>Is it really necessary to expect a front end developer to have complete knowledge of manipulating the DOM without jQuery? It depends. For your average front-e

>Is it really necessary to expect a front end developer to have complete knowledge of manipulating the DOM without jQuery? It depends. For your average front-end developer adding light functionality to a web page/app? No, probably not. However, if you are creating heavy, full-featured, client-side web-apps...absolutely. Not because you need to do it without jQuery, but because you need to understand what jQuery is doing behind the scenes. At least a couple times a year some major website like (to pick at random) Twitter crawls to a halt, bugs out, etc...because some front-end dev treated jQuery like magic without considering what is going on behind the scenes. So I would say if you serious about being a front-end developer, then sure...spend some time browsing the jQuery source and learn to do things in "vanilla" JS. In terms of whether to consider it re; hiring, it depends on what you are hiring for.