14 ms·

GitHub and Open-Source Is a Boon for the Underprivileged

331 points by amasad 8y ago

albertgoeswoof 8y ago
The author makes a valid point, however the pushback against using OSS as an important hiring signal, is that most people are not privileged with enough spare time to work on OSS outside of their day job. Eg if you have a family, long commute etc. And if they already are an excellent programmer and hitting all expectations, why should they do this? In fact, an employee who’s spending 5-6 hours/day on side projects might not be the best person for the company. I don’t think recruiters look all that deeply either, I think you could game this by writing some docs or readme corrections to all of the top projects on github and get the PRs accepted.
- jasoncartwright 8y ago
  > most people are not privileged with enough spare time to work on OSS outside of their day job I keep hearing this. Do you have any data to back it up?
  - jve 8y ago
    Count me as a data point. I have a family, children, relatives, friends and a house to keep in order. And some other things that takes time.
- sanxiyn 8y ago
  Where is pushback against using degrees as an important hiring signal, given many people are not privileged with enough money to go to the university? Where?
  - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    Literally this article, and all the other comments and posts about how useless a computer science degree is for hiring, and how we should all go to boot camps. I actually have a comp sci degree (and learned a tonne) but I know former classmates who skipped through without learning to program properly at all.
    - sanxiyn 8y ago
      Still, I confidently bet someone without GitHub profile has easier time in hiring market than someone without a degree.
  - chaosite 8y ago
    This is why scholarships exist and significant effort is being made at getting everyone a chance to attend university.
- chatmasta 8y ago
  You’re making a false equivalence. GitHub can both be good for the privileged, and the underprivileged can use GitHub as an equalizer. The only way to guarantee they cannot use GitHub as an equalizer is for every hiring manager to ignore GitHub profiles. Look at the candidate, whatever they choose to present as their experience and resume, and make a decision based on that. Don’t ignore anything they send you and don’t discount them because they didn’t send you something that someone else did.
- josteink 8y ago
  > The author makes a valid point, however the pushback against using OSS as an important hiring signal, is that most people are not privileged with enough spare time to work on OSS outside of their day job. Like most people I know, I use open source software in my day-to-day job even though I work in a company who provides proprietary software and services. That means that when I do encounter errors or bugs in those open source components and libraries I can make the choice to either write workarounds locally in my code, or I can choose to submit patches back upstream. That’s not a matter of privilege. That’s a matter of choice. I also think it’s reflective of a developer’s attitude: does he prefer things done “properly”, or will he just hack together something which works? Will he share his solutions or not?
  - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    That’s often not your choice, your employer needs to give you the time and in some cases permission to do it.
    - josteink 8y ago
      If your company allows you to use buggy components but doesn’t allow you to fix bugs... Then that’s a company with some pretty serious problems, and it’s going to show in all of their products. If you as a developer decides to stay in that company then that will also reflect on you.
      - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
        Oh right yes I’ll just quit my job and not pay my mortgage so I can work for a company that has great values.
        josteink 8y ago
        I'm not telling you what to do, or saying you should quit your job and leave your life in ruins over company values. I'm just telling you how perception by association works. Your choices are entirely your own.
- swiley 8y ago
  If your commute is on a straight enough road you could probably do it then using an ssh app on your phone. /s
grosjona 8y ago
>> At this point, we've heard enough "rags to riches" stories in programming that it becomes difficult to dismiss this as simply "survivorship bias". I like the rest of the article but this statement is disturbing. There are plenty of great open source projects which never got off the ground in terms of popularity. Quality is not necessarily correlated with popularity.
- amasad 8y ago
  How so? Programming is unprecedented in it's power for upwards class mobility. We're just scratching the surface. But it's the only thing we have that: a) doesn't require a lot of resources to make a meaningful contributions (access to a computer and the internet) that could land you a really good job. b) it's probably the only industry that doesn't requires formal education. Case in point, only one person at my company has a CS degree, and that's me.
  - Boulth 8y ago
    > it's probably the only industry that doesn't requires formal education. I think this is because large majority of tasks do not require formal education (proverbial CRUDs etc.). And that's OK. For the record I've got a master degree in CS but I can't remember last time I had to utilize that knowledge. Hobby projects? Sure. But not daily work. Great article by the way! I was also on the side of "it's hard to do PRs and github as resume is a bad idea" but it turns out that it's surprisingly easy to start and the experience of working with people that have similar interests is really fun!
  - sdoering 8y ago
    On the other hand, if you have two shitty jobs to make ends meet, how to program and contribute to OSS after that? There are cases. But most probably are survivorship bias. I would bet, most current IT professionals have a at least lower middle class background. If I take a look at my company, that at last rings true. Not sure about the US, though.
    - sodafountan 8y ago
sanxiyn 8y ago
As someone without a degree who got the first job based on open source work, this rings true.
- Nekorosu 8y ago
  It's anecdotal evidence. I don't have a degree and I don't contribute to open source because I have something better to do in my free time. Still, I have a decent developer job.
  - gitgud 8y ago
    Well, what's better to do in your free time?
onion2k 8y ago
The point people are making about using GitHub profiles for hiring is that it ignores great developers who don't write code outside of their job (that might be due to other interests, family responsibilities, a second job, whatever). The fact this guy is in a position to write code in his spare time just means he's not in that group, and the fact his open source work on Github specifically landed him a job he wanted kind of proves the point people are making.
- sintaxi 8y ago
  Privilege is what is UNEARNED and there is no way to qualify if those with open source contributions are more privileged than others. The very opposite could be true. The privileged can bounce from well paying job to the next with no OSS contributions while the underprivileged have to "show their value" in the harsh environment of open source. You're constructing the viewpoint you want others to see with no data or facts to back it up.
  - onion2k 8y ago
    I'm saying that being in a position to have spare time to work on open source is a sign of privilege, and that employers should recognize that when they're hiring. Some great developers work on open source projects, but equally some great developers don't. Open source contributions are not a useful filter.
    - sintaxi 8y ago
      > I'm saying that being in a position to have spare time to work on open source is a sign of privilege That is an assumption made without evidence. An equally qualified assumption would be that its a sign of privilege to not need to contribute to open source. You get an awesome education and go straight into well paying entry level position. Committing to open source is not something casually done at ones leisure. Anything with traction becomes a significant responsibility and it takes an incredible amount of discipline and sacrifice to stay committed.
      - 8y ago
switch007 8y ago
The same underprivileged who feel there is no option but to sign a contract assigning all IP to their employer, which at best dissuades them from doing much open source, and at worst, precludes them from doing any coding which isn't for their employer? (I'm talking about the world beyond California, here)
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  Who is signing away code they write in their own time? If you do that then that's your fault. It's not normal at all.
  - tom_ 8y ago
    It's been a clause in every employment contract I've been given. I signed the first one, because I wanted the job; the second company folded between my signing and the start date, so it was moot; I didn't sign the third contract at all, but I worked there for 7 years, which apparently is tantamount to acceptance :( Some companies have put this clause in contracts for shorter-term project-based contract work, but I've just crossed it out, generally with no pushback.
    - cimmanom 8y ago
