99.9% of excellent people I worked with don't have a public GitHub profile. Most of the remaining 0.1% don't have anything interesting there, in part because their employer claims ownership of everything they create, so disclosing their side projects publicly is stupid. As the old Russian saying goes, "the less they know, the better they sleep".
Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
131–140 of 226 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#132As a hiring manager, I glance at it and take a brief look at anything interesting. It’s good for talking points at the interview, perhaps to ask the candidate to expand upon and explain the work. If the profile is empty, I close the tab and find something else to talk about. I will never, ever penalise a candidate for an empty GitHub profile. So many people just do not have time for open source and that’s totally fin…
> So many people just do not have time for open source On the other hand, it's hard to imagine someone senior enough (in terms of experience, not years) who haven't ever hacked a FLOSS dependency to do something it originally didn't. Of course, it could be that the source wasn't on GitHub, or that author did effort to persuade upstream into accepting their changes and then repository was removed, or that the code is…
> On the other hand, it's hard to imagine someone senior enough (in terms of experience, not years) who haven't ever hacked a FLOSS dependency to do something it originally didn't.
No, I find that pretty easy to imagine.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#133As a hiring manager, I glance at it and take a brief look at anything interesting. It’s good for talking points at the interview, perhaps to ask the candidate to expand upon and explain the work. If the profile is empty, I close the tab and find something else to talk about. I will never, ever penalise a candidate for an empty GitHub profile. So many people just do not have time for open source and that’s totally fin…
> So many people just do not have time for open source On the other hand, it's hard to imagine someone senior enough (in terms of experience, not years) who haven't ever hacked a FLOSS dependency to do something it originally didn't. Of course, it could be that the source wasn't on GitHub, or that author did effort to persuade upstream into accepting their changes and then repository was removed, or that the code is…
I mean, many (most?) of software engineers are directly working with free software every day.
I think there's many more working on proprietary software, we just naturally don't hear about it due to its nature. Open source is prominent only because it's public.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#134As a hiring manager, I glance at it and take a brief look at anything interesting. It’s good for talking points at the interview, perhaps to ask the candidate to expand upon and explain the work. If the profile is empty, I close the tab and find something else to talk about. I will never, ever penalise a candidate for an empty GitHub profile. So many people just do not have time for open source and that’s totally fin…
> So many people just do not have time for open source On the other hand, it's hard to imagine someone senior enough (in terms of experience, not years) who haven't ever hacked a FLOSS dependency to do something it originally didn't. Of course, it could be that the source wasn't on GitHub, or that author did effort to persuade upstream into accepting their changes and then repository was removed, or that the code is…
> On the other hand, it's hard to imagine someone senior enough (in terms of experience, not years) who haven't ever hacked a FLOSS dependency to do something it originally didn't.
I can think of plenty of developers working in non-OSS (either internal/nonlicensed or proprietary licensed) shops who, even if they have and work with OSS dependencies, and even if they might hack on them for the sake of the projects they work on, have never, by (or at least as a result of the requirements of) employer policy, contributed a thing back.
Of course, that's because I've spent most of my career in that kind of environment, which is why I've got very little on my GitHub none of which has a direct relationship to my paid work.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been programming for years and I've had a GitHub account for about as long. Almost every piece of code I've ever written that wasn't for an employer or a school assignment has gone into a public GitHub repository. It goes online because that's what I do. It's the easiest way for me to share code with friends and others, to manage it across multiple machines, etc. There's no reason to put it in a private reposito…
That's well and good, but the thing people seem to keep missing is that git != github. Github is first and foremost a social network . You may keep your personal projects there, but they are still public and on a social network, and that means anyone who reads them will judge them. The question before us is, how do recruiters judge them?, and the answer one has given is he or she looks at style and clarity in code. O…
It usually takes a lot of work to get a person to judge your work. Typically if you make a repository public, no one will give a shit. It takes a lot of advertising to produce any interest.
I have a repository with 4500 stars, and hundreds of thousands of visitors. Not one person has ever commented on the quality of my code, but many people contribute. Back when I had 100-200 stars, potential employers were impressed by the popularity and rarely commented on the code either. When I got any comments at all, it would be questions like why did I decide to do something one way and not another. No judgment there either.
Bottom line: nobody will ever judge your code if it's public, unless you work very very hard for it.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#136I look for things to chat about. That's it. If there aren't any then I'll find other things to chat about. It's almost like a dating profile. You use the items as jump-off points to start a conversation and get to know the other person better.
> It's almost like a dating profile. That's a good description!
I would say that it’s more like a dating profile picture. You don’t have to add one, but if you do, it better be one where you’re smiling, not the one where you’re in hung over with a little bit of barf on your pajamas.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#137As a rule of thumb, people who offer their own code publicly, are usually in the top 10% of developers. People who have ever contributed to another project, even if in a minor way, are in the top 5%. And people who contribute or develop their own projects with any regularity, are the top 1%. Exceptions exist, but this pattern emerges on a large enough scale.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#138Not to get off topic but...Recruiters? Haven't I heard more than one of companies that (promise to) analyze code for quality, etc.? That is, resume aside, they can grade the quality of code / coder?
I'm not sure how often these come into play, but I would also bet that outfits that do don't brag about it.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#13999.9% of excellent people I worked with don't have a public GitHub profile. Most of the remaining 0.1% don't have anything interesting there, in part because their employer claims ownership of everything they create, so disclosing their side projects publicly is stupid. As the old Russian saying goes, "the less they know, the better they sleep".
Its incredible that anyone would accept such a horrid term.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#140I would hazard a guess that most pure recruiters aren't looking at your GitHub profile other than ensuring that you've provided one. The hiring manager or interview team, however, might be interested in it. Here are some things that I check for in a GitHub profile, as a hiring manager and as a recruiter (hooray startup roles!): 1. Repos that aren't just forks. I've seen plenty of profiles where the majority or entire…
Very much agree with the point others have made about photos being a bit problematic. I know that you don't mean to be doing this, but judging people for lack of a photo on their profile is an unintentional form of gender discrimination (and possibly race, religion, etc. as well), because of the different incentives that people have to post photos. Women who post photos get creepers, lots of people of color have reasons not to post photos to avoid other kinds of bias (and I imagine similar points with respect to, e.g., a Muslim person who wears religious headwear), older people probably have a disincentive to post photos because of the massive amount of age discrimination in tech, etc.