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80 front-end job applications – nearly no one had basic HTML/CSS/A11y skills

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Re: 80 front-end job applications – nearly no one had basic HTML/CSS/A11y skills

#101

Post by jotux »

morgante wrote: post #49
daleharvey wrote: post #5

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.

It doesn't even sound like he interviewed the candidates at all. > Although I only had the chance to review their personal websites or github profiles and this might of course not be a full show-off of their knowledge, it assured my lately developed opinion on web developers. Apparently because people's personal projects weren't developed with accessibility in mind he concluded that developers don't know HTML/CSS.

>I only had the chance to review their personal websites or github profiles

>Many are not able to [...] to explain why and how a clearfix works, or what ARIA roles are for

I have only had the chance to review this blog post but this person doesn't seem to be able to explain simple arithmetic, describe the difference between something that is round vs square, or tell me what a spoon is used for.

Re: 80 front-end job applications – nearly no one had basic HTML/CSS/A11y skills

#102

Post by [deleted] »

lojack wrote: post #91
diezge wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'd be worried about both! If you have to clear a float..." Why? I haven't needed to use floats at all since moving to flexbox.

If I interviewed anything but a junior candidate and they said this I'd immediately dismiss them. Sure, flexbox can solve most of the problems, but flexbox isn't always an option. Any candidate worth their grain of salt would know this regardless of whether or not they knew exactly how clearfixes work. I'd much rather them tell me they knew the purpose, but didn't exactly know how they worked than immediately dismiss…

[deleted]

Re: 80 front-end job applications – nearly no one had basic HTML/CSS/A11y skills

#103

Post by Fuxy »

morgante wrote: post #49
daleharvey wrote: post #5

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.

It doesn't even sound like he interviewed the candidates at all. > Although I only had the chance to review their personal websites or github profiles and this might of course not be a full show-off of their knowledge, it assured my lately developed opinion on web developers. Apparently because people's personal projects weren't developed with accessibility in mind he concluded that developers don't know HTML/CSS.

Personal projects are a bit questionable as a skill test.

I've been planning to do a personal site for a long time and wishing i could contribute on github more but most of the time the only contribution on github ends up to be bug fixes to libraries I use at work and I still haven't gotten anywhere with my personal website.

Most of my best code will never be seen by any interviewer since it's done at work.

Now if any of my personal code was making me money that would be different but I have nothing like that at the moment.

Re: 80 front-end job applications – nearly no one had basic HTML/CSS/A11y skills

#104

Post by wylee »

daleharvey wrote: post #5

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.

Or, at a higher level, maybe their approach to soliciting candidates is wrong. A lot of the job descriptions I see are sloppy. Or they're so vague that you can't figure out what you'd actually be doing (or what the day-to-day would be like). Some of them throw in peripheral technologies just to cover all the bases or something.

It seems like a lot of hiring managers/companies treat a job description as an afterthought when it actually has a huge effect on who applies for a position (_obviously_). People who have more options will tend to ignore the sloppy, vague postings.

The person who wrote this article seems more conscientious than this, but it's something to consider.

Re: 80 front-end job applications – nearly no one had basic HTML/CSS/A11y skills

#105

Post by sharms »

giaour wrote: post #20

If the skills you're looking for are that basic, why wouldn't you just hire one of those 80 applicants and spend an hour teaching them what aria attributes are?

One has to wonder how much time was spent dismissing applicants, and if that time would be better spent showing the new hire his personal preferences (which are only preferences, there wouldn't be 100+ comments on this thread if it was standard)

Re: 80 front-end job applications – nearly no one had basic HTML/CSS/A11y skills

#106

Post by mixmastamyk »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #77
mixmastamyk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on the memorization of trivia questions. I've encountered this clearfix problem and solved it independently perhaps five times over the last decade, but just had to look it up since I had no idea it was called "clearfix" ... someone's marketing term for it.

Not really a "marketing" term so much as one that became popular during the "everyone must write their own grid framework" era.

Yes, I was being facetious.

Re: 80 front-end job applications – nearly no one had basic HTML/CSS/A11y skills

#107

Post by lutusp »

A quote: "We have an ongoing problem with growing inequality around the world and a few super rich people (latest numbers say it’s down to 65) have as much money as the rest of the world now. If we don’t change anything and do not oblige people to pay their taxes in their own countries or reject trickle-down economics as the World Bank officially declared just recently, this system will break and our own lives are likely to be affected by this."

This is so ironic. This working developer, not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, rightly suggests that there's too much economic inequality, too great a gap between the wealthiest and poorest people. Many influential people have expressed the same sentiment -- as just one example, in a NY Times op-ed piece, billionaire Warren Buffett said, "My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-...

Some inequality is inevitable, indeed it can be argued that some economic inequality inspires people to try harder to raise themselves up. But when the middle class disappears, when those below the glass ceiling realize they're permanently trapped, this can be dangerous for all of us.

The irony is that the very poor and the very rich both see the problem, the danger, caused by extreme inequality, but congress refuses to see it.

Re: 80 front-end job applications – nearly no one had basic HTML/CSS/A11y skills

#108

Post by collyw »

grabcocque wrote: post #8
mkozlows wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no useful abstractions that will let you fail to understand how HTML and CSS work.

Nobody wants to understand how CSS works. Sometimes we have to, but it's rarely by choice.

I want to understand better, but its difficult to find intermediate resources. Everything is either beginner stuff, or way to complex and over my head. (I am a back end dev, so generally don't have loads of time to spend on front end stuff).

Re: 80 front-end job applications – nearly no one had basic HTML/CSS/A11y skills

#109

Post by darylfritz »

> I only had the chance to review their personal websites or github profiles

> Many are not able [..] to explain why and how a clearfix works, or what ARIA roles are for

I don't understand what the author expected to learn by browsing someone's hobby projects/personal homepages, without seemingly engaging in a discussion with the person who wrote the code.

Re: 80 front-end job applications – nearly no one had basic HTML/CSS/A11y skills

#110

Post by collyw »

lmm wrote: post #81
Silhouette wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find bland, practically identical sites to be the most useful sites. The design gets out of the way and puts the important thing - the content - front and center.

I remember someone on here scoffing at Googles main page on an article on design. It seemed to have bypassed him that it was designed for usability not shiny-shiny design.
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