4 ms·

So his way to test a full-stack javascript developer is to let someone explain 10 lines of which none is javascript.

by kabes 5y ago

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
I thought "full-stack" implied you understood the front-end web environment?
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  > A full-stack developer should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for junior developers. -- Robert A. Heinlein
  - jlcoff 5y ago
y42 5y ago
I'd say that's legit, considering what he is looking for - full stack. JavaScript is strongly connected to the term WebDevelopment and thus to HTML. That's just basic knowledge.
- kabes 5y ago
  Sure, but it also means being skilled in writing Node backends and I'm doubtful if knowing what some meta tags mean is a good indicator for that. This is the equivalent of interviewing for a C developer by letting him explain a Makefile.
  - jbki1121 5y ago
    what's wrong with that? surely a c developer would know their tools. I wouldn't call it a stretch to ask if a java developer could explain maven
    - whateveracct 5y ago
      It's not that they can't technically answer it. It's that the signal you're gonna get out of such an interview is gonna be so low that whoever you end up hiring is mostly going to be due to chance + how much you "liked" them.
    - cogman10 5y ago
      Pretty much the same thing that would be wrong with asking a javascript dev to explain grunt. What if that C++ dev primarily uses visual C++ and Visual studios projects? What if the C++ dev primarily used Cmake, ninja, or scion (or any of the other thousands of C++ build tools). What if that C++ dev never really needed to start a project from scratch? The issue is testing someone on minutia doesn't tell you anything about how capable they are. In particular, testing them on minutia that they very likely rarely interact with is beyond pointless.
      - ripley12 5y ago
        > What if that C++ dev primarily uses visual C++ and Visual studios projects? What if the C++ dev primarily used Cmake, ninja, or scion (or any of the other thousands of C++ build tools). Then it's an opportunity for the candidate to explain the tools they do use. There are certainly bad interviewers out there who misuse these kinds of questions, but I think they're fine if used as conversation starters.
      - jbki1121 5y ago
        if it makes any difference, I was referring to C, for which Make is the majority, I think - could be wrong, though, since I'm not a c developer. But to the point, I'm not sure if the code at issue would be considered minutiae or not, but I believe that the more curious you are, the more you tend to dig into the details, and a person doing this over many years would attain a rich knowledge-base spanning depth and breadth. I know as a java developer that I've referred innumerable times the docs for the POM and settings structure in order to explore the limits of customizing my build, which would include the rather obscure features. Not saying this is technically comparable to meta tags in html, but maybe that's what the author was going for.
- jlcoff 5y ago
zamadatix 5y ago
If you position yourself as a full stack JavaScript developer and you think talking to 10 lines of non-JS front end code is too much out of a 1 hour long interview I'd be extremely suspicious of how much time you've spent on the front end half of JavaScript integration.
- cogman10 5y ago
  The issue I have with this test is it tells you nothing about the person you are interviewing. When would you actually create such tags as a fullstack dev? Almost never. 90% of the time, those tags are auto generated by some boiler plate app. A person that can answer correctly MIGHT be someone that's looked into those tags and done things the hard way, but is that really someone you need to hire? A person that answers incorrectly doesn't necessarily seem like someone I wouldn't hire. After all, what do I care about someone knowing the intricate details of the "html" tag and how it interacts with various browsers? That's write once and forget sort of code. If you wanted this test to mean anything, why are you picking worthless trivia. Why not, instead, pick something like a function out of jquery or your own code base and ask the same question "Tell me what this function is doing".
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    "Explain the first ten or so lines of the Twitter source code to me." doesn't read to me like a test, it reads like an opener. Sure, it's possible to show off you know 100% of the trivia for the tags that show up... but more so it's an opener for you to talk to about how much background you know, how much you can relate what you didn't know to things you did or have worked on, and how much you've bothered to go beyond "that boilerplate is generated for me" and look into what the first few lines of the webpages you work on do. The point does not at all seem to be "Aha, gotcha! You didn't know about the syntax for Apple's limited PWA like functionality offhand in an interview. 5 demerits, next question!". A person that can hold a good discussion around these tags is both likely to be one that has truly been developing pages for a couple of years and has an interest in learning more than how to make their framework work rather how to make any framework work in a browser. If you're not able to say something cursory about language attributes I'm going to have a hard time believing you've full-stacked a multi-language website (not that I wouldn't but it'd lead to a lot of different questions later). If your response about the doctype line is "it's boilerplate put in by my IDE" my first thought isn't going to be "oh they just spend a lot of time writing code in the rest of the page" it's going to be "they either don't care what the first line of the page is about or it's been so long since they've touch the front end directly they can't say anything about the first tag. I wonder how well they can deal with integrating the front end JS with the page" and steer to towards more about that. Also the interview was mentioned to be an hour long, if 10 lines of HTML boilerplate, most of which should be on every page, is too far into the weeds of front end time wise then I'd have severe concerns the candidate would be too back-end heavy. Yes, other things should be talked about too, that's why the interview is an hour and this singular question is only about 10 lines.

