4 ms·

> I rarely had candidates that had significant portfolios I think that is the thing. The vast majority of software engineers have only worked on closed-source

> I rarely had candidates that had significant portfolios I think that is the thing. The vast majority of software engineers have only worked on closed-source codebases so reviewing their previous work is impossible. That said, what I have generally done is to just use interviews to talk about previous work. It is usually pretty clear in the course of a 30 minute interview who has actually done the amazing things they claim on their resume and understands how to build software systems and who doesn't.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Exactly. I ran a fairly "high-functioning" C++ image processing pipeline team, where every engineer had decades of experience. They were a diverse and individualized bunch of folks. We worked together well, as a team. Unique talent was what I was specifically looking for. Since my company paid "competitive" (i.e. "low") wages, I had to look for "diamonds in the rough." We did interview some highly qualified people, but they tended to defer, when offered. I feel that I was quite successful, and kept highly talented engineers for many years, but it made the search challenging. "Cookie cutter testing" wasn't even an option. I'd have been crazy to ignore every advantage each unique applicant had to offer.
- zip1234 5y ago
  I like to call this "hiring for potential" where you try to hire people that may not have the track record but have a lot of potential to do great work.
- aweiland 5y ago
  As someone that's in the market right now, I have found "competitive" to mean "low" as well. It's a meaningless term. Competitive to what?
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Competitive to before there were open websites tracking salaries.
stronglikedan 5y ago
You can't even know their portfolio is their portfolio. I had a candidate send me a link to their portfolio, and when I asked them why one of the apps had someone else's contact info at the top of some files, they ghosted me.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  I've had people tell me that I "faked" my portfolio. If I did, then I am a diabolical genius, and you should hire me, because I did such an amazing job, faking tens of thousands of lines of single-author code; maintaining a consistent style, throughout, along with dozens and dozens of articles, blog entries, and documentation examples. Extra credit for "faking" years and years of checkin comments. Since I sign my commits, it's not difficult to figure out who did what. I suspect some scammer was running a game on you. They tend to go "over the top," as "dumbass filters." If someone responds credulously to an outrageous claim, then they are a "good mark." The fact they ghosted you, tells me it was a scam. I have encountered many, many scammers, since leaving my last job. It's a pretty tough field, these days. One of the reasons that I stopped looking for work, was because a lot of hiring managers and recruiters believe that it's important to insult applicants, right out of the starting gate. I think that HR policy, in general, these days, is to always keep the applicant in a supplicant position, so you are in control of the relationship. I think that LeetCode tests are part of that game. Sort of like "hazing."
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    > I suspect some scammer was running a game on you. They tend to go "over the top," as "dumbass filters." If someone responds credulously to an outrageous claim, then they are a "good mark." The fact they ghosted you, tells me it was a scam. I have encountered many, many scammers, since leaving my last job. It's a pretty tough field, these days. What would be the purpose of this “scam”?
    - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
      I'm not 100% sure. I guess you could ask them, but I have been impressed with the ingenuity of scammers. It may be as basic as getting you to open an infected document, of some kind. We tend to exchange a lot of stuff, when we do employment negotiations. I'd think an engineering manager, at a sensitive level, would be a juicy target. I've had any number of LinkedIn attempts to get at me, through offers of employment, basic networking, and attempts to get me to employ (I have a title as a CEO of a couple of 1-person companies, so I get a lot of these types of attempts). My favorite ones, are the "attractive young women" that want to "link up" with me. I'll bet a lot of folks fall for that.
