Github is Your New Resume • Hacker News Board

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#41

Post by mishmash » Thu, Jul 14, 2011, 4:58 PM UTC

jjm wrote: post #38

cletus wrote: post #27

What about: - those that use different VCSs? - people who don't have the time (due to their job or other circumstances) to work on things they can open source? - people who work at companies that essentially own everything they might do so you can't work on open source? and - companies where hiring goes through HR who won't know what the hell Github is? Having work on Github is probably a good idea for college studen…

While this post talks about GitHub, i think it very well applies to any distributed version control system. Having an open source project is another means of visibly showing your enthusiasm, and even skill set. Notice how I don't say actual 'skill'. That is always subject to the eye of the beholder. By your definition, someone better tell https://github.com/jeresig & https://github.com/zedshaw they're JR developers a…

Both of your examples are of people who are and were extremely well known both before and outside of GitHub.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#42

Post by vailripper » Thu, Jul 14, 2011, 4:59 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #27

What about: - those that use different VCSs? - people who don't have the time (due to their job or other circumstances) to work on things they can open source? - people who work at companies that essentially own everything they might do so you can't work on open source? and - companies where hiring goes through HR who won't know what the hell Github is? Having work on Github is probably a good idea for college studen…

Whenever I'm hiring developers (junior through senior) I ask to see any portfolios they might have - github, websites they've built, a zip file of stuff they've written. I don't care what format it comes in. That said, expecting companies to be able to make good hires without having ANY code to look at isn't very realistic. I understand that sometimes people don't have the time / can't share work they do during the course of their job, but it DOES hurt your chances when there is nothing for someone hiring to look at. That said, if you're dedicating all your time to your day job, and presumably you're doing a great job there, then referrals are the way to go. We're always looking for referrals from employees within our company, and have always had the best experience with those hires.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#43

Post by econgeeker » Thu, Jul 14, 2011, 5:00 PM UTC

One of the key motivators that made me start my own company was this kind of nonsense. Poor managers, having made bad hiring decisions, are always looking for some way to short circuit the process. The entire recruiting agency industry exists for this very purpose (and look how little they know about engineering!)

This does provide a very useful feature for confident, quality engineers: Whenever someone asks for your github ID as part of the hiring process, you can say "Next!"

Seriously, you're an engineer. You can be choosy. And signs of pointy-haired boss syndrome are a good way to choose.

This is one of them.

The correct way to interview someone is to have a stakeholder in the business, who is a competent engineer, look thru the resumes, pick the ones they want to meet with, and bring them in. Talk to them, one on one, for about 30 minutes. (You should know after about 5 minutes, but you want to give them more time so they don't feel like they're being brushed off if you aren't willing to give them the job right then and there. Also, be ready to make an offer, or tell them you'll be making an offer, right then and there.)

If your startup doesn't have a stakeholder in the business whose competent enough to do this, then you still need your technical cofounder. Your technical cofounder cannot be "too busy" to interview engineers.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#44

Post by swanson » Thu, Jul 14, 2011, 5:01 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #27

What about: - those that use different VCSs? - people who don't have the time (due to their job or other circumstances) to work on things they can open source? - people who work at companies that essentially own everything they might do so you can't work on open source? and - companies where hiring goes through HR who won't know what the hell Github is? Having work on Github is probably a good idea for college studen…

Regarding different VCSs, the point is that code is the new resume and Github happens to be the most popular place to find it. Links to bitbucket, sourceforge, google code, etc etc are all equally valuable and would have the same impact.

Personal time commitments are understandable, but I feel like they are just an excuse in 90% of the cases. As 37signals puts it, "No time is no excuse". If you are serious about improving your abilities and buy into the craftmanship model at all, you can surely find a few hours of month to work on something, anything. Trade an hour of TV watching for an hour of writing your own blog engine or a Todo list app. Or write something to improve some small bit of your life (a program that emails you once a month to remind you to take your SO out for a nice dinner), put that on github. Don't make it out like you have to write the next Rails or jQuery to put code online.

The rest of your issues are largely related to workplace culture.

If you work at a company that uses any open source code (and I know there are some cases that don't due to federal validation and redtape etc etc), you have probably found a bug at some point. Put in an issue on github - send a pull request if you feel ambitious or if you had to monkeypatch the code for your project anyways. I have a feeling that people that work for closed/IP-hungry companies will go to the same kind of company when they change jobs. And that is fine, for some people software is just a job; but those are not the kind of people that read HN or software blogs anyways.