      I've been able to negotiate a rephrasing of this in every contract I've been presented with that contains it. What you're willing to give the company is probably the same as what's really important to them: rights to IP you create in the course of your work for the company or during work hours or using company resources. There are ways to phrase this such that - if you're a reasonably desirable hire - the vast majority of HR departments will be willing to substitute for the blanket terms. If you're not sure how to negotiate this, explain that as an example you want to be able to continue to manage the website for your rotary club / kids scout program / whatever; and that the current phrasing would give the company the rights to that website, which there's no reason they'd want, and prevent you from giving back to your community.
  - sidlls 8y ago
watwut 8y ago
Imo, OSS advocates really really want open source contributions to be used as hiring signal, because that would mean more open source developers. That is what this all is about, primary. Wish to come back to "open source developers are superior, because reasons" ideology that was pushed for during open/close source wars. And close source developers take issue with it not just because of privilege, but also because you are claiming they are less capable due to their code not being OSS. Majority of employed developers don't have regular open source contributions. Especially those who work in high pressure jobs that already take all they have - both in time and how much effort you can spend per day. If the company is trying at least little bit to reward contributions, the people who give the company more (or come in better rested) get rewarded more then those who work for company less. That drives employees incentives and behavior. Yes, there are junior jobs available to people with two months of coding experience. That is how it should be and there is nothing wrong with company seeing your OSS code as one of way to prove you can do it. The moment it will be expected from everyone, guess what, people like me will have tons of advantages to homeless, former "big scholarship to go to university" student who had to drop out due to personal reasons. Senior developer market is not flooded with people with large open source contributions through. It is just not the case. Why would open source on Github should be privileged over random portfolio in case of juniors? Or to open source contributions that are not on Github? Lastly, I dont think large open source projects can handle influx of juniors using them to prove themselves - which is what would happen if companies would really require oss contributions for hiring. Oss projects have often hard time to stay on top of existing pull requests.
- watwut 8y ago
  I would add: the homeless person linked from article is not someone having tons of open source contributions. He is someone who is learning, was adviced in browser compiler or raspbery pi to code on and sounds like a junior (e.g. has talent but not independent yet). He would be helped the most if you would hire him as junior, with salary, was able to provide mentoring the same way other juniors are provided mentoring instead of expecting him to spend months homeless in library hoping to run into project that will be good fit for him.
- spamizbad 8y ago
sanxiyn 8y ago
I think the obviously right choice is: Do not require open source contributions, but do not ignore them. Similarly: Do not require degrees, computer science or otherwise, but do not ignore them.
- lucb1e 8y ago
  Staying away from extremes and finding a middle way is generally good advice. Indeed never go 100% for degrees nor 100% for open source contributions.
  - Radim 8y ago
    Going a little deeper and not contesting your conclusion, I'd like to point out "middle ground" is more a result of survivorship bias than a general maxim. There are an infinity of choices we make daily that are completely binary, 100% extreme, both on the individual and social group level. They go unnoticed because there's nothing to gain by pontificating "Shall I go 100% in with 'I won't cut off my legs today', or find some middle ground that's not as extreme?" (apologies for the gross example, but articulating inarticulate choices is hard, by definition). Our cognitive capacity is limited, so naturally we've evolved to consider only the choices that matter. We look for the "middle ground" in only a tiny sliver of decisions. Which is obvious, but there's an interesting thought in there: To what degree is the presence of "middle ground" in our minds indicative of some potential gain, an arbitrage opportunity? Turning the causality around, can we assume the distinctions that bubble up to our conscious thought are useful hints at profit? There's something primal about spotting gradients: the only place where it makes sense to talk about a "middle".
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  @sedo: A rich GitHub profile is like a college degree: ∙ It's a positive signal, one of dozens possible ∙ Not everybody has the time and resources to get one ∙ Having one does not necessarily mean you're good at your job ∙ Ignoring one would be silly ∙ Requiring one would be silly https://twitter.com/seldo/status/1005120664850743296 https://twitter.com/seldo/status/1005120664850743296
realSlavojTrump 8y ago
There's evidence in the literature that shows that there are systemic biases against women in github pull requests, even when in the aggregate women may display greater levels of competence. https://peerj.com/articles/cs-111/ https://peerj.com/articles/cs-111/ To suggest that pull requests are a good hiring signal (as the author does in explicitly endorsing the "screening" of open source maintainers) ignores this bias. That can be positive or negative, depending on your commitment to diversity in our field.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  For those who haven't read the linked article before, it really is fascinating. The relevant bits are two factors: * Is the person sending the pull request someone already known to the project, or an outsider? * Is the gender of the pull request's author easily determinable? It would be unsurprising to find that "outsider" pull requests get merged at a lower rate. But "outsider" pull requests from women merge at different rates depending on the second factor: when it's easy to determine the gender of the author, a pull request from an "outsider" woman is significantly less likely to be accepted than a pull request from an "outsider" woman whose gender cannot easily be determined. Also, "insider" women and women whose gender is not easily determinable have higher rates of merged PRs than their male counterparts. There's no reason to suspect that whether someone's gender is easily determinable by a PR reviewer (usually, via username, profile picture, other clues like linked blogs or social-media profiles) has an effect on the quality of their code. So while this of course doesn't prove gender bias (we'd need telepathy for that), it does very very very strongly suggest it. This is also in line with a lot of prior research and reporting on blind interview and auditioning practices, so shouldn't be too surprising, but for some reason people love to insist that tech is somehow different from all those other fields where hiding someone's gender changed how they were evaluated.
- janeroe 8y ago
  > systemic biases against women in github pull requests Did you read your link? > The hypothesis is not only false, but it is in the opposite direction than expected; women tend to have their pull requests accepted at a higher rate than men! This difference is statistically significant
buro9 8y ago
Ignoring the debate around "that tweet" Github is great for those with an interest to be able to self-teach and self-learn. To acquire experience from doing, by being able to see how others have done it before or to take that and use it. Github is to this generation of programmers, what View Source was to the early web generation of programmers. Without View Source in 1996, and with no resource to education or work at that time, I would not have learned how to make complete web sites and then have moved to automatically making those websites (HTML generation via a CMS). Github is important and critical, but not for hiring those already in the industry... for learning and to make this industry accessible to those who are under privileged in terms of access to education, mentoring, code clubs, etc. And then for recognising those people during hiring and giving them the break they deserve.
tranchms 8y ago
“For example, it's hard for me as an individual Muslim to change the fact that some people hate Muslims, so it's better for me to focus my energy on things that I can control. This, however, doesn't mean that as a society we shouldn't discuss issues of discrimination.“ Whoa.
rectang 8y ago
It is unavoidable that privilege affects who contributes to open source and how much. Whether or not this is bad is a philosophical issue: is it bad that life is unfair? The harm comes when people deny the existence of privilege and other forms of luck, and attribute success to their own moral superiority and the moral inferiority of others.
- golergka 8y ago
  Fairness and morals in general are leaky abstractions that only apply to a subset of all possible situations. The most "fair" system can't survive a single generation of you allow parents to invest their resources in competitive advantage for their children – which is one of the most basic human desires.
  - rectang 8y ago
    The pull towards corrupt aristocracy is strong all right! But it's worth resisting.
    - golergka 8y ago
      Depends on your personal situation. It's possible it's also worth joining it.
jakobegger 8y ago
