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The dispassionate developer

blog.ploeh.dk

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Re: The dispassionate developer

#51

Post by pydry »

notsuoh wrote: post #16
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the hiring side, it’s rare to see someone come through with significant OSS contributions. A small bug fix here or there is about the most I see from 90% of resumes. Every once in a while we see someone with a lot of open source contributions, or even full leadership of a popular project. These people would really prefer if we believed that OSS contributions and GitHub profiles replaced resumes or CVs, because it’…

Taking that a step further, we often actively discourage looking at OSS contributions during resume review for the same reason we don't offer take home interview assignments: it's biased against people who don't have a whole lot of extra time at home. When we have done either of the above, the singles who work part time have a bunch of time to perfect their work suddenly have a lot to show over the single parents who…

>I say "often" because OSS contributions can still be an indicator of something, but it's not really clear what.

It's a fairly clear signal of skill quality and attitude.

Reading open source commits/PRs and issue trackers tells you quite a lot about a developer which you can't see without some sort of a test (often not even then).

>it's biased against people who don't have the time

Surely any career that requires a high level of skill and practice honing that skill is biased against people who don't have the time?

What's special about open source?

Re: The dispassionate developer

#52

Post by the_only_law »

giantg2 wrote: post #43
the_only_law wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can usually find interesting stuff, but nothing I’d ever be qualified for. Can’t speak to what most of it pays, but if I had to guess: more than I’m making now, less than I could be making theoretically.

This area is mostly boring business CRUD. I have the qualification problem too. Nobody wants to train, and nobody needs FileNet or Neoxam resources.

Ah yeah, generally I look at jobs all over the place. It’s still relatively rare to see something I’d qualify as “interesting” but I do see them. Typically when I do find them they require significant professional experience within the respective domain. The worst possible example I can think of are any jobs dealing with scientific software where it’s made clear they want scientists who can program a little not programmers who know a bit of science.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#53

Post by PragmaticPulp »

deergomoo wrote: post #44
notsuoh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking that a step further, we often actively discourage looking at OSS contributions during resume review for the same reason we don't offer take home interview assignments: it's biased against people who don't have a whole lot of extra time at home. When we have done either of the above, the singles who work part time have a bunch of time to perfect their work suddenly have a lot to show over the single parents who…

We're having a bit of a debate about this internally as the company I work for is struggling to hire good candidates. For a while we've had a take-home test and that has increased our success rate somewhat. But as you say, we really don't want to lay unreasonable expectations on people who may have other obligations, but we've had many people in the past who've interviewed very well but turned out to be completely in…

> we've had many people in the past who've interviewed very well but turned out to be completely incompetent when assigned to a real project.

Unpopular opinion on HN: This is actually quite common when you hire based purely on resumes or credentials. Some people are really good at interviewing and being charismatic enough to convince people to hire them. There are a lot of candidates who can talk the talk but really just want a job where they can browse Reddit and Twitter all day while writing a couple lines of code every once in a while. There are a lot of companies that are big enough for these people to blend in for years.

Take home tests in the range of 1-4 hours shouldn’t be an undue burden on any applicants, if you give sufficient time to return the test. Many candidates wouldn’t bat an eye at taking a day to interview on site, so asking them to spend a couple hours of their free time on an interview isn’t really a disproportionate ask.

Giving someone a 20-40 hour take home project would be ridiculous, of course, but reasonably sized problems are perfectly reasonable.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#54

Post by Der_Einzige »

kubanczyk wrote: post #23
alexashka wrote: post #6

It's interesting to read blogs, they almost universally make these leaps of faith that x implies y without noticing that they do it and spend the rest of the time operating on these faith-based assumptions. Let me give a couple of examples from this blog: Software devs had anti-capitalist values -> free software -> unintended consequences -> customer is the product Do you see where the leap of faith occurred? The las…

Not sure why you got the downvotes. The article in its entirety is a grand non sequitur . Observations. Rambling. "I don't know. Be dispassionate."

