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Github is Your New Resume

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Re: Github is Your New Resume

#21

Post by galenward »

unshift wrote: post #2

this may be true in startup land, where hires are evaluated by the engineers/managers/founders but it's absolutely not the case in the world of BigCorps. many recruiters (including internal ones) are less technical than anyone would like and have to operate on looking at key words in a resume before deciding what to pass along to managers. a github account with a bunch of code in it would be so confusing they'd just…

Maybe a better title would be "Github is Your new Resume... At Progressive Companies With Strong Engineering Organizations."

I think Daniel nailed it.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#22

Post by tzs »

There are two issues with this.

1. It excludes developers who have managed to find jobs that are sufficiently challenging, difficult, and interesting that their jobs keep them fully occupied, and so they simply do not have the time or energy left over to contribute to a bunch of open stuff on Github.

2. What happens after you hire someone? Do you have any policy to ensure that the job won't take too much of their time, or won't be too challenging and interesting, so as to leave them the time and energy to continue working on various open stuff on Github?

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#23

Post by wladh »

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 be overlooking some good people.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#24

Post by almightygod »

unshift wrote: post #2

this may be true in startup land, where hires are evaluated by the engineers/managers/founders but it's absolutely not the case in the world of BigCorps. many recruiters (including internal ones) are less technical than anyone would like and have to operate on looking at key words in a resume before deciding what to pass along to managers. a github account with a bunch of code in it would be so confusing they'd just…

I agree, a recruiter is not going to know what to look for on github. But the engineering team should, if they are worth joining. I think sites like coderwall.com and vizualize.me are interesting in that they summarize your experience to get you past the initial quick screening.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#25

Post by bronson »

eropple wrote: post #19
stevelosh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using Mercurial instead of Git you can create a mirror on GitHub with little effort (unless you're doing something pretty crazy with your DAG): http://hgtip.com/tips/advanced/2009-11-09-create-a-git-mirro... This also lets git users contribute to your project, so you get the benefit of GitHub's community without having to deal with git.

Interesting, but this doesn't address the other problem--I fundamentally dislike Github! (I use Bitbucket because of consistently stellar support from Atlassian and an overall pleasant working experience.) And going outside my current, working ecosystem for benefits I consider dubious at best--the overwhelming majority of open-source projects get no outside commits, ever, and magic Github pixie dust doesn't really ch…

So BitBucket is your resume. Where's the problem?

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#26

Post by shaggyfrog »

At first I thought "No, LinkedIn is my New Resume."

But then I realized neither are. Because when a recruiter wants a resume, they want to see a concise document that details exactly how your experience matches their job requirements. Github can't be that because it would require that (probably non-technical) recruiter to slog through a lot of stuff to get to what they want to see. Which none of them will actually do.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#27

Post by cletus »

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 students and recent grads but once people are employed it's value drops off significantly (IMHO). From a hiring perspective, you're also greatly limited your field of candidates if you only look at Github profiles.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#28

Post by almightygod »

gaius wrote: post #13
programminggeek wrote: post #9

I like the idea of GitHub as a resume, but most of the code I drop in GitHub is closed source and I don't spend a lot of free time hacking on other people's projects. So, while a GitHub resume is a great idea if you do a lot of open source hacking, it is not nearly as useful if you are working on private code.

Yeah. I mean, accountants and lawyers don't publish accounts and cases they've worked on pro-bono do they?

not yet but I think as far as making use of the web, devs are on the early start of a trend. Think about blogs, they were widely used in the tech community before mass adoption, now my mom even has one. I suspect you will find more and more industries figuring out ways to share their professional experience online

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#29

Post by lowglow »

tzs wrote: post #22

There are two issues with this. 1. It excludes developers who have managed to find jobs that are sufficiently challenging, difficult, and interesting that their jobs keep them fully occupied, and so they simply do not have the time or energy left over to contribute to a bunch of open stuff on Github. 2. What happens after you hire someone? Do you have any policy to ensure that the job won't take too much of their tim…

I love Github, but I certainly must agree with point number 1. I work as a CTO at a start-up here in SF full-time (which means, 8am-2am). We have to a lot of developers and designers around the world which means when I'm not coding, chances are I'm managing. This leaves me very little time to contribute to my own personal projects, much less open source projects.

I'd say that using Github as a resume is a great idea for Jr. Developers and students looking to get some "cred" in the real world. But that really just refers back to knowing your industry and being professional about your work.

Re: Github is Your New Resume

#30

Post by enjalot »

eropple wrote: post #19
stevelosh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using Mercurial instead of Git you can create a mirror on GitHub with little effort (unless you're doing something pretty crazy with your DAG): http://hgtip.com/tips/advanced/2009-11-09-create-a-git-mirro... This also lets git users contribute to your project, so you get the benefit of GitHub's community without having to deal with git.

Interesting, but this doesn't address the other problem--I fundamentally dislike Github! (I use Bitbucket because of consistently stellar support from Atlassian and an overall pleasant working experience.) And going outside my current, working ecosystem for benefits I consider dubious at best--the overwhelming majority of open-source projects get no outside commits, ever, and magic Github pixie dust doesn't really ch…

I'm sure a bucket full of your source code on bitbucket will serve the same purpose when interviewing. I'm on the job hunt and in interviewing with some YC startups we haven't really gotten to my github, since they more were interested in some of the closed-source projects I've done at other jobs. I think the overall point of the article is to be able to show people you can code rather than just list it as a bullet point in a document.
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