Why GitHub is not your CV • Hacker News Board

Re: Why GitHub is not your CV

#131

Post by hvidgaard » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 7:32 AM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #42

hvidgaard wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You either missed the point, or do not think it's a problem. > determine if a candidate cares enough to code on their own Which he is arguing that you are not a bad developer for doing other things outside of work. The vast majority of people need to not code to regenerate. I can use myself as anecdotal evidence: I'm the goto guy when it's particular difficult to solve a bug, when it's a new framework, or when the te…

> I would never pass the bar at a startup that's looking for the typical startup stereotype developer. I'm not seeing a problem with this. Not because you are a bad developer, but that you don't match the type of person they want to hire at that time. > I'm 100% certain that I make more business sense to hire than all of your average workoholic startup developer, but I would never be considered. What's your experienc…

> What's your experience as a "startup developer" that you feel justified in making that claim?

A lot of my peers work in startups and small companies. Most of them cannot make a schedule that they can meet. Many of them use the waterfall method. Most of them love to use this New Tech, because it's cool (NoSQL dbs in particular). Most of them work so much that they're less productive than I am with 40 hours a week.

I have been the sole developer for a complete rewrite of a program that gross for over a million a year, and I'm certain, absolutely certain, that most developers, and especially those who moan at "boring" work and like to use New Tech, would never have shipped anything remotely sellable.

> have you ever stopped to consider they need someone more than that for where they are at? Someone who can be more than a programmer?

The only thing I do not have, that a startup needs, is the ability to do PR. For the actual conceiving a product and evolve it, I'm just guy.

Re: Why GitHub is not your CV

#132

Post by hvidgaard » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 7:36 AM UTC

otikik wrote: post #74

hvidgaard wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You either missed the point, or do not think it's a problem. > determine if a candidate cares enough to code on their own Which he is arguing that you are not a bad developer for doing other things outside of work. The vast majority of people need to not code to regenerate. I can use myself as anecdotal evidence: I'm the goto guy when it's particular difficult to solve a bug, when it's a new framework, or when the te…

> The vast majority of people need to not code to regenerate. Citation needed. It seems to me that the majority of people don't.

Burnout is not exclusive to software developers. Any human needs to de-stress - this is well known and documented by the medical professionals.

Re: Why GitHub is not your CV

#133

Post by hvidgaard » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 7:37 AM UTC

Anderkent wrote: post #93

cnkeller wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. While I understand that many people enjoy writing code and do so for fun, there are a large number of fantastic engineers that don't (myself included). Just as I wouldn't give someone preference for a robust profile, I'm not going to penalize someone for lack thereof. There is only so much time in the day and if they can do ten hours worth of work in eight hours and choose to spend their off time with their fam…

> While I understand that many people enjoy writing code and do so for fun, there are a large number of fantastic engineers that don't (myself included). Sure, but there aren't many people who hate coding but still do it (in significant amounts) in their free time. so having a github profile is still a positive signal towards being a good coder (assuming, of course, that practice causes improvement). It would be wast…

> It would be wasteful for a company to ignore this information.

Very. All I'm trying to say it's not something you should even look at until you're later in the process of hiring.

Re: Why GitHub is not your CV

#134

Post by kybernetikos » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 10:27 AM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #124

kybernetikos wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Plenty of people have a site like http://kybernetikos.github.io/ which just tells a story about some of the projects they've got on github. I just threw that together quickly a while back and haven't updated it, but github whould make a fantastic site for a portfolio.

> Not really. Apparently not. When people are referring to using Github as your CV, they aren't talking about Github pages. They are talking about the repositories and the code. Github pages are another thing entirely, and not what is being discussed here. > but github [pages] whould make a fantastic site for a portfolio. No one would argue that github pages would make for an easy to use hosting provider for a portfo…

> When people are referring to using Github as your CV, they aren't talking about Github pages.

That's actually my point. They should be, and maybe you didn't read the comment I was replying to, but that is in fact exactly what we were talking about - "Unless you have your CV on github.."

Of course having a mess of github project pages is a bad portfolio, but each of the individual projects in your portfolio makes sense as a github project, and the fact that they give you a pleasant .github.io site to tie it all together makes it one of the best ways to host your portfolio.

It makes perfect sense to have github projects as your portfolio parts and turn it into the 'narrative' so beloved of the original author with a github pages site.

Re: Why GitHub is not your CV

#135

Post by jasonlotito » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 2:00 PM UTC

kybernetikos wrote: post #134

jasonlotito wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not really. Apparently not. When people are referring to using Github as your CV, they aren't talking about Github pages. They are talking about the repositories and the code. Github pages are another thing entirely, and not what is being discussed here. > but github [pages] whould make a fantastic site for a portfolio. No one would argue that github pages would make for an easy to use hosting provider for a portfo…

> When people are referring to using Github as your CV, they aren't talking about Github pages. That's actually my point. They should be , and maybe you didn't read the comment I was replying to, but that is in fact exactly what we were talking about - "Unless you have your CV on github.." Of course having a mess of github project pages is a bad portfolio, but each of the individual projects in your portfolio makes s…

> That's actually my point.

So then you are still missing the point. And so was the original comment you replied to. When people are talking about github as your CV, they don't care that you happened to host your website on ghpages. It's using the code repos themselves. Where you host your website is beside the point.

> It makes perfect sense to have github projects as your portfolio parts and turn it into the 'narrative' so beloved of the original author with a github pages site.

Yes. But again, that's not what's being discussed. You are in fact agreeing with the foundation of the idea.

Basically: GH Pages are merely a way to host your own personal website. The fact that it's also on GH isn't special in anyway, and you could achieve the same thing self-hosting. Remove that from the equation, and merely having GH repos is the issue.

People are saying you need that 'narrative.' How you achieve that is up to you, but relying just on the default GH repos doesn't help.