8 ms·

Hiring Front-End Engineers

90 points by martian 16y ago

jaspero 16y ago
I felt that the author kind of mixed up front-end engineer and graphic designer. Good front-end engineers(developers) are not necessarily good graphic designers and vice versa. I am a computer science graduate and front-end developer with four years of industry experience and I started it around 10 years back as a hobby. I do some graphic designing too but my strong domains are html,css and javascript. All of them are self-learned as the author has mentioned. Wherever I worked, I hated the fact that people kind of undermine the importance of front-end. They bring in some software engineers and make them work with me. Everyone thinks they know html and css and its pretty easy. Since there are no way of measuring the quality of their code, I get really frustrated seeing people undermine my domain. Even with this much of experience I feel there is so much to learn and so much improvements can be made.
- sudont 16y ago
  What's even worse is when the engineers usurp everything, from front-end to UX and design. As a designer, it pains me to see some interfaces that directly represent the back-end model, not the user's task.
  - Dylanlacey 16y ago
    The reverse is just as bad. Dear GDs: Let's not fight anymore, lets work together to make beautiful web-babies. Love, the Engineers. PS: Did you lose weight? You look great! Lose the hipster hat.
    - Tyrant505 16y ago
      why yes, thank you. Did you get a tan?
      - BillSaysThis 16y ago
        are you suggesting I was not working during sunlight hours every damn day for the last three months?
    - sudont 16y ago
      On second glance, my post was a bit troll-ish. It was more in reference to large enterprise apps, the one in mind combines 4 formerly separate, disparate apps, a mail server and a file manager into a single install, and doesn’t have any bearing at all to what an actual workflow is. Each Ext tab basically dumps the contents of a database out, or loads an iframe that contains a different install’s instance.
  - Stormbringer 16y ago
    As an front-end engineer, it pains me to see some pixel perfect thing of beauty that a graphic designer has whipped up in Macromedia, with the most $deity-awful pile of auto-generated crud backing it up, with no considerations for usability, or feasibility of making it work on multiple different browsers. Even getting something close to looking the same across multiple browsers and resolutions is a herculean task. So yeah, you pooped out something pretty. Well done and all that. Now the hard work begins, polishing that turd until it is dynamic (i.e. loads the appropriate data), usable and accessible. Get yourself some potty training (e.g. roll the html by hand) and then we'll talk about respect.
    - sudont 16y ago
      I am a front-end, and know Cocoa and deal with back-end systems in my working capacity, so I think I can comment on both sides. When I said "As a designer," I meant "in the eyes of a designer." Most people here like to wear enough hats that it makes sense. Try to be a little less condescending next time.
- NHQ 16y ago
  I think it was pretty clear he was not talking about graphic designers. Why would a writer or musician make a good graphic designer? They may or may not, which is not the point. What makes your artist types good at front end are the things that come with the practice of any art: rhythm, composition, juxtaposition, etc.
- Tyrant505 16y ago
  I agree with how you assumed he got the two "fields" messed up. I learned adobe first, then html and css, now im learning ruby(programming in general too) and rails / javascript. There is so much to learn. I am learning the "stack" out of necessity in the "do it or shut up" startup world but I really am amazed how a small amount of others seem to tackle all of this with a high quality level. There really is so much to learn. Not to say that serious coders don't have their work cut out for them but the depth and time and SKILL necessary for even less than great mastery is astonishing. I salute you all who seem to flow gracefully in this "expect everything" world.
rimantas 16y ago
Article is funny in a funny way: it kind of gets the gist right, but every single point is debatable. #1: same applies to back-end too. #2: why not? And why is that front-end is specialist and back-end is generalist? This point is very weak, and I'd say that the main problem with back-end specialist coming to front-end is the tendency to dismiss it as "easy". #3: I have both. And prototype. Good JS developer does not make good front-end engineer. Experience with popular frameworks is a plus. Also, if you know jQuery you will know your CSS selectors—that's a plus. #4: Author has a point there. I'd not say good F-EE must be an artist, but a good taste and design sense is a huge plus: with those qualities one can see misalignments, broken rhythm, stray font, etc. without the need of designer to point at that. #5: Wrong. A good front-end engineer must be able to operate those three separate layers: structure (HTML), presentation (CSS), behavior(JS). There is very little of that in print, not to mention other qualities that fundamentally differ.
- shawnee_ 16y ago
  >>#5: Wrong. A good front-end engineer must be able to operate those three separate layers: structure (HTML), presentation (CSS), behavior(JS). There is very little of that in print, not to mention other qualities that fundamentally differ. Nah. The original point of #5 was If you want to find good front-end engineers, look to the newspaper and print industry. This is because every design -- print or graphic-- needs a logical FLOW, visually. People who migrated from (or started in) print know this, and it ultimately makes the end user experience better. Knowing the three layers is obviously necessary, but I don't think that's the point the author was pointing out with respect to that data.