I think we should stop looking for the One True Way and accept that there are multiple ways to evaluate job applicants. Some companies will hire only people from top schools, other companies put a lot of focus on understanding algorithms; other companies just look at your previous jobs, and some may just look at your Github profile. If you are looking for a job, you need to understand that, and apply to the right companies. Depending on your background, not every company might be a great fit. If a CS degree is a hard requirement, and you don't have one, then applying at that job is a waste of time. If you're applying to a company that works on Open Source and they have popular, public Github repos, and you have a blank Github account without any contributions, you're not going to make a good impression.
smonff 8y ago
Also, what about Stack Exchange profiles?
- brett40324 8y ago
  IMO as someone who has been on stack exchange for a long time, while barely posting anything, ever. I would loathe feeling the need to have an active history of participation to boost my employment opportunities. At the same time, someone with a lot of good answers in their field should definitely include their profile in a job application.
- JanisL 8y ago
  Speaking as someone who has been on there and posted a substantial number of answers I think the correlation between professional development skills is much stronger with open source contributions than "points" on a QA board.
stealthmodeclan 8y ago
One thing is that since people from not so reputable university get to have very few interactions with those from elite universities, we assume elite university students are lot better at programming. Today, you can directly take a look at their craft on github, this has given much confidence to those from lower rungs of the society like, hey! I can create better than this person even tho i am not from such an ellite university. This along with the meritocracy in tech levels the playing field where the ones from better universities should found startups by using their connections instead of working for companies
mmjaa 8y ago
I have been working productively as a systems software developer for 32 years. I do not have a degree; I'm a high-school dropout. I've built systems you've probably used, and/or may still be using. The #1 technical lever I have found worth exploiting, worth far more than anything a university can provide, is the willingness to get the job done. It hasn't mattered if I wrote CP/M code ISR's, PROGRESS 4GL modules, Unix daemons, Pascal, .. Java, C, C++, Objective-C, Lua, Swift, &etc. - through the thick of it all, the fact that I was willing to get the job done, no matter what, is what made the difference. On the other end of this scale, is a bit of decadence. From my particularly tainted point of view, the ideological basis of the current cultural norm of "university==well-paid job" is entirely decadent. People seem to have expectations that, because they're in a certain class, they don't have to work hard at developing other real life issues, and too many times I've seen the well-educated, well-connected, nevertheless incompetent developer fall to pieces under pressure. I am grateful for these guys, because they make my life easier. Yet, those who are in this group, who haven't got a decadent ideal of their own worth, but rather get things done in computing, whatever it takes: great. So its really not a matter of educated-enough. Its whether the will to perform is, through whatever means, inculcated - and then manifest by taking the actions to get the state of things, done. Some of the best developers I've ever worked with, have come from utterly dire circumstances. Some of the worst, too. Likewise for the privileged, candied elite. The one differentiator, truly, is the will of the individual. Computers, being machines of will, equalise us all that way.
- poster123 8y ago
  Interesting post, but referring to people with college degrees as a "privileged, candied elite" shows some bias. Besides the will to get things done, other important differentiators are knowledge, talent, and intellligence.
  - mmjaa 8y ago
    "Privileged, candied elite" is just one end of the scale, yo. There are "Privileged, hard-working elite" too, in case that part wasn't clear. It really doesn't matter, if you've got the will to work, is the point.. knowledge/talent/intelligence: not finite resources, when there is enough willpower around.
reidrac 8y ago
For me, having some open source on GitHub, bitbucket and launchpad, has been useful in few job interviews because it kind of helped to avoid the "coding exercise" and it was a good data point to prove I know how to use git and good development practices. But that wasn't the main driver for me working on open source. I think it is a nice side effect, but it shouldn't be a requirement; and definitely GH is not your CV (specially when there's so much open source not in GH!). That said, when I've been in a position that I could influence the hiring policy, I gave value to open source contributions because it did align with the ethos of the company. I guess it may not be important depending on who's hiring, but it is always useful if it is there and what you see is good stuff.
zimbatm 8y ago
Some people say that they don't have time to contribute back because they have a family and and a life. At the same time, pretty much every company depends on OSS to operate. Shouldn't contributing be an integral part of work? In my day-to-day, I depend OSS to get my job done. If there is a bug, I am allowed take the time to build a patchset and push it upstream. It's good for everyone. The company benefits from not having to maintain a fork, the developer gets to build his github profile, the rest of the world can also use the update. People who don't have a GitHub profile is also a signal that they either don't take the time during their normal work hours, or are prevented from contributing back due to company policy.
xstartup 8y ago
It's very true. Many developers in the west having higher disposable income than their not so lucky counterparts who might be able to rival them in absolute skill. But those developers want to spend more time with the family. Remote work has not taken off even if we assume it's more profitable for a company to hire cheaper staff in low COL. This might mean that lots of the things in a startup has to do with maintaining a perception of smart geeks are working on a difficult global problem. There is an arbitrage opportunity here by hiring ghost developers from low COL locations (similar to ghost writers). Why not support developers from low COL? That's what creates global economic equality right which egalitarian society always strives for. So, if anyone comes to your office you'll have people looking seriously absorbed by the difficult problem but the real work will be done elsewhere, in return, you get peace of mind and more time with your family. Instagram pages and blogs will be lush with happy tech employee faces and "long stories of slaying tech demons". Is this happening?
pmorici 8y ago
This title feels like political click-bait. The first two paragraphs describe what most people would consider a privileged background and the core of the post goes on to discuss the merit of using GitHub as a hiring signal. What the author is really describing is how GitHub can be a way to get your foot in a door or stand out from the crowd where you otherwise don't have any social connections.
KirinDave 8y ago
> Because open-source is good at cutting through the bullshit, it also makes it an equalizer. That's one heck of a premise.
- ahartmetz 8y ago
  You mean open source doesn't cut through the bullshit? It totally does. People can put anything on their resume and sometimes bullshit their way through questions trying to figure out whether they've actually done these things. If all else fails, they can claim trade secrets. Open source contributions can't be faked (except by real name collision), and in any case, there is much more detail available than a few lines or bullet points in a resume.
  - aitrean 8y ago
    Open source contributions do not cover even scratch the surface of depth needed to be a software developer. Oh, you resolved that issue in a related repo? That's awesome. Now, for our repo we need you to design an entire system effectively, work well with our other developers, and meet whatever deadlines we prescribe. Of course, if you're someone that accomplishes all of that in the open source community, then your open source work definitely 'cuts through the bullshit'. But the people who meet those criteria are a small subset of even the active open source community. In general, someone's 50 line commit to an open source repo does not tell me much more than them knowing the technology, and being able to complete tasks within a time period of undefined length.
  - KirinDave 8y ago
    > People can put anything on their resume and sometimes bullshit their way through questions trying to figure out whether they've actually done these things. If all else fails, they can claim trade secrets. They can perform similar tactics on github: like mirroring an obscure but technically in-depth project without attribution, paying someone to write code and then committing it in your name (I've seen this done!), or making sure to get lots of extra commit density by doing one feature or bugfix after successfully landing a series of reformatting PRs. An applicant planning to fake their way past you is genuinely hard to catch unless your process is tuned for it. The idea that there is a one-size-fits all interview process and that process is as simple as, "Check their github" is lazy to the point of malpractice. It's a goofy premise, and it's playing right into the hand of people who want to abuse you. And this is just addressing the problematic nature of modern tooling for positive signals. Given the pervasive nature of harassment culture in the open source world, you should ALWAYS excuse the absence of open source work. It cannot be a requirement because the open source world can often become extremely hostile and/or political.
trjordan 8y ago
