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Yes, every bad hire is really bad. However, companies generally don't put in any effort into seriously evaluating your publicly available work. I have reams and

Yes, every bad hire is really bad. However, companies generally don't put in any effort into seriously evaluating your publicly available work. I have reams and reams of open source code companies can take a look at, and I've never seen any evidence that any company I've ever interviewed at has looked at that work. That's a result of companies being completely incompetent at evaluation and disrespecting their candidates time. Its wasteful and stupid. Its honestly flabbergasting how many companies don't put in the effort to make their hiring process passible, much less anything near "good".

bfung 5y ago
Being on the hiring end, it’s less out of incompetence and more of not enough time, and open source code is low signal that the candidate can actually solve problems. If I submit some “open source” code as some proof that I can code, how do you know I didn’t copy the code from somewhere? Also, writing code for the sake of writing code doesn’t tell a hiring manager if the person can take requirements and translate that to an automated process. It just say that person isn’t that busy and can, excuse my language, shit out code for the sake of appearing productive. Writing code can be a hobby, sure, but that’s only a small part of a software job and no amount of open source code can tell a company if the candidate can work with others and solve problems.
- buck4roo 5y ago
  > no amount of open source code can tell a company if the candidate can work with others and solve problems. Balderdash. When was the last time an interview task involved working with others? I'd offer that open source PRs show this way better, and in an appropriate context (as a collaborator) rather than what we have now: adversarial interview{er,ee}s.
- billytetrud 5y ago
  > how do you know I didn’t copy the code from somewhere? You can ask your candidate to explain the code... Is that not obvious? > writing code for the sake of writing code doesn’t tell a hiring manager if the person can take requirements and translate that to an automated process Kind of sounds like you don't know what open source software is. > excuse my language, shit out code for the sake of appearing productive I won't excuse your language. You sound like you're part of the problem buddy. I don't think you have any idea how to evaluate a programmer.
  - bfung 5y ago
    > You can ask your candidate to explain the code... Is that not obvious? Asking about projects is the obvious thing, but only substantial and interesting projects really provide any interview value. Yet another Todo app doesn’t fit that criteria. Neither is another scaffolded crud app. A PR to fix a bug in a semi-popular library is worth. But saying “I have a lot of repos” is def not.
    - billytetrud 5y ago
      I don't know why you're assuming my or most good programmers' githubs are filled up with todo apps and other worthless garbage. > saying “I have a lot of repos” is def not. When did I say that? I didn't. They should be looking at the repos and asking about them, not just taking your number of repos and using that as some kind of metric.
  - dang 5y ago
    Crossing into personal attack will get you banned here. No more of this, please. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- tcmart14 5y ago
  I agree on your open source comments as far as, the only open sourced code a person has is personal pet projects. However, if you see someone has PRs and commits into something like the Linux repository or a major well known project, then their open source contributions could be very meaningful. As an example. If you are hiring for a position for a developer to work on garage band at Apple, if an applicant is an audio dev for FreeBSD, that is a pretty good sign the candidate knows what they are doing.
  - bfung 5y ago
    Agree - it’d have to be some contribution to a significant project. Those are radar and far in between. Usually it’s “I wrote some code and put it on GitHub, call it open source”.
- code_duck 5y ago
  > Writing code can be a hobby, sure, > writing code for the sake of writing code > It just say that person isn’t that busy and can, excuse my language, shit out code for the sake of appearing productive. It sounds like you have a serious misunderstanding of open source at a basic level. It would have been questionable enough in 2000 but I’m not sure why anyone in 2021 would think that way.
  - bfung 5y ago
    I’d argue the other way - open source in 2000s to central libraries were of decent quality. The quantity of code now these days is so much and of questionable quality - everyone and their bootcamp writes code to GitHub and call it open source, just to show they have open source. Hell, I have public code on GitHub, but I’d never put it on my resume.
    - code_duck 5y ago
      There may be a signal-to-noise problem, but the amount of useful open source projects and the extent to which we rely upon them has only increased in the past 20 years. “Open source” includes projects like Go and NodeJS, which are hardly trivial, disposable projects like you’re referring to. Pretty much all crypto is open source and people have invested tens of billions in that ecosystem. I could continue and list at least half a dozen projects that are considered critical infrastructure which are developed in that fashion.
cubano 5y ago
Well the obvious issue here is...how do they truly know you wrote the code? Its pretty much impossible to source where OS code comes from, and it sure wouldn't be hard to find an obscure OS project and pass off the code as yours, if you were that sort of person. And this takes me to my 2nd point, and that is they current hiring model totally leads to companies hiring people who are good at interviewing not necessarily people who are good at doing the work required. There is no doubt t that interviewing for a job is a skill that can be learned and improved upon, and lots of crappy programmers have learned to be damn good at being I interviewed.
- azemetre 5y ago
  If a person has a history of giving talks, writing books, or creating content around code they've written there's probably a high likely hood they are capable workers and can code.