  - zacman85 16y ago
    Yes. This is exactly what I intended. Thank you for clarifying.
    - shawnee_ 16y ago
      You are welcome. Must stick up for print people; my design career technically began in middle school, on the yearbook staff. It is hard to forgot those basic fundamentals when they are drilled in so young. Even today I spend far more time pondering pixels, margin widths, font sizes, fonts, padding, etc than any normal person should.
geuis 16y ago
These are very good points. I fit those requirements almost perfectly. Self-taught: check Some college, no CS degree: check Play an instrument(several): check Artist of type X: pseudo check (I'm an amateur photographer) I think it makes sense under those guidelines where when I interviewed with Facebook in 2009, I ended the conversation after 10 minutes with one of their engineers. Completely the wrong fit for a frontend engineer worth their salt.
ojbyrne 16y ago
Each point except for #3 has lots of weasel words. "Nearly every", "The back-end engineers that break the mold", etc. Makes it un-actionable.
- alnayyir 16y ago
  Maybe he was scarred from getting nitpicked to death here.
- zacman85 16y ago
  If I had been more definitive, I would risk making the same mistakes that the people who inspired this article were making. That is, to rigidly define what a front-end engineer is in terms of completely arbitrary constraints. I wanted to provide a set of commonalities that I have found through my experiences, but not to explicitly say "this is what a front-end engineer has to be." A good front-end engineer can come from ANYWHERE and I state that by saying that there are clearly going to be exceptions to whatever I write.
btipling 16y ago
jQuery is not good for individuals who want to start out with JavaScript. I recommend people who want to work in the world of JavaScript to know JavaScript, read The Good Parts, read the Rhino Book, etc. Once you've got it down then use jQuery. In addition I recommend reading the source code of whatever library you use to see how it does things.
- astrofinch 16y ago
  Why?
  - iron_ball 16y ago
    So you can answer interview questions.
grayrest 16y ago
Proper front end engineering PRODUCES measurable, testable, predictable, reproducible and stable solutions. If you're calling yourself an engineer, you should be able to build a full application client side with separation between the business logic, communication, and display code. If you're writing untested spaghetti jQuery all over the place without at least writing custom extensions, I object to you calling yourself an engineer even if you can bang out a marketing site in no time flat. Call yourself an expert front end developer with my blessings.
- Dylanlacey 16y ago
  In quite a few places if you're calling yourself an engineer you need an Engineering degree. Just saying.
  - grayrest 16y ago
    Alas, not in the US. I'd at least like to hold to the reduced standard of practicing software engineering if you're going to call yourself an engineer.
- zacman85 16y ago
  While I understand your point, I feel like mine was missed. Perhaps I should have worded it differently. The fact is, the web is a constantly evolving ecosystem that as a front-end engineer, you do not get much control over. Yes of course the code YOU produce should be predictable and stable and so forth. However, at any time, the rug can be pulled out from underneath you by a browser update, the uptake of a particular device (e.g. iPhone), etc. When you are working on a website where the WebKit nightlies compose more of your traffic per day than most of the sites on the rest of the Internet get in their lifetime, you have to be extremely flexible in your interpretation of what a successful feature looks like when applied across the board. I do not feel that one faces this same level of constant uncertainty in backend environments where the engineers have much more say in what is running their software.
  - grayrest 16y ago
rwhitman 16y ago
Well, I like that I've been validated. I'll say that.
jsavimbi 16y ago
He's 50/50 at best with his assumptions. He should work on them. - Web developer since before Bubble 1.0.
- gscott 16y ago
  And who never needs to search for information on Google to develop a feature. I want my whole platform written on the whiteboard first please. No Googling for you.
bill-nordwall 16y ago
I agree with Chris here - I wince a little bit every time I see a candidate start off on the whiteboard with a dollar sign. However, this article emphasis on Javascript at the expense of the other technologies and soft skills that make a truly excellent front-end engineer - HTML/CSS, solid understanding of SEO, Accessibility (WCAG/508/WAI-ARIA), etc. I've interviewed plenty of front-end engineers who breezed through a similar no-framework javascript question, but fell to pieces when I had them hand-code a three-column, fixed width, centered layout in HTML/CSS (nav/content/sidebar) with the stipulation that the content column appear first in the HTML source. These candidates also tend not to know: - What rel="nofollow" means - What WAI-ARIA is. - What browsers were affected by and how to trigger Quirks Mode. - The difference between PNG-8 and PNG-24 Front-end engineering is a holistic discipline that demands a wide array of skills across a big chunk of the spectrum between back-end developer and visual designer. Overemphasizing Javascript skills at the expense of others is a dangerous precedent. EDIT: Fixed formatting.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
tantalor 16y ago
Solution to the puzzle; took about 3 to code minutes after I found the thumbnails for the slideshow. https://gist.github.com/789200 https://gist.github.com/789200
- asmithmd1 16y ago
  I like this slick way cycle thru a range of numbers: c = c < 4 ? c + 1 : 0;
