6 ms·

"first thing I look for in a resume is a GitHub URL" Ah yes, gatekeeping at its best. Because every skilled person has time to build stuff in public.

by k__ 5y ago

rmbyrro 5y ago
It doesn't have to be a real-world open source project. Could be a project you built to learn a language or framework, for example. Or some library you wrote for your own personal use. If there's nothing sensitive, you can publish it under an open license or even without any license at all...
- nemetroid 5y ago
  My employer doesn't allow publishing code that was written during working hours.
  - Gravyness 5y ago
    Why would you publish code that was written during working hours? Why not publish an university project, a learning exercise, or something you built for fun? Surely there is more reason to create something than you're getting paid to do it, right? Or are artists just silly?
    - nemetroid 5y ago
      I think some of my university projects are published. But they're quite old by now, and not representative of the production code I write. I do learning exercises quite frequently when getting into new libraries/frameworks/languages, but again, that's on company time. I don't begrudge others that do, but I don't code in my free time, I have other hobbies. Thus getting back to the original point made: > Because every skilled person has time to build stuff in public.
    - marssaxman 5y ago
      I publish practically everything I write in my free time, whether it goes anywhere or not, but I would never link to that playground on my resume!
- bluescrn 5y ago
  Some employment contracts claim ownership of anything you create even outside of working hours, so even publishing those little learning projects could potentially be problematic.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    How are those legal anywhere? Thankfully they aren't here in France.
    - bluescrn 5y ago
      Even if they're not likely to win in a court battle, most people don't want to risk a dispute over something trivial. Would you expect a little game jam game created in a weekend to lead to an ownership dispute with an employer? - Probably not, but I'm aware of a case where it has happened...
    - astura 5y ago
      https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
    - maccard 5y ago
      Even if it's not legal, I'm not going to sue my employer to stake ownership over an evening project.
      - rmbyrro 5y ago
        You don't need ownership here, just authorship.
    - formerkrogemp 5y ago
      American exceptionalism at its finest.
  - rmbyrro 5y ago
    This is another problem. For this purpose, you only need to show authorship, which is different from ownership rights. In general, your employer can't stop you there. Some exceptions would be if it conflicts with their products or if you disclose technological knowledge that could jeopardize competitive advantage.
pydry 5y ago
I see this attitude everywhere and I swear it makes no sense at all. Interviewing and selecting and hiring candidates is gatekeeping. Thats literally all it is. I guess the implication is that it's elitist or somehow unfair gatekeeping? If you ask the question "is it a more elitist form than gatekeeping than looking at your fancy university credentials or experience at a FAANG?" then I think it's not so much. IME it's less time consuming than leetcode and take home projects and about 1000 times less soul sucking than both.
- hocuspocus 5y ago
  It's not unfair gatekeeping, it's incredibly dumb gatekeeping. You're definitely going to miss out on interviewing good candidates. If the candidate can show code and you're willing to look at it because it saves everyone's time, then sure, go ahead. But there are plenty of very good reasons a candidate might not be able to do so.
  - pydry 5y ago
    For sure, but I cant really think of another low friction way to detect high quality candidates. CVs are easy to bullshit as the OP points out and ascertaining performance on a technical interview comes at a high cost. Search costs matter. Other than "I worked with this guy" (which doesnt scale) I dont know of a quicker method of uncovering an obviously decent programmer.
    - Juliate 5y ago
      Search costs matter, and GitHub browsing is low friction, but extremely low signal on a very narrow bandwidth. A lot of the best (technical-wise and ethic-wise) collaborators I've had had and have no public profile, some even not on LinkedIn. You won't find them there.
      - pydry 5y ago
        shrug this is the exact opposite of my experience. All the really great people I've worked with have had at least something there and I've never worked with somebody with a great github profile that wasnt also a great programmer. Having a decent profile is rare enough that it cant be your whole hiring pipeline but IMHO it's a great reason to let somebody skip an assessment stage or prioritize them for interview.
DJHenk 5y ago
It can be worse. As I understand it, this person just wants to see code. I'd imagine that sending a zip file, or express willingness to do some small assignment would suffice too. Meanwhile, I have been blocked from applying for a position multiple times because the online form required me to enter a LinkedIn profile, which I don't have. It would require a lot of time to create a profile and message all my relatives and past co-workers to build a nice looking network. I just treat this as a sign that we were probably no a good match anyway.
- felipemnoa 5y ago
  And here I thought I was the only one. Glad I'm not the only one without a LinkedIn profile.
  - formerkrogemp 5y ago
    Honestly I'm not sure you need one for programming. In accounting it's kind of required.
- marssaxman 5y ago
  Wow, that's awful! What a thoughtless requirement. On the other hand, it's helpful of them to filter themselves out of consideration so quickly. Who'd want to work at a place like that?
eric4smith 5y ago
You know what kills an interview really fast? When you ask the candidate to see some code and they tell you every single thing is under NDA. Brah, if you're a programmer, you have at least some tinker code lying around that you can show.
- hocuspocus 5y ago
  If that were even remotely true then almost no Apple employee would ever manage to find another job.
- ReptileMan 5y ago
  The only thing I have is project Euler in haskell. What insights will you get about that corporate java job
  - dinedal 5y ago
    If you're slinging Euler in Haskell, the insight is that you're probably overqualified for most corporate java jobs.
  - recursive 5y ago
    That you can write code. That's a positive signal. There's a reason FizzBuzz exists.
- scarface74 5y ago
  I haven’t written a single piece of code outside of work since I started working - in 1996. The only reason I have any open source code is because my company has a very easy open source process. I extract reusable non customer identifying code from projects and it usually takes at most 3 days for approval. There is also a company sponsored open source project I contribute to.
- Silhouette 5y ago
  The point is that you might not want to show toy code. Toy code I've written for fun is rarely written to the same standards I'd use for anything important, including code written for work. It probably won't have elaborate CI/CD tooling with a clear branching strategy. It probably won't have a comprehensive test suite. It probably won't have systematic error handling. It probably won't have carefully written comments to help other people find their way around it. Most important of all it probably won't be designed or cleaned up to the standards of good professional code, because I wrote it for fun or to solve some specific problem and not to be a portfolio piece and I stopped once the code had served its purpose. If anyone I might work with insisted on judging me on code like that they'd never get a realistic view of my level. If I wanted to show someone an example of code that did faithfully represent what I can do I'd want to show them some of the many projects I've completed to a high professional standard at work. But of course that code really is usually confidential and at least in my case that tends to be because it's important to the business and might not be public knowledge yet so it really would be very unprofessional if I went around handing it out to anyone who asked.
5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
tbh would prefer someone look at my code instead of some leetcode test.
zarzavat 5y ago
Software engineering is a highly-compensated professional job. It’s a given with such jobs that professionals are expected to spend some of their free time on their own career development. This means working on open source, staying up to date with new technologies, learning interview techniques. Everybody is entitled to a job but nobody is entitled to a fancy job.
- RalfWausE 5y ago
  And not everybody (as a personal statement from me) is at all interested in a "fancy" job...
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > a highly-compensated professional job. It’s a given with such jobs that professionals are expected to spend some of their free time on their own career development. Except most highly-compensated professional jobs don't expect people to get continuing education on their free time. The state bar and medical boards not to mention engineering certifications all require continuing education. Everyone I've known in those fields is paid for the continuing education credit time.

