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Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
11–20 of 111 posts
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#12One thing that have always annoyed me about Github is the lack of (free) private repos which makes the activity history patchy. So you show that you're active for months on end, then then radio-silence for a month. Or when you delete/move a repo and suddenly months of activity disappears. Just makes it look like you've lost interest in what you were working on =(
You can have the activity graph show private contributions.
edit: I may have misunderstood, assuming you mean it's patchy because you're contributing to a private repo that's not on Github.
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#13I wouldn't have been hired for the jobs i've had if it wasn't for my Github. I don't think false-negatives should lead you to disregard the ability to find that perfect developer. Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set?
> Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set? It is not. If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. It is a slippery slope where we allow employers to dictate uncompensated signaling necessary for a role. Observe how it worked out for everyone who got a degree because employers won't hire without one, and the…
> If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken.
Easier said than done, especially if you're talking about whiteboard interviews.
Nobody can even agree on what this perfect barrage of probing looks like.
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#14I wouldn't have been hired for the jobs i've had if it wasn't for my Github. I don't think false-negatives should lead you to disregard the ability to find that perfect developer. Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set?
> Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set? It is not. If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. It is a slippery slope where we allow employers to dictate uncompensated signaling necessary for a role. Observe how it worked out for everyone who got a degree because employers won't hire without one, and the…
That's not entirely true. Candidates have to meet employers halfway.
Employer's have a limited amount of time and money too, why should they waste those resources having to mine for someone's skill level when there's plenty of candidates out there that will display that on some online site.
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set? It is not. If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. It is a slippery slope where we allow employers to dictate uncompensated signaling necessary for a role. Observe how it worked out for everyone who got a degree because employers won't hire without one, and the…
> If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. Easier said than done, especially if you're talking about whiteboard interviews. Nobody can even agree on what this perfect barrage of probing looks like.
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Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#16I look at GitHub profiles to help filter / disqualify candidates. Just last weekend, I had a marketing candidate who had stolen three Wordpress projects from their current employer and post them as public repos on their personal GitHub account. In addition to the flagrant intellectual property theft, the repos contained the wp-config.php file with exposed database “root” credentials to live, client sites.
Wow talk about a scummy thing to do to their employer.
I am sure it will work for them before too... because not everyone would do their DD like you have.
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#17I wouldn't have been hired for the jobs i've had if it wasn't for my Github. I don't think false-negatives should lead you to disregard the ability to find that perfect developer. Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set?
The article's problem is that its arguments apply to trying to use GH as a search tool for candidates.
For instance, the fact that some accounts are fakes for a TV show, or that some projects are jokes and listicles, has nothing to do with the particular GH project of a candidate that you're interviewing, having found that candidate in ways having nothing to do with GH.
Sure; GH being full of crap makes it impossible to use for searching for developers. (Not to mention that, oh, people don't use real names, and you don't know whether they live across the street or across the ocean).
The main valid point is that a great developer might have an inactive GH account.
"If you're looking for a thief, it isn't useful to look into pockets. Many pockets contain nothing, or lint. And those that contain something are almost always legitimate: stuff that the pocket owner owns. Some pockets are fake; just ornamental openings that are sewn shut, with no actual pockets behind them. The best thief I ever nabbed had nothing in his pockets; everything was in a big duffle bag in the trunk of his car."
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#18[deleted]
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#19One thing that have always annoyed me about Github is the lack of (free) private repos which makes the activity history patchy. So you show that you're active for months on end, then then radio-silence for a month. Or when you delete/move a repo and suddenly months of activity disappears. Just makes it look like you've lost interest in what you were working on =(
Please don't do this -- GitHub does not register activity or hobbies outside of GitHub. You are arbitrarily ruling out people on BitBucket, Gitlab, and elsewhere, in addition to the legions of programmers that cannot post their work publicly and do not want to produce stuff on their own, unpaid, time.
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#20I look at GitHub profiles to help filter / disqualify candidates. Just last weekend, I had a marketing candidate who had stolen three Wordpress projects from their current employer and post them as public repos on their personal GitHub account. In addition to the flagrant intellectual property theft, the repos contained the wp-config.php file with exposed database “root” credentials to live, client sites.
Perhaps I misunderstood. But isn't Github help you filter out such candidates, is it? They have some big projects, but their contribution calandar should be almost empty, cuz all the code is pushed into Github at once.