I know you are probably playing devil's advocate here, but every time someone posts about why developers should have side projects or github accounts, these points all get brought up and it bugs me.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#45

Post by jjm » Thu, Jul 14, 2011, 5:05 PM UTC

mishmash wrote: post #41

jjm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this post talks about GitHub, i think it very well applies to any distributed version control system. Having an open source project is another means of visibly showing your enthusiasm, and even skill set. Notice how I don't say actual 'skill'. That is always subject to the eye of the beholder. By your definition, someone better tell https://github.com/jeresig & https://github.com/zedshaw they're JR developers a…

Both of your examples are of people who are and were extremely well known both before and outside of GitHub.

Well, I've met some extremely talented people through GitHub who would otherwise be unknown. People who have built now popular libraries and frameworks.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#46

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 14, 2011, 5:10 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #27

What about: - those that use different VCSs? - people who don't have the time (due to their job or other circumstances) to work on things they can open source? - people who work at companies that essentially own everything they might do so you can't work on open source? and - companies where hiring goes through HR who won't know what the hell Github is? Having work on Github is probably a good idea for college studen…

[deleted]

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#47

Post by pnathan » Thu, Jul 14, 2011, 5:10 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #27

What about: - those that use different VCSs? - people who don't have the time (due to their job or other circumstances) to work on things they can open source? - people who work at companies that essentially own everything they might do so you can't work on open source? and - companies where hiring goes through HR who won't know what the hell Github is? Having work on Github is probably a good idea for college studen…

As someone who works in a 'bigco' culture, I would definitely be looking for a github (or other vcs) link on a new hire, regardless of seniority. Of course they might have their own website with some portfolio code, and that is fine too in my eyes. What I'm looking for is the signal that says, "I care about my profession, I go the extra mile".

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#48

Post by wladh » Thu, Jul 14, 2011, 5:11 PM UTC

technomancy wrote: post #34

wladh wrote: post #23

While this works for freelancers/students/startupers, it doesn't work very well for people working in bigger companies. If your interests are related to your day job, I think it's quite risky to put your code on GitHub, even if the code is not "official". While I do have a GitHub account with some code in it, that code is not really representative. If having a relevant GitHub account becomes a pre-requisite, you may…

> you may be overlooking some good people. Every heuristic overlooks good people. This heuristic has the advantage of having next to no false positives, even though it allows for lots of false negatives. Given that false positives are absolutely disastrous while false negatives are merely unfortunate, it's a trade-off I'm happy to make.

I guess the majority of repos are either bigger and useful open source projects or just small toys. If you're looking at somebody with repos from the first category, most likely his resume will mention "author/ contributor to project X". For the people in the second category, only thing you'd infer is that they can somewhat code. Which you could assume as well if they worked on any delivered project. There are obviously exceptions in both cases.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#49

Post by Locke1689 » Thu, Jul 14, 2011, 5:15 PM UTC

swanson wrote: post #44

cletus wrote: post #27

What about: - those that use different VCSs? - people who don't have the time (due to their job or other circumstances) to work on things they can open source? - people who work at companies that essentially own everything they might do so you can't work on open source? and - companies where hiring goes through HR who won't know what the hell Github is? Having work on Github is probably a good idea for college studen…

Regarding different VCSs, the point is that code is the new resume and Github happens to be the most popular place to find it. Links to bitbucket, sourceforge, google code, etc etc are all equally valuable and would have the same impact. Personal time commitments are understandable, but I feel like they are just an excuse in 90% of the cases. As 37signals puts it, "No time is no excuse". If you are serious about impr…

In many cases contributing to open source software can present legal issues with your employer.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#50

Post by alain94040 » Thu, Jul 14, 2011, 5:18 PM UTC

swanson wrote: post #44

cletus wrote: post #27

What about: - those that use different VCSs? - people who don't have the time (due to their job or other circumstances) to work on things they can open source? - people who work at companies that essentially own everything they might do so you can't work on open source? and - companies where hiring goes through HR who won't know what the hell Github is? Having work on Github is probably a good idea for college studen…

Regarding different VCSs, the point is that code is the new resume and Github happens to be the most popular place to find it. Links to bitbucket, sourceforge, google code, etc etc are all equally valuable and would have the same impact. Personal time commitments are understandable, but I feel like they are just an excuse in 90% of the cases. As 37signals puts it, "No time is no excuse". If you are serious about impr…

Sorry but that doesn't make any sense (and I was a hiring manager for many years). When I want to hire an experienced developer, what matters is the experience they got at their previous employers, the large codebase they worked on there. None of that stuff will be on Github, that's just a fact of life.