Akronymus 5y ago
"We want our candidates to have a portfolio of open source software, but won't allow them to work on open source software while in our employ." That's also something I keep hearing in anecdotes.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  What do they think will happen if you do work on open source software while in their employ?
  - Akronymus 5y ago
    Most likely nothing, but most companies seem to have the expectation that OSS has to take a backseat
    - edoceo 5y ago
      Yea. Give me free code, don't make free code is a common problem.
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      Your employment contract could stipulate that any programming done outside official work is owned by the company. A “work for hire” of sorts. Whether these “copyright assignment” clauses are legal depends on your jurisdiction.
- mcny 5y ago
  Personally, I don't work on open source software. My personal projects are public, free and open source but they are useless to anyone other than for me. The main reason I publish them publicly is ... I don't know why actually. However, one benefit to public github repositories is I can try out various services that are free for open source projects. This way I have exposure to these services which is nice. Also it is easier to get help from others or ask questions when I get stuck. In my experience, I've found programmers very helpful as long as I am willing to put in some effort.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
I have this problem. All my code belongs to freelance customers or projects I intend to monetise at some point (and aren't even vaguely ready to share with the world). Also, there's nothing stopping someone from copy/pasting entire projects into their portfolio. I would totally ignore someone's portfolio when interviewing them.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Then, no problem! We won't be bothering each other. Too bad. you look like an interesting chap to know.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    I do find the "portfolio" thing interesting, because it clearly puts us in the same category as artists. Accountants don't have "portfolios", interviewers don't ask to see their spreadsheets. Managers don't have saved video recordings of 1:1 employee meetings for interviewers to look over. Engineers don't have a sample set of bridges they've built [0]. Artists (and by extension, designers) are the only other profession where you're expected to have a portfolio of your work for a prospective interviewer to look at. I guess what I'm trying to say with "I'd ignore the portfolio" is that if we're going to emulate another profession, let's copy the engineers, not the artists. Artists are typically underpaid and undervalued. Engineers are highly respected professionals. [0] well, they might have photographs of the actual bridges, but not a sample selection of actual bridges. For some reason I can't point an interviewer at a previous employer's app and say "I built that" like an engineer can.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
      > Engineers are highly respected professionals. So artists and designers aren't? There might be a few folks around these parts that might take issue with that. I was once an artist, and that training has been of significant value, in my engineering. I list Adobe Illustrator as one of the 4 applications that I use every day (along with Xcode, BBEdit, and SourceTree). It's what I use to generate graphic assets for my development work. Anyway, we could dance this jig all day, and I don't think it would solve any pressing world issues. Not a big deal. We don't need to prove anything to each other.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Exactly. I ran a fairly "high-functioning" C++ image processing pipeline team, where every engineer had decades of experience. They were a diverse and individualized bunch of folks. We worked together well, as a team. Unique talent was what I was specifically looking for. Since my company paid "competitive" (i.e. "low") wages, I had to look for "diamonds in the rough." We did interview some highly qualified people, but they tended to defer, when offered. I feel that I was quite successful, and kept highly talented engineers for many years, but it made the search challenging. "Cookie cutter testing" wasn't even an option. I'd have been crazy to ignore every advantage each unique applicant had to offer.