As usual, lightly downvoted comments on HN usually have more value than comments which get upvoted. The community has poor choices about how it votes here.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#55

Post by ARandomerDude »

giantg2 wrote: post #35
ARandomerDude wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true of most things, I've noticed. My neighbor is an amazing carpenter. He makes beautiful furniture from exotic pieces of wood he's had for 10 years just waiting to be used on that perfect project. I told him he could make a fortune selling things like what he's got in his living room, but he just shrugged and said it would take away all the fun. He's right.

Yeah, I use to make Android apps. Now I don't see the point.

That wasn't my point. You have to make a living, and in that regard fun is a nice-to-have. My point was even things people do for hobbies often become toilsome once they are your business.

My neighbor has a job unrelated to carpentry, and woodworking is his hobby. He doesn't want to ruin it.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#56

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

deergomoo wrote: post #44
notsuoh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking that a step further, we often actively discourage looking at OSS contributions during resume review for the same reason we don't offer take home interview assignments: it's biased against people who don't have a whole lot of extra time at home. When we have done either of the above, the singles who work part time have a bunch of time to perfect their work suddenly have a lot to show over the single parents who…

We're having a bit of a debate about this internally as the company I work for is struggling to hire good candidates. For a while we've had a take-home test and that has increased our success rate somewhat. But as you say, we really don't want to lay unreasonable expectations on people who may have other obligations, but we've had many people in the past who've interviewed very well but turned out to be completely in…

I don't know how receptive your management would be to this, or what it costs, but at my last job, all interviewers were required to take interview training. It made a real improvement in my ability to suss out a candidate and understand what they could actually do vs what they claimed they could.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#57

Post by danans »

> ... employers want employees who are passionate about their craft.

> ... I'd like such people to care about their vocation, but I'd prefer that they keep a cool head and make as rational decisions as possible.

> Why should programmers be passionate?

While I agree with the gist of the article, the author should realize that "passionate" as used in this context is effectively synonymous with "cares", and is only used because the word "care" has lost most of its impact over time, being mostly associated with the phrase "doesn't care". This is common linguistic phenomenon.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#58

Post by whatshisface »

kodah wrote: post #40
whatshisface wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software has an inherent bias towards people from prestigious schools and enforces that bias via heavy algorithm testing that is otherwise mostly not needed in software. Can't any school teach the same algorithms material? It's not exactly secret. Algorithms interviews seem more like surreptitious IQ tests than anything else.

Good question. I'm a drop out (a byproduct of paying for school while working in 2009) and it's been difficult to put my life on pause to go back. College grads get the luxury of having seen algorithms before and being taught how to negotiate and identify them in school with a fair amount of practice. I'm sure everyone studies for interviews, but for someone like me that study also often coincides with learning somet…

Then it's closer to "CS program vs anything else," moreso than "prestigious schools vs anything else." There are plenty of non-prestigious schools in the world, more of them than there are Stanfords, in fact.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#59

Post by titanomachy »

As an engineer in the US who's worked at three very different companies, I haven't seen any of the things that this article is complaining about. While most applications had a space to link your GitHub account, I've never had the sense that a company expected me to have open-source contributions. My co-workers don't do open-source work in their free time, or if they do they don't talk about it.

The author also claims that employers don't invest in training and expect us to do it on our own time. Every employer I've had has been thrilled when I used my paid hours to study and master technology relevant to the job. Although it's true that I've never really had much formal "training", no one ever told me to stop learning stuff and just do my job.

I'm sure I've been very fortunate, but I'm curious why my experience differs so much from the author's.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#60

Post by bauerd »

pydry wrote: post #51
notsuoh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking that a step further, we often actively discourage looking at OSS contributions during resume review for the same reason we don't offer take home interview assignments: it's biased against people who don't have a whole lot of extra time at home. When we have done either of the above, the singles who work part time have a bunch of time to perfect their work suddenly have a lot to show over the single parents who…

>I say "often" because OSS contributions can still be an indicator of something, but it's not really clear what. It's a fairly clear signal of skill quality and attitude. Reading open source commits/PRs and issue trackers tells you quite a lot about a developer which you can't see without some sort of a test (often not even then). >it's biased against people who don't have the time Surely any career that requires a h…

It's not about merit but about bias
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