Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Github is my resume

pydanny.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 70 posts

Re: Github is my resume

#41

Post by anonymoushn »

cliftonmckinney wrote: post #19

I agree with Danny here. In fact, part of the reason we built Work for Pie is to address this issue. I also agree with some of the other comments - Github certainly isn't the end all be all. But, we're all trending away from traditional education, and software developers are on the leading edge of this trend. There may be a fairly standard path for "finance guy," but great developers can (and often do) come from any…

I haven't found CS degrees to be very well correlated with being able to program, so I think this need applies even to people who got an education in the normal way.

Re: Github is my resume

#42

Post by robododo »

kstenerud wrote: post #25
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What GitHub (and others) are for the developer is leverage. There's nothing worse than going into a job interview that you know you are (over-) qualified for and being given fizzbuzz because the person interviewing you doesn't know if you are a rock star or a fraud. Handing them your GitHub commit log lets you walk in on more equal terms. If they are interviewing you, they already think you're good enough for the pos…

The unfortunate truth is that there are fraudsters out there who will attempt to cheat or bullshit their way in. Fizzbuzz is so utterly trivial that you could bang it out in a few minutes. And yet it's amazing how well it weeds out non-programmers, no matter how much they bamboozled over the phone or built up a web of deceit online. You should treat fizzbuzz or the like as a secret handshake, where you write it and t…

Totally agree.

A shockingly small number of candidates I've interviewed have heard of fizzbuzz. The first time I mentioned it to someone, I assumed they already knew it and would just chuckle and crank it out. However, that's actually kind of rare.

When I do talk to a candidate and get that "knowing grin", my estimation of them jumps up a couple of notches. It seems to actually mean something outside of coder forums.

The real downer is how dismaying it as that candidates clearly have never prepared. How could they have done any research ahead of time and NOT seen fizzbuzz?

Re: Github is my resume

#43

Post by reidmain »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #39
tptacek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fizzbuzz. Why would you optimize around it? Just write the silly fizzbuzz answer and move on. We don't "fizzbuzz". We have a more realistic interview challenge (with a similar purpose). But we apply it uniformly, even for candidates that come in with lots of code in their Github accounts.

Why? If they have code samples and you think they are good, why are you giving them a pop quiz?

Because of what kstenerud and robododo wrote below

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3622191 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3622441

Interviewers don't owe you anything. If you are over-qualified then within five minutes of talking you should be able to prove to them that you are worth skipping over the bullshit.

If the person still wants to go forward then that would decrease the value or working at that company in my mind.

Re: Github is my resume

#44

Post by tptacek »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #39
tptacek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fizzbuzz. Why would you optimize around it? Just write the silly fizzbuzz answer and move on. We don't "fizzbuzz". We have a more realistic interview challenge (with a similar purpose). But we apply it uniformly, even for candidates that come in with lots of code in their Github accounts.

Why? If they have code samples and you think they are good, why are you giving them a pop quiz?

To verify that they can bang out code when they need to, not just when they're in the right frame of mind to create code samples. Also, ours is domain specific and measures multiple things about the candidate (but the primary one is just that they can produce sane code).

In this case, we're talking about FizzBuzz. The point of FizzBuzz is that it's a test that can be passed by literally anyone with an elementary ability to code. Optimizing for it is silly. Just bang out the fizzbuzz answer (make fun of it if you like) and get on with your life.

Re: Github is my resume

#45

Post by Sidnicious »

I think your resume and GitHub account can complement each other — which is why I keep my resume on GitHub :)

I had mixed feelings about making its history publicly available, but I’ve come to agree with the OP — how you’ve changed is at least as important as what you are right now.

Re: Github is my resume

#46

Post by balloot »

eggbrain wrote: post #3

One of the most frustrating things for me, I feel, is that hardly any of the code I have written is on Github for various reasons (NDA, proprietary code, etc). So when an employer asks me for my Github, what do I do? Do I send him my account showing off my code from 3 years ago containing only a script I didn't really care about? I don't mind a Github being used in conjunction with other resources (the projects I've…

This is exactly why Github will not ever be the standard. It's fine to show off what you play around with in your spare time, but the very best and most productive workers actually won't have an extensive up-to-date Github repo. This is because they're been gainfully employed and have spent the vast majority of their coding time kicking ass at their real job.

In short, while people with impressive Github contributions can generally be good employees (but not always!), many good employees simply don't have time or interest for open source / side projects.

Re: Github is my resume

#47

Post by balloot »

galenward wrote: post #31

A corollary: Github is the first thing we look at when someone applies for a job and we do a cursory review of it before reaching out to an engineer. The door swings both ways though: forking lots of projects / not understanding Git are red flags.

So what happens if someone is employed? Do you just not hire them? Do you expect your employees to spend lots of time coding random stuff outside of work? That's not generally a quality I would put a lot of weight on.

Re: Github is my resume

#48

Post by MatthewPhillips »

tptacek wrote: post #44
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If they have code samples and you think they are good, why are you giving them a pop quiz?

To verify that they can bang out code when they need to, not just when they're in the right frame of mind to create code samples. Also, ours is domain specific and measures multiple things about the candidate (but the primary one is just that they can produce sane code). In this case, we're talking about FizzBuzz. The point of FizzBuzz is that it's a test that can be passed by literally anyone with an elementary abil…

I'm obviously against any quizzes in an interview; it puts the interviewer and the interviewee on unequal footing, but that's not the point in my comment. I'm not optimizing for fizzbuzz here. I'm optimizing for "I'm not some guy off the street here, here's some proof". I'm optimizing for "let's skip past the bullshit".

Re: Github is my resume

#49

Post by MatthewPhillips »

kstenerud wrote: post #25
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What GitHub (and others) are for the developer is leverage. There's nothing worse than going into a job interview that you know you are (over-) qualified for and being given fizzbuzz because the person interviewing you doesn't know if you are a rock star or a fraud. Handing them your GitHub commit log lets you walk in on more equal terms. If they are interviewing you, they already think you're good enough for the pos…

The unfortunate truth is that there are fraudsters out there who will attempt to cheat or bullshit their way in. Fizzbuzz is so utterly trivial that you could bang it out in a few minutes. And yet it's amazing how well it weeds out non-programmers, no matter how much they bamboozled over the phone or built up a web of deceit online. You should treat fizzbuzz or the like as a secret handshake, where you write it and t…

Do you really think someone is going to fake a GitHub account, including thousands of commit messages? I just don't buy that. To me that's definitely enough.

If you take a look at my github account you might think it's nothing special. But what you'll also see is that I have several commits per day, despite working a 40 hour/week job and a 15 hour/week job. So at minimum it should be obvious that I really like coding. If you think my code sucks I'm fine with that, please don't invite me to your interview. But at least the company I apply for will know who I am going in.

Post reply on HN