Thinking about Github-as-resume as strictly positive or uselessly noisy probably means you have an overly simplistic model for evaluating candidates. I'll share a model that's worked for me in the past. Before you even write the job description, define the 3-7 traits you need to hire against. These can be as fuzzy as "gets shit done" or as specific as "5+ years marketing SaaS to $100k+ accounts" or "is effective at resolving incidents while on-call." You need to be able to rate people on this. Binary is fine ("yes they can get shit done"). 3-4 levels is good (bad / good / total superstar). Don't go overboard with granularity: you need to fit this all in your head for a couple candidates at a time when you compare them. As you go through your process, try to get good information about at least one of these areas at each step. My favorite thing to do is, between in-person interviews, be able to tee up the next interviewer with "I got mixed signals about communication style. Can you dig in?" When you wrap up, make sure you cover all the boxes. Don't get smitten with a candidate with amazing experience who can code circles around everybody else who's never worked in a 25+ person team (assuming that's what you agreed was important). When you're ready to make a decision, you now have a reasonable set of trade-offs to make. I tend to create rubrics where solid scores in 3 of 5 categories is a Hire, to allow us to compare different types of candidates. Ok, back to GitHub. GitHub can give you VERY STRONG SIGNALS for some of these issues. It's great to be able to know up-front that somebody is comfortable working with teams they don't personally know well (typical in big open-source projects). The convese to that is that I generally expect some strong signal up front from any candidate. If not GitHub, give me a respected company on your resume. A recommendation from a mutual friend. A well-written cover letter. When folks complain about 100s of resumes, it's because the problem is this lack of signal. An aside: it's on you to allow folks with non-traditional backgrounds to succeed at this step. Write a better job req, or go email likely candidates. Diversity requires multiple ways in. Once you're a bit further, this cuts the other way. If "good communication in pull requests" is important to you, don't spend any time here with candidates who have strong Githubs. You already have all the data you need. Spend your time elsewhere. There is no extra credit. GitHub can help you a bunch when evaluating candidates, but it's crucial to stay away from this notion that _anything_ during an evaluation that looks like a silver bullet. You always have to do the work of interviewing well, and it's always specific to your company. Finally: if you have a process that allows you to fully evaluate a candidate by reading their public GitHub, you're almost certainly hiring for the wrong things.
teddyh 8y ago
Is this maybe a hint of the lock-in which GitHub will pursue in the future? Like Facebook, you might prefer to avoid having an account, but due to other people using the platform as a signal, you feel that you can’t avoid signing up for GitHub (and accepting whatever terms Microsoft will set on this). It is also a bit like the problem of academic publishing; you might prefer to publish in an Open Access journal and on ArXiv, but feel that you have no choice for your academic career other than to pay dearly for publishing in a “influential”/“reputable” journal owned by Elsevier, giving up all rights to publish elsewhere (and whatever other rights they feel they can push).
alien_ 8y ago
Nowadays most software depends on open source one way or another, and as developer you will eventually run into issues with the open source software that you depend on. Also, larger companies internally operate much like an open source community, having multiple projects that accept contributions from anyone in the company. Reporting and fixing public issues as part of your employment is a sign that you care about the ecosystem that you are part of, giving back rather than just benefiting from it. It's not necessarily a showcase of your coding skills, because these contributions are usually small, but it shows that you will get your hands dirty if needed and fix the problem at the root, instead of hacking a workaround in your own code base. It also shows that you have no problem with learning a new code base and delivering code according to that project's quality standards. If you don't have any public activity it may imply the opposite: that you are just freeloading your community, that you are prone to doing workarounds instead of fixing the problem upstream or that you are unable or reluctant to contribute to other projects.
- hocuspocus 8y ago
  > It also shows that you have no problem with learning a new code base and delivering code according to that project's quality standards. If you can tell your employer you'll spend the next sprint or two fixing a bug upstream, good for you! From my experience working with complex libraries, when you hit a bug or a corner case, it is probably not going to be an easy fix. There's a reason many open source projects are triaging low-hanging fruits for first-time contributors.
  - alien_ 8y ago
    Companies should invest in the open source they depend on, otherwise they will need to re-implement it from scratch or maintain an in-house fork with higher costs. You may be spending those sprints implementing a workaround that you will then have to touch again when the problem is eventually fixed upstream, or you will run a private fork that you're stuck with forever and will have a hard time maintaining. As for the complexity, from my experience it's a mix. There are indeed many complex issues, but often times the fixes are relatively easy and take little time to fix. For the hard ones it's often enough if you can contribute to the conversation to better understand the problem, providing valuable information on how to reproduce, so that someone familiar with the code base can solve it easier.
duxup 8y ago
Even compared to say 20+ years ago, it is amazing how many fully capable services and how much high quality and polished software is free. I'm a former network guy who is learning web development. The amount of software I've installed is kinda crazy compared to what I used with networking. Everything I've used is free and crazy high quality, I haven't felt like I'm missing anything. In the networking world it is a lot of custom software and proprietary software. There are free options for some things but they're not nearly as polished or fully functional out of the gate.
MentallyRetired 8y ago
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that doesn't have a ton of open source commits on github. I'm too busy building things I get paid for. Sorry, but that's the truth of it... github is a terrible CV replacement for me.
devxpy 8y ago
I hate how people don't mention the quality of work one is doing on Github, or anywhere for that matter. I've personally seen people make one-liner commits deliberately, to get a good graph. On the other hand, some people write code because they actually created something real, which solves a real problem. And the difference is quite clear if you're looking for it. Arguably, the github community suffers from the "celebrity" effect that facebook/Instagram have. But I digress. Comparing a Github account to a college degree is crazy. Once a piece of paper, and the other is a full history of the guy's work, presented at a mouse click away. I am about to clear the first year of my univ, and honestly couldn't care less about what the univ taught me. I can't even recall most of it. What I can show you is my Github profile, where I did real work, and built real software that actually works (including some IoT projects that I personally use myself, every day) Not to mention the other projects that didn't made on Github, but did make it on a Bitbucket private repo.
satysin 8y ago
I like platforms like GitHub as it makes it easy to have a public portfolio of your work. Not that there is anything wrong with not having a portfolio but it certainly makes life easier when trying to show clients/employers your skill set. Pretty much all designers have some kind of public portfolio such as a website with example of their previous work. I see GitHub as a centralised (and, for the most part, respected) place to put your work for developers, even if you don't want to use it for collaboration but simply as an advertising platform. However it does lead to the same kind of problem you get with employers not looking at a candidate who doesn't have a LinkedIn profile. You will inevitably miss out of some excellent people who don't wish to/can't use such a platform.
- aitrean 8y ago
  Design work is extremely different from developer work. Design work is usually publicly available, and each piece often stands on its own. Paid developer work is usually not publicly visible, and a lot of projects require working with teams. The type of work that goes on a Github profile, therefore, is usually unpaid work where you get to create your own project, and pick your own codebase. In this sense, you're comparing apples to oranges.
ImaCake 8y ago
I think this misses the point. A resource like GitHub shouldn't just be used by the underpriviliged to score a better paying job. It should be used by underpriviliged groups to gain access to the tools and knowledge that rich groups take for granted. Then the underpriviliged can build their own system without simply buying into the existing systems. This is the same argument we make against closed access research papers. The goal isn't to make it easier to hire poor people. The goal is to give poor people knowledge and resources so they can build themselves up.

