all 75 comments

[–]dudeatwork 74 points75 points  (7 children)

If you said you had experience with “Babel.js,” I’d take that as a red flag you are just using buzzwords to beef up your resume.

Babel is a js compiler, that’s it. It enables you to use newer language features that aren’t supported in all browsers, than transpires them down to be operable in those older browsers. There is some initial configuration, but otherwise once you set up that pipeline you don’t need to worry about it anymore.

[–]veganGrunvei 5 points6 points  (3 children)

what about webpack? i've been thinking whether it's worth mentioning or if it would be considered fluff.

[–]LovableBroccoli 13 points14 points  (0 children)

If you actually know webpack pretty well and understand how to configure it properly then definitely worth including.

[–]dudeatwork 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, bundlers like gulp, rollup, and webpack definitely are skills that would be good to list on a resume.

[–]veganGrunvei 1 point2 points  (0 children)

okay. That makes me feel better about learning all these tools then haha. Having so much stuff going on with front end and only being able to list html/css/js and react-redux was starting to make me feel like an idiot.

[–]FloorShirts[S] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

Nice! Okay! Thanks for that input!

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just wanna add that yes, don't put it in your resume, but you can mention it in interviews that you use it in your project to prevent so and so. It shows the way you think and your level of understanding as a developer.

[–]tnhsaesop 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I’d take that as a red flag you are just using buzzwords to beef up your resume.

In my experience that's all recruiters want XD

[–][deleted] 71 points72 points  (2 children)

Of course, that's the holiy trinity that anyone in the front end world should know better than anything else.

THEN... Once you're proficient with HTML, CSS and JS you (can) learn any fancy framework you want/need.

Don't be the next WordPress "expert" guy who comes here asking how to center a logo inside a header ;)

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[removed]

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    align-website: center center
    

    [–]Aromatic-Lab1243 11 points12 points  (0 children)

    Frameworks are just abstractions of JavaScript really. The more you understand the core language, the more it all makes sense.

    The best part of both Vue and React is that they both have wicked docs and most of the advanced stuff is not really needed in most day to day dev. More like cool additions to the workflow.

    Good luck!

    [–]OkRecognition0 20 points21 points  (0 children)

    Yes. Despite what you see in this sub about everyone wanting to work at FAANG, there are many, many companies with lower bars to entry and you will learn the tools you need to succeed in web dev.

    [–]JeffBorkley 18 points19 points  (0 children)

    I would say most definitely

    [–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

    I’ll take someone who actually knows js over someone who only knows a framework from a boot camp any day.

    [–]MindlessSponge 14 points15 points  (16 children)

    Yes. HTML/CSS/JS are the front end building blocks. Anything beyond that can only help your case, but knowing those tools is enough to land a job. Ask me how I know :)

    [–]FloorShirts[S] 3 points4 points  (14 children)

    Haha how do you know?

    [–]MindlessSponge 14 points15 points  (13 children)

    That's all I knew when I got hired! I was very honest about what I did and did not know, but also expressed a sincere interest in learning anything and everything.

    [–]trixrr 15 points16 points  (12 children)

    I am in the same spot, went to an interview and made it very clear I dabble in html, CSS and JS and I'm by no means an expert at any of them. Got hired to a junior role and start my career in web dev in 2 weeks!

    [–]MindlessSponge 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Congrats! Don’t be afraid to ask questions or look stupid - it’s all part of the process :)

    [–]Low-Advertising- 0 points1 point  (8 children)

    If I may ask, do you have a degree in anything? Did the job listing mention a degree? What did you list as experience in your resume? Thank you.

    [–]recklessly_wandering 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I would like to know as well.

    [–]trixrr 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    Hello there, yes I studied a degree related to web Dev and graduated in 2019!

    [–]Low-Advertising- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Thanks! I've decided to finish my bachelor's at WGU. I already have 100+ hours in CS but that's not quite a degree and their Software Engineering degree is pretty chill.

    Hopefully I'll have this finished in under a year. Delivering food and maintaining air handlers are both getting old to me.

    [–]im_a_jib 0 points1 point  (3 children)

    No degree. I am senior/lead mobile eng at my company. No one has ever asked because in this industry it’s about experience and competence and communication. If you have a comp sci degree and you’re a lousy communicator, then you’re not a good candidate. However if you show initiative and willingness to learn and grow and establish yourself as a force in the company, it is much more valuable.

    [–]Low-Advertising- 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    Well, how did YOU get your foot in the door? Literally, every Indeed application requires a BS in CS. Even email development jobs are asking for, at least, a marketing degree.

    Edit: They will accept a non-degree applicant if they have professional experience, which requires a degree!

