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>My original plan was to find a job, but most of the companies I contacted didn’t even want to interview me. If you happen to be in a position of authority in

>My original plan was to find a job, but most of the companies I contacted didn’t even want to interview me. If you happen to be in a position of authority in a tech company in the bay area, I would personally contact this guy and ask if one of these companies was yours. If it was, you have some serious work to do because your hiring practices are costing you more than you can easily imagine.

mgkimsal 10y ago
might be as interesting to know what companies he applied at, and how he presented himself. Did he list his projects at this time? Did he email to info@? Do people hiring for tech positions (esp out in the bay area) still filter just on school/degree, and weed out folks like max before learning anything else about them? I'm not trying to "blame the victim" so to speak as much as figure out what steps he took. Did he actually talk to a real person, and did that person review his resume/repos, and still pass (or... as is the case with almost all companies, just go silent and never respond again)?
austincheney 10y ago
I am curious how you come to that conclusion. Framework lust, particularly in the JS ecosystem, is inflated and often not representative of technical authority, experience, or sometimes even competence. If I were a hiring manager and the candidate couldn't write very basic vanilla JS I wouldn't hire them either. I don't care that they have a bunch of github stars. The inability to solve simple problems without a framework is a liability.
- TAForObvReasons 10y ago
  Github stars mean very little. It is free to give one and many people just star every repo they see. The #1 repo by stars is FreeCodeCamp. I have not used the service, but if https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11911647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11911647 is to be trusted then the count is inflated: > GitHub part is so flawed... because FreeCodeCamp inflate their popularity by requiring during onboarding for the user to star their repository yet keeping them at the top. It's like if I told everyone to vote up my Hacker News posts... and gave them the link to do it and GitHub has no remedy for that inflation. I'm also guilty of starring repos that seem cool but have not read the code or tried to use it. I've never used D3 in a project and can't speak to its quality, but I've seen some wicked cool demos and starred it as a bookmark of sorts.
  - minimaxir 10y ago
    Free Code Camp is a massive outlier. It received most stars of any repo at 177,914 stars in 2016, and the second most (the google-interview-university which has appeared a few times on HN) has only received a fraction of that at 28,727 stars in 2016, which likely did not use as much growth hacking. Full list of the Top 1000 Repos, freshly queried from BigQuery: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11bGpZq6ixlhrmQnzEUqbgbwTQwQVdtvILjp32vaOKBc/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11bGpZq6ixlhrmQnzEUqb...
    - tskaiser 10y ago
      While it is an outlier it is also proof that it is a poor system of measurement.
      - bcook 10y ago
        It is? I think the problem is how we (mis)interpret the data to mean anything more than what it actually says.
        wlesieutre 10y ago
        So what's the takeaway, "Repo stars are an accurate measurement of how many stars a repo has"?
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
- nilkn 10y ago
  I tend to agree that GitHub stars are a very dangerous metric to go off of. I tend to star repos that I think look "cool", often without trying to use them or even looking at the code at all. I've never considered it a damaging act, but I also didn't realize that some folks are encouraging others to make hiring decisions based off of GitHub stars.
antjanus 10y ago
That's complete bullshit. You can't judge the entire job market by one guy that ends up really good.
minimaxir 10y ago
The common propaganda that a GitHub-as-a-portfolio doesn't work in the real world, unfortunately. At minimum, an HR screener will never look at it and instantly dismiss the job application, even if it points to open source work, due the lack of paper education/professional experience in the field.
- knz 10y ago
  Isn't the github as a portfolio approach more for employment obtained via contacts/word of mouth than a traditional application to a HR department? It might also be reviewed by people on a hiring panel or the hiring manager depending upon the company.
coldtea 10y ago
>If it was, you have some serious work to do because your hiring practices are costing you more than you can easily imagine. Or they would just have some marginal returns for extreme opportunity costs if they improved them to also manage to get such persons.
- minimaxir 10y ago
  I'm not sure what "extreme opportunity costs" are in this context. If you're referring to onboarding time, that would be the same whether you hire someone with an demonstrated open source pedigree or you hire someone straight from Stanford.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >If you're referring to onboarding time, that would be the same whether you hire someone with an demonstrated open source pedigree or you hire someone straight from Stanford. No, I'm referring to the extreme restructuring and HR effort required to ensure you don't lose any such candidate.
    - minimaxir 10y ago
      Ah, that's fair.
1_2__3 10y ago
From the article: "I tried (again) to study Computer Science at the local technical university, but my joy of programming was (and still is) sadly not accompanied by a joy for converting numbers from the binary to the decimal system and back (much to the dismay of my parents)." This says everything you need to know right here. He's not a programmer, nor does he want to be. He wants to schmooze, be a mover and shaker, a people-person. None of that annoying maths stuff. Turns out that companies that write software need a lot of people who are absolutely interested in converting numbers and not a lot of people who just want to make connections and not be bothered with all that programmy stuff. Short version: Where a fresh-faced young post-Millenial learns that coding is not just cool fun graphical user interfaces but people need to get real work done and solve real problems. Which he doesn't like, so he decides to be a talking head instead.
- andreasklinger 10y ago
  sorry but programming isnt only about math for many programming is about creating products, which often has more to do w/ people than w/ math also if he currently wants to spend most of his time contributing to open source and giving talks/lectures to share knowhow let him be disclaimer: know max in person, studied CS myself, think that the comment above is a shame to this community

mgkimsal 10y ago

might be as interesting to know what companies he applied at, and how he presented himself. Did he list his projects at this time? Did he email to info@? Do people hiring for tech positions (esp out in the bay area) still filter just on school/degree, and weed out folks like max before learning anything else about them? I'm not trying to "blame the victim" so to speak as much as figure out what steps he took. Did he actually talk to a real person, and did that person review his resume/repos, and still pass (or... as is the case with almost all companies, just go silent and never respond again)?