  - nostrademons 16y ago
    I tend to prefer c = (c + 1) % 4. It's shorter (which matters for client-side code), and makes it more explicit what you're attempting to accomplish.
    - tantalor 16y ago
      Agreed, that is definitely more clear. Alternatively, increment with c++ and replace [c] with [c%4].
    - rudasn 16y ago
      I really regret not paying attention to maths at school. What exactly is the % doing there? What is the purpose of % normally?
      - nostrademons 16y ago
        % is the modulus operator. It's the remainder when you divide...so 0 % 4 == 0, 1 % 4 == 1, 2 % 4 == 2, 3 % 4 == 3, then 4 % 4 == 0 again. It's useful in that the result cycles through 0 <= x % n < n.
    - tydok 16y ago
      just a correction. The equivalent to the above is: c = (c + 1) % 5
- formika 16y ago
jhpriestley 16y ago
A div with an id of 'slideshow' contains five images, the first of which is shown and the others are hidden using a display style of none. Using Javascript, create a simple slideshow that cycles through the images, displaying each image for three seconds at a time, looping back to the first image when the end is reached. You cannot use jQuery or any other library. Instead of asking something easy, with a completely unrealistic caveat that makes it tricky for people who think that the "library" was actually a positive invention, why not ask something not easy. It sounds like you're looking for people who spend their time writing garbage like while(node = node.parentNode){ if(node.className.match(/foo/)) { break; } } because `node.closest('.foo')` isn't hardcore enough. That sounds like a crap engineer to me.
- Isofarro 16y ago
  The point of understanding the fundamentals of DOM means being able to adapt when the library abstraction you are using leaks. We are not in a state where libraries have effectively or completely abstracted DOM and BOM, so sometimes seeing past the library is necessary. With developers who can't tell the difference between jQuery and JavaScript + DOM, that is a barrier to being an effective developer.
Charuru 16y ago
Chris Zacharias worked at Youtube right? The hilarious thing about this article is that where he says Front-End Engineers he actually means web designers, and Google doesn't have them. It seems obvious to me that to have a good looking website you need good artists, and that #2 and #4 are such revelations speaks volumes to Google's overall lack of respect for that kind of thing. Though Developer/Test Driven Design seems to be working out for them.
- MJR 16y ago
  Web designer != Front-End Developer. For me the distinction is in the use of graphical tools. If you spend your day working in Photoshop for part of the time and you're not just slicing - you're a designer. The front-end developer takes the design and builds it in code. All of it - code, styles, interaction, etc. There are web designers who are also front-end developers and vice versa, but the roles are not equivalent and they require different skillsets.
  - Charuru 16y ago
    Yes I'm not saying they're the same role.
- zacman85 16y ago
  I mean what I said when I use the term Front-End Engineer. The people who have built the parts of YouTube that you touch on a daily basis fit very nicely within the traits I have outlined and I would most certainly call them engineers through-and-through. They sometimes have to design elements on a page. They sometimes have to code back-end services and infrastructure. They have to run the gamut between the disciplines of web design and computer science on a daily basis. I would NOT say that Google lacks respect for web design. I am saying that finding people who are hybrids of web design and computer science IS extremely challenging, even for Google.
CrabDude 16y ago
This article itself is the problem with the term "Front-End Engineer". I'm a JavaScript Engineer and find the majority of the comments in this thread a disturbing reflection of what people consider an "engineer". My degree is in Electrical Engineering at one if the best engineering colleges in the nation, so I'm very familiar with the term. What the author is describing here is at best a "JavaScript developer" (used in the pejorative) or more accurately a Web Designer with boilerplate JavaScript skills.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
gcb 16y ago
Went trhu the youtube hiring process a while ago. recruiter told me the interview would be just like google's. And i should study classical algos and python/java/C++ Studied it for 4 weeks until the day they wanted to call me. first question was a javascript one where the interviewer wanted me to remember the getElementsByTagName(*) solution. Heck, 4 weeks watching MIT algo classes and reading TOC and doing the exercises in python or C, i couldn't even remember proper JS syntax on the spot! Think that was one of the most awful interviews i had. got so nervous on that 1st question that i blanked out trhu all the rest :) back on topic, i got 5/5 on this list :) 1. degree in design related area 2. learned FE before BE (could do a little desktop and embeded before the web tough) 3. Still prefer pure JS for my personal projects (at work it's YUI, and open source contributions are mostly jquery nowadays) 4. Who aren't? :) 5. first job was at a newspaper
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  Asking people questions that they could look up the answer to online in a couple of seconds is pointless unless you expect them to be doing critical patches to web code when the internet is down or unavailable. Fundamentally the interviewing process is not a solved problem. So we have flaws in the system. I agree that playing trivial pursuits is annoying, but what else will they do?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - gcb 16y ago
    tell you the correct scope of what they plan to ask? :)

