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Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

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Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#241

Post by silverbax88 »

Retra wrote: post #227
silverbax88 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more likely to ask what source control you have used. If you say Git, I'm going to ask why. I'm going to figure out if you really understand source code or you just use what's popular. That is not a statement about Git or any other source control. But I don't need to see your github account to figure out what level of developer you are (or what level you think you are).

I use git because I was taught it and have found no reason to transition elsewhere. I know that's not a good reason to use git. If I'm to consider alternatives, I'm going to have to set aside the 10 million other things I could be learning, many of which are actual obstacles to my workflow. Oh, I could learn SVN. Or Mercurial. Or Node.js, Groovy, MFC, solaris, AngularJS, Adobe Illustrator, Guitar, Unicode, Python, We…

Well, for starters, the person interviewing you (in this case, ME) DOES know all of the different source control versions. That doesn't mean you have to know them, but it does matter to me why you think yours is best. Mercurial guys think theirs is best. SVN guys think theirs is best. Why? Why not? That tells me a lot more about how you think as a developer than which tool you actually use.

I mean, I had to use ClearCase for years and hated it. But I know how it works and why I hated it.

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#242

Post by Retra »

silverbax88 wrote: post #241
Retra wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use git because I was taught it and have found no reason to transition elsewhere. I know that's not a good reason to use git. If I'm to consider alternatives, I'm going to have to set aside the 10 million other things I could be learning, many of which are actual obstacles to my workflow. Oh, I could learn SVN. Or Mercurial. Or Node.js, Groovy, MFC, solaris, AngularJS, Adobe Illustrator, Guitar, Unicode, Python, We…

Well, for starters, the person interviewing you (in this case, ME) DOES know all of the different source control versions. That doesn't mean you have to know them, but it does matter to me why you think yours is best. Mercurial guys think theirs is best. SVN guys think theirs is best. Why? Why not? That tells me a lot more about how you think as a developer than which tool you actually use. I mean, I had to use Clear…

But I don't think mine is best, I think it is merely good enough.

From this end, it would strike me as a hypocrisy: "I don't care which religion you follow, so long as you believe the one you follow is the best and you can rationalize that to yourself."

That doesn't really tell you much. It's like if you are interviewing a philosopher and say "where is your toga and beard? How you choose your toga and beard style is important to evaluating what kind of philosopher you are." What are you basing that on? Why do you think source control selection is relevant to the work you are trying to do?

It seems to me like a totally pointless question, except for the fact that it is a question and it will fill the time and require someone to talk.

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#243

Post by silverbax88 »

stdbrouw wrote: post #199
silverbax88 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more likely to ask what source control you have used. If you say Git, I'm going to ask why. I'm going to figure out if you really understand source code or you just use what's popular. That is not a statement about Git or any other source control. But I don't need to see your github account to figure out what level of developer you are (or what level you think you are).

"Because it's popular" is a great way to pick your plumbing, though. The opposite is the awesome developer who is so religious about all the tools and languages that he uses that nobody wants to work with them.

It's a good place to start. But I want to know that the person using a tool has a better understanding of what they are using than "everybody else uses it".

The most popular solution could be the best one. I just want to hire people who think for themselves because I don't have time to do their thinking for them. But first I need to make sure they are really adept at problem solving and can adapt.

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#244

Post by silverbax88 »

jboy55 wrote: post #154
Raphmedia wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of the 120 developers where I work, about 5 have active github accounts. Hiring based on github is ridiculous.

I don't expect to see one for professional devs, a lot of time what we develop we aren't allowed to share. Or, if its a side project, its not necessarily open source. However, for college grads, or those without a CS degree and transitioning from a bootcamp, a github account really sets you apart and is becoming a must .

I don't agree with that. I actively hire guys off of internship. I welcome it. And I've even told guys when they were good enough to get more money somewhere else and I couldn't get it approved to keep them. Because a few years later, when they are established and I'm hiring that level of dev, I want to be able to try and get them again. And I have.

