When it comes to hiring, I'll take a Github commit log over a resume any day.

Post by sgift » Thu, Mar 31, 2011, 7:30 AM UTC

onan_barbarian wrote: post #75

hp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd go with a graphic designer with a portfolio you could look at every time, right? Say the graphic designer's previous employer didn't let them put stuff in the portfolio -- I don't know, maybe they only worked on NSA internal marketing -- that's the designer's problem. They aren't going to say "no fair," they're going to find a way to do some work to put in a portfolio. Wouldn't have to be open source work, just…

This assumes that all programming in analogous to 'graphic design'. This analogy breaks the moment you consider that perhaps at least some programming is more analogous to, say, civil engineering or in-house material science research or in-house statistics... none of these other professionals are going to be able to disclose their 'portfolio' in any meaningful way. Yet, mysteriously, civil engineers, material scienti…

Post by varjag » Thu, Mar 31, 2011, 7:44 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #85

technomancy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that I can't believe a word you said. It comes down to this: filtering by OSS contributions gives you many false negatives (as the OP has complained) but virtually zero false positives. In hiring, a false negative is a bummer, but a false positive is disastrous. It would be irresponsible of me as an interviewer not to take this into account. If it someone's pissed because they fall into the false neg…

Unless the person is a major contributor to widely used project, all the OSS contributions show you is two things: (1) The person can apparently code when he's allowed to pick what he wants to work on and doesn't have any real pressure, and (2) He has time to work on open source. Most companies need people who can code well under pressure and when they have to work on something they don't necessarily want to work on.…

Post by varjag » Thu, Mar 31, 2011, 7:54 AM UTC

optimusclimb wrote: post #90

Cymen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is becoming increasingly rare to work on an island away from open source. A lot of companies use open source in some way and having an in-house developer familiar with the projects they use or relay on can be quite useful. And the improvements that the company is willing to pay for but aren't a competitive advantage can be committed to the open source project. It's a win for everyone. Do you work on an island?

You people are insane. Going out on a limb here, as I hate making my life public - I worked at Factset Research Systems for just about four years. They are a publicly traded company (FDS - NYSE). Guess what - They would allow precisely 0% of the code I wrote for them while working there to be shown to another company. So what you are saying, is that, given that, unless I went home and coded and contributed to an open…

Post by cousin_it » Thu, Mar 31, 2011, 8:01 AM UTC

lusis wrote: post #53

akronim wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can participate in open source. That's not correct - plenty of employment contracts lay claim to any contributions, which means the projects can't accept them.

Let me quite honest and say that if someone Agnes an employment contract, as a developer, that prevents them from writing unrelated code in their spare time or lays claim to any code written outside of the office, that person is an idiot. I'm not a developer and on every company I've been with in the past 10 or so years I've gotten something in writing or marked up my contract/employee agreement stating that in no wa…

Post by tomjen3 » Thu, Mar 31, 2011, 8:28 AM UTC

technomancy wrote: post #64

bphogan wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that I can't believe a word you said. I can't see examples of this awesome super top-secret code because it's all closed-source, as you say, for good reasons. I also can't trust your references, because you'll only give me ones that will say good things about you, and any digging at your work history will only uncover "yes he worked here" responses. I want to see open-source contributions because I lik…

> The problem is that I can't believe a word you said. It comes down to this: filtering by OSS contributions gives you many false negatives (as the OP has complained) but virtually zero false positives. In hiring, a false negative is a bummer, but a false positive is disastrous. It would be irresponsible of me as an interviewer not to take this into account. If it someone's pissed because they fall into the false neg…