90 points by martian 16y ago

I felt that the author kind of mixed up front-end engineer and graphic designer. Good front-end engineers(developers) are not necessarily good graphic designers and vice versa. I am a computer science graduate and front-end developer with four years of industry experience and I started it around 10 years back as a hobby. I do some graphic designing too but my strong domains are html,css and javascript. All of them are self-learned as the author has mentioned. Wherever I worked, I hated the fact that people kind of undermine the importance of front-end. They bring in some software engineers and make them work with me. Everyone thinks they know html and css and its pretty easy. Since there are no way of measuring the quality of their code, I get really frustrated seeing people undermine my domain. Even with this much of experience I feel there is so much to learn and so much improvements can be made.

sudont 16y ago
What's even worse is when the engineers usurp everything, from front-end to UX and design. As a designer, it pains me to see some interfaces that directly represent the back-end model, not the user's task.
- Dylanlacey 16y ago
  The reverse is just as bad. Dear GDs: Let's not fight anymore, lets work together to make beautiful web-babies. Love, the Engineers. PS: Did you lose weight? You look great! Lose the hipster hat.
  - Tyrant505 16y ago
    why yes, thank you. Did you get a tan?
    - BillSaysThis 16y ago
      are you suggesting I was not working during sunlight hours every damn day for the last three months?
  - sudont 16y ago
    On second glance, my post was a bit troll-ish. It was more in reference to large enterprise apps, the one in mind combines 4 formerly separate, disparate apps, a mail server and a file manager into a single install, and doesn’t have any bearing at all to what an actual workflow is. Each Ext tab basically dumps the contents of a database out, or loads an iframe that contains a different install’s instance.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  As an front-end engineer, it pains me to see some pixel perfect thing of beauty that a graphic designer has whipped up in Macromedia, with the most $deity-awful pile of auto-generated crud backing it up, with no considerations for usability, or feasibility of making it work on multiple different browsers. Even getting something close to looking the same across multiple browsers and resolutions is a herculean task. So yeah, you pooped out something pretty. Well done and all that. Now the hard work begins, polishing that turd until it is dynamic (i.e. loads the appropriate data), usable and accessible. Get yourself some potty training (e.g. roll the html by hand) and then we'll talk about respect.
  - sudont 16y ago
    I am a front-end, and know Cocoa and deal with back-end systems in my working capacity, so I think I can comment on both sides. When I said "As a designer," I meant "in the eyes of a designer." Most people here like to wear enough hats that it makes sense. Try to be a little less condescending next time.
NHQ 16y ago
I think it was pretty clear he was not talking about graphic designers. Why would a writer or musician make a good graphic designer? They may or may not, which is not the point. What makes your artist types good at front end are the things that come with the practice of any art: rhythm, composition, juxtaposition, etc.
Tyrant505 16y ago
I agree with how you assumed he got the two "fields" messed up. I learned adobe first, then html and css, now im learning ruby(programming in general too) and rails / javascript. There is so much to learn. I am learning the "stack" out of necessity in the "do it or shut up" startup world but I really am amazed how a small amount of others seem to tackle all of this with a high quality level. There really is so much to learn. Not to say that serious coders don't have their work cut out for them but the depth and time and SKILL necessary for even less than great mastery is astonishing. I salute you all who seem to flow gracefully in this "expect everything" world.

