clear a float, you can do it even more cleanly in CSS by using a psuedo element. The old trick was to set `overflow: hidden` on the element containing floated items so it would always expand to contain it - but then things like box-shadows get cut off by the containing element. To get around this, you can use an `:after` pseudo-element on the element that contains the float items. This comes after the last floated item and automatically clear the float without needing `overflow: hidden`. Imagine markup like this: <main> <section></section> <section></section> </main> .section { float: left; } main:after { content: ''; display: block; clear: both; } The advantage of clearing a float this way over sticking `<div style=clear:both></div>` or a `.clearfix` class in your HTML is that when doing responsive design, my method keeps the clear in your CSS (and possibly only one @media query). With a `<div>` or class in your HTML you have to deal with that element at all widths - now do you have to specifically override your `.clearfix` class inside a @media query when doing responsive styles? How intuitive is that?
- tlrobinson 11y ago
  This right here is why I hate CSS.
- diezge 11y ago
  "I'd be worried about both! If you have to clear a float..." Why? I haven't needed to use floats at all since moving to flexbox.
  - lojack 11y ago
    If I interviewed anything but a junior candidate and they said this I'd immediately dismiss them. Sure, flexbox can solve most of the problems, but flexbox isn't always an option. Any candidate worth their grain of salt would know this regardless of whether or not they knew exactly how clearfixes work. I'd much rather them tell me they knew the purpose, but didn't exactly know how they worked than immediately dismiss it.

imdsm 11y ago

If "Hire for how they learn, not what they know" was followed, I'm sure there would be a better success rate than 0%.

morgante 11y ago

It doesn't even sound like he interviewed the candidates at all. > Although I only had the chance to review their personal websites or github profiles and this might of course not be a full show-off of their knowledge, it assured my lately developed opinion on web developers. Apparently because people's personal projects weren't developed with accessibility in mind he concluded that developers don't know HTML/CSS.

jotux 11y ago
>I only had the chance to review their personal websites or github profiles >Many are not able to [...] to explain why and how a clearfix works, or what ARIA roles are for I have only had the chance to review this blog post but this person doesn't seem to be able to explain simple arithmetic, describe the difference between something that is round vs square, or tell me what a spoon is used for.
Fuxy 11y ago
Personal projects are a bit questionable as a skill test. I've been planning to do a personal site for a long time and wishing i could contribute on github more but most of the time the only contribution on github ends up to be bug fixes to libraries I use at work and I still haven't gotten anywhere with my personal website. Most of my best code will never be seen by any interviewer since it's done at work. Now if any of my personal code was making me money that would be different but I have nothing like that at the moment.
- kldavis4 11y ago
  Agreed. And on top of that, any personal projects I do actually find time to work on are typically pretty rushed (due to the lack of time) and are not going to be the best examples of my work product. Typically I am just trying to write something quick and dirty to accomplish some task and want to share it in case somebody else might benefit. I'd love to make time to go back and polish things, but rarely do I have the time.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

mixmastamyk 11y ago

Agreed on the memorization of trivia questions. I've encountered this clearfix problem and solved it independently perhaps five times over the last decade, but just had to look it up since I had no idea it was called "clearfix" ... someone's marketing term for it.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Not really a "marketing" term so much as one that became popular during the "everyone must write their own grid framework" era.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  Yes, I was being facetious.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

wylee 11y ago

Or, at a higher level, maybe their approach to soliciting candidates is wrong. A lot of the job descriptions I see are sloppy. Or they're so vague that you can't figure out what you'd actually be doing (or what the day-to-day would be like). Some of them throw in peripheral technologies just to cover all the bases or something. It seems like a lot of hiring managers/companies treat a job description as an afterthought when it actually has a huge effect on who applies for a position (_obviously_). People who have more options will tend to ignore the sloppy, vague postings. The person who wrote this article seems more conscientious than this, but it's something to consider.