331 points by amasad 8y ago

The author makes a valid point, however the pushback against using OSS as an important hiring signal, is that most people are not privileged with enough spare time to work on OSS outside of their day job. Eg if you have a family, long commute etc. And if they already are an excellent programmer and hitting all expectations, why should they do this? In fact, an employee who’s spending 5-6 hours/day on side projects might not be the best person for the company. I don’t think recruiters look all that deeply either, I think you could game this by writing some docs or readme corrections to all of the top projects on github and get the PRs accepted.

jasoncartwright 8y ago
> most people are not privileged with enough spare time to work on OSS outside of their day job I keep hearing this. Do you have any data to back it up?
- jve 8y ago
  Count me as a data point. I have a family, children, relatives, friends and a house to keep in order. And some other things that takes time.
sanxiyn 8y ago
Where is pushback against using degrees as an important hiring signal, given many people are not privileged with enough money to go to the university? Where?
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  Literally this article, and all the other comments and posts about how useless a computer science degree is for hiring, and how we should all go to boot camps. I actually have a comp sci degree (and learned a tonne) but I know former classmates who skipped through without learning to program properly at all.
  - sanxiyn 8y ago
    Still, I confidently bet someone without GitHub profile has easier time in hiring market than someone without a degree.
- chaosite 8y ago
  This is why scholarships exist and significant effort is being made at getting everyone a chance to attend university.
chatmasta 8y ago
You’re making a false equivalence. GitHub can both be good for the privileged, and the underprivileged can use GitHub as an equalizer. The only way to guarantee they cannot use GitHub as an equalizer is for every hiring manager to ignore GitHub profiles. Look at the candidate, whatever they choose to present as their experience and resume, and make a decision based on that. Don’t ignore anything they send you and don’t discount them because they didn’t send you something that someone else did.
josteink 8y ago
> The author makes a valid point, however the pushback against using OSS as an important hiring signal, is that most people are not privileged with enough spare time to work on OSS outside of their day job. Like most people I know, I use open source software in my day-to-day job even though I work in a company who provides proprietary software and services. That means that when I do encounter errors or bugs in those open source components and libraries I can make the choice to either write workarounds locally in my code, or I can choose to submit patches back upstream. That’s not a matter of privilege. That’s a matter of choice. I also think it’s reflective of a developer’s attitude: does he prefer things done “properly”, or will he just hack together something which works? Will he share his solutions or not?
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  That’s often not your choice, your employer needs to give you the time and in some cases permission to do it.
  - josteink 8y ago
    If your company allows you to use buggy components but doesn’t allow you to fix bugs... Then that’s a company with some pretty serious problems, and it’s going to show in all of their products. If you as a developer decides to stay in that company then that will also reflect on you.
    - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
      Oh right yes I’ll just quit my job and not pay my mortgage so I can work for a company that has great values.
      - josteink 8y ago
        I'm not telling you what to do, or saying you should quit your job and leave your life in ruins over company values. I'm just telling you how perception by association works. Your choices are entirely your own.
swiley 8y ago
If your commute is on a straight enough road you could probably do it then using an ssh app on your phone. /s

grosjona 8y ago

>> At this point, we've heard enough "rags to riches" stories in programming that it becomes difficult to dismiss this as simply "survivorship bias". I like the rest of the article but this statement is disturbing. There are plenty of great open source projects which never got off the ground in terms of popularity. Quality is not necessarily correlated with popularity.

amasad 8y ago
How so? Programming is unprecedented in it's power for upwards class mobility. We're just scratching the surface. But it's the only thing we have that: a) doesn't require a lot of resources to make a meaningful contributions (access to a computer and the internet) that could land you a really good job. b) it's probably the only industry that doesn't requires formal education. Case in point, only one person at my company has a CS degree, and that's me.
- Boulth 8y ago
  > it's probably the only industry that doesn't requires formal education. I think this is because large majority of tasks do not require formal education (proverbial CRUDs etc.). And that's OK. For the record I've got a master degree in CS but I can't remember last time I had to utilize that knowledge. Hobby projects? Sure. But not daily work. Great article by the way! I was also on the side of "it's hard to do PRs and github as resume is a bad idea" but it turns out that it's surprisingly easy to start and the experience of working with people that have similar interests is really fun!
- sdoering 8y ago
  On the other hand, if you have two shitty jobs to make ends meet, how to program and contribute to OSS after that? There are cases. But most probably are survivorship bias. I would bet, most current IT professionals have a at least lower middle class background. If I take a look at my company, that at last rings true. Not sure about the US, though.
  - sodafountan 8y ago

sanxiyn 8y ago

As someone without a degree who got the first job based on open source work, this rings true.

Nekorosu 8y ago
It's anecdotal evidence. I don't have a degree and I don't contribute to open source because I have something better to do in my free time. Still, I have a decent developer job.
- gitgud 8y ago
  Well, what's better to do in your free time?

onion2k 8y ago

The point people are making about using GitHub profiles for hiring is that it ignores great developers who don't write code outside of their job (that might be due to other interests, family responsibilities, a second job, whatever). The fact this guy is in a position to write code in his spare time just means he's not in that group, and the fact his open source work on Github specifically landed him a job he wanted kind of proves the point people are making.

sintaxi 8y ago
Privilege is what is UNEARNED and there is no way to qualify if those with open source contributions are more privileged than others. The very opposite could be true. The privileged can bounce from well paying job to the next with no OSS contributions while the underprivileged have to "show their value" in the harsh environment of open source. You're constructing the viewpoint you want others to see with no data or facts to back it up.
- onion2k 8y ago
  I'm saying that being in a position to have spare time to work on open source is a sign of privilege, and that employers should recognize that when they're hiring. Some great developers work on open source projects, but equally some great developers don't. Open source contributions are not a useful filter.
  - sintaxi 8y ago
    > I'm saying that being in a position to have spare time to work on open source is a sign of privilege That is an assumption made without evidence. An equally qualified assumption would be that its a sign of privilege to not need to contribute to open source. You get an awesome education and go straight into well paying entry level position. Committing to open source is not something casually done at ones leisure. Anything with traction becomes a significant responsibility and it takes an incredible amount of discipline and sacrifice to stay committed.
    - 8y ago

switch007 8y ago

The same underprivileged who feel there is no option but to sign a contract assigning all IP to their employer, which at best dissuades them from doing much open source, and at worst, precludes them from doing any coding which isn't for their employer? (I'm talking about the world beyond California, here)

cup-of-tea 8y ago
Who is signing away code they write in their own time? If you do that then that's your fault. It's not normal at all.
- tom_ 8y ago
  It's been a clause in every employment contract I've been given. I signed the first one, because I wanted the job; the second company folded between my signing and the start date, so it was moot; I didn't sign the third contract at all, but I worked there for 7 years, which apparently is tantamount to acceptance :( Some companies have put this clause in contracts for shorter-term project-based contract work, but I've just crossed it out, generally with no pushback.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    I've been able to negotiate a rephrasing of this in every contract I've been presented with that contains it. What you're willing to give the company is probably the same as what's really important to them: rights to IP you create in the course of your work for the company or during work hours or using company resources. There are ways to phrase this such that - if you're a reasonably desirable hire - the vast majority of HR departments will be willing to substitute for the blanket terms. If you're not sure how to negotiate this, explain that as an example you want to be able to continue to manage the website for your rotary club / kids scout program / whatever; and that the current phrasing would give the company the rights to that website, which there's no reason they'd want, and prevent you from giving back to your community.
- sidlls 8y ago

