I ran across a link to a blog entry titled Hiring Front-End Engineers and gave it a quick read. The entire time, I kept thinking, “This dude’s describing me! Surely this is some sort of trick?”

He broke it down into 5 points:

• Good front-end engineers rarely have a computer science degree.
  I ended up leaving college to work in the design department of a newspaper.
• Good front-end engineers cannot be forged from back-end engineers.
  I started with html, css, and javascript years before I started dabbling with back-end techonology.
• Good front-end engineers list Javascript on their resume, not jQuery. John Resig (creator of jQuery) was about 12 years old when I started writing Javascript.
• Good front-end engineers are artists.
  I’ve been in several bands, own a ton of camera equipment, and love to draw and paint (though I haven’t done any of that in years).
• If you want to find good front-end engineers, look to the newspaper and print industry.
  I worked for two years doing advertising design at the newspaper (one of my first jobs).

The last point practically guarantees my status as a rare-breed with the print industry (and newspapers, specifically) imploding. If only there was a way to forward this to every prospective employer.