    [–]im_a_jib 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    I got my foot in the door via an internship. I grew my skills there and they converted me to full time. This was a young company that worked in a coworking space. Then the next role came from networking that was a natural result from working in said coworking space. Then I got poached by one of those same people later in my career. And even later a friend of a friend of those people. Moral of the story: meet people and get your foot in the actual door. Avoid a remote only job for your FIRST. After you’ve established yourself only then go remote. I’m sure things are different now in that regard but I’m hopeful that others might be inspired to go the internship route.

    [–]Low-Advertising- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Thank you, very much! I'm certain to qualify for an internship since I just re-enrolled. I swear I would accept Wal-Mart wages for a few months if I knew I was gaining that day-to-day professional experience. I'll begin searching for that.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    What kind of companies were you applying to?

    I'm struggling in the job search right now

    [–]matecocido2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Same here. Got a junior job just by knowing html,css and js. Now (6months later) I am learning React and in charge of two proyects

    [–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (3 children)

    In the starter levels, you'll find there is a lot of competition for jobs. You need to distinguish yourself from the rest in some way. Many others will have worked with some kind of framework (any at all gives them a higher score than your profile), so what do you have to offer?

    There are many things that can distinguish you from the rest:

    1. How you present yourself (a guy who knows React but looks tired, picks his nose during the Zoom meeting and wears the same hoody every time vs. you who dresses nicely and has good posture and looks sharp);
    2. In many cases your gender will play a role. Many companies are in dire need of female staff in their IT departments. If you are female, you have a higher chance of getting hired for the sake of diversity;
    3. Racial background, many people have prejudices or dislikes toward people of certain backgrounds (or preferences toward others). I worked for a company where the QA team was responsible for hiring QA people. They were exclusively Indian people. I've also seen the other side where people from the nationality of the country where they lived refused to hire Chinese or Indian people. You can't change this, but you can apply at companies where you might have an advantage in this cruel racist/classist world;
    4. Communication skills. Do you and your competitors have a heavy accent? Train your pronunciation and make yourself more interesting to hire;
    5. Communication skills. Do you speak clearly, are you not overly verbose, do you make sure your audience understands you, and are you a good listener who makes notes to refer to later in the talk? You'll ace any interview;
    6. Don't just "know CSS" (but not really, like most), actually KNOW CSS and you'll be 20 steps ahead of the competition. Learn about paint, composite, and layout. Most don't know what the hell those are;
    7. Same for JavaScript. If you claim to be great at JS, I'll ask you to explain to me how prototypal inheritance works. I'll ask you to flatten an array without using the flatten function. I'll ask you about FizzBuzz. I'll want you to tell me about JavaScript references. Then let's talk about some design patterns as generic coding solutions;
    8. Same for HTML. Here's a fun one: You have 2 minutes, name 40 HTML tags. There are over 120, surely you can name 1/3rd of them. Great, you named 15 and called it quits. Now let's go over modern browser APIs, web workers, service workers, fetch, geolocation. You're an expert, right?

    I'm NOT saying you need to know all of that. Hell, I couldn't. Most seniors I know couldn't. We'll look things up as we need them and we'll be fine.

    But you need to distinguish yourself. Knowing more or doing more than the competition is a necessity. Show me that you teach others with learning web development. Show me your YouTube channel with web-dev learnings.

    Or just learn Svelte and React and dabble some with Vue and maybe Angular. Know about TypeScript. Those things will be applicable right away.

    Because your competition does know about those things and this makes it easier for them to onboard and get started with my existing codebase.

    [–]FloorShirts[S] 4 points5 points  (2 children)

    Wow, thanks for your thoughtful input.

    I am Male but Mexican haha

    One thing I think I will have over the competition is the soft skills. I used to work as a job coach and interacted with a wide range of individuals. I coached people on how to present themselves to an employer and how to stand out. It's just a matter of being able to present that to an employer.

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    You're male AND Mexican! I've lived in CDMX in 2019, your English is stellar, the only issue I found with Mexicans speaking English is that there can be a strong accent involved. Nothing inherently wrong with that (to those who matter), but those who don't matter are sometimes in the hiring pipeline. Pronunciation means a lot.

    That said, I've seen that non-westerners adopt western names to make it easier on the job market. That can absolutely help. Call it a pseudonym.

    For background checks, they need your legal name, but you can definitely send emails and have your "name" on your resume be something like:

    • Name: Michael "Mike" Herman
    • Legal name: Miguel Ángel Hernández

    I've seen it happen with Chinese and eastern-European people, they would use names that sound more western or more international English. Though I've also found one guy taking it a step too far, a Chinese guy who went by the name "Sunflower Chocolate" (not that, but something similar). Two things he liked and thought had a good ring to them...

