i know this from tons of experience.
Everyone asks for github profile but no one actually has the time to analyze it. I asked an interviewer about it and said he admitted he hasn't looked at it.
Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
161–170 of 226 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#162Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Context for whom? My target audience for my personal projects is myself. Any company that assumes their recruiting org is the target audience for my personal projects is setting themselves up for disappointment.
Tell us in the readme if you make it public. You gotta think, who is reading this? That goes beyond documentation to code itself and any communication you do.
Repositories are public for a lot of reasons, a lot of which are not "I want to show this off to a potential employer". Let me give some good reasons, that's not an exhaustive list.
- It is the default.
- Free private repos are new and no one is going back and making things private.
- If you are working with someone it is many times easier to make it public.
- You want to share code with someone, public is easier than making them a collaborator.
Honestly I don't think a lot of people, if any, are reading the stuff I have on GitHub.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#164As 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…
In the past year we grew our team from 6 to almost 30 and counting. About 10 of those 30 are senior engineers (between 8-15 years of experience). So far everyone's been very skilled and great to work with.
We work in GitHub, and of those who use their personal profile for work, all of them have "empty" profiles and no meaningful OSS contributions. They spend their free time with their family and in other hobbies.
People who hack on OSS for fun are usually good developers, but good developers rarely hack on OSS for fun especially once they get older.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really don’t see why these things are relevant at all. It’s a personal Github profile. Why would anyone add thoughtful readme’s or a clean coding style if they’re the only contributor? I mean, those things are great of course, but not sure if I’d expect it on Github.
If you use your GitHub profile as part of your personal brand / marketing then these things absolutely are relevant. As a developer in a professional context you'll hardly ever work alone or be the sole contributor. Even if you use a GitHub profile just as your personal code repository code still is communication, even if it's just with your future self. Therefore communication skills are crucial. A well-thought-out…
I use to think this way then I started working in the real world with developers who coded and documented work code cleanly but had messy GitHub profiles especially because until recently private repos were not free. A lot of people don't care about perfectly formatted READMEs, commit comments, etc. if they're just hacking on the weekend on something small... and that's fine.
Nowadays unless you pushed your profile and repos hard in the resume or interview process, I couldn't care less if the rest of the interview went fine. Worst case scenario they're "forced" to write good documentation as part of the job - not everything we do at work is natural or fun for us.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#166As a recruiter I can answer this! I do not speak for all recruiters. As a recruiter who is also a programmer, my approach may be nonstandard. * I want to see thoughtful README files. If the README is whatever was generated default by the framework and not edited at all, that's a huge groan and turn off and you lose tons of strength (credibility) as a candidate. * I want to see your code looking pretty. Consistent ind…
This is awful, no offense. You're a recruiter, do you mind if I ask if you were previously a professional software engineer? GitHub is often, very often, for small personal projects where you don't spend a lot of time going through TDD or making sure the readme is up to date. Often mine are smaller projects I built to accomplish a specific goal (hello python script that clicks the "okay I'm still watching" button on all the required learning videos I've had to watch at work). It's impressive when someone has a substantial project or contributed to open source, but GitHub shouldn't be a negative signal.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Yes, I meant that lots of proprietary software links with and relies on FLOSS components.
E.g. I open Slack (a random pick - it's open on my desktop right now), a proprietary software app. And in the "about" section there's a huge list of FLOSS libraries they use: https://slack.com/libs/desktop
Moreover, I'd say, every website out there (and web is a giant niche) uses lots of FLOSS components.
And for GitHub contributions, I meant that once in many years there happens to be a library that's out of date but otherwise useful, or lacks some nice feature.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
In the past year we grew our team from 6 to almost 30 and counting. About 10 of those 30 are senior engineers (between 8-15 years of experience). So far everyone's been very skilled and great to work with. We work in GitHub, and of those who use their personal profile for work, all of them have "empty" profiles and no meaningful OSS contributions. They spend their free time with their family and in other hobbies. Peo…
I didn't mean hacking OSS side projects for fun, on free time. Why everyone reads it like that?
I meant, using FLOSS libraries for the actual job, during normal work hours. Depends on the industry, of course, I guess.
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#169As 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…
+1 for this. I used to be a recruiter, and knew hiring managers looked at GitHub profiles. When I started, I used to to stress out over pushing crappy code to my GitHub account. At some point I realized that anyone judging me for stuff I put into GitHub was simply not someone I would ever want to please. My GitHub is mostly a graveyard for experiments, learning, and goofing off, and that is exactly what I want it to…
I’m curious: why bother to use GH then? Why not simply have various repos in your filesystem?
It feels to me like having a blog site and only putting notes, scraps and drafts in it. Maybe there’s some functionality i’m not seeing?
Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I penalize people slightly for an empty GitHub if they put it on their resume, just out of annoyance. Why did you put this url for me to follow if there's nothing here but a half started React tutorial from 3 years ago?
Yeah, this is just like any other thing you call out by putting on your resume. Nobody is a expert in everything, of course, but if you specifically put "TCP/IP" or "OOP" on your resume, you better be able to explain TCP vs UDP or class vs interface (both real examples from real phone screens I've done).
>>> class vs interface
This is java specific, that's not OOP.