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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

#91

Post by whatyoucantsay »

onebot wrote: post #67

What should be the Dribbble equivalent for software engineers then? All I hear these days is, whiteboards for hiring is bad, asking to do a sample project for hiring is bad, now GitHub is bad. I don't know when software engineers became such "I don't want to show my work" industry. Having a portfolio to show what your capable of is a great way to set yourself apart. I don't think anyone is expecting you to have devel…

Reid Hoffman has a great answer for this in his book. References are the most important thing there is.

Given the choice between not being able to interview and not being able to get references, you'd do better hiring sight unseen based off of strong recommendations from a source you trust than from conducting thorough interviews without references.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#92

Post by whatyoucantsay »

onebot wrote: post #87
bassman9000 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seemingly too lazy Some people aren't in the mood for extra curricular activity after working +14h a day. They rather unwind, and be productive the day after in their not-pushing-to-github jobs.

And here you are on HN. It is hard to buy this argument. Instead of reading HN for a week, hack out a little app and toss it up on GitHub. I am almost certain that is more valuable for you than opining here.

Another factor is very large employers having policies regarding open source and requiring each OSS contribution to go through legal.

HN, particularly under a pseudonym, is somewhat more accessible for those under the watchful eye of $BIG_CORP.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#93

Post by letientai299 »

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.

To all the down-voters, let me rephrase my opinion again. I do take serious look on candidates Github profile, if they include that in their resume. And if they has some reasonable big projects, but they calendar seems empty, I will immediately think that the code is not belong to them. Perhaps that just forks, or, worse, that are stolen code.

I would also check they PR, issue and comments, to get some idea about how they work with stranger; what are important to them when they suggest ideas, contribute to existing code base; how they reply to critic or question from project owner, etc.

Also, just my opinion, most of us - software developers - can't live without OSS. We should contribute back when we could. That's why I usually prefer resume with a non empty Github profile than the others.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#94

Post by onebot »

whatyoucantsay wrote: post #91
onebot wrote: post #67

What should be the Dribbble equivalent for software engineers then? All I hear these days is, whiteboards for hiring is bad, asking to do a sample project for hiring is bad, now GitHub is bad. I don't know when software engineers became such "I don't want to show my work" industry. Having a portfolio to show what your capable of is a great way to set yourself apart. I don't think anyone is expecting you to have devel…

Reid Hoffman has a great answer for this in his book. References are the most important thing there is. Given the choice between not being able to interview and not being able to get references, you'd do better hiring sight unseen based off of strong recommendations from a source you trust than from conducting thorough interviews without references.

100% Agree!

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#95

Post by sjellis »

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.

I use GitHub accounts to provide context, after triaging CVs. The first sentence of the article mentions data aggregation, which is very far from how I use GitHub when evaluating technical candidates.

If you have already somebody's resume, GitHub provide clues and maybe a bit of evidence for your assessment of the candidate. Older, busy working software developer? Expect not many projects, possibly an intermittent commit history. Most GitHub projects are just unfinished exercises, so a workng project is unusual, and a clue that the candidate is also unusual. It's not scientific, but it's evidence that you can use, alongside the resume, and any communication with the candidate.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#96

Post by closeparen »

fecak wrote: post #52

GitHub 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 ch…

Software engineering is highly contextual. As a professional, I write tested, documented code within mature and responsible architectures that harmonize with current and anticipated future business needs, my company's infrastructure, adjacent and legacy systems, pragmatic balance of technical excellence vs. deadline pressure, etc.

In a genuine passion project, I'm having fun. If you're checking whether I've dotted the Is and crossed the Ts in terms of testing, documentation, edge cases, etc. you'll find that I haven't, because the whole point of programming outside of work is release from the tedium of professionalism and an opportunity to go straight for the novelty and joy of making things work at all.

For projects specifically intended as portfolio pieces, I'm not sure how I could design software appropriately (or evaluate candidates' designs) in the contextual vacuum of "needing something to put on Github."

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#98

Post by jadavies »

mdip wrote: post #65

Having personally used GitHub to aid in hiring developers, I find it to be a very valuable resource ... provided it's used correctly. The author makes a few points that I would have considered somewhat obvious (i.e. social networking is not a metric that indicates a successful developer) and he's correctly pointing out that using it superficially as a sort-of "metrics engine" for developer candidate quality is going…

Interesting, thanks. Do you specifically ask the candidates if the code in their repository is all their own work? One small thing that worries me about relying on GitHub is that I can't be 100% sure that the author actually wrote all of it.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#99

Post by closeparen »

onebot wrote: post #67

What should be the Dribbble equivalent for software engineers then? All I hear these days is, whiteboards for hiring is bad, asking to do a sample project for hiring is bad, now GitHub is bad. I don't know when software engineers became such "I don't want to show my work" industry. Having a portfolio to show what your capable of is a great way to set yourself apart. I don't think anyone is expecting you to have devel…

>I don't know when software engineers became such "I don't want to show my work" industry.

Expecting potential hires to labor over portfolios and prepare extensively for auditions is a luxury enjoyed by the few most badly oversupplied artistic fields.

Re: Why GitHub Won't Help with Hiring

#100

Post by whatyoucantsay »

xref wrote: post #97
whatyoucantsay wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you also report the employer's "theft", as you put it, of WordPress's GPL'd code?

that's just...that's just not at all what GPL is

The GPL is a license. If you don't abide by it, you don't get to download a copy of the software, sell it or create derivative works.

The history of WP itself enforcing the GP is instructive. More recently, Panasonic Avionics has been sued for $100M due to GPL violations.

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