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First thing I do when a resume crosses my desk (as a hiring manager) is check their GitHub (or GitLab) profile, if they supply one. It is an important weapon i

by bregma 6y ago

First thing I do when a resume crosses my desk (as a hiring manager) is check their GitHub (or GitLab) profile, if they supply one. It is an important weapon in our arsenal for helping determine which hire from a shortlist gets called in for interviews. Just having an empty profile is better than no profile, but one with repos of your work is best and worth extra points. It has made the difference in our hiring decisions. Unfortunately for me, I came from a world where everything had to be open source, but moved to a closed source world where everything I produce, even in my private time, belongs to The Company. IP lawyers have to check the bowl before I flush. I am paranoid that my public commit log being empty will affect my chances of getting a job in the FLOSS realm once again.

stennie 6y ago
If you are going to use public commit profiles as part of your screening process and hiring decisions, I would encourage you to ask candidates what aspects of their public activity are relevant. For example, ask for a few specific highlights and why the candidate thinks those are interesting. Hobby projects and open source contributions are evidence of patterns of collaboration and commits, but may not be indicative of one's typical (or best) work. There are also many reasons why a great software engineer may not have a public activity profile. The majority of my public commits are scratching itches on open source projects, and are very opportunistic depending on other life and work commitments at the time. Code may not always be pristine, but I can probably rationalise why I took a certain approach (following existing code style, hacking for my own use, actually aiming for quality and performance, ...). As a hiring manager, I'm also OK if candidates want to do something with their personal time that doesn't involve committing to public repos :).
pokeball1 6y ago
> [...] but moved to a closed source world where everything I produce, even in my private time, belongs to The Company. [...] So you can't even commit something own, when in private, because company you work for can sue you, just because?
- sethammons 6y ago
  And people just as surprised as you are are designing interview pipelines for their companies. They seem to not know they are asking lots of potential candidates to literally break contracts for the privilege to interview.
- VonGallifrey 6y ago
  I also have a contract like that. They don't sue you, but everything I produce is intellectual property of my employer. Not very useful when working on open source, which is why I don't. I argued about this before signing, but this has been in every contract I have ever read and when I argue about this they will always say it is standard practice to include.

by bregma 6y ago

stennie 6y ago

If you are going to use public commit profiles as part of your screening process and hiring decisions, I would encourage you to ask candidates what aspects of their public activity are relevant. For example, ask for a few specific highlights and why the candidate thinks those are interesting. Hobby projects and open source contributions are evidence of patterns of collaboration and commits, but may not be indicative of one's typical (or best) work. There are also many reasons why a great software engineer may not have a public activity profile. The majority of my public commits are scratching itches on open source projects, and are very opportunistic depending on other life and work commitments at the time. Code may not always be pristine, but I can probably rationalise why I took a certain approach (following existing code style, hacking for my own use, actually aiming for quality and performance, ...). As a hiring manager, I'm also OK if candidates want to do something with their personal time that doesn't involve committing to public repos :).

pokeball1 6y ago

> [...] but moved to a closed source world where everything I produce, even in my private time, belongs to The Company. [...] So you can't even commit something own, when in private, because company you work for can sue you, just because?

sethammons 6y ago
And people just as surprised as you are are designing interview pipelines for their companies. They seem to not know they are asking lots of potential candidates to literally break contracts for the privilege to interview.
VonGallifrey 6y ago
I also have a contract like that. They don't sue you, but everything I produce is intellectual property of my employer. Not very useful when working on open source, which is why I don't. I argued about this before signing, but this has been in every contract I have ever read and when I argue about this they will always say it is standard practice to include.