7 ms·

That ain’t no Open Source that I see here

14 points by facorreia 14y ago

jiggy2011 14y ago
If you have just graduated University then it's likely that the only code samples you have will be from that and universities are known to enforce one particular style of notation which may or may not be what is used in industry. I imagine that the number of university students who contribute anything meaningful to open source apps in addition to their studies is very small. This might be the small number of people he is interested in recruiting but being pissed off because every CV you get in isn't like that seems strange.
- jamesbanner 14y ago
  "If you have just graduated University then it's likely that the only code samples you have will be from" That's a weak argument. In fact it further strengthens Ayende's view that such a candidate is not suitable purely on the grounds of not liking to code.
- bryanlarsen 14y ago
  Contributing to open source while in University has major benefits: 1) skill development through practice and peer review 2) skill development through exposure to "real world" problems rather than the toy problems of school 3) portfolio development for job hunting 4) network building for job hunting If you're in University, you should be working on open source projects for these reasons and others. I suspect the article author is trying to help spread this meme. Open source contributors really do have a major advantage over their peers, but many students do not realise this. Others don't know how to start, but that's a different problem. Besides, open source is fun, and you probably have way more time and resources during University than you will later in life.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I agree that contributing to open source is a good way to learn many development skills, however: Besides, open source is fun, and you probably have way more time and resources during University than you will later in life. Not necessarily, if you are doing CS at a top university and aiming to attain the highest possible grades this requires a huge investment of time and effort to most people. Also it is not like a 9-5 where you can 'clock off' there is always an uncertain feeling of 'if I put another hour into this , then that might just bump me up an extra grade' Not to mention that if you just started programming at university your code is probably going to suck pretty hard for the first 2 years at least, to the point where no serious open source project is going to want your patches. Ultimately if Universities believed that this was important to job prospects in the industry as a whole they would make open source contributions a required part of the curriculum.
    - bryanlarsen 14y ago
      "Not necessarily, if you are doing CS at a top university and aiming to attain the highest possible grades this requires a huge investment of time and effort to most people." I would argue that you're better off with a B and a full portfolio than an A and an empty one. It depends on where you are applying, though. "Also it is not like a 9-5 where you can 'clock off'" Until you have kids. "no serious open source project is going to want your patches." That's not necessarily true. Often either your patches are small and trivial and can be accepted or they are large and useful enough that the other developers will provide feedback. This feedback is often more useful to the student than just getting the patch accepted. And nobody can reject your patches if it's your own project you're building.
      - __abc 14y ago
        Most students aren't aware that a "B" and a greater portfolio is better. Additionally, that is contextual. From my understanding Google would prefer the A. So a "B" with a "look at this side project" might get you iced against another candidate.
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        The pressure that students will get from professors and parents will be to prioritize academic work above all other activities. Also the majority of "good" tech jobs in the UK usually have a minimum degree requirement of a 2:1 (the majority of students achieve a 2:2) and will just bin anything that doesn't match that. There is a fundamental choice that the industry really needs to make as a whole here. When you compare CS to a degree in (say) photography, a large component of a photography degree will be to build up a portfolio to show off whereas this is not a priority in CS. If employers shout loudly enough that they want to see students who have produced real code for real projects then universities can adapt to that. Otherwise there is a very confused message being sent "We want people with an excellent academic record, a big git log of OSS commits, oh and they should also be well rounded with excellent interpersonal skills" , there are no doubt a few people like that but good luck to the companies all competing to hire them.
- mistercow 14y ago
  >If you have just graduated University then it's likely that the only code samples you have will be from that And that's why a university degree is almost meaningless. I had code samples I could have sent a prospective employer before I even started college. If you went all the way through getting a CS degree and never wrote a line of code for fun on your own time, I think that's a perfectly legitimate reason to reject your job application.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    What you are really saying here is that you are mainly interested in people who started coding before attending university. This is contrary to the view of most universities who are desperate to get people into the CS program who are not stereotypical 'geeks'. Perhaps the message they should be sending is 'if you haven't been coding for at least 3 years off your own back, don't apply for CS'. I'm not even sure that this idea is completely true, I know plenty of people who attended top UK universities for CS and the overwhelming majority of them didn't write OSS code while at university, it didn't seem to hurt their development skills too much though. In fact I'd wager that there are plenty of people doing cool things at google/MS/Apple etc who never wrote OSS code in their lives. Personally I hacked around on a few things while at university, but pretty much every few months I would look back on the code I had written prior and realise what a pile of junk it was. I didn't shed a tear when the disk it was all stored on died.