watwut 8y ago

Imo, OSS advocates really really want open source contributions to be used as hiring signal, because that would mean more open source developers. That is what this all is about, primary. Wish to come back to "open source developers are superior, because reasons" ideology that was pushed for during open/close source wars. And close source developers take issue with it not just because of privilege, but also because you are claiming they are less capable due to their code not being OSS. Majority of employed developers don't have regular open source contributions. Especially those who work in high pressure jobs that already take all they have - both in time and how much effort you can spend per day. If the company is trying at least little bit to reward contributions, the people who give the company more (or come in better rested) get rewarded more then those who work for company less. That drives employees incentives and behavior. Yes, there are junior jobs available to people with two months of coding experience. That is how it should be and there is nothing wrong with company seeing your OSS code as one of way to prove you can do it. The moment it will be expected from everyone, guess what, people like me will have tons of advantages to homeless, former "big scholarship to go to university" student who had to drop out due to personal reasons. Senior developer market is not flooded with people with large open source contributions through. It is just not the case. Why would open source on Github should be privileged over random portfolio in case of juniors? Or to open source contributions that are not on Github? Lastly, I dont think large open source projects can handle influx of juniors using them to prove themselves - which is what would happen if companies would really require oss contributions for hiring. Oss projects have often hard time to stay on top of existing pull requests.

watwut 8y ago
I would add: the homeless person linked from article is not someone having tons of open source contributions. He is someone who is learning, was adviced in browser compiler or raspbery pi to code on and sounds like a junior (e.g. has talent but not independent yet). He would be helped the most if you would hire him as junior, with salary, was able to provide mentoring the same way other juniors are provided mentoring instead of expecting him to spend months homeless in library hoping to run into project that will be good fit for him.
spamizbad 8y ago

sanxiyn 8y ago

I think the obviously right choice is: Do not require open source contributions, but do not ignore them. Similarly: Do not require degrees, computer science or otherwise, but do not ignore them.

lucb1e 8y ago
Staying away from extremes and finding a middle way is generally good advice. Indeed never go 100% for degrees nor 100% for open source contributions.
- Radim 8y ago
  Going a little deeper and not contesting your conclusion, I'd like to point out "middle ground" is more a result of survivorship bias than a general maxim. There are an infinity of choices we make daily that are completely binary, 100% extreme, both on the individual and social group level. They go unnoticed because there's nothing to gain by pontificating "Shall I go 100% in with 'I won't cut off my legs today', or find some middle ground that's not as extreme?" (apologies for the gross example, but articulating inarticulate choices is hard, by definition). Our cognitive capacity is limited, so naturally we've evolved to consider only the choices that matter. We look for the "middle ground" in only a tiny sliver of decisions. Which is obvious, but there's an interesting thought in there: To what degree is the presence of "middle ground" in our minds indicative of some potential gain, an arbitrage opportunity? Turning the causality around, can we assume the distinctions that bubble up to our conscious thought are useful hints at profit? There's something primal about spotting gradients: the only place where it makes sense to talk about a "middle".
madeofpalk 8y ago
@sedo: A rich GitHub profile is like a college degree: ∙ It's a positive signal, one of dozens possible ∙ Not everybody has the time and resources to get one ∙ Having one does not necessarily mean you're good at your job ∙ Ignoring one would be silly ∙ Requiring one would be silly https://twitter.com/seldo/status/1005120664850743296 https://twitter.com/seldo/status/1005120664850743296

realSlavojTrump 8y ago

There's evidence in the literature that shows that there are systemic biases against women in github pull requests, even when in the aggregate women may display greater levels of competence. https://peerj.com/articles/cs-111/ https://peerj.com/articles/cs-111/ To suggest that pull requests are a good hiring signal (as the author does in explicitly endorsing the "screening" of open source maintainers) ignores this bias. That can be positive or negative, depending on your commitment to diversity in our field.

ubernostrum 8y ago
For those who haven't read the linked article before, it really is fascinating. The relevant bits are two factors: * Is the person sending the pull request someone already known to the project, or an outsider? * Is the gender of the pull request's author easily determinable? It would be unsurprising to find that "outsider" pull requests get merged at a lower rate. But "outsider" pull requests from women merge at different rates depending on the second factor: when it's easy to determine the gender of the author, a pull request from an "outsider" woman is significantly less likely to be accepted than a pull request from an "outsider" woman whose gender cannot easily be determined. Also, "insider" women and women whose gender is not easily determinable have higher rates of merged PRs than their male counterparts. There's no reason to suspect that whether someone's gender is easily determinable by a PR reviewer (usually, via username, profile picture, other clues like linked blogs or social-media profiles) has an effect on the quality of their code. So while this of course doesn't prove gender bias (we'd need telepathy for that), it does very very very strongly suggest it. This is also in line with a lot of prior research and reporting on blind interview and auditioning practices, so shouldn't be too surprising, but for some reason people love to insist that tech is somehow different from all those other fields where hiding someone's gender changed how they were evaluated.
janeroe 8y ago
> systemic biases against women in github pull requests Did you read your link? > The hypothesis is not only false, but it is in the opposite direction than expected; women tend to have their pull requests accepted at a higher rate than men! This difference is statistically significant

buro9 8y ago

Ignoring the debate around "that tweet" Github is great for those with an interest to be able to self-teach and self-learn. To acquire experience from doing, by being able to see how others have done it before or to take that and use it. Github is to this generation of programmers, what View Source was to the early web generation of programmers. Without View Source in 1996, and with no resource to education or work at that time, I would not have learned how to make complete web sites and then have moved to automatically making those websites (HTML generation via a CMS). Github is important and critical, but not for hiring those already in the industry... for learning and to make this industry accessible to those who are under privileged in terms of access to education, mentoring, code clubs, etc. And then for recognising those people during hiring and giving them the break they deserve.

tranchms 8y ago

“For example, it's hard for me as an individual Muslim to change the fact that some people hate Muslims, so it's better for me to focus my energy on things that I can control. This, however, doesn't mean that as a society we shouldn't discuss issues of discrimination.“ Whoa.

rectang 8y ago

It is unavoidable that privilege affects who contributes to open source and how much. Whether or not this is bad is a philosophical issue: is it bad that life is unfair? The harm comes when people deny the existence of privilege and other forms of luck, and attribute success to their own moral superiority and the moral inferiority of others.

golergka 8y ago
Fairness and morals in general are leaky abstractions that only apply to a subset of all possible situations. The most "fair" system can't survive a single generation of you allow parents to invest their resources in competitive advantage for their children – which is one of the most basic human desires.
- rectang 8y ago
  The pull towards corrupt aristocracy is strong all right! But it's worth resisting.
  - golergka 8y ago
    Depends on your personal situation. It's possible it's also worth joining it.

jakobegger 8y ago

I think we should stop looking for the One True Way and accept that there are multiple ways to evaluate job applicants. Some companies will hire only people from top schools, other companies put a lot of focus on understanding algorithms; other companies just look at your previous jobs, and some may just look at your Github profile. If you are looking for a job, you need to understand that, and apply to the right companies. Depending on your background, not every company might be a great fit. If a CS degree is a hard requirement, and you don't have one, then applying at that job is a waste of time. If you're applying to a company that works on Open Source and they have popular, public Github repos, and you have a blank Github account without any contributions, you're not going to make a good impression.

