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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

#121

Post by tex0gen »

diezge wrote: post #98
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.

lojack: "...but flexbox isn't always an option." When isn't it? If you're developing for old (now unsupported) versions of Internet Explorer I'm not sure they'd be bothered about being turned down (unless they knew about that when applying). Just because something was done some way once doesn't make it right, and putting emphasis on 'clearing float' questions would show your company use old, bad practices.

Last time i checked, IE9+ are still supported browsers. Of which, IE9 has no support for Flexbox and IE10+, only have partial support. (Not counting Edge on those stats as it is after all an entirely new browser).

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

#122

Post by tex0gen »

pkinchla wrote: post #58
daiwei wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. I see front end job descriptions asking for understanding of Java and .Net but no mentioning of JS, CSS or any HTML. There could be easily a miscommunication of misunderstanding what the company want. Not saying the job description used here is wrong, just an example of miscommunication.

I recently saw an Ad for a front end job requiring: "strong Java Scripts" skills.

I think that would be down to the recruitment agencies most of the time. Truth is they have a phone call and assume it's 2 separate words.

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

#123

Post by [deleted] »

Fuxy wrote: post #103
morgante wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

[deleted]

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

#124

Post by mchahn »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #73
pkinchla wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently saw an Ad for a front end job requiring: "strong Java Scripts" skills.

Just got an email yesterday from a corporate recruiter with the line "must have strong JAVA script" skills. My instant reaction was, "You keep using that word, I do not think it means, what you think it means."

10 points for who can name the movie that has the quote...

"Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has no idea what it means to have a plethora".

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

#125

Post by collyw »

acbabis wrote: post #117
collyw wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can a back end dev learn that stuff? Any good tutorials, as that is the sort of thing that always confuses me when I need to do some front end.

I highly recommend this article: http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-30-css-selectors-you-...

Perfect, I haven't seen any good tutorials on this stuff until now. Thanks.

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

#126

Post by diezge »

tex0gen wrote: post #121
diezge wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lojack: "...but flexbox isn't always an option." When isn't it? If you're developing for old (now unsupported) versions of Internet Explorer I'm not sure they'd be bothered about being turned down (unless they knew about that when applying). Just because something was done some way once doesn't make it right, and putting emphasis on 'clearing float' questions would show your company use old, bad practices.

Last time i checked, IE9+ are still supported browsers. Of which, IE9 has no support for Flexbox and IE10+, only have partial support. (Not counting Edge on those stats as it is after all an entirely new browser).

Guess that was before January 2016 then? http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/12/microsoft-ends-support-for.... It is finally time to only support ie11 and beyond! So flexbox away and be happy

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

#127

Post by spjwebster »

diezge wrote: post #126
tex0gen wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time i checked, IE9+ are still supported browsers. Of which, IE9 has no support for Flexbox and IE10+, only have partial support. (Not counting Edge on those stats as it is after all an entirely new browser).

Guess that was before January 2016 then? http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/12/microsoft-ends-support-for... . It is finally time to only support ie11 and beyond! So flexbox away and be happy

From the article you linked to:

"At the end of 2015, the combined market share for IE8 (8.95 percent), IE9 (6.67 percent), and IE10 (4.18 percent) was 19.80 percent,"

Sure, use flexbox exclusively if you want to push away nearly 20% of visitors. Also notice how the older of those browsers has the highest single percentage of use, and reflect on what that might mean about how likely those users are to upgrade.

I prefer the more customer-centric method of looking at what browsers my customers use and supporting them, rather than the more developer-centric view of "X is hard, I don't want to do X anymore and it's no longer supported anyway so there!".

By all means keep an eye on the browser usage for your audience and drop active support for older browsers once they fall below a certain percent, but don't take another company's actions as a license to screw over your (hopefully paying) customers.

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

#128

Post by diezge »

spjwebster wrote: post #127
diezge wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess that was before January 2016 then? http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/12/microsoft-ends-support-for... . It is finally time to only support ie11 and beyond! So flexbox away and be happy

From the article you linked to: "At the end of 2015, the combined market share for IE8 (8.95 percent), IE9 (6.67 percent), and IE10 (4.18 percent) was 19.80 percent," Sure, use flexbox exclusively if you want to push away nearly 20% of visitors. Also notice how the older of those browsers has the highest single percentage of use, and reflect on what that might mean about how likely those users are to upgrade. I prefe…

That's % of desktop users (desktop use itself is declining rapidly - I don't know anyone non-tech who uses a PC/Laptop and most devs should be mobile/tablet-first now). Also that was before the big "please upgrade" message Microsoft send out to everyone using IE8/9/10.

If it was purely about numbers, I'd attempt to support to Opera Mini and it's 300 million users. But I don't, and I've never met anyone who does, yet some people bring up IE10 support on a React-driven, Mobile-first web app to appease managers who have always wanted support for older versions of IE "just because". Unless the clients are government/big bank I can't really see any justification for supporting them (and no one supports IE8 - even though it has double the usage IE10 has).

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

#129

Post by desireco42 »

jakozaur wrote: post #64
desireco42 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not figure out what exactly they are doing and how much it costs. Would you mind clarifying that.

You can send link to candidates asking them to do some coding tests. From as simple as reverse a string, FizzBuzz to more difficult ones. That way you can pick the best ones by technical merit, not be their ability to write nice resume. I don't remember the exact price, but when my company used them it was something in range of $100-500 / month.

Thank you.

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

#130

Post by lojack »

diezge wrote: post #116
lojack wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't dismiss a candidate for not knowing how a clearfix works. What's important is they understand positioning and layout and how things tend to fit together. I'd reasonably be able to extract this information from them. Asking about clearfixes is one of many ways I'd go about picking their brain. What I would dismiss them for, however, is the cocky attitude that they never need to bother learning any "old, bad…

"...is the cocky attitude that they never need to bother learning any "old, bad practices." - so before learning ES6 everyone should learn how to use inline onclick events, alerting to debug etc otherwise they're "cocky"? "..technology that was released just 4 years ago" - if you haven't been keeping up with the news on IE10 then... yeah "I'd dismiss them for the attitude that their solution solves all the problems w…

> This post is evidently about junior developers

Hence the "anything but a junior candidate" from my original post.

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