Repos weren't considered when I got my first job. I did do well in a technical interview where I pair programmed with someone and solved problems.
Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?
81–90 of 121 posts
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?
#82Nobody ever looks at my repos :(. Software hiring is stupidly broken. Google has done much research on hiring and a code sample+cognitive ability are the two most important predictors of job performance. Tell that to anyone that hired me ever.... The first time you'll even talk to another dev is your on-site. When I was in charge of hiring once we made a huge deal of user repos and probably spent more time looking at…
What about people that don't have much on their github? I like the idea of judging people based on their code, but I would say the majority of people don't feel like coding at home after doing it for 8+ hours day.
There's another issue - most of my code is stuff I've done for clients to make money (I can't show that on github), or stuff that I've done for myself to make money (I don't want to show that either).
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?
#83Animated gif puzzle game (iOS). https://github.com/danielhhooper/Gifsaw
very short video: https://i.imgur.com/4zDAQe7.mp4
Was hoping to publish this app but could not find an appropriate service provider for the images.
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?
#84I got my first job in a company that was desperate, because their only other developer was leaving in days. Got my second job under similar circumstances. And a third one. I did well at all of those companies and left on my own accord. I should also mention that none of those companies were even on a map as far as serious software development is concerned. Reality is that companies that are not desperate will be pick…
Maybe there should be job boards for desperate company?
Desperate companies may be hiring through tech recruiters also. A lot of small companies don't have anyone on staff that can effectively interview and hire a programmer, so they hire someone to do it for them.
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?
#85Didn't actually know how to use git when I landed my first FT dev job. Had no Github Account, no portfolio site.
Been coding since I was 12 though, had a good grasp of HTML/CSS, jQuery (but not really of javascript), VBScript, C#, SQL. All stuff I picked up either while making plugins/themes for a BBS I operated, or writing scripts for bots for MMORPGs. My code quality sucked, but I made stuff that people (other BBS operators or bot users) kinda liked and got hooked on the accolades. Sadly that was all in middle school and I didn't know enough to keep backups.
A few weeks after exams ended, and a few months before I would graduate with my Bachelor of Commerce degree (Finance Specialist), I went to my first interview for a developer position at my University. After talking with the manager/team-lead, I was handed a page of 12 questions ranging from logic, sorting, jQuery and databases, and given 30 minutes to complete them. I aced most of it (hiccuped on the sorting). Got the job. Made this: http://m.map.utoronto.ca (just the mobile version, which was a ground-up rewrite SPA)
Been 5 years now. Have worked on projects for Facebook and Google (although not employed by them, but via agency vendors), went through Intermediate Developer, Developer, Senior Developer, now an Architect at a cancer research place.
Still no portfolio (never got around to it), but here's my Github: http://github.com/cheapsteak/
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?
#86It's not what you know, it's who you know.
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?
#87Somehow I managed to land my first programming job in the most stereotypical means possible. I had connected with this young startup through my budding network. I was young, they were young, and we were both involved in TeensInTech (formerly a community of teens interested in startups). I had done a couple rounds of UI/UX feedback for them, that they had requested via TinT. The company made a password & bookmark mana…
I wish this incident was really an elaborate hiring scheme.
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?
#88Somehow I managed to land my first programming job in the most stereotypical means possible. I had connected with this young startup through my budding network. I was young, they were young, and we were both involved in TeensInTech (formerly a community of teens interested in startups). I had done a couple rounds of UI/UX feedback for them, that they had requested via TinT. The company made a password & bookmark mana…
Are you saying that the password field returned a password hash of the correct password when you mistyped it? That's extremely bizarre.
Seems like some misused form framework. They were potentially striving for Facebook-like functionality ("Hi Tom, welcome back") and got it wrong.
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?
#89It was my involvement and contributions to the KohanaPHP[1] web framework, then on SVN, that landed me my first dev job.
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught developers, what repo helped land your first job?
#90I applied for an internship at a local-ish company (I'm from a very rural area, so local means within 100 miles). They did check out my GitHub, and all I had on it was my blog (Rails app I had made when first learning). One of the interviewers checked out my blog, which had only posts about really basic topics on it, and I was worried I'd be outed as an idiot. He said "Oh, you're keeping a blog. That's really cool." I got the job on the spot. That was a little over two years ago.