rimantas 16y ago

Article is funny in a funny way: it kind of gets the gist right, but every single point is debatable. #1: same applies to back-end too. #2: why not? And why is that front-end is specialist and back-end is generalist? This point is very weak, and I'd say that the main problem with back-end specialist coming to front-end is the tendency to dismiss it as "easy". #3: I have both. And prototype. Good JS developer does not make good front-end engineer. Experience with popular frameworks is a plus. Also, if you know jQuery you will know your CSS selectors—that's a plus. #4: Author has a point there. I'd not say good F-EE must be an artist, but a good taste and design sense is a huge plus: with those qualities one can see misalignments, broken rhythm, stray font, etc. without the need of designer to point at that. #5: Wrong. A good front-end engineer must be able to operate those three separate layers: structure (HTML), presentation (CSS), behavior(JS). There is very little of that in print, not to mention other qualities that fundamentally differ.

shawnee_ 16y ago
>>#5: Wrong. A good front-end engineer must be able to operate those three separate layers: structure (HTML), presentation (CSS), behavior(JS). There is very little of that in print, not to mention other qualities that fundamentally differ. Nah. The original point of #5 was If you want to find good front-end engineers, look to the newspaper and print industry. This is because every design -- print or graphic-- needs a logical FLOW, visually. People who migrated from (or started in) print know this, and it ultimately makes the end user experience better. Knowing the three layers is obviously necessary, but I don't think that's the point the author was pointing out with respect to that data.
- zacman85 16y ago
  Yes. This is exactly what I intended. Thank you for clarifying.
  - shawnee_ 16y ago
    You are welcome. Must stick up for print people; my design career technically began in middle school, on the yearbook staff. It is hard to forgot those basic fundamentals when they are drilled in so young. Even today I spend far more time pondering pixels, margin widths, font sizes, fonts, padding, etc than any normal person should.

geuis 16y ago

These are very good points. I fit those requirements almost perfectly. Self-taught: check Some college, no CS degree: check Play an instrument(several): check Artist of type X: pseudo check (I'm an amateur photographer) I think it makes sense under those guidelines where when I interviewed with Facebook in 2009, I ended the conversation after 10 minutes with one of their engineers. Completely the wrong fit for a frontend engineer worth their salt.

ojbyrne 16y ago

Each point except for #3 has lots of weasel words. "Nearly every", "The back-end engineers that break the mold", etc. Makes it un-actionable.

alnayyir 16y ago
Maybe he was scarred from getting nitpicked to death here.
zacman85 16y ago
If I had been more definitive, I would risk making the same mistakes that the people who inspired this article were making. That is, to rigidly define what a front-end engineer is in terms of completely arbitrary constraints. I wanted to provide a set of commonalities that I have found through my experiences, but not to explicitly say "this is what a front-end engineer has to be." A good front-end engineer can come from ANYWHERE and I state that by saying that there are clearly going to be exceptions to whatever I write.

