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I've never understood the idea of ranking a developer based on activity on Github, Bitbucket, HN etc. I've been writing code for more than 15 years and don't ha

I've never understood the idea of ranking a developer based on activity on Github, Bitbucket, HN etc. I've been writing code for more than 15 years and don't have a single line of code on an public repo. "Why?", you may ask. Because everything I have done (besides a couple side projects that were never meant for release) has been paid work for an employer/client. Nothing to put in a public repo. And my activity on HN or other boards really has nothing to do with my coding. I'm sure I would score very poorly if I signed up for something like this. So I never would. And that now limits your dev pool to only a certain type of dev... and not necessarily the best ones. So knowing that and looking at it from that angle, if I was looking to hire a dev, I also would not use a site like this. "Why?", you may ask. Because I'd be looking for good devs... not just good devs that happen to release a lot of public code and/or post a lot on HN.

bad_user 13y ago
Nor will you understand it if you keep being a developer that doesn't contribute anything. The idea that you only did paid work for an employer being the reason for why you have no activity on GitHub is a false dichotomy. Seriously, you never wrote any helpers, or maybe a library that you wanted to reuse across projects? And in regards to IP, any sane employer would agree that open-sourcing pieces of code that aren't central to the business logic is OK, since if others find it useful, you'll get bug fixes for free.
- jack-r-abbit 13y ago
  >a developer that doesn't contribute anything Excuse me? That is rather rude.
  - Greenisus 13y ago
    He means that you don't contribute anything to open source, which is what you said. I don't think the guy was trying to be rude.
- ramchip 13y ago
  A lot of employers are not sane by this definition. I work at a bank and can't release anything, nor do we contribute back our patches to open source projects, because the management/approval/review cost is just so large and everybody's far too busy to do this kind of stuff. Company policy forbids us from posting on forums during working hours anyway. Unfortunately, I think this is common in finance, and perhaps to a lesser extent in embedded and a lot of other fields.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  "The idea that you only did paid work for an employer being the reason for why you have no activity on GitHub is a false dichotomy." Time. Not everyone wants to spend their spare time coding as well as their work time. "Seriously, you never wrote any helpers, or maybe a library that you wanted to reuse across projects?" These might be owned by the employer. "And in regards to IP, any sane employer would agree that open-sourcing pieces of code that aren't central to the business logic is OK" A minority of employers think like that in my experience.
- zappbrannigan 13y ago
  I don't know from which world you are sucking oxygen from, but many employers don't care about open source. All they expect from their programmers is to create applications and in return will pay in some money in the bank at a mutually agreed frequency. The understanding in this relationship is that the code is a business asset.

bad_user 13y ago

Nor will you understand it if you keep being a developer that doesn't contribute anything. The idea that you only did paid work for an employer being the reason for why you have no activity on GitHub is a false dichotomy. Seriously, you never wrote any helpers, or maybe a library that you wanted to reuse across projects? And in regards to IP, any sane employer would agree that open-sourcing pieces of code that aren't central to the business logic is OK, since if others find it useful, you'll get bug fixes for free.

jack-r-abbit 13y ago
>a developer that doesn't contribute anything Excuse me? That is rather rude.
- Greenisus 13y ago
  He means that you don't contribute anything to open source, which is what you said. I don't think the guy was trying to be rude.
ramchip 13y ago
A lot of employers are not sane by this definition. I work at a bank and can't release anything, nor do we contribute back our patches to open source projects, because the management/approval/review cost is just so large and everybody's far too busy to do this kind of stuff. Company policy forbids us from posting on forums during working hours anyway. Unfortunately, I think this is common in finance, and perhaps to a lesser extent in embedded and a lot of other fields.
moocowduckquack 13y ago
"The idea that you only did paid work for an employer being the reason for why you have no activity on GitHub is a false dichotomy." Time. Not everyone wants to spend their spare time coding as well as their work time. "Seriously, you never wrote any helpers, or maybe a library that you wanted to reuse across projects?" These might be owned by the employer. "And in regards to IP, any sane employer would agree that open-sourcing pieces of code that aren't central to the business logic is OK" A minority of employers think like that in my experience.
zappbrannigan 13y ago
I don't know from which world you are sucking oxygen from, but many employers don't care about open source. All they expect from their programmers is to create applications and in return will pay in some money in the bank at a mutually agreed frequency. The understanding in this relationship is that the code is a business asset.