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I wouldn't have been hired for the jobs i've had if it wasn't for my Github. I don't think false-negatives should lead you to disregard the ability to find that

I wouldn't have been hired for the jobs i've had if it wasn't for my Github. I don't think false-negatives should lead you to disregard the ability to find that perfect developer. Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set?

toomuchtodo 9y ago
> Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set? It is not. If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. It is a slippery slope where we allow employers to dictate uncompensated signaling necessary for a role. Observe how it worked out for everyone who got a degree because employers won't hire without one, and then they don't get hired regardless of that degree. So we'll all toil on public Github projects in hopes that'll be what convinces an employer to hire? Will we all need to intern for several months for free next? @always_good: Hiring is hard. If you succeed in hiring the right people, it won't be because they jumped through your hoops, but because they were passionate, had some of the skills and could grow fast, and a huge helping of luck.
- always_good 9y ago
  > If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. Easier said than done, especially if you're talking about whiteboard interviews. Nobody can even agree on what this perfect barrage of probing looks like.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- _seemethere 9y ago
  That's not entirely true. Candidates have to meet employers halfway. Employer's have a limited amount of time and money too, why should they waste those resources having to mine for someone's skill level when there's plenty of candidates out there that will display that on some online site.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    > Candidates have to meet employers halfway. Perhaps in a recession, but in the current market, the employer must meet the candidate. That's how supply and demand works. To confirm (as an example), check out the last HN Who's Hiring [1], and compare to the next one. I assure you, most of the positions go unfilled because demand is exceeding supply. A company can either make their filters more reasonable, pay more, or a combination of the two. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819
    - always_good 9y ago
      There may be more jobs available than developers, but all of those jobs aren't equal. For the good jobs, you're competing against other good people. Good luck playing coy. There were also more women than men in my university, but that didn't free up the cutest girl in the bar.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        > For the good jobs, you're competing against other good people. Good luck playing coy. Everyone does not need the best job. They all just need good enough jobs that continually must improve because demand outstrips supply. See Basecamp for an example; I'm confident developers reading that post began to think about their compensation after reading that. "Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in San Francisco, but now we pay everyone as though all did" https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-san-francisco-but-now-we-pay-everyone-as-though-all-did-3ee87013cfc2 https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-...
    - souprock 9y ago
      Sometimes an employer has more than one slot to fill, or the business is growing and gets another slot to fill. I may post the same thing next month, but that doesn't mean we haven't hired. There is an ongoing need.
- Benjamin_Dobell 9y ago
  > If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken. > Observe how it worked out for everyone who got a degree because employers won't hire without one, and then they don't get hired regardless of that degree. I don't have a degree, I got my first job because I walked into the interview with a portfolio; more specifically a fully functional completed piece of software that I live demonstrated. This wasn't an open-source project, but I sent them the code to be reviewed nonetheless (I own the IP). The reason some people with degrees don't get jobs is because people with portfolio's (irrespective of degrees) can demonstrate their skill-set, where as waving around a piece of paper and having no demonstrable skills makes it extremely difficult for a potential employer to evaluate you. > It is a slippery slope where we allow employers to dictate uncompensated signaling necessary for a role. I do somewhat agree with this. However, your portfolio need not be open-source work, it's just common as there's some proof (version control, although not tamper-proof) indicating you did the work you're claiming you've done.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    > That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken. I have been working in tech for 18 years, as both an IC and a hiring manager. I do not believe it to be inaccurate. It's how I do hiring in my current role. I also do not have a degree. In my current role, I was hired on the spot leaving the conference room after my interview. In my role before that, I had three video conference interviews and a take home project. > I do somewhat agree with this. However, your portfolio need not be open-source work, it's just common as there's some proof (version control, although not tamper-proof) indicating you did the work you're claiming you've done. I used to be an sysadmin|linux|network|infrastructure engineer. Now I'm in security architecture. What work would you have someone like me show that I did the work I claimed to be doing other than me explaining to you what I did and how I did it? No Github repo is going to be able to properly illustrate the work I've done, or the breadth and depth of my knowledge and understanding. Public repos are a poor signal. Just my two cents. You want to figure out how people think, that's what an interview is for.
