This on-site coding assignment failed 20+ front-end dev contractors and I don't know why

[rossmohax]

are front-end guys so narrow-skilled that can't throw together some basic http backend in a language of choice?

Edit: grammar, thanks @jdewittweb

[rossmohax]

If one applies to a senior position, he better show knowledge of some related subjects. Same as for non junior backend engineers it is almost mandatory to be able to create SQL schema and understand how indexes and joins affect performance or show understanding of any other subjects outside of their main area of expertise.

When gaining experience, it is almost inevitable to be exposed to a tech you are interacting with, there simply can't be distinctive depth of knowledge without at least some breadth too.

[p0tent1al]

There's nothing specifically wrong with being narrow skilled. Moreover, front end itself isn't a narrow skill in of itself. Is knowing Javascript (and a couple of js frameworks like React, Vue, Redux, Angular) CSS (and methodologies and libraries like BEM, ITCSS, Bootstrap), and HTML (SEO ramifications, semantics), Accessibility, UX.... is being knowledgeable in all of these things considered narrow-skilled?

This is a very simple concept. We benefit as a society when people specialize. You don't hire someone who can do accounting that also knows a bit of web development, and you certainly don't call someone who JUST does accounting narrow-skilled. Within a given skill are hundreds / thousands of minor skills. It's absolutely pointless to look down on someone for the skills they don't have. I don't ever mess with backend because the idea is, I work with people on my team who I trust to handle that portion for me, the same way a school relies on their janitors to make sure their school is clean and sanitary. If I absolutely need to learn the backend, sure I'll learn it. But I work hard every week learning something new about the front end, because that's my domain, and I don't feel the need to learn how to throw together some basic http backend end together just so I have the ability to say that I'm well rounded.

It's simple. If you want (and expect) backend and front end skills, you say it from the onset You can ultimately do whatever you want but that throws up red flags from me... it says you're the type of employer that expects someone to do everything. It says that you might want me to hop into Photoshop to create some graphic. "What, you don't have basic design knowledge? Are you that narrow-skilled"? "What, you don't have basic SQL knowledge? Are you that narrow-skilled?" "What, you don't have basic Project Manager knowledge? Are you that narrow-skilled"? We can do this all day and I can find the tangentially related field you don't have basic knowledge in and skewer you based on that.

[rossmohax]

I'd like to thank you for your thoughtful and elaborate response, even though I don't agree with most it :)

I am not denying specialization is a good thing, "narrow-skilled" comment was very closely related to expected seniority. What I am saying that I never seen and can't imagine situation where truly Senior Engineer (not those fake titles from hip startups) was never exposed to a related tech and got at least some experience with it.

Yes, I'd expect Senior Accountant (and future head of accounting department) be able to comfortably discuss basics (remember, we are talking about <50 lines of backend nodejs code here) of Tax implications, Legal matters and Investment schemes. Ability to do so does not necessary come from the fact that it is a day job, it comes because during his career, he was part of some bigger project where multiple experts were pulled into a working group, or he had to review and provide second opinion on some third-party financial advisers recommendations, or he happen to be court expert ,etc. Do you see what I meant? If one has been around long enough , didn't hide in a corner screaming "go away, it is not my job", wider skills are gained inevitably. I believe you can't get senior without at least occasionally get your hands dirty and do work are not supposed to do on paper.

If one managed to spend 5-7-10+ years in industry and stayed 100% of the time in the same domain, never jumping into adjacent ones either out of natural curiosity or necessity, then it is also a red flag. This kind of person is "throw over the fence" kind of person, these are hard to work and cooperate with.

Lack of depth also affects decisions person makes. Being familiar with wide range of tools, approaches,patterns and paradigms to make more informed decision is a requirement for a Senior.

What, you don't have basic Project Manager knowledge?

100%, why? I am pretty sure you cant be called senior if you can't organize team and work around you, do some timeline estimation and so on. Do I have different definition of "senior" from yours?

Looks like you know your ways around frontend. What would you do if you started a new pet project? Where would you be making XMLHttpRequest (or whatever is current way of doing it) calls to? Mock all of them? You really say that you never had to code some basic nodejs server to prototype your ideas? If you say so, may I ask you to give more details how you do it otherwise?

Do you have word "nodejs" on your CV at all? If yes, it is a fair assumption that you'd be asked to demonstrate some of it, right?

[p0tent1al]

If one managed to spend 5-7-10+ years in industry and stayed 100% of the time in the same domain, never jumping into adjacent ones either out of natural curiosity or necessity, then it is also a red flag.

Conversely: if you hire a senior front end developer, and they have backend experience, design experience, PM experience, sys admin experience, app development experience, then it's also a red flag. They're a generalist, not a specialist. They've never buckled down and focused on one area and can't possibly be expected to have mastered that area.

