Areas of Concern

I listened to a great episode of Shop Talk Show the other day with Eric Meyer all about how to think like a front-end developer and there’s one bit that caught my attention. It’s the part where Chris asks the question “what is a front-end developer today?” And around the 10:58 mark, Eric responds like this:

What it looks like now, to me anyway, is somebody who worries about the HTML, the CSS, the JavaScript, the performance in the browser. [...] But that’s what they take as their area of, not only expertise, but concern.

I suppose it’s the Brit in me but I love that Eric doesn’t emphasis professionalism or skills, but concern and worry. I mentioned this a while ago but that’s just the sort of thing that I’m looking for in interviews, too. Although I phrased it like this:

During a front-end interview earlier this week I realized that I’m looking for folks that happen to be riddled with self doubt. There’s never one way to build anything on the web and being confident is always more trouble than it’s worth.

I think concern is a better word for it then self-doubt. Anyway, the whole episode with Eric is super interesting and worthy of your time.