I have no side code projects to show • Hacker News Board

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#71

Post by droithomme » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 3:49 AM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #27

I am generally suspicious of someone who has no sample code to show. You can't take a few hours a week for a month to put a small project together as a demo of your abilities? Skip the novel writing for a month and instead create a 10 hour project that shows potential employers you know what you're talking about. You can use it for years so it's well worth the time investment. For most jobs you don't have to have a t…

Most, but not all people who are employed have contracts which assign ownership of everything they do, including in their spare time at home on their own equipment, to their employer. And yes, a very small number of states consider such standard clauses to be unenforceable.

Most candidates who show their previous code, either written for their employer, or from side projects that are still within the scope of their contract, are violating non disclosure clauses of their contracts. Someone who has sample code to show is likely an unreliable candidate who thinks nothing of violating his signed contracts. Such candidates should not be hired.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#72

Post by jwatte » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 3:52 AM UTC

I am passionate about code. But, most of my github is little hacks to solve some particular need or scratch some particular itch, without any need for overarching design or maintainability.

The good stuff (including libraries and frameworks) is all in my professional career.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#73

Post by krishicks » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 3:54 AM UTC

dvcrn wrote: post #13

Here's a little example what happened to me: I interviewed with a company. Naturally they asked for my side projects which I showed them. We talked about technical challenges, scaling, interesting bits of codes - all these kind of things. They were really excited. I passed the interviews and got the job. Fast forward a couple month, still working on my side projects, some of which started generating a couple hundred…

You might find this post by Joel Spolsky a good read: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#74

Post by stevekemp » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 3:55 AM UTC

donatj wrote: post #69

I feel like if you use open source libraries and are a decent developer you'll naturally end up submitting a PR to Github at some point. I find bugs in almost every open source library I use and have had so many PRs to fix them.

It depends on the projects you're touching, of course.

I've contributed bugfixes to GNU less, GNU screen, and GNU emacs, and GNU make. None of those would be easy to dig out references for, and none of them use github.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#75

Post by OJFord » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 3:57 AM UTC

nicolia wrote: post #8

I actually don't mind being a human machine. Not that I've had the chance yet. I'm still in college to get my CS degree and would fall into one of those people where "coding is a Craft". I genuinely love programming. I don't have a family, or really desire one. My weekend plans always consist of building another project of my own. A place that will let me code all day, give me a nap room, a shower, some salary, and f…

The naïveté is cringeworthy.

There's a middle-ground to be found, for sure, between OP and parent. I do think it's a little odd to have years of experience in software development and not one "if only ... I'm going to make it."-project.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#76

Post by jwatte » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 3:57 AM UTC

hafriedlander wrote: post #45

jknoepfler wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that. I'd really like a 21st century study showing that devs with > 3 years of experience fail fizz buzz, and that failure is predictive of being a bad developer (and not being a shitty interviewer)

If you don't believe Jeff Atwood, I'm not sure why you'd believe me based just on my anecdata, but at a previous job I gave a simple filtering programming task to interviewees (not exactly fizz buzz, but very close. Single loop, multiple 10-line solutions possible). Out of 10, only 1 solved it well, 2-3 solved it acceptably (only edge case bugs), the rest never solved it, or had obvious bugs or code that would never…

Yes, this is typical.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#77

Post by ajmurmann » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 3:57 AM UTC

jknoepfler wrote: post #24

eps wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The range/xrange question was likely to check if you were a fraud. Having interviewed close to a hundred people in a year for a senior C dev position I can assure you that people lie like you wouldn't believe. They cheat with take-home tasks, they show others' code as their own. And that's in the system programming circles, where the level of professionalism is typically much higher than in app/web development areas.…

On the other hand, I'm a skilled dev with only a smattering of python experience, but if you asked me this question I'd have no idea and wouldn't think twice about looking up the python docs for both. What are you actually asking? P.s. I don't believe anyone actually fails fizz buzz.

I suspect failing fizz buzz typically is caused by nervousness. I've one gotten so nervous in an interview that I'm certain I couldn't have implemented fizz buzz either at that time. I've also seen it on interviewees. As the interviewer it also sucks because you can't be sure it's nervousness.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#78

Post by fencepost » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 3:59 AM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #11

vigrante wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty elaborate story to rationalize the fact you didn't know the difference between range and xrange....

The correct answer is of course, is that xrange doesn't exist.

I'd say that the correct answer would be "Which version of Python are you using?" but I actually kind of like the question - it's an important enough function that most people doing more than toy projects would have needed to use it at some point or at least would have considered it, but it's also something that has changed recently enough that people who are claiming long-term experience will have dealt with both versions.

My Python is rusty, but I actually had to go look up the differences - my initial thought was "I'm pretty sure it used to be that range() generated a list and xrange() basically just iterated a value, but at some point range() was changed to use the xrange() behavior - I'd have to look it up to give you more detail than that." I didn't realize that xrange() had been completely removed from 3.x, for example. For that matter, I was thinking that both of them might have existed in 1.x, though it looks like they were added in 2.0.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#79

Post by fencepost » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:03 AM UTC

logicallee wrote: post #56

bubblesocks wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a few companies ask me for my Github account, so they can see what code I've written. I never give it out, because I think the request is pointless to start with. A friend of mine, who works for a well-known technology giant, recently told me about a Linux guru they interviewed and hired. He was amazing in the interview, and they gave him an offer on the spot. When he started working, however, he constantly…

Hi, I was really interested in this story: >A couple of months later, one of the members of the team who had interviewed this guy flew out to where he was working, and discovered that the guy sitting in the cube doing the work was not the guy they had interviewed. It was someone else. This seems absolutely incredible to me (just in the slang sense, I don't mean that I'm incredulous). I mean it's way more than enough…

There have been a few stories over the past few years of people outsourcing their own jobs, but I'm not sure whether any of them have actually been shown to be based in fact. That said, this could be the same kind of thing - did the guy in the cube hire the "guru" to interview, or did the "guru" interview then outsource to the guy in the cube?

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#80

Post by peteretep » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:05 AM UTC

    > For every one of those
    > folks there are thousands
    > of amazing, solid
    > developers

This does not match my experience.

Also, for every genuine genius in the world, there are a whole bunch of pretty average people who think they're really smart.