I don't really need to see a GitHub account. Actually, I don't want to see it at all, because I don't have time. Let's just talk about what you've built, what got you excited and what types of things you like to really get heads down in. I'm going to slip in some tech questions during the conversation but if you're a solid programmer you probably won't even notice it. If you're not, you're going to give me a deer-in-headlights look or worse, try to bullshit me. I'm not going to call you on it, but I'm not going to hire you, either.

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#245

Post by interdrift »

lachenmayer wrote: post #97

Hey Marek, I see you've been accepted at UCL, would you like to check out what London is like? We at HackCampus http://hackcampus.io/ could offer you a 10-week internship at some amazing startups (GoCardless, SwiftKey, Kano and more) in London this summer. It's well-paid, and we'll give you free accommodation over the summer with a batch of other awesome student hackers like yourself. http://hackcampus.io/internship/…

Hello, I've just applied for that amazing opportunity. Thanks for posting. One thing I've noticed for which I'm too shy to send you an e-mail is if you go to :

http://hackcampus.io/internship/settings/ it says :

Username Enter your current password.

Just thought I should let you know, again, great opportunity hope I have the opportunity to meet with you someday :).

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#246

Post by Raphmedia »

aquadrop wrote: post #216
Raphmedia wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of the 120 developers where I work, about 5 have active github accounts. Hiring based on github is ridiculous.

Are any of those 5 githubbers in the "lower half" amongst all 120 developers?

Mixed. It's mostly people with interest in open-source. Or some people that encountered bugs, fixed them and then abandoned/forgot their github account.

That being said, we use private bitbuckets for all things internal. It's not as if people couldn't work with git. People are simply not interested in open source / github.

That said, english is a second language here, so that may explain why people are not interested in working on open source projects that are mostly made in english.

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#247

Post by mikekchar »

corobo wrote: post #235
mikekchar wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably lots of people are like you. I think the world is changing, though, and I think it is instructive to note that the person complaining about the lack of Github content is 20 years old. I've read hundreds of CVs for web developers in the last 2 years and I could point to only a handful that didn't include some kind of reference to a portfolio (usually on Github). Even though you say that you don't care about a…

A problem you might find here is that people with actual real world experience but without being 'rockstars' are stifled by contracts that stop them being able to have a decent github account. Of course in many cases you can't just publish internal code from your place of work but a lot seem to also include clauses that claim ownership of anything you do outside of work too. Personally speaking that's why my own gith…

I hear you. I have lived through that. When I worked at a few Microsoft partners back in the bad old days I even had stipulations in my contract that I wasn't allowed to contribute to free software projects without permission. Every time I asked for permission I was denied. When I was young I put up with it because progressing in these companies seemed to be important to me. Now I simply would not sign such a contract. I'm a contractor now and so I'm a lot more free than before, however in my last job I got explicit assurances up front that I was allowed to write my own code.

Luckily there are a lot of places around that will accommodate you these days. They may not be the highest paying jobs, but I'm willing to take a huge pay cut to ensure my freedom to code.

Re: Take me as an Intern – 19yo student seeking internship

#248

Post by aries1980 »

corobo wrote: post #235
mikekchar wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably lots of people are like you. I think the world is changing, though, and I think it is instructive to note that the person complaining about the lack of Github content is 20 years old. I've read hundreds of CVs for web developers in the last 2 years and I could point to only a handful that didn't include some kind of reference to a portfolio (usually on Github). Even though you say that you don't care about a…

A problem you might find here is that people with actual real world experience but without being 'rockstars' are stifled by contracts that stop them being able to have a decent github account. Of course in many cases you can't just publish internal code from your place of work but a lot seem to also include clauses that claim ownership of anything you do outside of work too. Personally speaking that's why my own gith…

Indeed, but many company don't want to hire people who just take, have a decent life using free software, but never take the extra mile or sacrifice free time to contribute back.
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