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As someone making hiring decisions, I very much do visit the github accounts of my applicants. I consider the quality of their code and look favorably on them f
by killjoywashere 7y ago
As someone making hiring decisions, I very much do visit the github accounts of my applicants. I consider the quality of their code and look favorably on them for making code available. I look even more favorably on those who bother to make licensing decisions for their code. Do you get an extra $5k for pushing 1k lines of GNU-licensed code? No. Did you get a callback on your job application? You bet. Do I take pride in the OSS work of my people? Yes. Does that factor into their performance review? Yes. Does that factor into their annual raise and prospects for promotion? Yes.
I have also hired people who don't have GitHub accounts. In those cases, they have some other proof of work. Papers, thesis, references (which are a drag, because then I have to also figure out how to vet the reference) and, particularly valuable, referrals from people I already know personally. This last one goes both ways: not only do I have high confidence in the good intentions of the person making the referral, I can then retrospectively assess this contact's ability to assess.
- steinuil 7y agoDoes your company allow engineers to work on OSS while they're not busy? If not then how can you claim you're proud of their contributions, and don't you feel like you're coercing people into working overtime to get a better raise or a promotion?
- wawawiwa 7y agoMy take: He can claim he is proud because he acknowledges their work and - as the rest of the work - it influences promotion and raises. He enjoys and rewards the positive impact this work has for the company image and the skills of the employees.
- steinuil 7y agoI can understand that, I just disagree that to be a better employee one should also devote their free time to an activity that directly influences one's performance review at work. This is definitely a good deal for people who enjoy doing OSS work on their own time-- but it feels wrong and not fair to those who don't want or don't have time to put the extra hours for that.
- killjoywashere 7y agoWe're so remote the sun never sets on our group, so the definition of "workday" is pretty fluid, so yes, "when they're not busy" is a good partition. Otherwise, as the other child comment says, there is a pride in supporting effort. I don't necessarily benefit directly from the projects they may work on. Like others have said, I can't coerce them to do write open source code. But I definitely benefit from their improved or sustained skills. You have to find differentiators to make such decisions. Are you arguing that I should ignore signal or that open source contributions are an invalid signal, or the use of the signal itself is immoral, by some definition of "immoral"?