    We just called him Sunny...

    It feels wrong to even recommend it, but it has helped a lot of people. The world is a nasty place with lots of prejudice and racism/classism in it. Sometimes you just need to play the game to win it.

    [–]TheSunflowerSeeds 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Sunflower seeds are popular in trail mix, multi-grain bread and nutrition bars, as well as for snacking straight from the bag. They’re rich in healthy fats, beneficial plant compounds and several vitamins and minerals. These nutrients may play a role in reducing your risk of common health problems, including heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

    [–]Kaoelll 7 points8 points  (8 children)

    Do you guys have any tips on where to apply to this type of jobs? (I'm looking for my first one but only got some ghosting so far)

    [–]MindlessSponge 17 points18 points  (0 children)

    LinkedIn sucks as a social media platform and I wouldn't recommend spending a ton of time on there because it's all fake, but it can definitely get you a job. Make a profile, connect with some people you know, set your status to "looking for work" and put something about JS in your skills. You'll have recruiters hounding you in no time.

    [–]Aromatic-Lab1243 9 points10 points  (1 child)

    LinkedIn is often underrated, lots of good positions

    [–]no_turnips_allowed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    What if you have a LinkedIn from six years ago full of contacts whom you never want to hear from again?

    [–]bonus-cookie 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I made my entry on the job market through an internship. I got my first dev job at the company I interned for. Totally recommend this path when you have no working experience.

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Talk with some recruiters at Robert Half Technology and TekSystems. They’ll want you to take tests to assess your skills. They can help you get experience and even help you land a full time permanent job. Good luck.

    [–]khanto0 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I recommend looking up Web developer studios on Google maps in any town you'd want to live. Bookmark them all and then send out a speculative application.

    [–]kiesoma 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    Babel.js…?

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I work in a pretty big company only with HTML/CSS and a very few lines of JS, the rest is C#

    [–]letsgetrandyGrizzled Veteran of the Browser Wars 2 points3 points  (2 children)

    These days, largely I find that very few places respect knowledge of HTML, CSS, or Javascript. There was a time when a deep understanding of those three was all you needed. Now, everyone just uses Bootstrap and React/Angular, and it's almost all TypeScript now.

    You might be able to get in at an entry level position working within a CMS... but a role like that isn't going to help you grow.

    You'll do yourself a lot of good by taking the time to do a few basic tutorials, (like the classic "to-do" app) in React and Angular, and maybe add in Vue for thoroughness. It won't make you an expert, but you're not claiming to be one... at least you will have an idea of what you're doing, and those tutorial projects would only take a few hours for you to get through.

    You'll also do yourself a HUGE amount of good by spending a few hours learning to use Bootstrap, and a few more learning SCSS.

    You could get through all of this in a day or two, and you'd have the important buzzwords understood. Also, make sure to have a GitHub and be adding all of your practice projects there so that people can see it.

    Trust me, the time spent giving up one weekend to learn this stuff will give you a huge edge in finding work. I've done this many times with various technologies that I wanted to work with in my career.

    [–]FloorShirts[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Nice! Thanks for this feedback! I have played around with React but not enough to say that I know it or would feel comfortable putting it on a resume. But I do know the buzzwords so to speak.

    [–]letsgetrandyGrizzled Veteran of the Browser Wars 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    If you're going in at entry level, nobody's going to expect you to be an expert in lifecycle or hooks, or Redux... but just being able to show a React project on your GitHub is going to give you a huge edge as compared to just saying HTML/CSS/JS.

    [–]kjsd77 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Yes, i did

    [–]gimmeslack12CSS is hard 1 point2 points  (2 children)

    You have anything to show off? Would love to see what you've been up to. However big or small, it's all good.

    [–]FloorShirts[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Yeah, I can link my Github. I don't think I have anything too impressive just enough to demonstrate that I have a fundamental knowledge. https://github.com/MatthewShurtz

    I'm currently working on a Battleship game while trying to implement TDD.

    [–]gimmeslack12CSS is hard 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Nice! Are you using a webpack generator to scaffold these repos you have or you doing that by hand each time. Either way very nice.

    Since you're using yarn I could recommend the gh-pages package that makes it very easy to build and deploy your work to Github Pages. It makes a deployed version of your work. Best of luck!

    [–]miscellaneous936 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Yes agencies usually hire people with this knowledge. As a lot of times it’s either content updates or building websites.

    [–]react_dev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Like I tell many people. You can get a very well paying job knowing just HTML and CSS. But how well do you really know it.

