Well, the original problem seemed to be that interviewees were not able to even find the API. If they had a mental model od DOM, this shouldn't be a problem.
They'd knew that there are nodes, can be queried from the document via JS and moved in relation to other nodes, so they could just google: "move dom node", or "query dom node" and put the pieces together via JS.
Look, yes this very well might be a case of lots of inexperienced people shooting ambitiously high (you don’t win unless you try, right?). And it might be true that most people interviewing for front end jobs don’t know squat. The story above just doesn’t actually demonstrate that.
My point here is that there are other explanations, we can’t jump to the conclusion that the cause is because most people lack a mental model of the DOM, that’s overlooking many possible reasons. Nothing about the state of developers is proven by this anecdote.
The interview specifically asked about an API that most people simply do not use. It’s not a surprise that a bunch of candidates backed out when they learned this, and it’s not a surprise that it was accidentally more challenging than the interviewer thought for those who stayed.
It doesn’t really matter that Google was allowed, it’s an assumption to think that it’s easy to come up with keywords and search terms for a API you haven’t used, during a job interview. I’ve interviewed a lot of people and watched a lot of people freeze during interviews, people that I know would figure it out quickly if I wasn’t interviewing them and they were relaxed. A job interview is a test, and the test administrator isn’t in a position to claim that it should have been relaxing or easy for the test-takers.