smonff 8y ago

Also, what about Stack Exchange profiles?

brett40324 8y ago
IMO as someone who has been on stack exchange for a long time, while barely posting anything, ever. I would loathe feeling the need to have an active history of participation to boost my employment opportunities. At the same time, someone with a lot of good answers in their field should definitely include their profile in a job application.
JanisL 8y ago
Speaking as someone who has been on there and posted a substantial number of answers I think the correlation between professional development skills is much stronger with open source contributions than "points" on a QA board.

stealthmodeclan 8y ago

One thing is that since people from not so reputable university get to have very few interactions with those from elite universities, we assume elite university students are lot better at programming. Today, you can directly take a look at their craft on github, this has given much confidence to those from lower rungs of the society like, hey! I can create better than this person even tho i am not from such an ellite university. This along with the meritocracy in tech levels the playing field where the ones from better universities should found startups by using their connections instead of working for companies

mmjaa 8y ago

I have been working productively as a systems software developer for 32 years. I do not have a degree; I'm a high-school dropout. I've built systems you've probably used, and/or may still be using. The #1 technical lever I have found worth exploiting, worth far more than anything a university can provide, is the willingness to get the job done. It hasn't mattered if I wrote CP/M code ISR's, PROGRESS 4GL modules, Unix daemons, Pascal, .. Java, C, C++, Objective-C, Lua, Swift, &etc. - through the thick of it all, the fact that I was willing to get the job done, no matter what, is what made the difference. On the other end of this scale, is a bit of decadence. From my particularly tainted point of view, the ideological basis of the current cultural norm of "university==well-paid job" is entirely decadent. People seem to have expectations that, because they're in a certain class, they don't have to work hard at developing other real life issues, and too many times I've seen the well-educated, well-connected, nevertheless incompetent developer fall to pieces under pressure. I am grateful for these guys, because they make my life easier. Yet, those who are in this group, who haven't got a decadent ideal of their own worth, but rather get things done in computing, whatever it takes: great. So its really not a matter of educated-enough. Its whether the will to perform is, through whatever means, inculcated - and then manifest by taking the actions to get the state of things, done. Some of the best developers I've ever worked with, have come from utterly dire circumstances. Some of the worst, too. Likewise for the privileged, candied elite. The one differentiator, truly, is the will of the individual. Computers, being machines of will, equalise us all that way.

poster123 8y ago
Interesting post, but referring to people with college degrees as a "privileged, candied elite" shows some bias. Besides the will to get things done, other important differentiators are knowledge, talent, and intellligence.
- mmjaa 8y ago
  "Privileged, candied elite" is just one end of the scale, yo. There are "Privileged, hard-working elite" too, in case that part wasn't clear. It really doesn't matter, if you've got the will to work, is the point.. knowledge/talent/intelligence: not finite resources, when there is enough willpower around.

reidrac 8y ago

For me, having some open source on GitHub, bitbucket and launchpad, has been useful in few job interviews because it kind of helped to avoid the "coding exercise" and it was a good data point to prove I know how to use git and good development practices. But that wasn't the main driver for me working on open source. I think it is a nice side effect, but it shouldn't be a requirement; and definitely GH is not your CV (specially when there's so much open source not in GH!). That said, when I've been in a position that I could influence the hiring policy, I gave value to open source contributions because it did align with the ethos of the company. I guess it may not be important depending on who's hiring, but it is always useful if it is there and what you see is good stuff.

zimbatm 8y ago

Some people say that they don't have time to contribute back because they have a family and and a life. At the same time, pretty much every company depends on OSS to operate. Shouldn't contributing be an integral part of work? In my day-to-day, I depend OSS to get my job done. If there is a bug, I am allowed take the time to build a patchset and push it upstream. It's good for everyone. The company benefits from not having to maintain a fork, the developer gets to build his github profile, the rest of the world can also use the update. People who don't have a GitHub profile is also a signal that they either don't take the time during their normal work hours, or are prevented from contributing back due to company policy.

xstartup 8y ago

It's very true. Many developers in the west having higher disposable income than their not so lucky counterparts who might be able to rival them in absolute skill. But those developers want to spend more time with the family. Remote work has not taken off even if we assume it's more profitable for a company to hire cheaper staff in low COL. This might mean that lots of the things in a startup has to do with maintaining a perception of smart geeks are working on a difficult global problem. There is an arbitrage opportunity here by hiring ghost developers from low COL locations (similar to ghost writers). Why not support developers from low COL? That's what creates global economic equality right which egalitarian society always strives for. So, if anyone comes to your office you'll have people looking seriously absorbed by the difficult problem but the real work will be done elsewhere, in return, you get peace of mind and more time with your family. Instagram pages and blogs will be lush with happy tech employee faces and "long stories of slaying tech demons". Is this happening?

pmorici 8y ago

This title feels like political click-bait. The first two paragraphs describe what most people would consider a privileged background and the core of the post goes on to discuss the merit of using GitHub as a hiring signal. What the author is really describing is how GitHub can be a way to get your foot in a door or stand out from the crowd where you otherwise don't have any social connections.

KirinDave 8y ago

> Because open-source is good at cutting through the bullshit, it also makes it an equalizer. That's one heck of a premise.

ahartmetz 8y ago
You mean open source doesn't cut through the bullshit? It totally does. People can put anything on their resume and sometimes bullshit their way through questions trying to figure out whether they've actually done these things. If all else fails, they can claim trade secrets. Open source contributions can't be faked (except by real name collision), and in any case, there is much more detail available than a few lines or bullet points in a resume.
- aitrean 8y ago
  Open source contributions do not cover even scratch the surface of depth needed to be a software developer. Oh, you resolved that issue in a related repo? That's awesome. Now, for our repo we need you to design an entire system effectively, work well with our other developers, and meet whatever deadlines we prescribe. Of course, if you're someone that accomplishes all of that in the open source community, then your open source work definitely 'cuts through the bullshit'. But the people who meet those criteria are a small subset of even the active open source community. In general, someone's 50 line commit to an open source repo does not tell me much more than them knowing the technology, and being able to complete tasks within a time period of undefined length.
- KirinDave 8y ago
  > People can put anything on their resume and sometimes bullshit their way through questions trying to figure out whether they've actually done these things. If all else fails, they can claim trade secrets. They can perform similar tactics on github: like mirroring an obscure but technically in-depth project without attribution, paying someone to write code and then committing it in your name (I've seen this done!), or making sure to get lots of extra commit density by doing one feature or bugfix after successfully landing a series of reformatting PRs. An applicant planning to fake their way past you is genuinely hard to catch unless your process is tuned for it. The idea that there is a one-size-fits all interview process and that process is as simple as, "Check their github" is lazy to the point of malpractice. It's a goofy premise, and it's playing right into the hand of people who want to abuse you. And this is just addressing the problematic nature of modern tooling for positive signals. Given the pervasive nature of harassment culture in the open source world, you should ALWAYS excuse the absence of open source work. It cannot be a requirement because the open source world can often become extremely hostile and/or political.

