I rarely look at candidate's GitHub profiles anymore. I used to do it, but I didn't get much value from it, and I didn't notice any correlation to job performance.
Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
51–60 of 111 posts
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#52GitHub profiles are incredibly useful for college grads, bootcampers, and self-taught devs that typically can't speak of professional accomplishments.
As your professional accomplishments increase, the value of GitHub profiles (for most) as a marketing tool diminishes dramatically, but can still be helpful.
For developers at any level, repos are a good conversation piece for interviews. The interviewer can ask why choices were made, what the candidate might do differently now (shows growth), and start interesting technical debates.
I always ask my clients (I'm a resume writer and career consultant) if they have a GitHub profile if I don't see one listed, but I don't always include it on the resume. New entrants to the industry are not exactly punished for not having one, but it's becoming an expectation. This is different than expecting an older adult that may have life responsibilities that prevent (or simply no interest in) coding outside work.
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#53If we are being interviewed like carpenters, a carpenter's work may be a lot of effort to create and then none and it still remains created. Why is the age or spontaneity of the commits a factor? Yes I am working in a professional capacity and can't show any of that. Why not look at the table I created 2 years ago?
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#54Why are we reading this post? "I've only had one job interview in the last decade or so, but as far as I could tell none of the people interviewing me checked out my GitHub profile before the interview" So that makes this guy an expert?
That's really not a charitable representation of the article. When the HN guidelines say: "please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize", it applies to authors as well as commenters.
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#55I 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?
That's what a resume is for. It explains the what and how I performed my last jobs. GitHub is possibly how I did my own hobby projects which have different requirements.
We're not artists who can easily keep a copy of the code we produce. That's a problem with asking for more effort on my own (unpaid) time.
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#56> "Interviewers Don't Check GitHub Profiles"
This generalized statement is false; some do, some don't.
Been at multiple startups and the best candidates hired have great open source projects on github that indicates they're qualified for the role more than someone with nothing to show.
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 haven't had any publicly accessible work to show off since I posted a HyperCard stack on AOL and freeware FTP sites while I was in college in 1995. I've been working as a professional developer since 1996, have never b…
Surely the argument isn't that a portfolio is a necessary positive signal, but rather that it's just a positive signal. In other words, would you take the stance that having some quality work on Github can never work in your favor? What about other positive-but-not-guaranteed signals like having a quality blog where you cover technical topics? Can that ever work in your favor? Or is it pure noise that can never demon…
I have to admit my own bias against actually doing side projects. While I will read technical books dealing with high level concepts, I've never done a side project outside of work.
I'd rather try to champion technology at my job and do a proof of concept or if that isn't possible, change jobs.
I've been able to find jobs where what I am good at is a "requirement" and where what I want to learn is a "nice to have" and learn the nice to have.
I find it carries a lot more weight to be able to talk about how you have used technology at work than a side project unless the side project was a really popular open source project.
Then again, I never work for companies with a large development team where I can't have a large, resume building impact.
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#58Why are we reading this post? "I've only had one job interview in the last decade or so, but as far as I could tell none of the people interviewing me checked out my GitHub profile before the interview" So that makes this guy an expert?
That's really not a charitable representation of the article. When the HN guidelines say: "please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize", it applies to authors as well as commenters. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Well, it is an honest question. And I don't think it is uncharitable at all. The premise of the article is that github does not help with interviews but it doesn't really provide facts to back that up.
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#59I 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?
Lots or most devs don't need to.
Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring
#60I 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.
I know it's not really your responsibility but did you inform those sites and/or the candidate?
"if you see something, say something"