In a newsletter I receive
a recent thread asked the question "What is so great about
Hand Coding?". The poster was curious as to why someone who could create
wonderful pages with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editor, such as
FrontPage would be overlooked in a job search, in favor of someone with direct HTML
experience.
It is common for hiring managers and HR departments to prefer someone with
direct HTML experience to someone who has only created Web pages with an
editor.
In my own experience, I work at a company that used to market a WYSIWYG
HTML editor. When I was in the job interview, I asked my manager if I
would be required to use that editor when I built pages for the company. I
was told that they preferred a developer who was comfortable outside of
a visual editor and liked to work directly with HTML.