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Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

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Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#191

Post by zrobotics »

drdaeman wrote: post #168
peruvian wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The trouble is, many of the people who responded to you had a legitimate point. I've done embedded development with OS libraries that I've extended, but there was 0% chance of me opwm-sourcing any of that code. I didn't even ask. Not everyone works in a field that is conducive to OS models. Consider that there are people who work in the military space who read this site, and the thought of open-source would give their managers aneurysms.

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#192

Post by scardine »

gabrielblack wrote: post #185

In my experience they don't look your Github profile at all. I think mainly because the average recruiter have no competence to read it (sad but true). I had two so called independent recruiters pretending to read it, but when I asked what repository preferred and why I obtained an embarrassing silence. Worst, the same happened with a couple of programmers during the final interviews. Recently I had a letter from a b…

We hire remote software engineers to work with Python/Django/Vue. We believe talent can be anywhere.

Many companies will ask you to invest a couple hours of your life writing some toy project as a code exercise (often unpaid). Instead, we ask you to pick any open issue in an opensource project and contribute a few hours to fix it (we suggest links to a dozen issue lists filtered by "easy for beginners" tags) - we call it "social code exercise".

Of course if you have such contributions already you can skip this step. We will analyse your github profile and give extra points to:

* any PR to projects in our technology stack

* good online citizenship

* constructive, reproducible bug reports

* well written documentation

* test coverage

We penalize:

* unprofessional, disrespectful or toxic behavior while interacting with the community

* non-constructive comments and answers

The rationale is that while pushing the envelope with an opensource stack we often have to report (and fix) bugs or implement lacking features.

Projects like Python and Django have a high bar for accepting contributions so any candidate able to land a PR is capable of basic communication in English, writing acceptable code, documentation and tests.

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#194

Post by zrobotics »

ModernMech wrote: post #48
cimmanom wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s quite an assumption to make about intentions. Repository hosting is also a way to back up your code or make sure it’s available on multiple devices. Until very recently, you couldn’t do that and keep your code private on github without paying. So (unless they want to also maintain a bitbucket account) people dump stuff there for reasons other than explicitly wanting to share it with the world or show it off.

> Until very recently, you couldn’t do that and keep your code private on github without paying. Ok, but now you can. > people dump stuff there for reasons other than explicitly wanting to share it with the world or show it off. Maybe, but that doesn't change the fact you are sharing it with the world and you are showing it off, and if you put a bunch of sloppy inscrutable code on your GitHub, people are going to ass…

>>a bunch of sloppy inscrutable code on your GitHub, people are going to assume you tend to write sloppy inscrutable code

Im sorry, but wouldn't most developers have a large amount of code that fits this description? I likely have several mB of hacked python and bash scripts that were only intended to run once. But, I kept them in a repo because I occasionally would refer to an old script. But expecting a readme is a bit much, most of those scripts were lucky to get a descriptive file name, much less documentation. I hate doing documentation professionally, I'm certainly not stressing over it in my free time.

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#195

Post by zepolen »

bjourne wrote: post #104
zepolen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So choose between: 1. A developer who doesn't respect himself first and foremost to write a README/maintainable code so that his future self and others can have an easier time. 2. A developer who cares about communicating his work to himself/others and making the environment easier for everyone to work for the future. Right.

I don't agree with zepolen's comments at all. But can you guys who use "downvote to disagree" kindly please stop? You are just making Ask HN worse for all of us by turning it into an echo chamber. This isn't Reddit FFS.

In the long term any vote based community turns into an echo chamber.

The popular opinions win.

The users with unpopular opinions get downvoted/censored and are either banned/leave.

Leaving one opinion behind.

Moderators also a play a huge part in this - which is why it's only an illusion of democracy.

I wonder if it would be possible to create truly neutral discussion platform that doesn't end up as an echo chamber.

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#196

Post by zepolen »

Novashi wrote: post #57
zepolen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> README quality is a pretty weak signal. It's a fantastic signal of what the quality of the code will be. Lack of a README indicates many things, including unmaintainable code either via lack of experience or rushed work. But hey talk is cheap and you seem to know a lot - so how about you link an open source project you've published ;)

>But hey talk is cheap and you seem to know a lot - so how about you link an open source project you've published ;) I wrote tech docs explaining the jungle of IT systems that we were relying on at a hospital I worked at, and sometimes that included diving into old code. These were usually much longer than READMEs. Having a README wouldn't have saved this code from needing to be refactored. Nor would it have really c…

A programmer who by default adds a good concise readme to his projects is an indicator that the same will apply to the codebase, in that he will plan for the future.

I've seen it too many times, exceptions are rare.

A good readme is concise, it offers key 'bring me up to speed as fast as possible' information, nothing more. It's not documentation.

A good readme should include a quick bootstrapping info, but it's not enough, it should have a concise summary overview and list any important gotchas. As well as provide the procedures for builds/releases if apply. Links to relevant docs if exist are fine if the information becomes too large for the readme.

> Having a README wouldn't have saved this code from needing to be refactored. Nor would it have really changed my opinion of the code. It hasn't been a reliable signal.

See I read that and figure that it was actually a perfect signal - since that "bad unmaintainable code" lacked a good readme.

It's like the Van Halen requiring Brown M&Ms at their concerts https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brown-out/ - I've found the README is one of the best indicators of the level of detail a person applies to their work.

> it makes no sense to give that much credit for something that really isn't impactful beyond the first few days of using something.

This is the attitude that I wouldn't be looking for when recruiting - a README has a ton of use, for helping bootstrapping new people to the code base - to even helping yourself if you do some maintenance on an old project and don't want to spend more than the minimum time necessary.

It's this forethought I'd like to see in a candidate, and that 99.9% of the time shows in the quality of the readme.

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#199

Post by chimen »

jki275 wrote: post #107
chimen wrote: post #72

I ask both Github and StackOverflow profiles. In Github I look for code style & quality, tests written, open source project participation (often good indicator of quality code when accepted). In SO I look for issues created as an indicator of one's struggles and overall expertise. Both profiles offer me a strong view over one's position and the data really helps me to filter out prospects. 95% of the times when they…

I’ve never written a SO post, and barely have a github profile. I’ve been coding since the 80s. Some people don’t live on social networking - and that is, after all, exactly what those sites are.

I'm always writing there as it's the only platform where you have 80-90% chances of getting a reply within minutes. Docker, Kubernetes, Go, Elixir etc. were not here in the 80s.

You cannot learn new things without asking questions.

Re: Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile?

#200

Post by jki275 »

chimen wrote: post #199
jki275 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never written a SO post, and barely have a github profile. I’ve been coding since the 80s. Some people don’t live on social networking - and that is, after all, exactly what those sites are.

I'm always writing there as it's the only platform where you have 80-90% chances of getting a reply within minutes. Docker, Kubernetes, Go, Elixir etc. were not here in the 80s. You cannot learn new things without asking questions.

I find that most questions have been answered already. Unless one is doing cutting edge research, somebody has almost always had the same problem I'm having before, and written about it, and some guru has written a five page response on SO that breaks it down in detail and I don't have to ask...
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