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I have no side code projects to show you

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Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#251

Post by candiodari »

trevor-e wrote: post #210
eropple wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side? As somebody who has plenty of open source projects--the set of employers who actually looks at them is within epsilon of zero. I have not once, not once gotten a meaningful question from anything I have posted on Github in any interview or client meeting even after suggesting up-front that it's worth taking a look. And I used to interview on a monthly basis just to keep in practice! No--instead you…

FWIW, I'll look at a candidate's Github account whenever they list it on their resume. That doesn't mean I'll bring it up during the interview unless there was something particularly interesting to talk about. It's pretty useful for screening candidates, especially looking at code written <1 year ago. I do keep in mind that code written in free time might not have the same standards as production code, but often ther…

You realize that github dates can easily be falsified, right ?

Besides, you are only using this as a negative ? So you'll actually hire people who don't put in extra effort over people who put slightly substandard free time code online ? That seems like a losing strategy.

I've always found that willingness to put in effort vastly outperforms ability. Not to an infinite extent, but quite a bit.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#252

Post by vonmoltke »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #76
sidlls wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you believe software development is neither engineering nor science, and is purely creative. It isn't, though, and demanding a portfolio is almost as terrible a practice as Cracking the Coding Interview style interviews.

In traditional engineering disciplines like civil engineering, organizing bodies and licensure communicate competency, applicability, and ethical awareness. Software development has no industry-wide equivalent. There are small certifications for Cisco et al but for the general practice there's no standard.

This frequently comes up in discussions like this. Licensure is a joke with respect to demonstrating competency. Yes, the initial hurdle is high. However, once you are licensed it's hard to lose it. I would never rely on licensure as a measure of competency or currency.

On top of that, many electrical and mechanical engineers are not licensed because they don't need to be. (Everybody likes to jump to the civils in these discussions and forget about us, since civils are basically required to be licensed.). EEs and MEs don't get put through the same bullshit that this industry puts developers through.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#253

Post by makecheck »

You have to look at side projects as helping to build you up in ways that are not explicitly paid for. This isn’t limited to software. Consider physical labor; if it’s someone’s job to do lots of work that requires massive strength and endurance, is there ANY employer that will pay you extra for the time you’d be spending at the gym to meet the required strength? No; they’ll simply ignore the person demanding that investment, and hire the person that already fits their needs. School is another example of something you work hard on without really being paid.

On the flipside, I do hope that employers are good at actually understanding open-source project pages. For instance, GitHub is terrible about letting people create profiles with prominently-displayed forks of dozens of projects as if they’re contributing when those people may actually have done nothing on any of the projects they’ve displayed. Similarly, having a single project should not be an indication that you’re worse than someone with 10 projects; there are some legitimately huge problems and “one project” might be a full-time job in itself.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#254

Post by Macha »

eropple wrote: post #42
warcher wrote: post #31

I’m not mad at you, but as the dude on the other side of the desk, I have to decide whether you can cut it and I’m fine saying no. I could make you do some whiteboard problems, but I think whiteboard problems are pretty far removed from your day to day development and I am uncomfortable relying on them as a proxy for your ability to ship code. I don’t really disagree with your philosophy of working while you’re worki…

On the flip side? As somebody who has plenty of open source projects--the set of employers who actually looks at them is within epsilon of zero. I have not once, not once gotten a meaningful question from anything I have posted on Github in any interview or client meeting even after suggesting up-front that it's worth taking a look. And I used to interview on a monthly basis just to keep in practice! No--instead you…

So when I was interviewing as a intern and junior developer, I had _most_ places that actually interviewed me look at my side projects I'd listed on my CV. The one interview I've done at an intermediate level (at a company that reached out to me) also did.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#255

Post by ultrasaurus »

kelnos wrote: post #32
shortsightedsid wrote: post #25

It's funny that the tech industry is so insistent on side projects. I mean - would you hire a marketing person based on their 'side projects' or a corporate lawyer purely based on their pro-bono work? Likewise, who on earth asks a building contractor if they have any side projects? You would ask for references or find a contractor via someone you know. What about recruiters themselves? How does one judge if a person…

The next time I'm interviewing in front of a hiring manager who asks me about my side coding projects, I'm going to ask them about their side managing projects.

