On Hiring Front-end Engineers / Cameron Moll / Designer, Speaker, Author

Friday 21 January 2011

On Hiring Front-end Engineers →

Speaking of freelance gigs and jobs, Chris Zacharias, former YouTube engineer (I believe), authors some thoughts on what to look for in front-end engineers.

On scripting:

Bad front-end engineers are dependent on jQuery and other libraries. Good front-end engineers make use of libraries like jQuery to empower themselves, but are not beholden to them.

On art:

Nearly every first rate web developer I have worked with had some kind of extracurricular, no matter how casual, that focused around some form of art. I have worked with painters, photographers, singers, writers, actors, musicians, sculptors, printmakers, and graffiti artists. One question I started to ask candidates was ‘Do you play an instrument?’ If they did, it was usually a good sign.

~~Naturally, I might disagree with point #5, having seen many successful hires online including a couple of my own (and still working with one of them today).~~ Update: I obviously misunderstood Chris’ point here. He’s not advocating finding candidates through print mediums; rather, he suggests finding candidates that work in or have experience in print mediums. So, I’ve expanded the excerpt:

If you want to find good front-end engineers, look to the newspaper and print industry…. They have to construct and layout items within grid systems. They have to know typography fundamentals like fonts, leading, and kerning. They often have to work within color constraints and style guides. They value things like legibility, copywriting, and visual hierarchy.

/via Hacker News