8 ms·

Ask HN: Professional Hacker's Web Presence?

22 points by techbio 16y ago

What sites are key for the professional hacker? What is your public face? How do you evaluate a candidate professional for employ/contract/partner/supplier online?

superk 16y ago
Edit: Ok, that's a little bit of a loaded question. Key to the professional hacker / public face: blog, github / google code, twitter and activity in forums (like HN). How to evaluate a potential employee / contract.. the above, plus LinkedIn, CV / references, portfolio and social networks (if they aren't careful with permissions). Supplier.. google, twitter (#good / #bad tweets) and credibility of web site. Partner.. lot's of face-to-face time.
- techbio 16y ago
  Loaded? As in the answer is obvious because of how it was asked? I don't mean it that way. I am curious if there is a combination of online attributes that will generally form a proxy for professionalism.
  - superk 16y ago
    Sorry... I meant because the two sentences weren't entirely related.
    - techbio 16y ago
      Not at all. I meant for it to ask a specific question. Your response hit all the notes.
angusgr 16y ago
I think that the answer to the first part of your question ("public face") depends on a lot on the choice offered in the second part "employ/contract/partner/supplier". Also, to a lesser extent, on the kind of work you're talking about (startup hacker, co-founder, web programmer, systems programmer, open source hacker, IT dogsbody?). Can you be more specific? Assuming the question is for your benefit, what are you looking to be? If the question is for your own analysis, who are you looking to hire/partner/contract to?
- techbio 16y ago
  Lets say your boss gives you a list of ten name/email address pairs every morning at 10:00, and you have to give him a list of the three most professional candidates, in order, by 11 because your competition will hire them or something. What script/Google search query/yahoo pipe/metrics could you use to automate this task?
  - angusgr 16y ago
    I'd say that this is still meaningless without context. Who is your boss? Who are you? Who are the potential hires for? Where did the names come from in the first place? If I'm reading your reply correctly, you're actually looking to write an algorithm for an automated "find-a-hacker" engine? In which case, I'd say the first bar to surpass is from another comment here - the guy who said his website is pretty crummy but it comes up first when you google "PHP programmer edinburgh"
    - techbio 16y ago
      Meaningless is a little strong. I'm asking generally. And clearly Google is not tuned to answer this.
    - techbio 16y ago
      I do not know your name, but for example, projectgus gives me 3400 Google results: blog, twitter, github, and then the rest of the top ten are "something something Project - Gus Winters, something, ..." So 3400 is a poor rating metric. But what metrics from the list of HN, StackOverflow, /., reddit/prog, yahoo answers, MIT Media Lab, web site PR, Citseer mentions, etc. could constitute a good ranking? Sure, a Nobel Prize is a shortcut. I am talking about a proxy or data model for finding and sorting. If it can be automated, it will be.
      - angusgr 16y ago
        It would still seem to me like it would be context sensitive, in the sense that you want different information to hire different types of professionals and also that people put different aspects of their life online. To follow on from your example of me - googling projectgus gives you my both my personal blog and my twitter account as the first two results. My twitter account title gives you my real name, and if you google that then you immediately find my current employer, and some details from an old employer, and then a long tail of quasi-related noise. Whether or not you'll find anything relevant to what you want depends on what you're looking for. I don't have a resume posted online, which means that although I'm a professional programmer most of my programming experience doesn't immediately show up anywhere on the internet. However, it's possible you could infer a lot of it from my posts on various little mailing lists and forums (for example, a handful of posts on Erlang-Questions because I spent about a year writing Erlang and a few posts on the Hibernate forums because I've done a little bit of Java middleware development.) Maybe. Of course, nobody just says "let's see if Angus is a hacker we can hire". Someone might say "oh, you need more Erlang programmers? I know a local programmer called Angus who has programmed in Erlang" (for contrived example). In which case, you google my name + Erlang and you can see that I've programmed in Erlang. Although my online Erlang presence is, in my opinion, underwhelming and you would not decide to approach me on that basis. Which, in my opinion, would be a mistake. ;) However, even though you wouldn't get specific information about me, you would be able to read my blog and find out I like Linux & open source, I own an Arduino, I like taking apart cheap chinese gadgets, and I like writing. Which is possibly all useful information, again depending on exactly what you were after me for in the first place. Although I didn't put that information online to get jobs (if I did want to do that, I'd have a resume section online or a LinkedIn profile or something, and maybe the above paragraphs of rant would be redundant.) I hope this discussion helps you in whatever process you decide to automate. I understand that you're talking about something a bit different, but at the same time I think it would be hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all approach that was entirely based on scraping other data. Finding something more specific, in the same vein as Haskellers.com except without the user-submitted data, might be plausible. Stack Overflow Careers, for instance, uses Stack Overflow as its data source but OTOH it still relies on the user to submit other details, in order to make the information relevant to employers.
nathanielksmith 16y ago
github (or something similar, but only if used heavily) is the most paramount, I'd say. By looking at a well-used github (/gitorius/bitbucket...) account you can evaluate someone's: - communication skills - code quality - areas of expertise - creativity - ability to see things through to the end
- lolname 16y ago
  Do you refrain from hiring anybody without a github account?
  - superk 16y ago
    If it were an employer's market you could probably get away with that.
    - lolname 16y ago
      Why would an employer want to do that? A github account just makes it slightly more likely that the candidate's experience involves more open source, and less proprietary code. Personally, I'd rather filter candidates based on factors that relate to their performance. After all, bad hires are very expensive... as such, most of these shortcuts strike me as incredibly misguided nonsense.
      - superk 16y ago
        Because they can see first hand the quality of the code (plus all the other meta information that comes along with commit logs). How do you evaluate proprietary code at anywhere near that same level?
user24 16y ago
I publish a lot on my personal blog ( http://www.puremango.co.uk http://www.puremango.co.uk ). Other than that it's twitter, reddit and HN. I do have linkedin but I don't really use it at all. I invite employers to read over my blog posts and my CV which I put online ( http://www.puremango.co.uk/2009/08/php-cv/ http://www.puremango.co.uk/2009/08/php-cv/ ). That's about it really. If I don't want something associated with me, I try not to do it really...
- techbio 16y ago
  The Eric Schmidt Solution to web archives? http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-people http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-...
TamDenholm 16y ago
I'm a web dev so obviously i've got a website. Its very neglected but it still ranks in google for "Edinburgh PHP Developer" which is exactly the people i'm after so its fine for now.
lsc 16y ago
depends on what kind of hacker. for a unix greybeard, it's all about the mailing lists. I'd be very suspicious of any applicant for a high level open-source *NIX job who doesn't show up on mailing lists.
- dinkumthinkum 16y ago
  Why, exactly?
  - angusgr 16y ago
    I think because that's where the bulk of the community is for "greybeard unix open source" technology. The generalised answer, I would think, is "be visible or at least present in the online community that exists around your chosen technologies". (I didn't post the parent reply, but I did upvote it!)
    - dinkumthinkum 16y ago
      I just disagree with the current mantra that you have to be so out there and in the public to be a worthwhile programmer. Many great programmers really aren't interested in tweeting every time they figure out what a hashtable is or whatever.I think it would be suspect if one was not aware of mailing lists and didn't at least lurk through them as a resources but as far as being an active participant, I think it's a bit over-hyped.
      - lsc 16y ago
        For many kinds of programming, you are right. But if you hit a bug in the kernel, you are probably going to communicate with others (probably on a mailing list) in the process of fixing that bug. Same goes for hitting bugs in any other open-source part of UNIX. I mean, sure, if you are writing an application, this only applies on the shared library bits. But I was specifically talking about advanced *NIX people... people who would be expected to deal with bugs in open-source products.

