From my experience so far, I’ve never worked at a place that actually required all the bullet points they list in their job description. I came across a senior front-end development position and I’m wondering if this is sensible list of requirements or whether it’s commonplace?
I generally assume that an employee should be able to do most of it and improvise the rest (learn on the job). In this field, the learning process never stops obviously.
Frontend:
CSS3 : cross-browser positioning, efficient selectors, reflow vs repaint, transitions/animations.
JavaScript: able to avoid libraries and write native code for Ajax requests, DOM traversal, event binding/delegation, ready states. Constructors and lambdas.
HTML5: familiar with Web Sockets, Local Storage, Session Storage. Bonus: Web Components.
Yeah, good luck finding someone who is fluent in everything listed. That more or less looks like a bucket list for a company that doesn’t really know what they need just using a bunch of the latest buzz terms/languages/frameworks. One thing that sticks out is the listing says they would like developers who can avoid libraries but than go on to list several
Well, half of those are “plusses” but yeah, good luck to them.
What I find disconcerting is that there did not used to be so much emphasis on JS when it came to front-end development 6 years ago. I still can’t help but assume that it should be separated if you they want that degree of specialization.
It isn’t unreasonable to expect front-end developers be fluent in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Given expert knowledge of those any of the frameworks which they mentioned can easily be learned. It is the other end of the spectrum that is playing with fire. Where one only knows a framework such as; jQuery or Bootstrap but not the underlaying code behind it. As I see time and time again… designers or “developers” over their head relying on jQuery or some framework way to much without understanding what is actually happening. For small projects you can get away with that but when it comes to large, legacy sites/apps it is highly unlikely someone like that would be able to satisfy the needs of most clients where a project is in continuous development. I just noticed that the ad leaves out something that is more important than most of the libraries and frameworks on there – version control. Funny for a senior development position to not even mention version control or subversion, git, perforce, etc. I mean version control isn’t necessarily a difficult thing to learn but it is to master. I would think a senior development position would require version control knowledge one way or another. I hope that isn’t an indicator that they don’t use version control…
I’d say it is. And that’s not unusual, unfortunately. I’ve worked in lots of places where they don’t.
And I see lots of ads asking for everything and then some more. Usually followed by a not so high salary…
I’ve never worked at a company or client that doesn’t use/insist version control (knock on wood). I didn’t think those types of companies even exist. Perhaps an individual but not an entire company. Though I guess I could see it at a design agency or something but not a tech firm or in-house development department. Designers are pretty lack luster when it comes to things like this…
You’re an exception then or maybe the US is different
Small companies (up to 50 employees) rarely use version control and big companies may not use it for tiny projects where only 1 programmer is involved and he should only need a few months for it.