bfung 5y ago

Being on the hiring end, it’s less out of incompetence and more of not enough time, and open source code is low signal that the candidate can actually solve problems. If I submit some “open source” code as some proof that I can code, how do you know I didn’t copy the code from somewhere? Also, writing code for the sake of writing code doesn’t tell a hiring manager if the person can take requirements and translate that to an automated process. It just say that person isn’t that busy and can, excuse my language, shit out code for the sake of appearing productive. Writing code can be a hobby, sure, but that’s only a small part of a software job and no amount of open source code can tell a company if the candidate can work with others and solve problems.

buck4roo 5y ago
> no amount of open source code can tell a company if the candidate can work with others and solve problems. Balderdash. When was the last time an interview task involved working with others? I'd offer that open source PRs show this way better, and in an appropriate context (as a collaborator) rather than what we have now: adversarial interview{er,ee}s.
billytetrud 5y ago
> how do you know I didn’t copy the code from somewhere? You can ask your candidate to explain the code... Is that not obvious? > writing code for the sake of writing code doesn’t tell a hiring manager if the person can take requirements and translate that to an automated process Kind of sounds like you don't know what open source software is. > excuse my language, shit out code for the sake of appearing productive I won't excuse your language. You sound like you're part of the problem buddy. I don't think you have any idea how to evaluate a programmer.
- bfung 5y ago
  > You can ask your candidate to explain the code... Is that not obvious? Asking about projects is the obvious thing, but only substantial and interesting projects really provide any interview value. Yet another Todo app doesn’t fit that criteria. Neither is another scaffolded crud app. A PR to fix a bug in a semi-popular library is worth. But saying “I have a lot of repos” is def not.
  - billytetrud 5y ago
    I don't know why you're assuming my or most good programmers' githubs are filled up with todo apps and other worthless garbage. > saying “I have a lot of repos” is def not. When did I say that? I didn't. They should be looking at the repos and asking about them, not just taking your number of repos and using that as some kind of metric.
- dang 5y ago
  Crossing into personal attack will get you banned here. No more of this, please. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
tcmart14 5y ago
I agree on your open source comments as far as, the only open sourced code a person has is personal pet projects. However, if you see someone has PRs and commits into something like the Linux repository or a major well known project, then their open source contributions could be very meaningful. As an example. If you are hiring for a position for a developer to work on garage band at Apple, if an applicant is an audio dev for FreeBSD, that is a pretty good sign the candidate knows what they are doing.
- bfung 5y ago
  Agree - it’d have to be some contribution to a significant project. Those are radar and far in between. Usually it’s “I wrote some code and put it on GitHub, call it open source”.
code_duck 5y ago
> Writing code can be a hobby, sure, > writing code for the sake of writing code > It just say that person isn’t that busy and can, excuse my language, shit out code for the sake of appearing productive. It sounds like you have a serious misunderstanding of open source at a basic level. It would have been questionable enough in 2000 but I’m not sure why anyone in 2021 would think that way.
- bfung 5y ago
  I’d argue the other way - open source in 2000s to central libraries were of decent quality. The quantity of code now these days is so much and of questionable quality - everyone and their bootcamp writes code to GitHub and call it open source, just to show they have open source. Hell, I have public code on GitHub, but I’d never put it on my resume.
  - code_duck 5y ago
    There may be a signal-to-noise problem, but the amount of useful open source projects and the extent to which we rely upon them has only increased in the past 20 years. “Open source” includes projects like Go and NodeJS, which are hardly trivial, disposable projects like you’re referring to. Pretty much all crypto is open source and people have invested tens of billions in that ecosystem. I could continue and list at least half a dozen projects that are considered critical infrastructure which are developed in that fashion.

cubano 5y ago

Well the obvious issue here is...how do they truly know you wrote the code? Its pretty much impossible to source where OS code comes from, and it sure wouldn't be hard to find an obscure OS project and pass off the code as yours, if you were that sort of person. And this takes me to my 2nd point, and that is they current hiring model totally leads to companies hiring people who are good at interviewing not necessarily people who are good at doing the work required. There is no doubt t that interviewing for a job is a skill that can be learned and improved upon, and lots of crappy programmers have learned to be damn good at being I interviewed.

azemetre 5y ago
If a person has a history of giving talks, writing books, or creating content around code they've written there's probably a high likely hood they are capable workers and can code.