Is there a marketplace where one could buy a side project and post it on github?
See a job add for a Go programmer, buy a Go side project...and so on.
I have no side code projects to show you
61–70 of 545 posts
Re: I have no side code projects to show you
#62I like to have side projects, but I still don't like to share them. People love to find reasons to reject, and an 18, 11, or 7 year long side project (the age of all my side projects) isn't really a fair representation of how I code today. Even as someone who enjoys side projects, the prospect of sharing a side project, and being criticized by a potential employer about the contents of it, turns it from "side project…
Have you ever had an interview where you shared your side projects, and they were criticized?
From my experiences on both sides of the hiring game, side projects aren't really criticized in an interview but are rather used as a starting point for a conversation to explore the ways of thinking of the potential employee. "What was on of the most challenging parts about your project?" is probably one of the most common questions there, and I'd guess that long-running side projects (even if they have a lot of inactivity in them) contain challenges like any other project, maybe even more so.
Re: I have no side code projects to show you
#63I like to have side projects, but I still don't like to share them. People love to find reasons to reject, and an 18, 11, or 7 year long side project (the age of all my side projects) isn't really a fair representation of how I code today. Even as someone who enjoys side projects, the prospect of sharing a side project, and being criticized by a potential employer about the contents of it, turns it from "side project…
> I like to have side projects, but I still don't like to share them. People love to find reasons to reject
Nowadays you can share anything online (git or other) without fear of rejection, because unless you choose point select individuals to it, in today's deep oceans of "everyone sharing every random little bone they spewed up" it'll immediately drown and stay there forever undetected and unnoticed. Doubly so if you don't fill out repo description or tags.
(There's must be gazillions of solo hackers dumping their sources of the coolest little projects and experiments without any attention, simply because they don't go and spend the day yapping on about it everywhere --- they Just Keep On Hacking.)
The upside of doing so? If a code file that's way below your current skills is indeed many years old, this becomes clearly visible in the repo and there's no need to explain yourself --- if choosing to indeed point someone to your personal for-fun code-bases.
Re: I have no side code projects to show you
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if you believe software development is neither engineering nor science, and is purely creative. It isn't, though, and demanding a portfolio is almost as terrible a practice as Cracking the Coding Interview style interviews.
> Only if you believe software development is neither engineering nor science, and is purely creative. I have to believe it "is neither engineering nor science, and is purely creative"? Only those extremes? I believe it is some of all 3 and I don't think requesting (i.e. not "demanding") a portfolio or prior work is any more unreasonable than not asking for it.
Fine, then you must believe it's mostly creative. Far more than you think it's engineering or science. Otherwise a portfolio would simply be at best an interesting conversation piece and not at all indicative of ability.
Re: I have no side code projects to show you
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Side projects are for software what a portfolio is for other creative industries. You don't hire a designer sight unseen -- usually you ask for a sample. It makes perfect sense to expect the same of technology.
Only if you believe software development is neither engineering nor science, and is purely creative. It isn't, though, and demanding a portfolio is almost as terrible a practice as Cracking the Coding Interview style interviews.
[deleted]
Re: I have no side code projects to show you
#66I’m not mad at you, but as the dude on the other side of the desk, I have to decide whether you can cut it and I’m fine saying no. I could make you do some whiteboard problems, but I think whiteboard problems are pretty far removed from your day to day development and I am uncomfortable relying on them as a proxy for your ability to ship code. I don’t really disagree with your philosophy of working while you’re worki…
Dude as a Dude who knows a little about employment law all your work code belongs to your employer.
Re: I have no side code projects to show you
#67What strikes me as weird about this is the assumption that it's an either/or proposition. I am passionate about playing traditional dance music. And I have supported this by writing a program to generate high quality sheet music from ABC scores; scripts to download collections of scores or MP3s off the web; scripts to handle tagging/naming my MP3 files; etc. I am passionate about RPGs. Back in the day I supported thi…
A lot of code you can't just toss up on Github. Is that your best code? It better be because that's all the code the interviewer is going to see!
Re: I have no side code projects to show you
#68It's funny that the tech industry is so insistent on side projects. I mean - would you hire a marketing person based on their 'side projects' or a corporate lawyer purely based on their pro-bono work? Likewise, who on earth asks a building contractor if they have any side projects? You would ask for references or find a contractor via someone you know. What about recruiters themselves? How does one judge if a person…
Computing is really noisy and chaotic. There are a lot of dudes out there that just can’t cut it, for whatever reason, and there’s no good way to figure out who’s who.
Whiteboard stuff selects for a particular algorithmic dexterity that I just don’t need a lot of the time. And rejects some of the grungier virtues that make a big difference in moving units in production.
Hiring folks for a couple weeks is fantastically expensive in management overhead. I gotta be highly confident you will work out to take that step.
Just hiring a bunch of dudes and firing the duds is similarly expensive and I frankly don’t want to be that guy. I hate firing people just because I was lazy interviewing. This is my job and I take it seriously.
And there are a whole lot of guys that just don’t ship. They show up. They commit code. They are prompt and attentive at meetings. But if you need to ship, they just can’t shit it out. So many organizations are rotten with these guys- you wonder how so many devs can produce so little product, this is the reason. (Also shitty management- mgmt is ten times noisier and a hundred times more expensive if you fuck up.)
Re: I have no side code projects to show you
#69It's funny that the tech industry is so insistent on side projects. I mean - would you hire a marketing person based on their 'side projects' or a corporate lawyer purely based on their pro-bono work? Likewise, who on earth asks a building contractor if they have any side projects? You would ask for references or find a contractor via someone you know. What about recruiters themselves? How does one judge if a person…
Side projects are for software what a portfolio is for other creative industries. You don't hire a designer sight unseen -- usually you ask for a sample. It makes perfect sense to expect the same of technology.
What if we consider software candidates like tradespeople? How do electricians and welders demonstrate their ability in an interview?
Re: I have no side code projects to show you
#70Pet projects need not take up all of your time. All you need is a few hours every so often — an evening or so once every couple of months, or one weekend a year would set you head and shoulders above a lot of people. The whole thing of dark matter developers with no pet projects at all, versus "passionate programmers" who eat, sleep and breathe code, is a completely false dichotomy.
All employers are looking for is some publicly available evidence that you actually have the skills that you claim to have listed on your CV.