trjordan 8y ago

Thinking about Github-as-resume as strictly positive or uselessly noisy probably means you have an overly simplistic model for evaluating candidates. I'll share a model that's worked for me in the past. Before you even write the job description, define the 3-7 traits you need to hire against. These can be as fuzzy as "gets shit done" or as specific as "5+ years marketing SaaS to $100k+ accounts" or "is effective at resolving incidents while on-call." You need to be able to rate people on this. Binary is fine ("yes they can get shit done"). 3-4 levels is good (bad / good / total superstar). Don't go overboard with granularity: you need to fit this all in your head for a couple candidates at a time when you compare them. As you go through your process, try to get good information about at least one of these areas at each step. My favorite thing to do is, between in-person interviews, be able to tee up the next interviewer with "I got mixed signals about communication style. Can you dig in?" When you wrap up, make sure you cover all the boxes. Don't get smitten with a candidate with amazing experience who can code circles around everybody else who's never worked in a 25+ person team (assuming that's what you agreed was important). When you're ready to make a decision, you now have a reasonable set of trade-offs to make. I tend to create rubrics where solid scores in 3 of 5 categories is a Hire, to allow us to compare different types of candidates. Ok, back to GitHub. GitHub can give you VERY STRONG SIGNALS for some of these issues. It's great to be able to know up-front that somebody is comfortable working with teams they don't personally know well (typical in big open-source projects). The convese to that is that I generally expect some strong signal up front from any candidate. If not GitHub, give me a respected company on your resume. A recommendation from a mutual friend. A well-written cover letter. When folks complain about 100s of resumes, it's because the problem is this lack of signal. An aside: it's on you to allow folks with non-traditional backgrounds to succeed at this step. Write a better job req, or go email likely candidates. Diversity requires multiple ways in. Once you're a bit further, this cuts the other way. If "good communication in pull requests" is important to you, don't spend any time here with candidates who have strong Githubs. You already have all the data you need. Spend your time elsewhere. There is no extra credit. GitHub can help you a bunch when evaluating candidates, but it's crucial to stay away from this notion that _anything_ during an evaluation that looks like a silver bullet. You always have to do the work of interviewing well, and it's always specific to your company. Finally: if you have a process that allows you to fully evaluate a candidate by reading their public GitHub, you're almost certainly hiring for the wrong things.

teddyh 8y ago

Is this maybe a hint of the lock-in which GitHub will pursue in the future? Like Facebook, you might prefer to avoid having an account, but due to other people using the platform as a signal, you feel that you can’t avoid signing up for GitHub (and accepting whatever terms Microsoft will set on this). It is also a bit like the problem of academic publishing; you might prefer to publish in an Open Access journal and on ArXiv, but feel that you have no choice for your academic career other than to pay dearly for publishing in a “influential”/“reputable” journal owned by Elsevier, giving up all rights to publish elsewhere (and whatever other rights they feel they can push).

alien_ 8y ago

Nowadays most software depends on open source one way or another, and as developer you will eventually run into issues with the open source software that you depend on. Also, larger companies internally operate much like an open source community, having multiple projects that accept contributions from anyone in the company. Reporting and fixing public issues as part of your employment is a sign that you care about the ecosystem that you are part of, giving back rather than just benefiting from it. It's not necessarily a showcase of your coding skills, because these contributions are usually small, but it shows that you will get your hands dirty if needed and fix the problem at the root, instead of hacking a workaround in your own code base. It also shows that you have no problem with learning a new code base and delivering code according to that project's quality standards. If you don't have any public activity it may imply the opposite: that you are just freeloading your community, that you are prone to doing workarounds instead of fixing the problem upstream or that you are unable or reluctant to contribute to other projects.

hocuspocus 8y ago
> It also shows that you have no problem with learning a new code base and delivering code according to that project's quality standards. If you can tell your employer you'll spend the next sprint or two fixing a bug upstream, good for you! From my experience working with complex libraries, when you hit a bug or a corner case, it is probably not going to be an easy fix. There's a reason many open source projects are triaging low-hanging fruits for first-time contributors.
- alien_ 8y ago
  Companies should invest in the open source they depend on, otherwise they will need to re-implement it from scratch or maintain an in-house fork with higher costs. You may be spending those sprints implementing a workaround that you will then have to touch again when the problem is eventually fixed upstream, or you will run a private fork that you're stuck with forever and will have a hard time maintaining. As for the complexity, from my experience it's a mix. There are indeed many complex issues, but often times the fixes are relatively easy and take little time to fix. For the hard ones it's often enough if you can contribute to the conversation to better understand the problem, providing valuable information on how to reproduce, so that someone familiar with the code base can solve it easier.

duxup 8y ago

Even compared to say 20+ years ago, it is amazing how many fully capable services and how much high quality and polished software is free. I'm a former network guy who is learning web development. The amount of software I've installed is kinda crazy compared to what I used with networking. Everything I've used is free and crazy high quality, I haven't felt like I'm missing anything. In the networking world it is a lot of custom software and proprietary software. There are free options for some things but they're not nearly as polished or fully functional out of the gate.

MentallyRetired 8y ago

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that doesn't have a ton of open source commits on github. I'm too busy building things I get paid for. Sorry, but that's the truth of it... github is a terrible CV replacement for me.

devxpy 8y ago

I hate how people don't mention the quality of work one is doing on Github, or anywhere for that matter. I've personally seen people make one-liner commits deliberately, to get a good graph. On the other hand, some people write code because they actually created something real, which solves a real problem. And the difference is quite clear if you're looking for it. Arguably, the github community suffers from the "celebrity" effect that facebook/Instagram have. But I digress. Comparing a Github account to a college degree is crazy. Once a piece of paper, and the other is a full history of the guy's work, presented at a mouse click away. I am about to clear the first year of my univ, and honestly couldn't care less about what the univ taught me. I can't even recall most of it. What I can show you is my Github profile, where I did real work, and built real software that actually works (including some IoT projects that I personally use myself, every day) Not to mention the other projects that didn't made on Github, but did make it on a Bitbucket private repo.

satysin 8y ago

I like platforms like GitHub as it makes it easy to have a public portfolio of your work. Not that there is anything wrong with not having a portfolio but it certainly makes life easier when trying to show clients/employers your skill set. Pretty much all designers have some kind of public portfolio such as a website with example of their previous work. I see GitHub as a centralised (and, for the most part, respected) place to put your work for developers, even if you don't want to use it for collaboration but simply as an advertising platform. However it does lead to the same kind of problem you get with employers not looking at a candidate who doesn't have a LinkedIn profile. You will inevitably miss out of some excellent people who don't wish to/can't use such a platform.

aitrean 8y ago
Design work is extremely different from developer work. Design work is usually publicly available, and each piece often stands on its own. Paid developer work is usually not publicly visible, and a lot of projects require working with teams. The type of work that goes on a Github profile, therefore, is usually unpaid work where you get to create your own project, and pick your own codebase. In this sense, you're comparing apples to oranges.

ImaCake 8y ago

I think this misses the point. A resource like GitHub shouldn't just be used by the underpriviliged to score a better paying job. It should be used by underpriviliged groups to gain access to the tools and knowledge that rich groups take for granted. Then the underpriviliged can build their own system without simply buying into the existing systems. This is the same argument we make against closed access research papers. The goal isn't to make it easier to hire poor people. The goal is to give poor people knowledge and resources so they can build themselves up.