

How to Recruit a Frontend Hero - 9elements
http://codemonkeyism.com/recruit-frontend-hero/

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ccollins
I don't think so. First of all, a Frontend Hero needs to have design sense,
ability to learn quickly, empathy with users, trustworthiness to "fill in the
blanks", and the balls to say no to designs or features that are unnecessary,
impractical, and time-consuming. What Sebastian Deutsch described is a CSS /
Javascript quirks specialist.

Additionally, the article never really touched on how to recruit these people
- it just lists screening questions to ask during an interview. To recruit a
Frontend Hero, you need to hire great designers and create a culture that
treats front end engineers as first class citizens.

Incidentally, we're doing that at Airbnb right now.
<http://www.airbnb.com/jobs/show/8>

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generalk
Absolutely. Frontend is far more about design and usability than it is about
whether or not you can remember vendor-specific hacks for CSS columns.

I figure if I ever need to hire a "frontend hero" my checklist will be very
short. Do you have a sizable portfolio, and does your stuff look like the
stuff I want? If so, you're in the running.

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niels
Please notice a frontend coder is not a user experience designer. So having
good design skills is not necessary to work as a frontend coder.

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rimantas

      Q: What methods do you know to realize columns?
      A: cleardiv
      clearfix (better one)
    

WTF? I'd expect floats, faux columns, display: table-* , *-column-count being
the answer but get some cleardiv/clearfix instead. I never liked those,
especially cleardiv. Often you can do simply reusing next element (#footer
{clear:both}), but sometimes that's not enough, alas.

In my opinion any competent frontend developer should know these, not enough
for the hero. On the other hand, to be able to interview hero you should be at
least on that level yourself, which is not the case there, imho.

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jacquesm
To me this looks like an endless series of 'gotcha' questions that for the
most part are either in the totally obvious or terribly obscure category.

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antidaily
Agreed. I'm not even sure what this means:

 _Q: What methods do you know to realize columns?_

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gmurphy
It means "If the design calls for having text flow across side-by-side columns
(like in newspapers or magazines), what ways are there to code it?"

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notahacker
That looks like a very poor checklist unless you're purely looking for someone
that rapidly turns templates into markup.

Otherwise, a grasp of how the users will interact with your app and what
constraints that imposes on the front end is far more important than their
ability to regurgitate CSS clearfix syntax and knowledge of server side
javascript frameworks they might not have to learn.

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krakensden
... wow, I haven't been paying close attention to the web development
community. CSS frameworks are really considered an essential building block
now?

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kk3
I literally equate css frameworks with code bloat. I'm glad to see that other
people feel the same.

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evadne
Bloated as because CSS frameworks are, essentially, based on CSS and works at
mercy of the browser; true “frameworks” like Compass are pre-compiled and
comes without presentational classes, therefore less bloat. On the other hand,
front-end work is dirty by nature, and I’d argue that a beautiful page with
bloated code is better than a not-working page with very clean code.

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kk3
Someone who understands normal flow and positioning, how elements interact
with each other, and minimizes the amount of code for each part of the design
will be much more effective than someone who knows all the short cut css
hacks.

Also, a bunch of these questions were far more relevant during the IE6 era
which is now finally at a decline. I would care that someone knows how to code
for IE6, but that requires one question since all IE6 bugs are very well
documented, just make sure the person is aware.

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vinhboy
I actually that's a pretty nice list of quirks that only an experienced
developer would know. I learned quite a few things from that list.

I would add: When all else fails, use a table. Ha!

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Prozaker
this list is wrong.

hacks, css grids, obscure references, nonstandard way of clearing divs,
instead of the much more used and standard overflow:hidden , vendor specific
css declarations? printed media references?

here's a few questions that a REAL front end dev would likely answer:

do you know standards? do you do inline css/js? do you use hacks? do you use
grids? if yes, this guy is a neofite and needs to learn how to unbloat his css
do you reset your css? do your sites validate? do you like flash in your
websites? do you code by hand? do you use autohotkey/zen
coding/texter/autoit/etc for coding? do you despise expression
web/dreamweaver/kompozer? do you use firebug? how do you test for xbrowser
testing? do you know what "semantics" mean in a web context?

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9elements
For a user experience designer I would have a different interview.

What's important for me is to see if some understand what is happening behind
the scenes. There are so many people who apply a clearfix but do not
understand the principles of block contexts.

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yosho
I do not see how any of these questions reflect the ability to be good at the
front-end. If I didn't know one of those answers in a real world scenario, I
could easily just Google it. Design sense and a good concept of usability are
much more important IMO.

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9elements
@euroclydon oh yes minifying, I gonna add that to the list good point.