"first thing I look for in a resume is a GitHub URL" Ah yes, gatekeeping at its best. Because every skilled person has time to build stuff in public.

by k__ 5y ago

"first thing I look for in a resume is a GitHub URL" Ah yes, gatekeeping at its best. Because every skilled person has time to build stuff in public.

rmbyrro 5y ago

It doesn't have to be a real-world open source project. Could be a project you built to learn a language or framework, for example. Or some library you wrote for your own personal use. If there's nothing sensitive, you can publish it under an open license or even without any license at all...

nemetroid 5y ago
My employer doesn't allow publishing code that was written during working hours.
- Gravyness 5y ago
  Why would you publish code that was written during working hours? Why not publish an university project, a learning exercise, or something you built for fun? Surely there is more reason to create something than you're getting paid to do it, right? Or are artists just silly?
  - nemetroid 5y ago
    I think some of my university projects are published. But they're quite old by now, and not representative of the production code I write. I do learning exercises quite frequently when getting into new libraries/frameworks/languages, but again, that's on company time. I don't begrudge others that do, but I don't code in my free time, I have other hobbies. Thus getting back to the original point made: > Because every skilled person has time to build stuff in public.
  - marssaxman 5y ago
    I publish practically everything I write in my free time, whether it goes anywhere or not, but I would never link to that playground on my resume!
bluescrn 5y ago
Some employment contracts claim ownership of anything you create even outside of working hours, so even publishing those little learning projects could potentially be problematic.
- sofixa 5y ago
  How are those legal anywhere? Thankfully they aren't here in France.
  - bluescrn 5y ago
    Even if they're not likely to win in a court battle, most people don't want to risk a dispute over something trivial. Would you expect a little game jam game created in a weekend to lead to an ownership dispute with an employer? - Probably not, but I'm aware of a case where it has happened...
  - astura 5y ago
    https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
  - maccard 5y ago
    Even if it's not legal, I'm not going to sue my employer to stake ownership over an evening project.
    - rmbyrro 5y ago
      You don't need ownership here, just authorship.
  - formerkrogemp 5y ago
    American exceptionalism at its finest.
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  This is another problem. For this purpose, you only need to show authorship, which is different from ownership rights. In general, your employer can't stop you there. Some exceptions would be if it conflicts with their products or if you disclose technological knowledge that could jeopardize competitive advantage.