btipling 16y ago

jQuery is not good for individuals who want to start out with JavaScript. I recommend people who want to work in the world of JavaScript to know JavaScript, read The Good Parts, read the Rhino Book, etc. Once you've got it down then use jQuery. In addition I recommend reading the source code of whatever library you use to see how it does things.

astrofinch 16y ago
Why?
- iron_ball 16y ago
  So you can answer interview questions.

grayrest 16y ago

Proper front end engineering PRODUCES measurable, testable, predictable, reproducible and stable solutions. If you're calling yourself an engineer, you should be able to build a full application client side with separation between the business logic, communication, and display code. If you're writing untested spaghetti jQuery all over the place without at least writing custom extensions, I object to you calling yourself an engineer even if you can bang out a marketing site in no time flat. Call yourself an expert front end developer with my blessings.

Dylanlacey 16y ago
In quite a few places if you're calling yourself an engineer you need an Engineering degree. Just saying.
- grayrest 16y ago
  Alas, not in the US. I'd at least like to hold to the reduced standard of practicing software engineering if you're going to call yourself an engineer.
zacman85 16y ago
While I understand your point, I feel like mine was missed. Perhaps I should have worded it differently. The fact is, the web is a constantly evolving ecosystem that as a front-end engineer, you do not get much control over. Yes of course the code YOU produce should be predictable and stable and so forth. However, at any time, the rug can be pulled out from underneath you by a browser update, the uptake of a particular device (e.g. iPhone), etc. When you are working on a website where the WebKit nightlies compose more of your traffic per day than most of the sites on the rest of the Internet get in their lifetime, you have to be extremely flexible in your interpretation of what a successful feature looks like when applied across the board. I do not feel that one faces this same level of constant uncertainty in backend environments where the engineers have much more say in what is running their software.
- grayrest 16y ago

rwhitman 16y ago

Well, I like that I've been validated. I'll say that.

jsavimbi 16y ago

He's 50/50 at best with his assumptions. He should work on them. - Web developer since before Bubble 1.0.

gscott 16y ago
And who never needs to search for information on Google to develop a feature. I want my whole platform written on the whiteboard first please. No Googling for you.

bill-nordwall 16y ago

I agree with Chris here - I wince a little bit every time I see a candidate start off on the whiteboard with a dollar sign. However, this article emphasis on Javascript at the expense of the other technologies and soft skills that make a truly excellent front-end engineer - HTML/CSS, solid understanding of SEO, Accessibility (WCAG/508/WAI-ARIA), etc. I've interviewed plenty of front-end engineers who breezed through a similar no-framework javascript question, but fell to pieces when I had them hand-code a three-column, fixed width, centered layout in HTML/CSS (nav/content/sidebar) with the stipulation that the content column appear first in the HTML source. These candidates also tend not to know: - What rel="nofollow" means - What WAI-ARIA is. - What browsers were affected by and how to trigger Quirks Mode. - The difference between PNG-8 and PNG-24 Front-end engineering is a holistic discipline that demands a wide array of skills across a big chunk of the spectrum between back-end developer and visual designer. Overemphasizing Javascript skills at the expense of others is a dangerous precedent. EDIT: Fixed formatting.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

tantalor 16y ago

Solution to the puzzle; took about 3 to code minutes after I found the thumbnails for the slideshow. https://gist.github.com/789200 https://gist.github.com/789200

asmithmd1 16y ago
I like this slick way cycle thru a range of numbers: c = c < 4 ? c + 1 : 0;
- nostrademons 16y ago
  I tend to prefer c = (c + 1) % 4. It's shorter (which matters for client-side code), and makes it more explicit what you're attempting to accomplish.
  - tantalor 16y ago
    Agreed, that is definitely more clear. Alternatively, increment with c++ and replace [c] with [c%4].
  - rudasn 16y ago
    I really regret not paying attention to maths at school. What exactly is the % doing there? What is the purpose of % normally?
    - nostrademons 16y ago
      % is the modulus operator. It's the remainder when you divide...so 0 % 4 == 0, 1 % 4 == 1, 2 % 4 == 2, 3 % 4 == 3, then 4 % 4 == 0 again. It's useful in that the result cycles through 0 <= x % n < n.
  - tydok 16y ago
    just a correction. The equivalent to the above is: c = (c + 1) % 5
formika 16y ago