    - eru 14y ago
      Not OSS code, but at least some pet projects?
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        You might have some pet projects but I'm not sure if that really proves anything. For example I built PHP websites when I was at university but I would never show any of the code from those as a representation of the output I was capable of. Most of the programming work was very trivial (for example a form that sends an email) and the code quality wasn't great (because I knew the project would never have to scale and if I did I would just have rewritten it anyway). So it wouldn't prove anything beyond "can do rudimentary PHP" , I would think that having a high score in a difficult class (compilers, A.I etc) would be a far better signal to an employer.
tjr 14y ago
I usually find this sort of reply distasteful, but it seems appropriate in this context... I don’t know if I can’t send you the code, I’ll have to ask my employer. (Which seems really silly thing to do, considering you want to get the code to show it to some other company that you want to hire you). The parenthetical phrase is not a complete sentence, and should have been placed before the period following "employer". "Which" should not have been capitalized. "seems really silly thing to do" is missing an article. The final period would be rendered redundant by proper placement of the parenthetical phrase. Here is the deal, if you aren’t coding for fun ... A colon after "deal" would be better. driven by whatever the crazy professor think is a valid coding standard "crazy professor" is a singular noun. Either use "thinks" or "crazy professors". I can understand crazy coding standards, what I can’t understand is why someone would submit something that would raise so many red flags so quickly as part of a job application process. This sentence just doesn't flow well, but that aside, the comma should be replaced with a semicolon, or it should be broken into two sentences. And I'm sure there are more errors. But why do I care? If someone is going to write an angry rant about how a job candidate submitted code that used suboptimal coding standards, then it would be more convincing if the author would avoid writing this angry rant using suboptimal grammatical standards. Thanks!
- eru 14y ago
  You might try sending this to the author (e.g. as an email) for them to fix it.
kstenerud 14y ago
"Here is the deal, if you aren’t coding for fun, you are not suitable for a developer position in Hibernating Rhinos." OK, fine. SO PUT THAT REQUIREMENT IN YOUR JOB DESCRIPTION! If this is a deal breaker and you fail to inform the candidate, the person wasting everyone's time is YOU. To put some things you dismissed into perspective: - Sometimes a company already knows that the candidate is leaving, in which case they are being helpful by telling you it will take some time to get a release on the code they want to submit. - If someone passes you proprietary code without permission, bravo! You've just weeded out an untrustworthy candidate and you didn't even need to take it to the in-person interview! A huge time saver! - Junior programmers straight out of school rarely have a bunch of open source code. They're fresh out into the field, looking for someone to mentor and guide them as they grow. There's a mountain of things they need to learn and another mountain they need to unlearn, and they're wide open to whatever culture you find important. If you're not up to the task, don't hire them. Don't even approach them. Getting all bent out of shape over these things is a symptom of much deeper issues within yourself.
__abc 14y ago
I really don't like the tone of this post. Getting "angry" about candidates CV's and given the impression you think less of them is a bit much. It's absolutely okay to have a preference for the type of candidate you are looking for. Even better, how that preferred candidate should appear as early as their application. However, don't classify the candidate as a "moron" (implied via the tone of your blog post) simply because they don't meet your preferred qualifications. Pass on them and move on. Better yet, this is also a chance to teach if your up to it. Rather then get upset, why not ask them to elaborate AND tell them why you are having them do so. Inform them why you think it is important, helpful, and how it may be important when applying at other companies.
asadotzler 14y ago
It sounds like what you're looking for is someone who won't have a life outside of work or whose life outside of work looks a lot like their life at work. I wonder if "you must also spend your free time coding" is an attitude that discourages female participation in software engineering.
orangecat 14y ago
Note to self: never work for this guy (or "Duke" from the comments). I do in fact have side projects, but making them mandatory shows disrespect for my time away from the job.
tzs 14y ago
I would not be hirable there. I have had the misfortune of only working at jobs where there has been (1) a lot to do, (2) much of it very interesting, and (3) the quicker it gets done the better. Trying to throw in any significant open source work on top of this would push me past the burnout point. When I get off work, I sit down on the couch, put on something relaxing on the TV (Science channel, Discovery, History, Nat Geo, etc. or a sitcom or Futurama, Simpsons, or South Park), and then pull out a math textbook or a theoretical CS book or an interesting research paper, and work on expanding my theoretical knowledge. I've also added a lot of Udacity and Coursera to the mix. (I assume it goes without saying that I also waste a vast amount of time on Reddit and HN...)

