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And almost no backend developers can write assembler either! It's almost like we've spent decades layering abstractions on this stuff so we don't have to wrangle it ourselves, isn't it.
There are no useful abstractions that will let you fail to understand how HTML and CSS work.
Provide an example you saw.
To pinpoint one of his major gripes - I've moved further "back" down the stack since, but when I was doing strictly front-end I had to make a fully accessible page for some clients, but not others. If anything this post gets me aware that portfolio content is also judged for accessibility, so it provided me that benefit should I take on front-end projects in the future. Some may call it lazy, but I tend to focus on "bigger picture" accessibility issues such as contrast and font scaling.
Also with clearfix - many times its actually abused and painted on every element including ones that don't need to clear its children. It's also not the only way to solve the problem - soon display: flow-root will be adopted across browsers.
Hiring people, don't confuse route memorization with job performance. It's an absolute ridiculous requirement.
Thankfully not one of those applicaments would have wanted to work there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody wants to understand how CSS works. Sometimes we have to, but it's rarely by choice.
I respectfully disagree. I'd much prefer to understand the real technologies that run the web -- HTML, CSS, HTTP, and so on -- and then use tools and build abstractions on top when it's useful. Starting with some specific framework or tool set inevitably limits what you can achieve. Surely the recent emphasis on frameworks over fundamentals has been a major contributor to the Web full of bland, practically identical…
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.
Alternatively it seems like a good case for putting some sort of earlier filtering mechanism, like giving a short quiz or coding exercise to see if they know what you want them to know. I remember reading an article by TripleByte on how their quiz actually was a better filtering mechanism than a coding exercise though.
> After reviewing a lot of applications in the past days, I can only agree with Kristian Glass here and say: “If you get the chance, always send a cover letter”. It’s your opportunity to say something about yourself and make clear why you apply for the job.
I can understand why employers feel this way, but from an applicant's perspective, the reason someone applies to your company most likely is that they need to make a living. Frankly I don't think there's anything wrong with that and it's not something I would think stops people from being good employees. After all, it's difficult to know how much you'd like to work somewhere unless you've actually been there.