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No, it doesn't mean you suck. But it does mean that those with full GitHub profiles usually spend every waking our programming. If they have e that much passion

No, it doesn't mean you suck. But it does mean that those with full GitHub profiles usually spend every waking our programming. If they have e that much passion and programming hours under their belt, and you can see their code examples, the chances of hiring a false positive is a lot lower. It's all about mitigating risk. No one is saying you are worse, but hiring you is more of a risk than hiring someone such as I just mentioned above. It's harder to really know how good/passionate you are.

ghaff 10y ago
>It's harder to really know how good/passionate you are. Sorry, but I have to really object to this idea that programming every waking hour with great passion is a positive job qualification. Sounds more like a recipe for burnout.
- throwanem 10y ago
  It is exactly that. Ask me how I know.
  - phkahler 10y ago
    We interviewed a guy and without prompting (that's probably off limits anyway) he told us how he's divorced and has no real social life, so working long hours for us would be just fine by him. I wasn't impressed by him to start with, but that just put the final nail in the coffin for me. Not only did it sound a bit desperate, I'd prefer someone with a healthy attitude toward work and life. The other hiring managers felt the same way.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Marital status certainly is off-limits, and I've found a good general rule to be that anything that's impermissible for me to ask an interviewee is something that also doesn't merit mention when I'm on the other side of the table, both because to raise it puts my interlocutor in an uncomfortable position, and because such things really are not relevant in any case.
    - duderific 10y ago
      I'm glad to hear that attitude still exists among hiring managers. I'm working at an otherwise great company that doesn't give a rat's behind about work/life balance. I.e., if you're not still here at 6:30 or 7:00 PM you must not be a team player. Never mind if you have a wife and small child that you'd like to get home and have dinner with. Edited for clarity.
mattlondon 10y ago
I agree to a certain extent that seeing examples of work reduces recruiting risk, but I disagree that looking for people spending "every waking hour" programming is something positive. If I am interviewing people then I would try to avoid this line of thinking (i.e. how much time is spent out of work programming) as it strikes me as unfair. My reasons are that not all candidates could spend every waking hour of their time even if they wanted to for various legitimate reasons. For example if you are a parent looking after a baby/toddler, it would be totally unreasonable to expect you to be coding "every waking hour". If you had two candidates that were 100% equal except one had no real non-work-commitments of note and spent their evenings messing around on github, and the other was a parent who wanted to code all night but had to look after their kids in the evenings, which would you pick? If you picked the non-parent based only on the non-work github commits are you descriminating someone based on the fact they have kids? I dunno - but I thinik it would need careful consideration. As I said - I dunno, but it strikes me as this would be an unfair thing to look for. Afterall, you're recruiting fill a role, not recruiting a lifestyle.
- rodgerd 10y ago
  > I agree to a certain extent that seeing examples of work reduces recruiting risk Not really. It doesn't tell me how well they play with others, or how well they work to someone else's requirements. Finding obnoxious pricks who know how to write code but stink up the workplace with a terrible attitude isn't particularly hard.
mdekkers 10y ago
But it does mean that those with full GitHub profiles usually spend every waking our programming. i.e. at significantly greater risk of burnout. I'd prefer to hire staff with a healthy work/life balance
plandis 10y ago
It's dumb. I lost my GitHub profile on my resume and I have yet had one person ask me about anything I put up there. It seems that having open source contributions is a check mark for you but is a pretty pointless piece of data for making a hiring decision. Nobody is reading through all your code to figure out if it's actually good or not.

ghaff 10y ago

>It's harder to really know how good/passionate you are. Sorry, but I have to really object to this idea that programming every waking hour with great passion is a positive job qualification. Sounds more like a recipe for burnout.

throwanem 10y ago
It is exactly that. Ask me how I know.
- phkahler 10y ago
  We interviewed a guy and without prompting (that's probably off limits anyway) he told us how he's divorced and has no real social life, so working long hours for us would be just fine by him. I wasn't impressed by him to start with, but that just put the final nail in the coffin for me. Not only did it sound a bit desperate, I'd prefer someone with a healthy attitude toward work and life. The other hiring managers felt the same way.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Marital status certainly is off-limits, and I've found a good general rule to be that anything that's impermissible for me to ask an interviewee is something that also doesn't merit mention when I'm on the other side of the table, both because to raise it puts my interlocutor in an uncomfortable position, and because such things really are not relevant in any case.
  - duderific 10y ago
    I'm glad to hear that attitude still exists among hiring managers. I'm working at an otherwise great company that doesn't give a rat's behind about work/life balance. I.e., if you're not still here at 6:30 or 7:00 PM you must not be a team player. Never mind if you have a wife and small child that you'd like to get home and have dinner with. Edited for clarity.

mattlondon 10y ago

I agree to a certain extent that seeing examples of work reduces recruiting risk, but I disagree that looking for people spending "every waking hour" programming is something positive. If I am interviewing people then I would try to avoid this line of thinking (i.e. how much time is spent out of work programming) as it strikes me as unfair. My reasons are that not all candidates could spend every waking hour of their time even if they wanted to for various legitimate reasons. For example if you are a parent looking after a baby/toddler, it would be totally unreasonable to expect you to be coding "every waking hour". If you had two candidates that were 100% equal except one had no real non-work-commitments of note and spent their evenings messing around on github, and the other was a parent who wanted to code all night but had to look after their kids in the evenings, which would you pick? If you picked the non-parent based only on the non-work github commits are you descriminating someone based on the fact they have kids? I dunno - but I thinik it would need careful consideration. As I said - I dunno, but it strikes me as this would be an unfair thing to look for. Afterall, you're recruiting fill a role, not recruiting a lifestyle.

rodgerd 10y ago
> I agree to a certain extent that seeing examples of work reduces recruiting risk Not really. It doesn't tell me how well they play with others, or how well they work to someone else's requirements. Finding obnoxious pricks who know how to write code but stink up the workplace with a terrible attitude isn't particularly hard.

mdekkers 10y ago

But it does mean that those with full GitHub profiles usually spend every waking our programming. i.e. at significantly greater risk of burnout. I'd prefer to hire staff with a healthy work/life balance

plandis 10y ago

It's dumb. I lost my GitHub profile on my resume and I have yet had one person ask me about anything I put up there. It seems that having open source contributions is a check mark for you but is a pretty pointless piece of data for making a hiring decision. Nobody is reading through all your code to figure out if it's actually good or not.