14 points by facorreia 14y ago

jiggy2011 14y ago

If you have just graduated University then it's likely that the only code samples you have will be from that and universities are known to enforce one particular style of notation which may or may not be what is used in industry. I imagine that the number of university students who contribute anything meaningful to open source apps in addition to their studies is very small. This might be the small number of people he is interested in recruiting but being pissed off because every CV you get in isn't like that seems strange.

jamesbanner 14y ago
"If you have just graduated University then it's likely that the only code samples you have will be from" That's a weak argument. In fact it further strengthens Ayende's view that such a candidate is not suitable purely on the grounds of not liking to code.
bryanlarsen 14y ago
Contributing to open source while in University has major benefits: 1) skill development through practice and peer review 2) skill development through exposure to "real world" problems rather than the toy problems of school 3) portfolio development for job hunting 4) network building for job hunting If you're in University, you should be working on open source projects for these reasons and others. I suspect the article author is trying to help spread this meme. Open source contributors really do have a major advantage over their peers, but many students do not realise this. Others don't know how to start, but that's a different problem. Besides, open source is fun, and you probably have way more time and resources during University than you will later in life.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I agree that contributing to open source is a good way to learn many development skills, however: Besides, open source is fun, and you probably have way more time and resources during University than you will later in life. Not necessarily, if you are doing CS at a top university and aiming to attain the highest possible grades this requires a huge investment of time and effort to most people. Also it is not like a 9-5 where you can 'clock off' there is always an uncertain feeling of 'if I put another hour into this , then that might just bump me up an extra grade' Not to mention that if you just started programming at university your code is probably going to suck pretty hard for the first 2 years at least, to the point where no serious open source project is going to want your patches. Ultimately if Universities believed that this was important to job prospects in the industry as a whole they would make open source contributions a required part of the curriculum.
  - bryanlarsen 14y ago
    "Not necessarily, if you are doing CS at a top university and aiming to attain the highest possible grades this requires a huge investment of time and effort to most people." I would argue that you're better off with a B and a full portfolio than an A and an empty one. It depends on where you are applying, though. "Also it is not like a 9-5 where you can 'clock off'" Until you have kids. "no serious open source project is going to want your patches." That's not necessarily true. Often either your patches are small and trivial and can be accepted or they are large and useful enough that the other developers will provide feedback. This feedback is often more useful to the student than just getting the patch accepted. And nobody can reject your patches if it's your own project you're building.
    - __abc 14y ago
      Most students aren't aware that a "B" and a greater portfolio is better. Additionally, that is contextual. From my understanding Google would prefer the A. So a "B" with a "look at this side project" might get you iced against another candidate.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      The pressure that students will get from professors and parents will be to prioritize academic work above all other activities. Also the majority of "good" tech jobs in the UK usually have a minimum degree requirement of a 2:1 (the majority of students achieve a 2:2) and will just bin anything that doesn't match that. There is a fundamental choice that the industry really needs to make as a whole here. When you compare CS to a degree in (say) photography, a large component of a photography degree will be to build up a portfolio to show off whereas this is not a priority in CS. If employers shout loudly enough that they want to see students who have produced real code for real projects then universities can adapt to that. Otherwise there is a very confused message being sent "We want people with an excellent academic record, a big git log of OSS commits, oh and they should also be well rounded with excellent interpersonal skills" , there are no doubt a few people like that but good luck to the companies all competing to hire them.
mistercow 14y ago
>If you have just graduated University then it's likely that the only code samples you have will be from that And that's why a university degree is almost meaningless. I had code samples I could have sent a prospective employer before I even started college. If you went all the way through getting a CS degree and never wrote a line of code for fun on your own time, I think that's a perfectly legitimate reason to reject your job application.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  What you are really saying here is that you are mainly interested in people who started coding before attending university. This is contrary to the view of most universities who are desperate to get people into the CS program who are not stereotypical 'geeks'. Perhaps the message they should be sending is 'if you haven't been coding for at least 3 years off your own back, don't apply for CS'. I'm not even sure that this idea is completely true, I know plenty of people who attended top UK universities for CS and the overwhelming majority of them didn't write OSS code while at university, it didn't seem to hurt their development skills too much though. In fact I'd wager that there are plenty of people doing cool things at google/MS/Apple etc who never wrote OSS code in their lives. Personally I hacked around on a few things while at university, but pretty much every few months I would look back on the code I had written prior and realise what a pile of junk it was. I didn't shed a tear when the disk it was all stored on died.
  - eru 14y ago
    Not OSS code, but at least some pet projects?
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      You might have some pet projects but I'm not sure if that really proves anything. For example I built PHP websites when I was at university but I would never show any of the code from those as a representation of the output I was capable of. Most of the programming work was very trivial (for example a form that sends an email) and the code quality wasn't great (because I knew the project would never have to scale and if I did I would just have rewritten it anyway). So it wouldn't prove anything beyond "can do rudimentary PHP" , I would think that having a high score in a difficult class (compilers, A.I etc) would be a far better signal to an employer.