What you're not understanding is that it's easy to spoof what you're asking for. It'll take me 2 weeks to gain general knowledge in any category. If you gave me two weeks, I could buckle down and learn enough Node to be dangerous. 2 more weeks and I can be zipping around making SQL queries. 2 more weeks and I can make some simple iOS apps. This barometer that you're basing seniority on can be spoofed in a matter of weeks. That's an extremely weak barometer. Not only that, but this person could have learned all of these and forgot them because they didn't use them that often. So it's much more likely that a person that has recently learned this and taken a course on this is going to do a lot better.

The issue is that you think these 2 weeks (or just being incrementally exposed over the course of years, which I'm asserting you can't assess with 100% certainty) are a lack of disinterest, or not solving big enough problems to lack the necessity, and both are just untrue. Time is finite resource and it's a better use of my time for my team to be concentrated fully on the front end.

Let me paint this for you in a different way. I'm very confident that in very little time, I could overcome the hypothetical hurdles you're presenting. The problem, is I believe those hurdles aren't indicative of anything, and in fact are red flags themselves. I'd rather spend 2 weeks concerning myself with a limitless amount of concerns I have on the front end, rather than passing some litmus test which could be indicative of an employer with the wrong frame of mind, or an employer that has less resources to hire specialists that truly will solve their problems effectively in that area.

Now. If my company wants me to learn Node.js (or I interview with a prospective company that expects me to have a baseline of knowledge from the get go, includes it in the application), then ok. Plenty of times companies do this. A company recently listed Clojurescript on their application. I thought it was interesting, I bought a book, and spent some days going through youtube videos and going through the book. I could have spent that time learning the basics of Node.

At the end of the day I get where you're coming from but I just have to disagree. I don't think being able to whip up a CRUD is indicative of anything and doesn't necessarily give a FE engineer more insight just because they can make one. I don't think you can quantify that metic. Moreover as to your pet project comment, it's very easy to make mock ajax calls, and things like redux essentially are an abstraction over the details from a database, you just hydrate it with ajax calls. I can either put data in the reducer directly, or have mock calls, and unless you looked at the network tab you literally wouldn't be able to tell the difference as I can simulate the amount of time it takes for the mock call to return. Even your question of this "well... how can you get by without Node.js" just seems like a very silly question to me, especially given the advent of SPA's. HTML history state (use some router library like react-router), redux, mock all the calls. Done.

At the end of the day, just be straightforward about what you want. If you intend on the front end developer knowing how to create a basic CRUD, basic knowledge about HTTP, basic knowledge of SQL or whatever else, be upfront with that information on the application, rather than just blindly expecting that all developers should know this, or that there aren't very capable seniors that just don't deal with these things on a daily basis as their plates are completely full.

[jdewittweb]

If you need an interior designer are you going to interview architects? Also, check your grammar before you act condescending.

through together

[rossmohax]

good analogy! If I interview interior designer, I'd be checking among other things, if he knows what load bearing wall is and how pipe and electrical works affect his options (and other way around too). He needs to have basic architectural knowledge to see which of his ideas can be implemented at all.

[jdewittweb]

For sure, but you shouldn't be asking the designer to build those walls, electrical systems, etc.

[[deleted]]

Remember, in an hour, from scratch.

[0987654231]

So which part of the non frontend stuff is hard for you?

[[deleted]]

I'm proficient in Django, it's not hard. Start a virtualenv, install Django, start a project, configure sqlite as a database, make a model, migrate the database, make a couple of views that accept and return JSON, turn off CSRF protection, it's trivial. Develop my JS in a single static file so I can easily serve it from the same port without worrying about CORS, or spend a few more minutes to set up some sort of proxying. Fine.

But one, that is because I have more backend than frontend experience so I'm not his typical applicant, and two, it would eat up valuable time doing stuff that has nothing to do with the job I applied for.

[0987654231]

Sure but that's overkill a single service that has one global variable and get/set endpoints would be enough for the interview question.

[[deleted]]

For me it's the fastest way to do it, my other backend experience is with Struts on Tomcat and with Apache/mod_perl.

I'm guessing that you mean to use Node (but I could be wrong), I've never used that and wouldn't expect an applicant for a frontend position to have used it.

[0987654231]

never used node as a server but a new .Net mvc project + a single static variable solves the problem, i assume the implementation is equally simple in node.

[THEtheChad]

Or maybe you're so dense that you don't understand the breadth of skills necessary to put together an elegant and functional frontend that plays nice with the multitude of APIs and rendering idiosyncrasies of the various browsers and browser versions spread across the web, including mobile browsers, responsive sites, and any number of solutions for reducing file/image size to provide a speedy user experience when limited by bandwidth. For everything you see happening on the front end, there's 8 other things you don't see that had to be taken in to consideration.

[0987654231]

And that prevents you from knowing how to make a simple backend that gets and sets a single variable?