8 ms·

Depends on what you want out of a career too. The big FAANG type companies don't tend to care at all about your GitHub, so "practice whiteboard problems" is bet

Depends on what you want out of a career too. The big FAANG type companies don't tend to care at all about your GitHub, so "practice whiteboard problems" is better advice for someone looking for that of job.

staticassertion 7y ago
I don't think any company cares that much about your github. It almost always comes down to the interview. But programming in your free time will (likely) make you more effective in your job, garner recognition/ place you in a programming community, teach you about new problem spaces, etc. So while that may not help you move from job to job (I'd argue, however, that it does), it'll help you accelerate your career within a company. I don't think it's contentious to say that practice will improve your skill, and improving your skill generally leads to a better (by some definition) career.
- ori_b 7y ago
  > I don't think any company cares that much about your github. It almost always comes down to the interview. Personally, I would weight a great GitHub more highly than an interview. But great GitHubs are very rare.
  - staticassertion 7y ago
    Sure, I would too. Interviews are mostly stupid. At small companies where you have more wild-west type procedures you can probably get away with saying "Github is good enough", but my experience is that even mid sized companies start to put all of their bags in the interview basket.
- solipsism 7y ago
  I would like to see evidence that, say, 10 hours a day (assuming 2 hours of free time programming) yields better results than 8. It's plausible, but it's not at all obvious.
  - staticassertion 7y ago
    Me too. I can't say one way or the other, I can only speak to what I perceive in my career. I believe I've made it this far, in part at least, due to the extra hours I've put in. I believe I'm a much better programmer for it too. But I also put way more in than an extra 2 hours a day.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> The big FAANG type companies don't tend to care at all about your GitHub My feedback from Google was to put more code up on my GitHub (and I already had hundreds of thousands of lines in a major open source project on there.)
- singron 7y ago
  I doubt that the feedback Google gives to candidates is valuable (seems like it wasn't for you). I'm surprised they give any at all since they are probably afraid of getting sued. If you got anything back, it's probably been so filtered down from the original pages of feedback the interviewers wrote that it's meaningless.

staticassertion 7y ago

I don't think any company cares that much about your github. It almost always comes down to the interview. But programming in your free time will (likely) make you more effective in your job, garner recognition/ place you in a programming community, teach you about new problem spaces, etc. So while that may not help you move from job to job (I'd argue, however, that it does), it'll help you accelerate your career within a company. I don't think it's contentious to say that practice will improve your skill, and improving your skill generally leads to a better (by some definition) career.

ori_b 7y ago
> I don't think any company cares that much about your github. It almost always comes down to the interview. Personally, I would weight a great GitHub more highly than an interview. But great GitHubs are very rare.
- staticassertion 7y ago
  Sure, I would too. Interviews are mostly stupid. At small companies where you have more wild-west type procedures you can probably get away with saying "Github is good enough", but my experience is that even mid sized companies start to put all of their bags in the interview basket.
solipsism 7y ago
I would like to see evidence that, say, 10 hours a day (assuming 2 hours of free time programming) yields better results than 8. It's plausible, but it's not at all obvious.
- staticassertion 7y ago
  Me too. I can't say one way or the other, I can only speak to what I perceive in my career. I believe I've made it this far, in part at least, due to the extra hours I've put in. I believe I'm a much better programmer for it too. But I also put way more in than an extra 2 hours a day.

chrisseaton 7y ago

> The big FAANG type companies don't tend to care at all about your GitHub My feedback from Google was to put more code up on my GitHub (and I already had hundreds of thousands of lines in a major open source project on there.)

singron 7y ago
I doubt that the feedback Google gives to candidates is valuable (seems like it wasn't for you). I'm surprised they give any at all since they are probably afraid of getting sued. If you got anything back, it's probably been so filtered down from the original pages of feedback the interviewers wrote that it's meaningless.