Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How important is a public GitHub repo for job applications in 2024?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 31 posts

Ask HN: How important is a public GitHub repo for job applications in 2024?

#1

Post by J253 »

I’m a US-based senior software engineer with almost 15 years of experience. Graduated from a top 50 uni in the states. I have worked mostly for smaller companies because I prefer the autonomy and outsized impact you can have—so no FAANG-like companies on the resume but I have cofounded a startup and had a successful exit. I’m not a job hopper by any means—spent over a decade with one company. However, by choice I have zero online presence. No LinkedIn, no Facebook, no X, not even a public GitHub repo. I have plenty of stuff in a private repo that mostly contains foundations for a handful of other half-baked startup ideas. Nothing I’d be willing to share for job search purposes because it’s just brain dump-type code and some POC stuff.

I’m not necessarily job searching, but I’m casually looking and have applied for a half dozen or so specific positions that I’m really interested in and based on the job description, would be a great fit for. I tailor my resume to each position and write a well thought out cover letter for each one. On paper, everything looks like a great match and at the very least I’d expect a first-call screening from each one. However, I’ve received only generic “thanks for applying” rejection letters without even a first call. I haven’t applied for jobs in quite a long time so I’m wondering if my lack of online presence (especially my inability to supply public code examples as part of the application) is sending my resume straight to the bin.

My question is: how important is that kind of stuff these days? Is an application without a bunch of links to example code dead on arrival in 2024? Or does the issue more likely exist in my resume and cover letter? Speaking of, do people actually do cover letters anymore? They seem “optional” on most applications.

Re: Ask HN: How important is a public GitHub repo for job applications in 2024?

#6

Post by jdale27 »

I've spent a lot of time screening resumes for software engineering positions.

Having a public GitHub profile is not a requirement, and most GitHub profiles I see are worthless. They're either large open source repos where the candidate contributed a few trivial changes among thousands; or personal repos that are just them working through some cookie-cutter online tutorial. The most useful repos from a screening perspective are where you created a non-trivial project from scratch. It doesn't have to be anything ground-breaking or truly novel. It just has to show evidence that you identified a problem worth solving, and spent some meaningful amount of time solving it, so that the code you wrote is a faithful representation of your ability to build and evolve a software system over time.

A lot of people just post "student code", which is badly organized, badly formatted, sparsely commented, and untested. This gives me no positive signal. Putting in the time to apply professional software engineering standards, even to a personal project, is much more likely to give me a positive impression of your capabilities.

Aside from the repo question: this just seems to be a difficult time for job-seekers. Lots of companies are doing layoffs and slowing hiring, is my perspective on the situation.

Other resume signals:

* A degree from a top 10 or top 20 university may help you stand out; top 50 is nothing special (but not a negative either).

* Sad as it is to say, if you've been hired at a well-known tech company with fairly high standards, that does provide a positive signal. If the only companies you've worked at are small startups I've never heard of, it's a bit harder for me to justify spending 30-45 minutes on a phone screen.

That said, the #1 thing I look for is whether you've done the previously done the kind of work I need to have done, and done it successfully (e.g., you stayed a while at the same company and the company didn't fail). (Obviously I can't attribute that to you individually, but I might at least give you a chance to demonstrate your depth of knowledge and ability in a phone screen.)

Re: Ask HN: How important is a public GitHub repo for job applications in 2024?

#8

Post by frompdx »

If you aren't getting to the first call there is something up with your resume. Are you applying directly or working with a recruiter? Applying directly is a roll of the dice in my experience. I have gotten just one job in tech by applying directly of the many I have had and it was a total surprise. For all others I have worked with a recruiter.

From a hiring manager perspective, I'm more interested in experience, level of ownership in past work, and good performance on technical screening questions. I rarely look at GitHub profiles and candidates rarely list them.

From my personal experience, what you have publicly available in your GitHub can only hurt you unless you are the owner of a successful open source project. As you said, you have a lot of half-baked stuff. It's probably not worth making public.

Will the lack of online presence be an issue? Maybe or maybe not. Some people seem to care a lot about whether or not someone has a LinkedIn and whether or not they keep their job history up to date. I do not personally care, but I will say LinkedIn is a low effort investment of your time. As much as I don't care for it, I have landed multiple jobs thanks to having a reasonably up to date profile that recruiters look for.

Re: Ask HN: How important is a public GitHub repo for job applications in 2024?

#9

Post by xp84 »

Hiring manager perspective: I've looked at maybe two of them at some point in the process. Mostly it was just academic stuff. I noticed no correlation with quality of the developer's skills.

Also, my company is primarily hiring technical staff from Latin America, and it's been wildly successful. In this small, non-representative sample, those developers definitely all rank in the top 20% of our technical staff in terms of commitment, ownership, and efficiency, so this experiment seems to be paying off rather than proving a mistake.

I say the above not to denigrate anyone or to discourage you, but just to point out that there are probably a number of startups like mine which are sitting on the sidelines of the US tech job market, which is definitely going to decrease number of interviews and offers you're getting.

Post reply on HN