Front end, why don't I want you

I joined my current company as a front-end supervisor in January this year. I have interviewed more than a dozen candidates so far and was surprised to find that the market situation of this niche position is so strange. On the one hand, various companies are competing to hire, which leads to high and impetuous prices; on the other hand, most practitioners have little experience, so little technical accumulation, little project experience, and even more terrible is that they have no ambition. Here is a summary for self-encouragement.

One year experience repeat

This is the most terrifying thing. If you don’t understand it carefully, it’s hard to tell the water in the work experience. Most of the people I interviewed have 4-5 years of work experience, their resumes are awesome, they came from big companies, and they participated in dozens of projects. It stands to reason that this type of talent, even if not good enough, is not bad, right?

During the interview, I found that the so-called experience in big companies is basically outsourcing. Well, outsourcing is outsourcing, that's not the point. I have worked for 4 years, but I don't know HTTP protocol; I have learned about TCP three-way handshake in textbooks; I have not paid attention to web performance bottlenecks; closures just return a function... Nine out of ten questions are unknown. When asked about expectations before leaving, 12K, 15K, 18K... To be honest, in my opinion, these people are not much different from fresh graduates. How can they have the nerve to say such numbers? Why should I want you?

There is an even more bizarre case. He has worked for 5 years as a supervisor in a small company, but he has never even tried to package the code. He has never heard of sass, less, or grunt. Brother, you are a supervisor, how can you say that your subordinates have no learning spirit and are hindering your studies?

Technical capabilities

I often browse blogs and feel that there are many talented people on the street; but when I actually go to interviews, I find that most of the technical skills are average. In the resumes I have read, many people write that they are proficient in this and that. To be honest, in today's society, appropriate exaggeration and embellishment are not excessive, and are even necessary. But if you exaggerate too much, that is a big problem, right?

There is a particularly strange person who has been working for three years and is proficient in HTTP protocol, JQUERY, Bootstrap, angular and so on. In fact, when asked, he has never tried JS OOP; has never read the JQUERY source code; has never written a JQUERY plug-in; has read angular as a hobby, and has never used ng-view. With your level, you don't even have the knowledge, how can you have the nerve to write a proficient one? You don't know nine out of ten questions, how can you say you expect 16K?

Basic knowledge

Indeed, most programmers (especially front-end programmers) do not have particularly difficult tasks, but does this mean that they do not understand basic algorithms, data structures, network protocols, and W3C standard protocols? Please, it is no longer the era where you can just write some HTML and jQuery to meet your needs. If you do not understand data structures, you do not know how to construct a dynamic menu tree; if you do not understand algorithms, you do not know how to operate this menu tree efficiently; if you do not understand network protocols, you do not know how to optimize the code and how to use the proxy cache mechanism; if you do not understand W3C standard protocols, you cannot even explain event bubbling clearly.

The fact is, I asked all the candidates at a job fair, and not a single one could name the three stages of DOM standard events.

Professionalism

This point is very abstract, but also very important. The most basic one is, did you bring your resume? No kidding, there are really many people who don't bring their resumes, but there was one weird one who did bring one, and when I asked him for it, he said he only had one copy and had to keep it for the next interview... I can't complain. I would ask many people what technology they used in the last project, why they used it, what are the advantages and disadvantages, and what are the alternatives, and they basically can't answer; or ask if they have any plans for their future, what plans they have in five years, and what stage they are currently in, they can answer very well at the beginning, but the more detailed you ask, the more at a loss they will be; or ask if they know anything about MVC, MVVM, and have they built a project architecture themselves, they basically can't answer. Brother, please be a little more responsible for your career, you are so grown up, and you are still playing house.

Oh, by the way, I also met an older lady who spent the entire interview, more than ten minutes, looking down at her phone... Playing with her phone...

Summarize

All I can say is that the market is very complex and people are very impetuous. It is easy to get started with the front-end. If you can use HTML to build a page framework, use CSS to write some basic styles, and use jQuery to write DOM interactions, you can basically say that you are a front-end engineer. It is difficult to improve the front-end. Algorithms, data structures, and OOP are old hats; JavaScript, DOM, CSS, HTML5 are standard; performance optimization, security, code elegance, SEO, these are also necessary to understand. The front-end development environment is very light and cumbersome. The application of various tools, frameworks, and architectural patterns is also a standard for measuring professionalism.

If you don’t even understand the above, why should I want you?

The front end we need

Our company has just received investment, which is considered generous in the industry. The requirements are not high. As long as you have normal thinking, normal communication, correct attitude, and your skills are worth the salary, it's OK. We are a learning team. We also believe that everyone has the desire and ability to learn, so if we see potential, we will recruit. We are a rapidly developing team, with project awards, year-end bonuses, five insurances and one housing fund, and everything we need. Once hired, you will receive preferential treatment.

***One thing, we don’t mind being old, but we don’t want to be too old-fashioned.