tjr 14y ago

I usually find this sort of reply distasteful, but it seems appropriate in this context... I don’t know if I can’t send you the code, I’ll have to ask my employer. (Which seems really silly thing to do, considering you want to get the code to show it to some other company that you want to hire you). The parenthetical phrase is not a complete sentence, and should have been placed before the period following "employer". "Which" should not have been capitalized. "seems really silly thing to do" is missing an article. The final period would be rendered redundant by proper placement of the parenthetical phrase. Here is the deal, if you aren’t coding for fun ... A colon after "deal" would be better. driven by whatever the crazy professor think is a valid coding standard "crazy professor" is a singular noun. Either use "thinks" or "crazy professors". I can understand crazy coding standards, what I can’t understand is why someone would submit something that would raise so many red flags so quickly as part of a job application process. This sentence just doesn't flow well, but that aside, the comma should be replaced with a semicolon, or it should be broken into two sentences. And I'm sure there are more errors. But why do I care? If someone is going to write an angry rant about how a job candidate submitted code that used suboptimal coding standards, then it would be more convincing if the author would avoid writing this angry rant using suboptimal grammatical standards. Thanks!

eru 14y ago
You might try sending this to the author (e.g. as an email) for them to fix it.

kstenerud 14y ago

"Here is the deal, if you aren’t coding for fun, you are not suitable for a developer position in Hibernating Rhinos." OK, fine. SO PUT THAT REQUIREMENT IN YOUR JOB DESCRIPTION! If this is a deal breaker and you fail to inform the candidate, the person wasting everyone's time is YOU. To put some things you dismissed into perspective: - Sometimes a company already knows that the candidate is leaving, in which case they are being helpful by telling you it will take some time to get a release on the code they want to submit. - If someone passes you proprietary code without permission, bravo! You've just weeded out an untrustworthy candidate and you didn't even need to take it to the in-person interview! A huge time saver! - Junior programmers straight out of school rarely have a bunch of open source code. They're fresh out into the field, looking for someone to mentor and guide them as they grow. There's a mountain of things they need to learn and another mountain they need to unlearn, and they're wide open to whatever culture you find important. If you're not up to the task, don't hire them. Don't even approach them. Getting all bent out of shape over these things is a symptom of much deeper issues within yourself.

__abc 14y ago

I really don't like the tone of this post. Getting "angry" about candidates CV's and given the impression you think less of them is a bit much. It's absolutely okay to have a preference for the type of candidate you are looking for. Even better, how that preferred candidate should appear as early as their application. However, don't classify the candidate as a "moron" (implied via the tone of your blog post) simply because they don't meet your preferred qualifications. Pass on them and move on. Better yet, this is also a chance to teach if your up to it. Rather then get upset, why not ask them to elaborate AND tell them why you are having them do so. Inform them why you think it is important, helpful, and how it may be important when applying at other companies.

asadotzler 14y ago

It sounds like what you're looking for is someone who won't have a life outside of work or whose life outside of work looks a lot like their life at work. I wonder if "you must also spend your free time coding" is an attitude that discourages female participation in software engineering.

orangecat 14y ago

Note to self: never work for this guy (or "Duke" from the comments). I do in fact have side projects, but making them mandatory shows disrespect for my time away from the job.

tzs 14y ago

I would not be hirable there. I have had the misfortune of only working at jobs where there has been (1) a lot to do, (2) much of it very interesting, and (3) the quicker it gets done the better. Trying to throw in any significant open source work on top of this would push me past the burnout point. When I get off work, I sit down on the couch, put on something relaxing on the TV (Science channel, Discovery, History, Nat Geo, etc. or a sitcom or Futurama, Simpsons, or South Park), and then pull out a math textbook or a theoretical CS book or an interesting research paper, and work on expanding my theoretical knowledge. I've also added a lot of Udacity and Coursera to the mix. (I assume it goes without saying that I also waste a vast amount of time on Reddit and HN...)