jhpriestley 16y ago

A div with an id of 'slideshow' contains five images, the first of which is shown and the others are hidden using a display style of none. Using Javascript, create a simple slideshow that cycles through the images, displaying each image for three seconds at a time, looping back to the first image when the end is reached. You cannot use jQuery or any other library. Instead of asking something easy, with a completely unrealistic caveat that makes it tricky for people who think that the "library" was actually a positive invention, why not ask something not easy. It sounds like you're looking for people who spend their time writing garbage like while(node = node.parentNode){ if(node.className.match(/foo/)) { break; } } because `node.closest('.foo')` isn't hardcore enough. That sounds like a crap engineer to me.

Isofarro 16y ago
The point of understanding the fundamentals of DOM means being able to adapt when the library abstraction you are using leaks. We are not in a state where libraries have effectively or completely abstracted DOM and BOM, so sometimes seeing past the library is necessary. With developers who can't tell the difference between jQuery and JavaScript + DOM, that is a barrier to being an effective developer.

Charuru 16y ago

Chris Zacharias worked at Youtube right? The hilarious thing about this article is that where he says Front-End Engineers he actually means web designers, and Google doesn't have them. It seems obvious to me that to have a good looking website you need good artists, and that #2 and #4 are such revelations speaks volumes to Google's overall lack of respect for that kind of thing. Though Developer/Test Driven Design seems to be working out for them.

MJR 16y ago
Web designer != Front-End Developer. For me the distinction is in the use of graphical tools. If you spend your day working in Photoshop for part of the time and you're not just slicing - you're a designer. The front-end developer takes the design and builds it in code. All of it - code, styles, interaction, etc. There are web designers who are also front-end developers and vice versa, but the roles are not equivalent and they require different skillsets.
- Charuru 16y ago
  Yes I'm not saying they're the same role.
zacman85 16y ago
I mean what I said when I use the term Front-End Engineer. The people who have built the parts of YouTube that you touch on a daily basis fit very nicely within the traits I have outlined and I would most certainly call them engineers through-and-through. They sometimes have to design elements on a page. They sometimes have to code back-end services and infrastructure. They have to run the gamut between the disciplines of web design and computer science on a daily basis. I would NOT say that Google lacks respect for web design. I am saying that finding people who are hybrids of web design and computer science IS extremely challenging, even for Google.

CrabDude 16y ago

This article itself is the problem with the term "Front-End Engineer". I'm a JavaScript Engineer and find the majority of the comments in this thread a disturbing reflection of what people consider an "engineer". My degree is in Electrical Engineering at one if the best engineering colleges in the nation, so I'm very familiar with the term. What the author is describing here is at best a "JavaScript developer" (used in the pejorative) or more accurately a Web Designer with boilerplate JavaScript skills.

deleted 16y ago

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gcb 16y ago

Went trhu the youtube hiring process a while ago. recruiter told me the interview would be just like google's. And i should study classical algos and python/java/C++ Studied it for 4 weeks until the day they wanted to call me. first question was a javascript one where the interviewer wanted me to remember the getElementsByTagName(*) solution. Heck, 4 weeks watching MIT algo classes and reading TOC and doing the exercises in python or C, i couldn't even remember proper JS syntax on the spot! Think that was one of the most awful interviews i had. got so nervous on that 1st question that i blanked out trhu all the rest :) back on topic, i got 5/5 on this list :) 1. degree in design related area 2. learned FE before BE (could do a little desktop and embeded before the web tough) 3. Still prefer pure JS for my personal projects (at work it's YUI, and open source contributions are mostly jquery nowadays) 4. Who aren't? :) 5. first job was at a newspaper

Stormbringer 16y ago
Asking people questions that they could look up the answer to online in a couple of seconds is pointless unless you expect them to be doing critical patches to web code when the internet is down or unavailable. Fundamentally the interviewing process is not a solved problem. So we have flaws in the system. I agree that playing trivial pursuits is annoying, but what else will they do?
- deleted 16y ago
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- gcb 16y ago
  tell you the correct scope of what they plan to ask? :)