- mdip 9y ago
  > If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. I think the better way of putting that is "Interviewing is broken". Determining that a candidate meets a minimum level of skill-set is possible to do in an interview, however, determining much beyond that is highly elusive. I've had candidates that were incredible "Used Car Salesmen", who the previous interviewers wanted to "skip the technical interview" and just hire the guy outright because he was so convincing only to have his outcome in the technical interview end up being terrible (and I've had candidates get the job where this fact was discovered too late)[0]. I've had candidates that I've had to have a fight nearly come to blows to get a candidate hired because they were so nervous that they completely bombed the interview, and that "accurate portfolio of their skill set" was the only thing, outside of my insistence, that got them hired (out of the few this has happened with, all were good hires, too). I'm not asking anyone to jump through my hoops (especially now that I'm working at a place where I, thankfully, no longer interview candidates). I don't ask candidates to white-board code (I wouldn't let them if they wanted to), but given a candidate who has a solid portfolio against a candidate who does not -- assuming all other things are equal (or the portfolio is incredible) -- I'm going to hire the one with a portfolio. And I feel it is a personal responsibility of mine to keep that stuff up-to-date. I could do a better job of it, myself, but if I failed to get a job because I lacked in that area, I wouldn't blame anyone but myself. [0] I blame myself for this one -- he could talk up and down about concepts; was hugely into functional programming at a time when that was less mainstream. He not only knew all of the buzzwords, but he knew the "why"'s behind them. Academically speaking, he was incredibly knowledgeable. It wasn't until he had to actually learn an existing code base and contribute to it that it was discovered he lacked in execution. A manager on his team felt that he "froze up" ... would write something seven different ways and keep coming back to it while writing follow-on features until all he was doing was modifying code he'd already written to yield the same result, just slightly differently. I, arrogantly, assumed he was too good for the half-rate programmers we hired but upon running into someone who worked with him at the company he came from, it was discovered that he was not actually employed by them at the time he was interviewing as he'd been let go a couple of weeks prior ... and he had the same problem there.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
kazinator 9y ago
The article's problem is that its arguments apply to trying to use GH as a search tool for candidates. For instance, the fact that some accounts are fakes for a TV show, or that some projects are jokes and listicles, has nothing to do with the particular GH project of a candidate that you're interviewing, having found that candidate in ways having nothing to do with GH. Sure; GH being full of crap makes it impossible to use for searching for developers. (Not to mention that, oh, people don't use real names, and you don't know whether they live across the street or across the ocean). The main valid point is that a great developer might have an inactive GH account. "If you're looking for a thief, it isn't useful to look into pockets. Many pockets contain nothing, or lint. And those that contain something are almost always legitimate: stuff that the pocket owner owns. Some pockets are fake; just ornamental openings that are sewn shut, with no actual pockets behind them. The best thief I ever nabbed had nothing in his pockets; everything was in a big duffle bag in the trunk of his car."
el_benhameen 9y ago
A software designer at my company can add our software to his or her portfolio because the design itself is publicly-accessible. I can’t add our software to my portfolio, though, because while the final product is available to the public, the code itself is not. So I can point to the software without actually showing my work, or work many extra hours to have a portfolio of code. Which I guess is life, but I think it’s fair to point out that maintaining a code portfolio is far more time consuming than a design portfolio, for instance.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
>Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set? That's what a resume is for. It explains the what and how I performed my last jobs. GitHub is possibly how I did my own hobby projects which have different requirements. We're not artists who can easily keep a copy of the code we produce. That's a problem with asking for more effort on my own (unpaid) time.
tytytytytytytyt 9y ago
> Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set? Lots or most devs don't need to.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

> Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set? It is not. If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. It is a slippery slope where we allow employers to dictate uncompensated signaling necessary for a role. Observe how it worked out for everyone who got a degree because employers won't hire without one, and then they don't get hired regardless of that degree. So we'll all toil on public Github projects in hopes that'll be what convinces an employer to hire? Will we all need to intern for several months for free next? @always_good: Hiring is hard. If you succeed in hiring the right people, it won't be because they jumped through your hoops, but because they were passionate, had some of the skills and could grow fast, and a huge helping of luck.

always_good 9y ago
> If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. Easier said than done, especially if you're talking about whiteboard interviews. Nobody can even agree on what this perfect barrage of probing looks like.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
_seemethere 9y ago
That's not entirely true. Candidates have to meet employers halfway. Employer's have a limited amount of time and money too, why should they waste those resources having to mine for someone's skill level when there's plenty of candidates out there that will display that on some online site.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > Candidates have to meet employers halfway. Perhaps in a recession, but in the current market, the employer must meet the candidate. That's how supply and demand works. To confirm (as an example), check out the last HN Who's Hiring [1], and compare to the next one. I assure you, most of the positions go unfilled because demand is exceeding supply. A company can either make their filters more reasonable, pay more, or a combination of the two. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819
  - always_good 9y ago
    There may be more jobs available than developers, but all of those jobs aren't equal. For the good jobs, you're competing against other good people. Good luck playing coy. There were also more women than men in my university, but that didn't free up the cutest girl in the bar.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      > For the good jobs, you're competing against other good people. Good luck playing coy. Everyone does not need the best job. They all just need good enough jobs that continually must improve because demand outstrips supply. See Basecamp for an example; I'm confident developers reading that post began to think about their compensation after reading that. "Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in San Francisco, but now we pay everyone as though all did" https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-san-francisco-but-now-we-pay-everyone-as-though-all-did-3ee87013cfc2 https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-...
  - souprock 9y ago
    Sometimes an employer has more than one slot to fill, or the business is growing and gets another slot to fill. I may post the same thing next month, but that doesn't mean we haven't hired. There is an ongoing need.
Benjamin_Dobell 9y ago
> If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken. > Observe how it worked out for everyone who got a degree because employers won't hire without one, and then they don't get hired regardless of that degree. I don't have a degree, I got my first job because I walked into the interview with a portfolio; more specifically a fully functional completed piece of software that I live demonstrated. This wasn't an open-source project, but I sent them the code to be reviewed nonetheless (I own the IP). The reason some people with degrees don't get jobs is because people with portfolio's (irrespective of degrees) can demonstrate their skill-set, where as waving around a piece of paper and having no demonstrable skills makes it extremely difficult for a potential employer to evaluate you. > It is a slippery slope where we allow employers to dictate uncompensated signaling necessary for a role. I do somewhat agree with this. However, your portfolio need not be open-source work, it's just common as there's some proof (version control, although not tamper-proof) indicating you did the work you're claiming you've done.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken. I have been working in tech for 18 years, as both an IC and a hiring manager. I do not believe it to be inaccurate. It's how I do hiring in my current role. I also do not have a degree. In my current role, I was hired on the spot leaving the conference room after my interview. In my role before that, I had three video conference interviews and a take home project. > I do somewhat agree with this. However, your portfolio need not be open-source work, it's just common as there's some proof (version control, although not tamper-proof) indicating you did the work you're claiming you've done. I used to be an sysadmin|linux|network|infrastructure engineer. Now I'm in security architecture. What work would you have someone like me show that I did the work I claimed to be doing other than me explaining to you what I did and how I did it? No Github repo is going to be able to properly illustrate the work I've done, or the breadth and depth of my knowledge and understanding. Public repos are a poor signal. Just my two cents. You want to figure out how people think, that's what an interview is for.
mdip 9y ago
> If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. I think the better way of putting that is "Interviewing is broken". Determining that a candidate meets a minimum level of skill-set is possible to do in an interview, however, determining much beyond that is highly elusive. I've had candidates that were incredible "Used Car Salesmen", who the previous interviewers wanted to "skip the technical interview" and just hire the guy outright because he was so convincing only to have his outcome in the technical interview end up being terrible (and I've had candidates get the job where this fact was discovered too late)[0]. I've had candidates that I've had to have a fight nearly come to blows to get a candidate hired because they were so nervous that they completely bombed the interview, and that "accurate portfolio of their skill set" was the only thing, outside of my insistence, that got them hired (out of the few this has happened with, all were good hires, too). I'm not asking anyone to jump through my hoops (especially now that I'm working at a place where I, thankfully, no longer interview candidates). I don't ask candidates to white-board code (I wouldn't let them if they wanted to), but given a candidate who has a solid portfolio against a candidate who does not -- assuming all other things are equal (or the portfolio is incredible) -- I'm going to hire the one with a portfolio. And I feel it is a personal responsibility of mine to keep that stuff up-to-date. I could do a better job of it, myself, but if I failed to get a job because I lacked in that area, I wouldn't blame anyone but myself. [0] I blame myself for this one -- he could talk up and down about concepts; was hugely into functional programming at a time when that was less mainstream. He not only knew all of the buzzwords, but he knew the "why"'s behind them. Academically speaking, he was incredibly knowledgeable. It wasn't until he had to actually learn an existing code base and contribute to it that it was discovered he lacked in execution. A manager on his team felt that he "froze up" ... would write something seven different ways and keep coming back to it while writing follow-on features until all he was doing was modifying code he'd already written to yield the same result, just slightly differently. I, arrogantly, assumed he was too good for the half-rate programmers we hired but upon running into someone who worked with him at the company he came from, it was discovered that he was not actually employed by them at the time he was interviewing as he'd been let go a couple of weeks prior ... and he had the same problem there.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

kazinator 9y ago

The article's problem is that its arguments apply to trying to use GH as a search tool for candidates. For instance, the fact that some accounts are fakes for a TV show, or that some projects are jokes and listicles, has nothing to do with the particular GH project of a candidate that you're interviewing, having found that candidate in ways having nothing to do with GH. Sure; GH being full of crap makes it impossible to use for searching for developers. (Not to mention that, oh, people don't use real names, and you don't know whether they live across the street or across the ocean). The main valid point is that a great developer might have an inactive GH account. "If you're looking for a thief, it isn't useful to look into pockets. Many pockets contain nothing, or lint. And those that contain something are almost always legitimate: stuff that the pocket owner owns. Some pockets are fake; just ornamental openings that are sewn shut, with no actual pockets behind them. The best thief I ever nabbed had nothing in his pockets; everything was in a big duffle bag in the trunk of his car."

el_benhameen 9y ago

A software designer at my company can add our software to his or her portfolio because the design itself is publicly-accessible. I can’t add our software to my portfolio, though, because while the final product is available to the public, the code itself is not. So I can point to the software without actually showing my work, or work many extra hours to have a portfolio of code. Which I guess is life, but I think it’s fair to point out that maintaining a code portfolio is far more time consuming than a design portfolio, for instance.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

>Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set? That's what a resume is for. It explains the what and how I performed my last jobs. GitHub is possibly how I did my own hobby projects which have different requirements. We're not artists who can easily keep a copy of the code we produce. That's a problem with asking for more effort on my own (unpaid) time.

tytytytytytytyt 9y ago

> Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set? Lots or most devs don't need to.