pydry 5y ago

I see this attitude everywhere and I swear it makes no sense at all. Interviewing and selecting and hiring candidates is gatekeeping. Thats literally all it is. I guess the implication is that it's elitist or somehow unfair gatekeeping? If you ask the question "is it a more elitist form than gatekeeping than looking at your fancy university credentials or experience at a FAANG?" then I think it's not so much. IME it's less time consuming than leetcode and take home projects and about 1000 times less soul sucking than both.

hocuspocus 5y ago
It's not unfair gatekeeping, it's incredibly dumb gatekeeping. You're definitely going to miss out on interviewing good candidates. If the candidate can show code and you're willing to look at it because it saves everyone's time, then sure, go ahead. But there are plenty of very good reasons a candidate might not be able to do so.
- pydry 5y ago
  For sure, but I cant really think of another low friction way to detect high quality candidates. CVs are easy to bullshit as the OP points out and ascertaining performance on a technical interview comes at a high cost. Search costs matter. Other than "I worked with this guy" (which doesnt scale) I dont know of a quicker method of uncovering an obviously decent programmer.
  - Juliate 5y ago
    Search costs matter, and GitHub browsing is low friction, but extremely low signal on a very narrow bandwidth. A lot of the best (technical-wise and ethic-wise) collaborators I've had had and have no public profile, some even not on LinkedIn. You won't find them there.
    - pydry 5y ago
      shrug this is the exact opposite of my experience. All the really great people I've worked with have had at least something there and I've never worked with somebody with a great github profile that wasnt also a great programmer. Having a decent profile is rare enough that it cant be your whole hiring pipeline but IMHO it's a great reason to let somebody skip an assessment stage or prioritize them for interview.

DJHenk 5y ago

It can be worse. As I understand it, this person just wants to see code. I'd imagine that sending a zip file, or express willingness to do some small assignment would suffice too. Meanwhile, I have been blocked from applying for a position multiple times because the online form required me to enter a LinkedIn profile, which I don't have. It would require a lot of time to create a profile and message all my relatives and past co-workers to build a nice looking network. I just treat this as a sign that we were probably no a good match anyway.

felipemnoa 5y ago
And here I thought I was the only one. Glad I'm not the only one without a LinkedIn profile.
- formerkrogemp 5y ago
  Honestly I'm not sure you need one for programming. In accounting it's kind of required.
marssaxman 5y ago
Wow, that's awful! What a thoughtless requirement. On the other hand, it's helpful of them to filter themselves out of consideration so quickly. Who'd want to work at a place like that?

eric4smith 5y ago

You know what kills an interview really fast? When you ask the candidate to see some code and they tell you every single thing is under NDA. Brah, if you're a programmer, you have at least some tinker code lying around that you can show.

hocuspocus 5y ago
If that were even remotely true then almost no Apple employee would ever manage to find another job.
ReptileMan 5y ago
The only thing I have is project Euler in haskell. What insights will you get about that corporate java job
- dinedal 5y ago
  If you're slinging Euler in Haskell, the insight is that you're probably overqualified for most corporate java jobs.
- recursive 5y ago
  That you can write code. That's a positive signal. There's a reason FizzBuzz exists.
scarface74 5y ago
I haven’t written a single piece of code outside of work since I started working - in 1996. The only reason I have any open source code is because my company has a very easy open source process. I extract reusable non customer identifying code from projects and it usually takes at most 3 days for approval. There is also a company sponsored open source project I contribute to.
Silhouette 5y ago
The point is that you might not want to show toy code. Toy code I've written for fun is rarely written to the same standards I'd use for anything important, including code written for work. It probably won't have elaborate CI/CD tooling with a clear branching strategy. It probably won't have a comprehensive test suite. It probably won't have systematic error handling. It probably won't have carefully written comments to help other people find their way around it. Most important of all it probably won't be designed or cleaned up to the standards of good professional code, because I wrote it for fun or to solve some specific problem and not to be a portfolio piece and I stopped once the code had served its purpose. If anyone I might work with insisted on judging me on code like that they'd never get a realistic view of my level. If I wanted to show someone an example of code that did faithfully represent what I can do I'd want to show them some of the many projects I've completed to a high professional standard at work. But of course that code really is usually confidential and at least in my case that tends to be because it's important to the business and might not be public knowledge yet so it really would be very unprofessional if I went around handing it out to anyone who asked.

5350-uiop-1130 5y ago

tbh would prefer someone look at my code instead of some leetcode test.

zarzavat 5y ago

Software engineering is a highly-compensated professional job. It’s a given with such jobs that professionals are expected to spend some of their free time on their own career development. This means working on open source, staying up to date with new technologies, learning interview techniques. Everybody is entitled to a job but nobody is entitled to a fancy job.

RalfWausE 5y ago
And not everybody (as a personal statement from me) is at all interested in a "fancy" job...
HWR_14 5y ago
> a highly-compensated professional job. It’s a given with such jobs that professionals are expected to spend some of their free time on their own career development. Except most highly-compensated professional jobs don't expect people to get continuing education on their free time. The state bar and medical boards not to mention engineering certifications all require continuing education. Everyone I've known in those fields is paid for the continuing education credit time.