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How to present a GitHub project for your resume (2016)

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Re: How to present a GitHub project for your resume (2016)

#21

Post by jorgemf »

nawitus wrote: post #2

"Nobody cares about your code" That's a peculiar claim about people who hire employees to create code. "It’s not the code that counts, it’s the product" So is everyone only hiring programmers who write code which can be sloppy and full of technical debt and impossible maintain, as long as the product works okay for now?

They care about the money the code/product generate. If it doesn't generate money nobody cares how good it is, when it generates money them you can care about good code and improving things.

Re: How to present a GitHub project for your resume (2016)

#22

Post by Walkman »

The last part is definitely not true at all. I skipped the coding part of the interview process for my current job because I had good code on GitHub. Also got job offers out of the blue because I contributed to multiple projects. I feel there are companies looking at only GitHub (for a good reason IMO) nowadays for candidates.

Re: How to present a GitHub project for your resume (2016)

#23

Post by guessmyname »

What about NDAs and in-house projects?

I have contributed to many projects in the past years that are not publicly available, not even as a product/service because they are, for example, DevOps tools or improvements to servers or a development/management/sale process. My GitHub account is mostly personal projects and nothing — except for a couple of them — are used in production. It is very difficult to show your value as an active contributor to open-source projects if your contributions cannot be public.

Re: How to present a GitHub project for your resume (2016)

#24

Post by ian_d »

cubano wrote: post #11

For the last two or three contract jobs I have got, including my current one, just the fact I had a working github repos was enough to impress the hiring guys. In all three cases, I eventually trained everyone how to use git, so there is that as well.

Yeah, here in the slums of higher-ed dev/IT just having a github repos of any original code makes an applicant novel. We never really discussed an applicant's github code with them, but we absolutely read through and took it as a very positive hiring signal.

You don't have to have a huge contribution history or a project with a ton of stars, just having something out there matters to some places.

Re: How to present a GitHub project for your resume (2016)

#25

Post by thinkingemote »

guessmyname wrote: post #23

What about NDAs and in-house projects? I have contributed to many projects in the past years that are not publicly available, not even as a product/service because they are, for example, DevOps tools or improvements to servers or a development/management/sale process. My GitHub account is mostly personal projects and nothing — except for a couple of them — are used in production. It is very difficult to show your val…

I think even more people will be affected by IP clauses in their work contracts which state that any work they do even outside on their own time is the property of the company they work for. many cannot do any open source work at all. Some need to get explicit and lengthy approval from HR, managers etc.

in short, most in companies cannot easily build up a personal github profile.

Re: How to present a GitHub project for your resume (2016)

#26

Post by Others »

guessmyname wrote: post #23

What about NDAs and in-house projects? I have contributed to many projects in the past years that are not publicly available, not even as a product/service because they are, for example, DevOps tools or improvements to servers or a development/management/sale process. My GitHub account is mostly personal projects and nothing — except for a couple of them — are used in production. It is very difficult to show your val…

Not to be rude, but why do you think that contributions to in-house/closed-source projects should count as contributions to open source? By definition, if you contribute to an open source project, you should be able to point to the public code you wrote. What you're describing is basically previous work experience (which is already on your resume).

Re: How to present a GitHub project for your resume (2016)

#27

Post by guessmyname »

Others wrote: post #26
guessmyname wrote: post #23

What about NDAs and in-house projects? I have contributed to many projects in the past years that are not publicly available, not even as a product/service because they are, for example, DevOps tools or improvements to servers or a development/management/sale process. My GitHub account is mostly personal projects and nothing — except for a couple of them — are used in production. It is very difficult to show your val…

Not to be rude, but why do you think that contributions to in-house/closed-source projects should count as contributions to open source? By definition, if you contribute to an open source project, you should be able to point to the public code you wrote. What you're describing is basically previous work experience (which is already on your resume).

I am talking about contributions to open-source projects under the name of the employer. I have signed NDAs with clauses that state that as an employer I am responsible for the maintenance of the internal systems including the bug fixes to whatever project the system depends on, but later there are clauses that prevent me from identifying myself as an individual contributor to these open-source projects, I have to use a company-provided account.

Re: How to present a GitHub project for your resume (2016)

#28

Post by VLM »

thinkingemote wrote: post #25
guessmyname wrote: post #23

What about NDAs and in-house projects? I have contributed to many projects in the past years that are not publicly available, not even as a product/service because they are, for example, DevOps tools or improvements to servers or a development/management/sale process. My GitHub account is mostly personal projects and nothing — except for a couple of them — are used in production. It is very difficult to show your val…

I think even more people will be affected by IP clauses in their work contracts which state that any work they do even outside on their own time is the property of the company they work for. many cannot do any open source work at all. Some need to get explicit and lengthy approval from HR, managers etc. in short, most in companies cannot easily build up a personal github profile.

The marketplace is too scattered to understand, seeing as its common knowledge that most devs can't fizzbuzz on command, and also everyone knows all interviews are piles of buzzwords surrounded by infinite whiteboard algo discussions.

Given that disorder in the marketplace, you might be worried they're asking for an entire tech startup, but they might be happy with little more than a personal fizzbuzz hello-world analogy. If your employer were jerks enough to demand ownership of your fizzbuzz-alike, you could write another in a day or two.

Something more like a weekly homework assignment from school, and less like a PHD thesis.

Re: How to present a GitHub project for your resume (2016)

#29

Post by mgkimsal »

cubano wrote: post #11

For the last two or three contract jobs I have got, including my current one, just the fact I had a working github repos was enough to impress the hiring guys. In all three cases, I eventually trained everyone how to use git, so there is that as well.

> just the fact I had a working github repos was enough to impress the hiring guys.

as opposed to a non-working repo? do you mean the code in it "worked" or just that you had repos up?

ANECDOTE TIME: I knew of a guy who was hired because his github profile page showed a lot of stars. It didn't dawn on them until after he was hired that those are things that he starred, not stars received for his projects. He had "a lot of repos". Cursory inspection showed all but 2 (of the 40+) were forked. He was a horrible hire, and left after a few months, but the dept manager who'd hired him (against input from some of the team) got uber-defensive about any criticism (this person was in way over their head from a tech and management standpoint) and... multiple people (surprisingly, anyone who'd made any criticism of the 'mr github stars' profile) ended up getting 'reduced' (laid off) a couple months later.

Re: How to present a GitHub project for your resume (2016)

#30

Post by penpapersw »

__s wrote: post #15

I definitely make this mistake. I have a handfull of maintained projects, but nearing 100 repos, most without readmes, many are just random ideas The last time I interviewed the technical interviewer actually had me go over my openEtG project, & dive into the guts of the AI's eval. They also stumbled upon https://github.com/serprex/brainwebfuckassembly which ended up having a profanity filled interview They started t…

My difficulty with interviews is, I'm a fairly good programmer. But when asked to put these kinds of things into words, that's just not how my mind works. I see the patterns in abstract ways, and I know which ones to use when. And I can write clean code pretty well. And if presented with a concrete problem to solve, I can communicate effectively on how to solve it. But during interviews, or any kind of abstract discussion about "code in general" (whatever that means), I fumble and stumble and can't put my thoughts into words no matter what.
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