I realize that you're being glib, but I have had a candidate ask me about someone I've mentored (which is basically a management side project) and I thought that was a great question.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#256

Post by always_good »

Pica_soO wrote: post #225
warcher wrote: post #31

I’m not mad at you, but as the dude on the other side of the desk, I have to decide whether you can cut it and I’m fine saying no. I could make you do some whiteboard problems, but I think whiteboard problems are pretty far removed from your day to day development and I am uncomfortable relying on them as a proxy for your ability to ship code. I don’t really disagree with your philosophy of working while you’re worki…

Eh, the Duds can fork github projects too, add some minor feature and release the "project" to rot. You do not get to see people who get stuff done- you get to see people who optimized their "work"-life for the impression of getting stuff done. Not beeing ready to pour unreasonable hours in- actually is a good sign. Such a person values his/her time- and thus will think on there own, for example when handed ridiculou…

> the Duds can fork github projects too

Sounds like a boogeyman.

Since you can see right there in Github's UI that something is a fork and that they are not the main contributor to the project, the dishonest applicant would have to go through some trouble to fake it as a sideproject.

The same dishonest person can also just lie about their work history.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#257

Post by 0xfeba »

apple4ever wrote: post #202
eropple wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side? As somebody who has plenty of open source projects--the set of employers who actually looks at them is within epsilon of zero. I have not once, not once gotten a meaningful question from anything I have posted on Github in any interview or client meeting even after suggesting up-front that it's worth taking a look. And I used to interview on a monthly basis just to keep in practice! No--instead you…

You must be applying to the wrong companies then. I just got done doing interviews, and I looked at what the second round candidates had available on GitHub and their personal site, and the one who got the job had about 5 projects that were impressive. Good employers care. I care. Its not signaling. Its important.

Best company I worked at looked at my personal site and Github, albeit briefly, ahead of time and didn't ask much if anything about it (IIRC). They asked more peer-level questions. Pretty casual. As my first job out of college they didn't expect much from me but later told me the other devs were impressed. Best group of devs I've ever worked with. All of them were pretty smart, wrote nice code, comments, knew how to use version control, and configuration management. They wrote their own JS framework that interfaced with a Java backend. I would later realize (in retrospect) this code was really well written and maintained.

Worst company I worked (work) for (but pays well) had me answer a few questions on a whiteboard. One of which was 'not even wrong' (the answer was: "HTML5 gave us the tag to replace ").

They were desperate for bodies after a bunch of people left. They also partake in the usual H1B/contractor games and wonder why they have shit code. Meh, my project is going well. If they have me work on their main .NET monstrosity though, I'll quit. Haha, jokes on them.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#258

Post by viperscape »

Good for you, I’m jealous I guess. I am constantly developing and learning on my free time, and it’s a problem really. It consumes me often, tires me out over time. What do I have to show for it? Not much of real essence. I should probably focus on projects non computer related. If I only had all the time in the world

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#259

Post by dm03514 »

I'm personally in line with the OP where I don't have any fully formed side projects that I would feel very comfortable as a reflection of my current ability. I really like stackoverflow for this exact issue. Spending time with family is just more important than coding, but I'm able to easily/quickly contribute to stack overflow during work or in the off time. If someone is interested in seeing examples of how I think, help or code I can say, look at the 1000 answers on stackoverflow :p

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#260

Post by foobarian »

bad_user wrote: post #75
kelnos wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're espousing a false dichotomy. The options in evaluating a candidate aren't merely "give them whiteboard coding problems" or "examine their side projects". Give them a take-home assignment. Give them an in-person assignment where they have several hours to complete a smallish design-and-build task. There are a lot more options, and I'm getting tired of people claiming they don't know how to evaluate technical ca…

Giving a candidate a "take-home assignment" is actually the most disrespectful of the options listed. Unless you're an awesome company, with really cool projects and offering me a jaw dropping salary and benefits, then no, I'm not going to do free work for you. Even if you are an awesome company, people probably have to actually work for you to see that, so no, I'm not going to do free work for you. I'd rather spend…

I don't know what kind of homework assignments those companies give but I can't even imagine how something a candidate could code in a few hours could have internal use. It takes days for even new hires to start contributing useful projects, let alone a never-before seen candidate without knowledge or access to the codebase and internal systems.

The homeworks are mainly a time saving device on one hand, where they replace an hour of phone screen time for an engineer with hopefully less than 30 minutes of grading. For the candidate, they may take a couple of hours instead of 1, but they also allow for a more relaxed setting with use of IDEs, Google, etc. and no interviewer watching the typing and tapping their foot.

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