Another proposed hiring metric that is likely to favor the stereotypical coding-since-childhood male developer. IRC channels are often just as bad if not worse than mailing lists when it comes to providing a welcoming space for minorities.
IRC as a Hiring Filter
11–20 of 91 posts
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#12Is IRC still a widely used protocol? I used it for years about 10-15 years ago, but I rarely hear of people around me using it currently.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#13I haven't used IRC since middle school, back when I was 31337. Way back from the days when there was a leading '3.'
It's great you mention 'being a prick,' because that's what I said out loud as I read your article. I was tickled by the fact that you mentioned it, so I do respect that you know your strengths.
This might work for you, and for the projects you work on, and I think it's not a bad recommendation for positions that need... that kind of stuff.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#14I forgot what the word meant so here is the definition for anyone else:
---
A custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important.
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Besides the mentioned Github and open source project participation other shibboleth I use is some experience or knowledge of functional languages -- Scala, Haskell, Lisp, Erlang, F# and such.
I don't use them as hard guidelines but these just proved to be good heuristics in the past. Chances are high if someone is good at Haskell they will be good at many hard problems we throw at them.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#15I thought we all used Slack by now?
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#16This is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. IRC is an extremely narrow, exclusive and whitebread club. I'm personally kind of skeptical of most diversity-based complaints about improperly biased screening in hiring -- but man, this would really take the cake. As a daily IRC user, it would still be off putting to me.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#17"Being a prick is generally not a good thing, but it is conditionally necessary" – this is where I stopped reading!
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#18Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#19Is IRC still a widely used protocol? I used it for years about 10-15 years ago, but I rarely hear of people around me using it currently.
IRC is still the bread and butter for a large variety of free software projects. I don't see that changing soon.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#20I'm very technical, I've written hacks for online games, boot loaders, my own micro-operating system, accounting software, http servers. I've written patches for snort (the ids, not public) and a ton of other stuff.
Yet I'm not on irc, I'd be a hire you'd miss if you used irc as a screening filter.
> "and I have actually decided not to work with specific developers before in a professional setting because they literally could not figure out how connect to freenode and join a keyed channel"
How about you just talk to people in the way they're used too? Instead of deriding them for not using . I know how to use irc, so this scenario does not completely apply to me, but it's very possible that a very technical person has never seen it before and has trouble with the irc commands or w/e. Especially since irc is really becoming a relic of the past, and newer hackers/programmers might never have used or seen it.