zip1234 5y ago
I like to call this "hiring for potential" where you try to hire people that may not have the track record but have a lot of potential to do great work.
aweiland 5y ago
As someone that's in the market right now, I have found "competitive" to mean "low" as well. It's a meaningless term. Competitive to what?
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Competitive to before there were open websites tracking salaries.

stronglikedan 5y ago

You can't even know their portfolio is their portfolio. I had a candidate send me a link to their portfolio, and when I asked them why one of the apps had someone else's contact info at the top of some files, they ghosted me.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I've had people tell me that I "faked" my portfolio. If I did, then I am a diabolical genius, and you should hire me, because I did such an amazing job, faking tens of thousands of lines of single-author code; maintaining a consistent style, throughout, along with dozens and dozens of articles, blog entries, and documentation examples. Extra credit for "faking" years and years of checkin comments. Since I sign my commits, it's not difficult to figure out who did what. I suspect some scammer was running a game on you. They tend to go "over the top," as "dumbass filters." If someone responds credulously to an outrageous claim, then they are a "good mark." The fact they ghosted you, tells me it was a scam. I have encountered many, many scammers, since leaving my last job. It's a pretty tough field, these days. One of the reasons that I stopped looking for work, was because a lot of hiring managers and recruiters believe that it's important to insult applicants, right out of the starting gate. I think that HR policy, in general, these days, is to always keep the applicant in a supplicant position, so you are in control of the relationship. I think that LeetCode tests are part of that game. Sort of like "hazing."
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  > I suspect some scammer was running a game on you. They tend to go "over the top," as "dumbass filters." If someone responds credulously to an outrageous claim, then they are a "good mark." The fact they ghosted you, tells me it was a scam. I have encountered many, many scammers, since leaving my last job. It's a pretty tough field, these days. What would be the purpose of this “scam”?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    I'm not 100% sure. I guess you could ask them, but I have been impressed with the ingenuity of scammers. It may be as basic as getting you to open an infected document, of some kind. We tend to exchange a lot of stuff, when we do employment negotiations. I'd think an engineering manager, at a sensitive level, would be a juicy target. I've had any number of LinkedIn attempts to get at me, through offers of employment, basic networking, and attempts to get me to employ (I have a title as a CEO of a couple of 1-person companies, so I get a lot of these types of attempts). My favorite ones, are the "attractive young women" that want to "link up" with me. I'll bet a lot of folks fall for that.

Akronymus 5y ago

"We want our candidates to have a portfolio of open source software, but won't allow them to work on open source software while in our employ." That's also something I keep hearing in anecdotes.

Aeolun 5y ago
What do they think will happen if you do work on open source software while in their employ?
- Akronymus 5y ago
  Most likely nothing, but most companies seem to have the expectation that OSS has to take a backseat
  - edoceo 5y ago
    Yea. Give me free code, don't make free code is a common problem.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    Your employment contract could stipulate that any programming done outside official work is owned by the company. A “work for hire” of sorts. Whether these “copyright assignment” clauses are legal depends on your jurisdiction.
mcny 5y ago
Personally, I don't work on open source software. My personal projects are public, free and open source but they are useless to anyone other than for me. The main reason I publish them publicly is ... I don't know why actually. However, one benefit to public github repositories is I can try out various services that are free for open source projects. This way I have exposure to these services which is nice. Also it is easier to get help from others or ask questions when I get stuck. In my experience, I've found programmers very helpful as long as I am willing to put in some effort.

marcus_holmes 5y ago

I have this problem. All my code belongs to freelance customers or projects I intend to monetise at some point (and aren't even vaguely ready to share with the world). Also, there's nothing stopping someone from copy/pasting entire projects into their portfolio. I would totally ignore someone's portfolio when interviewing them.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Then, no problem! We won't be bothering each other. Too bad. you look like an interesting chap to know.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I do find the "portfolio" thing interesting, because it clearly puts us in the same category as artists. Accountants don't have "portfolios", interviewers don't ask to see their spreadsheets. Managers don't have saved video recordings of 1:1 employee meetings for interviewers to look over. Engineers don't have a sample set of bridges they've built [0]. Artists (and by extension, designers) are the only other profession where you're expected to have a portfolio of your work for a prospective interviewer to look at. I guess what I'm trying to say with "I'd ignore the portfolio" is that if we're going to emulate another profession, let's copy the engineers, not the artists. Artists are typically underpaid and undervalued. Engineers are highly respected professionals. [0] well, they might have photographs of the actual bridges, but not a sample selection of actual bridges. For some reason I can't point an interviewer at a previous employer's app and say "I built that" like an engineer can.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    > Engineers are highly respected professionals. So artists and designers aren't? There might be a few folks around these parts that might take issue with that. I was once an artist, and that training has been of significant value, in my engineering. I list Adobe Illustrator as one of the 4 applications that I use every day (along with Xcode, BBEdit, and SourceTree). It's what I use to generate graphic assets for my development work. Anyway, we could dance this jig all day, and I don't think it would solve any pressing world issues. Not a big deal. We don't need to prove anything to each other.