austincheney 10y ago

I am curious how you come to that conclusion. Framework lust, particularly in the JS ecosystem, is inflated and often not representative of technical authority, experience, or sometimes even competence. If I were a hiring manager and the candidate couldn't write very basic vanilla JS I wouldn't hire them either. I don't care that they have a bunch of github stars. The inability to solve simple problems without a framework is a liability.

TAForObvReasons 10y ago
Github stars mean very little. It is free to give one and many people just star every repo they see. The #1 repo by stars is FreeCodeCamp. I have not used the service, but if https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11911647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11911647 is to be trusted then the count is inflated: > GitHub part is so flawed... because FreeCodeCamp inflate their popularity by requiring during onboarding for the user to star their repository yet keeping them at the top. It's like if I told everyone to vote up my Hacker News posts... and gave them the link to do it and GitHub has no remedy for that inflation. I'm also guilty of starring repos that seem cool but have not read the code or tried to use it. I've never used D3 in a project and can't speak to its quality, but I've seen some wicked cool demos and starred it as a bookmark of sorts.
- minimaxir 10y ago
  Free Code Camp is a massive outlier. It received most stars of any repo at 177,914 stars in 2016, and the second most (the google-interview-university which has appeared a few times on HN) has only received a fraction of that at 28,727 stars in 2016, which likely did not use as much growth hacking. Full list of the Top 1000 Repos, freshly queried from BigQuery: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11bGpZq6ixlhrmQnzEUqbgbwTQwQVdtvILjp32vaOKBc/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11bGpZq6ixlhrmQnzEUqb...
  - tskaiser 10y ago
    While it is an outlier it is also proof that it is a poor system of measurement.
    - bcook 10y ago
      It is? I think the problem is how we (mis)interpret the data to mean anything more than what it actually says.
      - wlesieutre 10y ago
        So what's the takeaway, "Repo stars are an accurate measurement of how many stars a repo has"?
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
nilkn 10y ago
I tend to agree that GitHub stars are a very dangerous metric to go off of. I tend to star repos that I think look "cool", often without trying to use them or even looking at the code at all. I've never considered it a damaging act, but I also didn't realize that some folks are encouraging others to make hiring decisions based off of GitHub stars.

antjanus 10y ago

That's complete bullshit. You can't judge the entire job market by one guy that ends up really good.

minimaxir 10y ago

The common propaganda that a GitHub-as-a-portfolio doesn't work in the real world, unfortunately. At minimum, an HR screener will never look at it and instantly dismiss the job application, even if it points to open source work, due the lack of paper education/professional experience in the field.

knz 10y ago
Isn't the github as a portfolio approach more for employment obtained via contacts/word of mouth than a traditional application to a HR department? It might also be reviewed by people on a hiring panel or the hiring manager depending upon the company.

coldtea 10y ago

>If it was, you have some serious work to do because your hiring practices are costing you more than you can easily imagine. Or they would just have some marginal returns for extreme opportunity costs if they improved them to also manage to get such persons.

minimaxir 10y ago
I'm not sure what "extreme opportunity costs" are in this context. If you're referring to onboarding time, that would be the same whether you hire someone with an demonstrated open source pedigree or you hire someone straight from Stanford.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >If you're referring to onboarding time, that would be the same whether you hire someone with an demonstrated open source pedigree or you hire someone straight from Stanford. No, I'm referring to the extreme restructuring and HR effort required to ensure you don't lose any such candidate.
  - minimaxir 10y ago
    Ah, that's fair.

1_2__3 10y ago

From the article: "I tried (again) to study Computer Science at the local technical university, but my joy of programming was (and still is) sadly not accompanied by a joy for converting numbers from the binary to the decimal system and back (much to the dismay of my parents)." This says everything you need to know right here. He's not a programmer, nor does he want to be. He wants to schmooze, be a mover and shaker, a people-person. None of that annoying maths stuff. Turns out that companies that write software need a lot of people who are absolutely interested in converting numbers and not a lot of people who just want to make connections and not be bothered with all that programmy stuff. Short version: Where a fresh-faced young post-Millenial learns that coding is not just cool fun graphical user interfaces but people need to get real work done and solve real problems. Which he doesn't like, so he decides to be a talking head instead.

andreasklinger 10y ago
sorry but programming isnt only about math for many programming is about creating products, which often has more to do w/ people than w/ math also if he currently wants to spend most of his time contributing to open source and giving talks/lectures to share knowhow let him be disclaimer: know max in person, studied CS myself, think that the comment above is a shame to this community