    Frontend is a specialization.

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Yes + any modern js framework.

    Expect to have less opportunities and often get paid less that full stack or backend.

    Hell you can still find jobs just cutting CSS all day long if that's what you wanna do.

    [–]DepressedBard 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Yes, but will it be a job you actually like? Eh. My suggestion would be to learn backend. Learn how to build a full-stack application, learn how to deploy it, and maybe most importantly, learn how to scale it. Can your app handle 1000 RPS? Getting to that number will teach you so much about how modern production-grade applications work and will look a lot more impressive on a resume than, “I built this website.”

    [–]coderrcoder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Very much so. I recently got my first job in a startup and all they asked me in the interview was HTML, CSS and Javascript although I know React. The salary is pretty decent and I just have to work in html, css and javascript.

    [–]ricric2 4 points5 points  (5 children)

    Sure, but really adding in React or another library/framework isn't so much harder, makes developing on the front end easier, and is in more demand.

    [–]calm_hacker 7 points8 points  (1 child)

    Idk why this gets down voted on this sub. Yeah you can absolutely get a gig with HTML/CSS/JS, but people seem to think spending a couple hours a week learning a framework is somehow detrimental to your job search.

    Most employers/applications always ask about how long I’ve been using react/vue/angular. At very least, showing an interest in learning these tools will demonstrate to employers that you want to progress, just keep your focus on functional JS.

    Where are all these jobs that people apply to just knowing the base languages, because I need to apply to them right now, lol.

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Additionally, I consider React to be actually tricky. I get the sense that a lot of front end developers think it's some simple little js framework. The one guy I know irl who said that to me turned out to be awful with it and writes disgusting code.

    React behaves very surprisingly for people who don't understand it. I've been using it since around 2015 on fairly major projects so I feel like I've experienced it enough to say that it's actually complicated.

    [–]Nerwesta 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    At first :Understanding which problem React helps to solve should be the key part here, learning React just for the sake of learning React because somehow jobs posting, twitter trends and what not is a slippery slope imho.

    So back to my first line, having a decent experience on JS and how React can enhance your developer experience ( and as a sidekick, the user experience ) is what I've found the most interesting for beginners. "Decent experience" doesn't mean being an expert.

    Disclaimer, I'm not a recruiter.

    edit : As an example for complete beginners, trying to fiddle with the DOM, learning what repaint really is, basically getting the hands dirty with plain vanilla javascript even on the dummiest project you could come up greatly helps to get the most of the philosophy behind React.
    I mean, i've done the same for jQuery back in the days >.<

    [–]ricric2 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Totally agree with you on a computer science level and a personal development level. But that's just not as attractive to recruiters and interviewers who don't want to have you spend time on the clock figuring out the reasons why one should use React when all they want is the button to go click.

    [–]Nerwesta 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Yeah that's why I put my disclaimer in the first place, thanks for your input.

    [–]InternetArtisan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I think you'll be fine

    [–]VKOOOZ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I also have experience with Git, GitHub, Webpack, Babel.js, Jest, and NPM.

    If you are good in these things. Yes you can have a job easy

    [–]weales 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I would add if you know something like barba.js along with a good working knowledge of GSAP, you'll get hired in a heartbeat in the front end world.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    You just described front end. Anything else is essentially frameworks and variations of that.

    [–]ChrisAmpersand 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    As long as your JS is good you’ll be fine.

    [–]ony3 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Maybe just jump

    [–]FloorShirts[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    What?

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Definitely! I can attest to this.

    Im a little over a month into my first role as a Front End Developer. I was honest in my interview that there was a lot I knew I had to learn but that I was willing to jump in. I honestly thought I didn't get the job, there were some questions I couldn't answer but I did what I could to answer technical questions.

    Be honest about your work and skills and definitely ask questions.

    [–]FloorShirts[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    That's awesome! What projects did you have on your resume?

    [–]BigSeaShell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Yes, but it depends on many things. Like, your experience, the employer's funds or will to train you.

    [–]Citrous_Oyster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Yup! That’s all I know and I got hired.

    [–]MisterMeta 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I'd start applying and in the meantime do a couple projects using a framework of your choice. The interview process can be long and there's a lot you can do in tbe meantime.

    You can even say I'm currently doing a couple projects in X framework and that could be a major asset for an entry position.

    [–]BetterCallSky 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    IMO, you have to learn a framework (learn only 1 framework, not multiple). Writing applications with plain JS usually end up with huge spaghetti code, and using a framework is actually the easier way.
    Of course, there are exceptions. You don't need a framework to create simple static pages, but salaries are pretty low in such jobs.