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Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

benfrederickson.com

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Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#21

Post by el_benhameen »

stevemk14ebr wrote: post #4

I 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?

A software designer at my company can add our software to his or her portfolio because the design itself is publicly-accessible. I can’t add our software to my portfolio, though, because while the final product is available to the public, the code itself is not. So I can point to the software without actually showing my work, or work many extra hours to have a portfolio of code. Which I guess is life, but I think it’s fair to point out that maintaining a code portfolio is far more time consuming than a design portfolio, for instance.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#22

Post by toomuchtodo »

_seemethere wrote: post #14
toomuchtodo wrote: post #10

Earlier 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…

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.

> Candidates have to meet employers halfway.

Perhaps in a recession, but in the current market, the employer must meet the candidate. That's how supply and demand works.

To confirm (as an example), check out the last HN Who's Hiring [1], and compare to the next one. I assure you, most of the positions go unfilled because demand is exceeding supply. A company can either make their filters more reasonable, pay more, or a combination of the two.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#23

Post by hungerstrike »

letientai299 wrote: post #20
ryanf323 wrote: post #6

I 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.

I spent the majority of my time working on closed source.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#24

Post by always_good »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #22
_seemethere wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Candidates have to meet employers halfway. Perhaps in a recession, but in the current market, the employer must meet the candidate. That's how supply and demand works. To confirm (as an example), check out the last HN Who's Hiring [1], and compare to the next one. I assure you, most of the positions go unfilled because demand is exceeding supply. A company can either make their filters more reasonable, pay more, or…

There may be more jobs available than developers, but all of those jobs aren't equal.

For the good jobs, you're competing against other good people. Good luck playing coy.

There were also more women than men in my university, but that didn't free up the cutest girl in the bar.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#25

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #10
stevemk14ebr wrote: post #4

I 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.

That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken.

> Observe how it worked out for everyone who got a degree because employers won't hire without one, and then they don't get hired regardless of that degree.

I don't have a degree, I got my first job because I walked into the interview with a portfolio; more specifically a fully functional completed piece of software that I live demonstrated. This wasn't an open-source project, but I sent them the code to be reviewed nonetheless (I own the IP).

The reason some people with degrees don't get jobs is because people with portfolio's (irrespective of degrees) can demonstrate their skill-set, where as waving around a piece of paper and having no demonstrable skills makes it extremely difficult for a potential employer to evaluate you.

> It is a slippery slope where we allow employers to dictate uncompensated signaling necessary for a role.

I do somewhat agree with this. However, your portfolio need not be open-source work, it's just common as there's some proof (version control, although not tamper-proof) indicating you did the work you're claiming you've done.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#26

Post by minimaxir »

The argument that "GitHub isn't a useful indicator of skill" has the logically-following argument "we won't look at GitHubs at all because they're a waste of time." Which is a loss of helpful information for hiring a candidate, and ignoring relevant information seems inefficient.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#27

Post by toomuchtodo »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #25
toomuchtodo wrote: post #10

Earlier 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. That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken. > Observe how it worked out for everyone who got a degree because employers won't hire without one, and then they d…

> That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken.

I have been working in tech for 18 years, as both an IC and a hiring manager. I do not believe it to be inaccurate. It's how I do hiring in my current role.

I also do not have a degree. In my current role, I was hired on the spot leaving the conference room after my interview. In my role before that, I had three video conference interviews and a take home project.

> I do somewhat agree with this. However, your portfolio need not be open-source work, it's just common as there's some proof (version control, although not tamper-proof) indicating you did the work you're claiming you've done.

I used to be an sysadmin|linux|network|infrastructure engineer. Now I'm in security architecture. What work would you have someone like me show that I did the work I claimed to be doing other than me explaining to you what I did and how I did it? No Github repo is going to be able to properly illustrate the work I've done, or the breadth and depth of my knowledge and understanding.

Public repos are a poor signal. Just my two cents. You want to figure out how people think, that's what an interview is for.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#28

Post by to3m »

tomc1985 wrote: post #19
convery wrote: post #5

One 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.

Even if you do work on GitHub, when a repo is deleted, your activity on that repo is also deleted.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#29

Post by derimagia »

letientai299 wrote: post #20
ryanf323 wrote: post #6

I 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.

No one should look at the contribution calendar and hire based on it without looking more in depth. To answer your question it's based on commit time, but because of that you have things like: https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#30

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #27
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken. > Observe how it worked out for everyone who got a degree because employers won't hire without one, and then they d…

> That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken. I have been working in tech for 18 years, as both an IC and a hiring manager. I do not believe it to be inaccurate. It's how I do hiring in my current role. I also do not have a degree. In my current role, I was hired…

> I also do not have a degree. In my current role, I was hired on the spot leaving the conference room after my interview.

Sounds like a broken hiring process.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all saying you're bad it your job. I'm saying your employer got lucky.

> I used to be an infrastructure engineer. Now I'm in security architecture. What work would you have someone like me show that I did the work I claimed to be doing other than me explaining to you what I did and how I did it?

There's absolutely nothing stopping you publishing part of your solutions to Github, along with published articles explaining what you did and why you did it.

You've simply chosen not to, and you've artificially limited your hiring prospects by not doing so. You could have a better job.

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