22 points by techbio 16y ago

What sites are key for the professional hacker? What is your public face? How do you evaluate a candidate professional for employ/contract/partner/supplier online?

superk 16y ago

Edit: Ok, that's a little bit of a loaded question. Key to the professional hacker / public face: blog, github / google code, twitter and activity in forums (like HN). How to evaluate a potential employee / contract.. the above, plus LinkedIn, CV / references, portfolio and social networks (if they aren't careful with permissions). Supplier.. google, twitter (#good / #bad tweets) and credibility of web site. Partner.. lot's of face-to-face time.

techbio 16y ago
Loaded? As in the answer is obvious because of how it was asked? I don't mean it that way. I am curious if there is a combination of online attributes that will generally form a proxy for professionalism.
- superk 16y ago
  Sorry... I meant because the two sentences weren't entirely related.
  - techbio 16y ago
    Not at all. I meant for it to ask a specific question. Your response hit all the notes.

angusgr 16y ago

I think that the answer to the first part of your question ("public face") depends on a lot on the choice offered in the second part "employ/contract/partner/supplier". Also, to a lesser extent, on the kind of work you're talking about (startup hacker, co-founder, web programmer, systems programmer, open source hacker, IT dogsbody?). Can you be more specific? Assuming the question is for your benefit, what are you looking to be? If the question is for your own analysis, who are you looking to hire/partner/contract to?

