I feel like the author recently learned the word "shibboleth" and just wanted an excuse to use it as many times as possible in an article.
IRC as a Hiring Filter
71–80 of 91 posts
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have not seen anything in the RFC 1459,2810, 2811, 2812, 2813 preventing females from using irc protocol. And obviously you never used IRC if you think that it's somehow not a welcoming space to minorities.
Apparently all these downvotes come from people who never used IRC.. and never took a part in a flame war on usenet, or overtook a channel on IRC.. Keep them coming, I still have enough karma left :)
I downvoted you, as someone who spent years hanging around on IRC large parts of my free time, and who based on your comment questions how much experience you have with IRC.
For a while, it was my main source of social interaction overall. 20 years ago I used to pick up women on IRC - most of my dates for years came that way.
At the same time, while certainly there are women and minorities on IRC, I've seen few environments that could turn incredibly ugly and sexist and bigoted so quickly, or that could wear women in particular down so quickly and drive them away. It at least used to take an incredibly thick skin to be a woman on IRC.
In fact, back in the day, one of the most effective way of picking up women on IRC, was to simply set yourself apart from what they quickly became used to, by making fun of the endless stream of horny teenage boys anyone with a somewhat female-sounding nick used to have to deal with, no matter what channels they were on.
The extent certainly does vary by network, and channel, but watching over the shoulder of a woman using IRC anywhere without very strict policies and very specific audiences can be very enlightening unless they hide their gender. And many do.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#73Uh, IRC? Really? Now I know the 90s are back.
Let me know if you have a position open for a Gopher developer.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have not seen anything in the RFC 1459,2810, 2811, 2812, 2813 preventing females from using irc protocol. And obviously you never used IRC if you think that it's somehow not a welcoming space to minorities.
Apparently all these downvotes come from people who never used IRC.. and never took a part in a flame war on usenet, or overtook a channel on IRC.. Keep them coming, I still have enough karma left :)
[deleted]
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#75Uh, IRC? Really? Now I know the 90s are back. Let me know if you have a position open for a Gopher developer.
http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/
Start by writing gopher plugin for chrome. :)
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently all these downvotes come from people who never used IRC.. and never took a part in a flame war on usenet, or overtook a channel on IRC.. Keep them coming, I still have enough karma left :)
I downvoted you, as someone who spent years hanging around on IRC large parts of my free time, and who based on your comment questions how much experience you have with IRC. For a while, it was my main source of social interaction overall. 20 years ago I used to pick up women on IRC - most of my dates for years came that way. At the same time, while certainly there are women and minorities on IRC, I've seen few envir…
"I downvoted you"
No hard feelings. I lived through a fair share of flamewars, and stuff like karma holds little meaning to my overall well being.
"while certainly there are women and minorities on IRC, I've seen few environments that could turn incredibly ugly and sexist and bigoted so quickly, or that could wear women in particular down so quickly and drive them away."
Here is the whole problem - claiming that IRC is bad for minorities is like claiming that all establishments serving food and drinks are.. and while this may be true for pubs, it certainly is not for restaurants.
It all depends where you hang out, and on technical channels, I have never seen anything that would suggest that minorities are not welcomed.. in fact nobody cares who or what you are, and you have no reason to share that information if you believe that this somehow may affect how people treat you.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#77"A simple `/ctcp $nick version` would be quite insightful to the tastes and possibly technical floor of the user."
insightful? it tells you if the person uses irc on a regular basis already (in which case they might have a native client) or whether they use something else usually (in which case they might use the simplest web-based client they can find on google).
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#78Another proposed hiring metric that is likely to favor the stereotypical coding-since-childhood male developer. IRC channels are often just as bad if not worse than mailing lists when it comes to providing a welcoming space for minorities.
Maybe it's because of the channels I do and don't use, but I've found IRC communities to be mostly unwelcoming in general, and not more-so towards any specific race/gender/religion/etc groups. It's hard to be racist against somebody whose race you do not know, because your only insight into their physical existence is their chosen nick. This article is a pretty solid point of evidence that IRC communities are insular…
If you go to a dark alley, you can expect to get mugged, but that does not mean that the whole city is out to get you.
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#79On the other hand, I'd probably not want to work for someone who thought IRC was the best solution for team communication in 2015, and certainly not for someone who thought it was better to bang your collective head against all of IRC's problems instead of paying a small amount for Slack or Flowdock or another solution that works well out of the box. IRC is still useful and relevant for a lot of OSS, but it's definit…
What problems are you referring to?
Re: IRC as a Hiring Filter
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course not, the breath of technology these days is huge. Knowledge of irc, a chat protocol that's been in decline since 2003 and perhaps used by about 400k people daily, is by no means indicative of technical skill. Can you imagine that it'd be kind of hard to join to join a channel for your interview if you've never been told how or were granted the time to find out? Sure it's popular in opensource/hackers/etc, b…
Irc is easy. It does not require huge knowledge. If you can't login to irc channel, even by simply typing "web irc client" in google and clicking on the first link, you are not a technical person.
If it's easy, why use it as a filter?