11–20 of 262 posts
100% this. I've seen consultants get paid $250 an hour to simply listen to what the team is saying and regurgitate that to management. But it's more trusted than their own employees because the consultant is "independent".
Maybe it's the jobs that I've worked, or the country I'm in ( UK ). But I've really not seen this shift towards looking at portfolios of open source work rather than CV's. Every company I've worked for has requested a CV, and often does some form of test or in person interview centred around programming problems. The tests vary in quality and depth. I wouldn't think of myself as a passionate developer. I have a famil…
Every once in a while we see someone with a lot of open source contributions, or even full leadership of a popular project. These people would really prefer if we believed that OSS contributions and GitHub profiles replaced resumes or CVs, because it’s where they shine. Unfortunately, doing so would exclude many great hires who have done a lot of great work at private companies that doesn’t show up on their GitHub. We’ve also had trouble hiring prolific OSS contributors who spent their days working on OSS contributions instead of doing their job. One candidate wanted their contract to state that they could spend half of their paid time working on their OSS project. We passed.
In my experience, anyone claiming to have a single dimension credential preference for hiring (usually GitHub portfolio, Ivy League education, ex-FAANG) is simply hiring for people who look like themselves. They’re not a good fit for unbiased hiring.
I'm betting on this article being controversial here somewhat. The point on OSS is hilariously true though. Like, everyone does realize that the tech giants just found a way to make the community work for them and to make money off the backs of it right? OSS is great for almost everyone, don't get me wrong, but in whole, the largest tech companies in the world have gotten an entire community to test, fix, and develop…
> Like, everyone does realize that the tech giants just found a way to make the community work for them and to make money off the backs of it right? Virtually every tech startup or company makes use of open source at every level. We all benefit. There’s no need to be cynical because big companies are also benefiting.
Working in the industry kills one's passion. It did for me.
Maybe it's the jobs that I've worked, or the country I'm in ( UK ). But I've really not seen this shift towards looking at portfolios of open source work rather than CV's. Every company I've worked for has requested a CV, and often does some form of test or in person interview centred around programming problems. The tests vary in quality and depth. I wouldn't think of myself as a passionate developer. I have a famil…
On the hiring side, it’s rare to see someone come through with significant OSS contributions. A small bug fix here or there is about the most I see from 90% of resumes. Every once in a while we see someone with a lot of open source contributions, or even full leadership of a popular project. These people would really prefer if we believed that OSS contributions and GitHub profiles replaced resumes or CVs, because it’…
I say "often" because OSS contributions can still be an indicator of something, but it's not really clear what. Maybe it indicates drive to contribute to OSS, maybe technical ability, maybe no hobbies or commitments outside their day job. In our experience it's often the latter, but even so, it's biased against people who don't have the time to contribute even if they desired to do so.
So we typically just stick with the resume for actual experience and college coursework, if any, but not the college itself. Using these heuristics we've managed to build a pretty strong pipeline of people with all backgrounds of education or experience.
Maybe it's the jobs that I've worked, or the country I'm in ( UK ). But I've really not seen this shift towards looking at portfolios of open source work rather than CV's. Every company I've worked for has requested a CV, and often does some form of test or in person interview centred around programming problems. The tests vary in quality and depth. I wouldn't think of myself as a passionate developer. I have a famil…
On the hiring side, it’s rare to see someone come through with significant OSS contributions. A small bug fix here or there is about the most I see from 90% of resumes. Every once in a while we see someone with a lot of open source contributions, or even full leadership of a popular project. These people would really prefer if we believed that OSS contributions and GitHub profiles replaced resumes or CVs, because it’…
Maybe it's the jobs that I've worked, or the country I'm in ( UK ). But I've really not seen this shift towards looking at portfolios of open source work rather than CV's. Every company I've worked for has requested a CV, and often does some form of test or in person interview centred around programming problems. The tests vary in quality and depth. I wouldn't think of myself as a passionate developer. I have a famil…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Like, everyone does realize that the tech giants just found a way to make the community work for them and to make money off the backs of it right? Virtually every tech startup or company makes use of open source at every level. We all benefit. There’s no need to be cynical because big companies are also benefiting.
The point I'm making is that large companies benefit on a scale much much larger than others. Facebook isn't just gaining from OSS because they can use other's repos, they are gaining because they can have others fix and build their own repos. The Gameplan is to gain from the community, not contribute. Sure, React is nice and fine for the community, great framework...but the intent is not to help the community in the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Like, everyone does realize that the tech giants just found a way to make the community work for them and to make money off the backs of it right? Virtually every tech startup or company makes use of open source at every level. We all benefit. There’s no need to be cynical because big companies are also benefiting.
The point I'm making is that large companies benefit on a scale much much larger than others. Facebook isn't just gaining from OSS because they can use other's repos, they are gaining because they can have others fix and build their own repos. The Gameplan is to gain from the community, not contribute. Sure, React is nice and fine for the community, great framework...but the intent is not to help the community in the…
They do benefit immensely, but no by having "others fix and build" their own repos. You're overestimating the source code contributions and underestimating the cost to manage a hugely popular project.
> The Gameplan is to gain from the community, not contribute.
This is just silly. The """gameplan""" is to contribute and AND grow a community, which benefits everyone. Does it benefit more the company than the community as a whole? Maybe, but that's petty reasoning.