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Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

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Re: Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

#21

Post by hansef »

droithomme wrote: post #11

These arguments that the only worthy developers have tons of public facing open source projects are tiresome. Probably less than 1% of developers have GitHub repos and there's no correlation between skill level and having a GitHub repo. If you have extensive and current open source contributions, for most people it means you're unemployed, or you're violating your employer's contract terms. Evaluating a GitHub repo f…

Depends on what stack you're working with, and the associated broad engineering culture. I haven't hired anyone who didn't have a Github repo in 2 years, out of 18+ FTEs and contractors - but we're a Rails/Scala/node shop building fancy web apps for startups. Not having a huge OSS track record is fine, but not having a Github account at all would be kinda weird these days. If we were doing embedded systems stuff or financial modeling software or game development, probably a lot less relevant. The "show us your Github, not your resume" line in a lot of job posts is more about the specific engineering culture in a particular kind of startup development, not a hard and fast rule for every software firm everywhere.

That said, if you're a Rails developer and you don't have a Github account, I'm still probably not going to read your resume.

Re: Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

#22

Post by jseliger »

kanzure wrote: post #10
danielweber wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, "show me the github" is one of the worst trends for software developers' careers. I'll always ask for live code from people at interviews, if only to filter out the total posers.

> Yes, "show me the github" is one of the worst trends for software developers' careers. On the other hand, there are benefits to posting code online that they can review. Instead of spending hours writing code for each company that you're interviewing with, you can just write code that you're actually interested in and throw it online. Say you're talking with 20 companies. Each of those 20 interviews have an associa…

>Instead of spending hours writing code for each company that you're interviewing with, you can just write code that you're actually interested in and throw it online.

Maybe, but I bet you'll still have to spend hours writing to code in order to prove that you wrote and understand the code, rather than copying it.

Re: Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

#23

Post by spitfire »

Some of the most interesting developers can't talk about what they've done.

You'll never see the flight computer system of an F-16, but it's probably a much cooler project to work on than an iPhone app. Or nuclear reactor engineering.

Is a resume relevant in this day and age? As a device to portray the best of what you've accomplished yes. For a few people, the answer will be no, that's best done through portfolios like github and open source projects.

In the end, everything old will be new again but with a twist.

Re: Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

#24

Post by ismarc »

I am actually a fan of well written resumes. The problem is that a resume is not a CV or even a listing of all skills/qualifications of an applicant. A resume should be a highlight reel of the skills/experience/qualifications of the applicant THAT PERTAIN TO THE JOB BEING APPLIED FOR. The cover letter then explains how those skills go together and what the applicant is looking for. Github, open source projects, web sites, examples, etc. are supporting evidence once they've gone from an unqualified lead to a qualified lead. But that's the difference that people seem to forget, a large majority of job positions are filled from unqualified leads and spending 20 minutes per applicant with nothing indicating they even have the minimal skills necessary.

Re: Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

#25

Post by mgse »

droithomme wrote: post #11

These arguments that the only worthy developers have tons of public facing open source projects are tiresome. Probably less than 1% of developers have GitHub repos and there's no correlation between skill level and having a GitHub repo. If you have extensive and current open source contributions, for most people it means you're unemployed, or you're violating your employer's contract terms. Evaluating a GitHub repo f…

"If you have extensive and current open source contributions, for most people it means ... you're violating your employer's contract terms."

Bingo (at least for me). Both companies I've worked for require you to submit a proposal to an open source review board for approval. I went through the process at my previous job and approximately 2 months later I was given the go-ahead. Not worth it.

Re: Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

#26

Post by daenz »

droithomme wrote: post #11

These arguments that the only worthy developers have tons of public facing open source projects are tiresome. Probably less than 1% of developers have GitHub repos and there's no correlation between skill level and having a GitHub repo. If you have extensive and current open source contributions, for most people it means you're unemployed, or you're violating your employer's contract terms. Evaluating a GitHub repo f…

> Probably less than 1% of developers have GitHub repos

And if you count Google Code, Bitbucket, Sourceforge? Github alone has "2.1 million users hosting over 3.7 million repositories". What's your source for your statistic?

> When all of your work is online, it suggests you are not spending much time contributing value to whoever is employing you.

Or that you enjoy writing code so much that you do it in your free time.

> Companies that can't find developers often have bizarre and useless criteria such as "must have GitHub repository" ... none of which is correlated with ability.

Source?

Re: Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

#27

Post by endianswap »

droithomme wrote: post #11

These arguments that the only worthy developers have tons of public facing open source projects are tiresome. Probably less than 1% of developers have GitHub repos and there's no correlation between skill level and having a GitHub repo. If you have extensive and current open source contributions, for most people it means you're unemployed, or you're violating your employer's contract terms. Evaluating a GitHub repo f…

The related problem I have is when I see a prospective employer that wants to see or discuss hobby projects. I understand that it is seen as an indication of passion for hacking/engineering or whatever, but when I'm at home I'm either drained from a day of focused work, or working on a hobby project related to my employer, like a new visualization or small tool that's fun to construct. It worries me when I think about having to interview out in the world without any good response when asked about hobby projects (except the truth as written above.)

Re: Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

#28

Post by kingkilr »

droithomme wrote: post #11

These arguments that the only worthy developers have tons of public facing open source projects are tiresome. Probably less than 1% of developers have GitHub repos and there's no correlation between skill level and having a GitHub repo. If you have extensive and current open source contributions, for most people it means you're unemployed, or you're violating your employer's contract terms. Evaluating a GitHub repo f…

I disagree with almost everything you said, but I'm going to take note of one bit in particular:

    "there's no correlation between skill level and having a GitHub repo"
There may be no evidence of any correlation, but I'm willing to bet there's no evidence in favor of a lack of correlation, because I'm pretty sure no one has done anything approaching a scientific study on this.

Re: Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

#29

Post by adrianhoward »

GitHub et al only provide a very small part of what I'm looking for on a CV/Resume. It's an vital small part - but a small part nevertheless.

The biggest unanswered questions I'm trying to figure out are:

* what value are you going to bring to the organisation (from the value you demonstrate bringing to your previous positions)

* how well you're going to fit into the team (from how you talk about your previous roles)

* how well you understand the position and the organisation (from how you target the information you present)

GitHub et al don't really help with these much.

What GitHub et al do is make fact checking / reference chasing easier. You include some links to github and lanyrd and your background looks more credible - but by themselves they're not going to get you the job.

Re: Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

#30

Post by theorique »

droithomme wrote: post #11

These arguments that the only worthy developers have tons of public facing open source projects are tiresome. Probably less than 1% of developers have GitHub repos and there's no correlation between skill level and having a GitHub repo. If you have extensive and current open source contributions, for most people it means you're unemployed, or you're violating your employer's contract terms. Evaluating a GitHub repo f…

A github repo is probably not worth scrutiny before a phone screen, but if you're at the stage of second interviews and dinners with the candidate, it's probably worth a close look.

It definitely depends on the culture of different companies - for example, I work in finance and my day-to-day work is proprietary and not for public consumption, but my strange personal side projects wind up in bitbucket or github.

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