So his way to test a full-stack javascript developer is to let someone explain 10 lines of which none is javascript.

by kabes 5y ago

So his way to test a full-stack javascript developer is to let someone explain 10 lines of which none is javascript.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

I thought "full-stack" implied you understood the front-end web environment?

Viliam1234 5y ago
> A full-stack developer should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for junior developers. -- Robert A. Heinlein
- jlcoff 5y ago

y42 5y ago

I'd say that's legit, considering what he is looking for - full stack. JavaScript is strongly connected to the term WebDevelopment and thus to HTML. That's just basic knowledge.

kabes 5y ago
Sure, but it also means being skilled in writing Node backends and I'm doubtful if knowing what some meta tags mean is a good indicator for that. This is the equivalent of interviewing for a C developer by letting him explain a Makefile.
- jbki1121 5y ago
  what's wrong with that? surely a c developer would know their tools. I wouldn't call it a stretch to ask if a java developer could explain maven
  - whateveracct 5y ago
    It's not that they can't technically answer it. It's that the signal you're gonna get out of such an interview is gonna be so low that whoever you end up hiring is mostly going to be due to chance + how much you "liked" them.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    Pretty much the same thing that would be wrong with asking a javascript dev to explain grunt. What if that C++ dev primarily uses visual C++ and Visual studios projects? What if the C++ dev primarily used Cmake, ninja, or scion (or any of the other thousands of C++ build tools). What if that C++ dev never really needed to start a project from scratch? The issue is testing someone on minutia doesn't tell you anything about how capable they are. In particular, testing them on minutia that they very likely rarely interact with is beyond pointless.
    - ripley12 5y ago
      > What if that C++ dev primarily uses visual C++ and Visual studios projects? What if the C++ dev primarily used Cmake, ninja, or scion (or any of the other thousands of C++ build tools). Then it's an opportunity for the candidate to explain the tools they do use. There are certainly bad interviewers out there who misuse these kinds of questions, but I think they're fine if used as conversation starters.
    - jbki1121 5y ago
      if it makes any difference, I was referring to C, for which Make is the majority, I think - could be wrong, though, since I'm not a c developer. But to the point, I'm not sure if the code at issue would be considered minutiae or not, but I believe that the more curious you are, the more you tend to dig into the details, and a person doing this over many years would attain a rich knowledge-base spanning depth and breadth. I know as a java developer that I've referred innumerable times the docs for the POM and settings structure in order to explore the limits of customizing my build, which would include the rather obscure features. Not saying this is technically comparable to meta tags in html, but maybe that's what the author was going for.
jlcoff 5y ago

zamadatix 5y ago

If you position yourself as a full stack JavaScript developer and you think talking to 10 lines of non-JS front end code is too much out of a 1 hour long interview I'd be extremely suspicious of how much time you've spent on the front end half of JavaScript integration.

cogman10 5y ago
The issue I have with this test is it tells you nothing about the person you are interviewing. When would you actually create such tags as a fullstack dev? Almost never. 90% of the time, those tags are auto generated by some boiler plate app. A person that can answer correctly MIGHT be someone that's looked into those tags and done things the hard way, but is that really someone you need to hire? A person that answers incorrectly doesn't necessarily seem like someone I wouldn't hire. After all, what do I care about someone knowing the intricate details of the "html" tag and how it interacts with various browsers? That's write once and forget sort of code. If you wanted this test to mean anything, why are you picking worthless trivia. Why not, instead, pick something like a function out of jquery or your own code base and ask the same question "Tell me what this function is doing".
- zamadatix 5y ago
  "Explain the first ten or so lines of the Twitter source code to me." doesn't read to me like a test, it reads like an opener. Sure, it's possible to show off you know 100% of the trivia for the tags that show up... but more so it's an opener for you to talk to about how much background you know, how much you can relate what you didn't know to things you did or have worked on, and how much you've bothered to go beyond "that boilerplate is generated for me" and look into what the first few lines of the webpages you work on do. The point does not at all seem to be "Aha, gotcha! You didn't know about the syntax for Apple's limited PWA like functionality offhand in an interview. 5 demerits, next question!". A person that can hold a good discussion around these tags is both likely to be one that has truly been developing pages for a couple of years and has an interest in learning more than how to make their framework work rather how to make any framework work in a browser. If you're not able to say something cursory about language attributes I'm going to have a hard time believing you've full-stacked a multi-language website (not that I wouldn't but it'd lead to a lot of different questions later). If your response about the doctype line is "it's boilerplate put in by my IDE" my first thought isn't going to be "oh they just spend a lot of time writing code in the rest of the page" it's going to be "they either don't care what the first line of the page is about or it's been so long since they've touch the front end directly they can't say anything about the first tag. I wonder how well they can deal with integrating the front end JS with the page" and steer to towards more about that. Also the interview was mentioned to be an hour long, if 10 lines of HTML boilerplate, most of which should be on every page, is too far into the weeds of front end time wise then I'd have severe concerns the candidate would be too back-end heavy. Yes, other things should be talked about too, that's why the interview is an hour and this singular question is only about 10 lines.