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 Frontend Developers, what's happening?

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malleus
post Aug 26 2021, 08:58 PM

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would have failed first year uni if not able to do this
malleus
post Aug 27 2021, 02:56 PM

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QUOTE(silverhawk @ Aug 27 2021, 10:31 AM)
Yes, there is no standard answer, the problem is that they can't even produce the answer.

You want to do it via nested loop, single loop or even just pop off the array and console.log it at each iteration. I'm ok, as long as you can produce the result and explain the thought process.

The frontend candidates so far seem to think that by asking them questions like these, means we're expecting their workload to be algorithmically heavy and say things like "we don't do calculatiosn in the frontend".
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I'm expect something simple like this to be handled quite often on the frontend
malleus
post Aug 27 2021, 05:10 PM

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QUOTE(silverhawk @ Aug 27 2021, 04:17 PM)
Yeap, so I asked questions like "don't you do things like receive a result set of rows/columns and have to display them in a table or some sort". And the typical response I get is "we just pass the data into the component and the component renders it". doh.gif

To me, not passing question 1 pretty much disqualifies you as a candidate. However seeing the amount of people failing it, I'm entertaining the idea that my expectations might need adjustment, that's why I'm asking here.

Is it possible for a frontend dev to be any good if they can't solve that question? My thinking is no, but I'm open to be proven wrong.
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It's definitely a red flag. but I think I seen this primarily in ppl who worked a lot with wordpress only who calls into this category.

but there's another question that I have though. These candidates that you interviewed, what's their background? are they working as a web dev in a creative agency? as in, more of a design house or online marketing agency? the tech requirements for these places are rather different.

I've worked with one before where their web dev lead (he's actually more of a web designer than a web dev) does not know how to consume an API. and they had to fall back to making the API request, write the results to DB, then render the results to screen by querying it out of a DB.

sounds very similar to your example of 'we just pass the data into the component'
malleus
post Aug 29 2021, 11:36 PM

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QUOTE(silverhawk @ Aug 29 2021, 06:52 PM)
because you're creating unnecessary exceptions to your logic, its not like you're getting any real performance benefit for doing so either. Small exceptional optimisations like these tend to create unexpected bugs if requirements change.
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The other thing to watch out for is maintainability. ie: a few months down the road, can one still remember what they were doing, or a year later when somebody else looks at it.

The one question that we always have to ask ourself is, what is the value of the work that we do, considering how much we charge for it? spending too much time on small optimisations with too little returns is not something beneficial to clients, and may result in them questioning what exactly it is that they're paying for.

This is also one of the things that we take into consideration when determine when a developer is ready to move to a senior position or not, on if they're able to identify situations when they're supposed to optimise, and situations when they're not supposed to.
malleus
post Sep 8 2021, 09:09 PM

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QUOTE(FlierMate @ Sep 8 2021, 01:57 PM)
Set this skill test aside, I recall famous quote from a self-help book many years ago, where it says:

"Hire for attitude, train for skill"

It literally means skill can be trained, but not so with an employee's attitude.
So, does employer like that of @silverhawk, emphasizing on a candidate's attitude even for a technical role?

I am in my forties, and long left the IT job industry. Just curious to know what's up in today IT hiring process.
Take me as an example, I was known for bad temper as a software developer in the early millennium and despite my good skill, I was fired on one occasion after threatening to hurt a coworker in the workplace.
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skills can be trained, yes. however there's still a minimal amount of skill requirement for each role level that you're hiring for. and it's not like this is some ultra difficult question to begin with.

if at a candidate at a senior level cannot even do a question that a first year uni student is expected to be able to do without flunking out, then there's still a problem with the aptitude to begin with.

but one test that we do find useful as a basic proficiency test will be Pivotal Lab's RPI test. it's a simple enough pairing exercise that can be completed in under an hour, there's 2 main conditions to the test,: 1) the test cases needs to be written out first
2) the candidate does not get to type. instead the candidate is to verbalise what they want to do and the pairing interviewer will be doing the typing.

it's a good test on communication skills, as well as forces the candidate to first think about testing.

even for senior or higher level candidates, it's amazing how many of them tends to trip over it, mainly due to over confidence and halfway through find themselves in trouble.

This post has been edited by malleus: Sep 8 2021, 09:23 PM
malleus
post Sep 12 2021, 04:50 PM

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QUOTE(Advent Syracuase @ Sep 12 2021, 01:42 PM)
Wasn't that difficult

CODE
const countToTarget = (target) => {
   let current = 1;
   const output_array = [];
   while(current <= target) {
       output_array.push(current);
       current++;
   }
   return output_array.join(' ');
}


Did you guys use paper? It always trips me off when I have to use paper to code. There was once I got an interview in a semi con company. They asked me to write solutions for code problems in a paper [???].
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I scribble stuff on paper first whenever I'm able to.
malleus
post Sep 20 2021, 08:59 AM

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QUOTE(Grammar Police @ Sep 20 2021, 01:15 AM)
I don't think much of the algorithm questions myself, but do keep in mind that the question given in this thread is to do with basic array operations that a first year uni student is expect to be able to solve. In fact, this tends to be lab questions given to a uni student in the first half of the first semester.



 

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