4 ms·

I'd strongly dispute this point - these tags need to (usually) be written once per organization, occasionally you need to come in and fiddle with it, but the co

by munk-a 5y ago

I'd strongly dispute this point - these tags need to (usually) be written once per organization, occasionally you need to come in and fiddle with it, but the contents of your page header should occupy no brainspace. Additionally I think this interview question might be testing a depth of knowledge, but not one that's actually relevant for your position. I've worked on backend systems for most of my life (that and databases) and I can definitely name the purpose of most of these tags since, back before node, I'd just be popping them out in some PHP file somewhere - again, once written and then mostly forgotten about. If the job responsibilities are going to involve a modern front-end framework/language suite and your interview isn't even touching on that topic then you're not effectively interviewing for the position - you're querying about some corollary information that most people in the space will sort of know but, if I was their manager, I'd be happy as a clam if they popped over to the MDN and copy-pasted a big chunk of this as a starting point... assuming they ever actually needed to interact with it.

grumple 5y ago
Not only do these get written once per organization, but they are specific to that organization. With the exception of the doctype, html tag, viewport, and charset, we use none of the rest. And our attribute usage differs.
Jorge1o1 5y ago
That’s exactly why it’s such a bad interview question, regardless of how “fundamental” it is to a website, changing the HTML <head> tags will never be within the new hire’s scope of work. They will basically never ever in their entire career need to do this. It’s like hiring a C++ developer by quizzing them on random gcc flags. These are things that make up 0.00001% of the total work produced by the dev.
- redonyo 5y ago
  Now I'm thinking its a good idea to quiz developers on the first 10 lines of some arbitrary Makefile
pythonaut_16 5y ago
Not to mention they're perfectly referenceable. If I need to set up a new HTML doc and add the meta tags I can easily find everything I need on MDN and a quick Google search for best practices. Anything more specific (like Apple specific tags) is trivial to find as well. Interviews should be focused on skills and experience because those take time and effort to develop. Not 5 minutes on the internet.

by munk-a 5y ago

grumple 5y ago

Not only do these get written once per organization, but they are specific to that organization. With the exception of the doctype, html tag, viewport, and charset, we use none of the rest. And our attribute usage differs.

Jorge1o1 5y ago

That’s exactly why it’s such a bad interview question, regardless of how “fundamental” it is to a website, changing the HTML <head> tags will never be within the new hire’s scope of work. They will basically never ever in their entire career need to do this. It’s like hiring a C++ developer by quizzing them on random gcc flags. These are things that make up 0.00001% of the total work produced by the dev.

redonyo 5y ago
Now I'm thinking its a good idea to quiz developers on the first 10 lines of some arbitrary Makefile

pythonaut_16 5y ago

Not to mention they're perfectly referenceable. If I need to set up a new HTML doc and add the meta tags I can easily find everything I need on MDN and a quick Google search for best practices. Anything more specific (like Apple specific tags) is trivial to find as well. Interviews should be focused on skills and experience because those take time and effort to develop. Not 5 minutes on the internet.