techbio 16y ago
Lets say your boss gives you a list of ten name/email address pairs every morning at 10:00, and you have to give him a list of the three most professional candidates, in order, by 11 because your competition will hire them or something. What script/Google search query/yahoo pipe/metrics could you use to automate this task?
- angusgr 16y ago
  I'd say that this is still meaningless without context. Who is your boss? Who are you? Who are the potential hires for? Where did the names come from in the first place? If I'm reading your reply correctly, you're actually looking to write an algorithm for an automated "find-a-hacker" engine? In which case, I'd say the first bar to surpass is from another comment here - the guy who said his website is pretty crummy but it comes up first when you google "PHP programmer edinburgh"
  - techbio 16y ago
    Meaningless is a little strong. I'm asking generally. And clearly Google is not tuned to answer this.
  - techbio 16y ago
    I do not know your name, but for example, projectgus gives me 3400 Google results: blog, twitter, github, and then the rest of the top ten are "something something Project - Gus Winters, something, ..." So 3400 is a poor rating metric. But what metrics from the list of HN, StackOverflow, /., reddit/prog, yahoo answers, MIT Media Lab, web site PR, Citseer mentions, etc. could constitute a good ranking? Sure, a Nobel Prize is a shortcut. I am talking about a proxy or data model for finding and sorting. If it can be automated, it will be.
    - angusgr 16y ago
      It would still seem to me like it would be context sensitive, in the sense that you want different information to hire different types of professionals and also that people put different aspects of their life online. To follow on from your example of me - googling projectgus gives you my both my personal blog and my twitter account as the first two results. My twitter account title gives you my real name, and if you google that then you immediately find my current employer, and some details from an old employer, and then a long tail of quasi-related noise. Whether or not you'll find anything relevant to what you want depends on what you're looking for. I don't have a resume posted online, which means that although I'm a professional programmer most of my programming experience doesn't immediately show up anywhere on the internet. However, it's possible you could infer a lot of it from my posts on various little mailing lists and forums (for example, a handful of posts on Erlang-Questions because I spent about a year writing Erlang and a few posts on the Hibernate forums because I've done a little bit of Java middleware development.) Maybe. Of course, nobody just says "let's see if Angus is a hacker we can hire". Someone might say "oh, you need more Erlang programmers? I know a local programmer called Angus who has programmed in Erlang" (for contrived example). In which case, you google my name + Erlang and you can see that I've programmed in Erlang. Although my online Erlang presence is, in my opinion, underwhelming and you would not decide to approach me on that basis. Which, in my opinion, would be a mistake. ;) However, even though you wouldn't get specific information about me, you would be able to read my blog and find out I like Linux & open source, I own an Arduino, I like taking apart cheap chinese gadgets, and I like writing. Which is possibly all useful information, again depending on exactly what you were after me for in the first place. Although I didn't put that information online to get jobs (if I did want to do that, I'd have a resume section online or a LinkedIn profile or something, and maybe the above paragraphs of rant would be redundant.) I hope this discussion helps you in whatever process you decide to automate. I understand that you're talking about something a bit different, but at the same time I think it would be hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all approach that was entirely based on scraping other data. Finding something more specific, in the same vein as Haskellers.com except without the user-submitted data, might be plausible. Stack Overflow Careers, for instance, uses Stack Overflow as its data source but OTOH it still relies on the user to submit other details, in order to make the information relevant to employers.

nathanielksmith 16y ago

github (or something similar, but only if used heavily) is the most paramount, I'd say. By looking at a well-used github (/gitorius/bitbucket...) account you can evaluate someone's: - communication skills - code quality - areas of expertise - creativity - ability to see things through to the end

lolname 16y ago
Do you refrain from hiring anybody without a github account?
- superk 16y ago
  If it were an employer's market you could probably get away with that.
  - lolname 16y ago
    Why would an employer want to do that? A github account just makes it slightly more likely that the candidate's experience involves more open source, and less proprietary code. Personally, I'd rather filter candidates based on factors that relate to their performance. After all, bad hires are very expensive... as such, most of these shortcuts strike me as incredibly misguided nonsense.
    - superk 16y ago
      Because they can see first hand the quality of the code (plus all the other meta information that comes along with commit logs). How do you evaluate proprietary code at anywhere near that same level?

user24 16y ago

I publish a lot on my personal blog ( http://www.puremango.co.uk http://www.puremango.co.uk ). Other than that it's twitter, reddit and HN. I do have linkedin but I don't really use it at all. I invite employers to read over my blog posts and my CV which I put online ( http://www.puremango.co.uk/2009/08/php-cv/ http://www.puremango.co.uk/2009/08/php-cv/ ). That's about it really. If I don't want something associated with me, I try not to do it really...

techbio 16y ago
The Eric Schmidt Solution to web archives? http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-people http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-...

TamDenholm 16y ago

I'm a web dev so obviously i've got a website. Its very neglected but it still ranks in google for "Edinburgh PHP Developer" which is exactly the people i'm after so its fine for now.

lsc 16y ago

depends on what kind of hacker. for a unix greybeard, it's all about the mailing lists. I'd be very suspicious of any applicant for a high level open-source *NIX job who doesn't show up on mailing lists.

dinkumthinkum 16y ago
Why, exactly?
- angusgr 16y ago
  I think because that's where the bulk of the community is for "greybeard unix open source" technology. The generalised answer, I would think, is "be visible or at least present in the online community that exists around your chosen technologies". (I didn't post the parent reply, but I did upvote it!)
  - dinkumthinkum 16y ago
    I just disagree with the current mantra that you have to be so out there and in the public to be a worthwhile programmer. Many great programmers really aren't interested in tweeting every time they figure out what a hashtable is or whatever.I think it would be suspect if one was not aware of mailing lists and didn't at least lurk through them as a resources but as far as being an active participant, I think it's a bit over-hyped.
    - lsc 16y ago
      For many kinds of programming, you are right. But if you hit a bug in the kernel, you are probably going to communicate with others (probably on a mailing list) in the process of fixing that bug. Same goes for hitting bugs in any other open-source part of UNIX. I mean, sure, if you are writing an application, this only applies on the shared library bits. But I was specifically talking about advanced *NIX people... people who would be expected to deal with bugs in open-source products.