5 ms·

I look for consistency, someone who either has no contributions (doesn't make them a bad developer, just not working on public things) or has regular steady con

by dblock 11y ago

I look for consistency, someone who either has no contributions (doesn't make them a bad developer, just not working on public things) or has regular steady contributions. Anyone who has a bunch of green dots in the last couple of weeks and a bunch of green dots months ago makes me just discard the github profile as a useful positive signal.

tjr 11y ago
Anyone who has a bunch of green dots in the last couple of weeks and a bunch of green dots months ago makes me just discard the github profile as a useful positive signal. Ooh, you just more or less described me. What makes working on public things, say, one weekend every couple of months less interesting than not working on public things at all?
- akerl_ 11y ago
  It sounds like the thing being watched out for is "they clearly didn't do open source things until somebody said that open source looks good to recruiters", and so their recent work is more suspect. Not sure I agree 100%, but the "green dots start when they start job-hunting" pattern is pretty common.
  - tjr 11y ago
    I've been doing volunteer work for the GNU Project since the 1990s. My GitHub profile might not be jam-packed with dots, but I think one would be hard-pressed to seriously insinuate that my few GitHub dots align with the fleeting open source wishes of recruiters... :-) Though anyone looking only at my GitHub profile might reasonably think so, I guess.
  - quotedmycode 11y ago
    Considering that they don't have a job, and thus have more free time to contribute shouldn't make them look bad. I have a job, I do my job, I go home. Occasionally (like on my birthday) I donate some of my spare time to projects that I care about, and you'll see contributions for a while then I get back to regular stuff which isn't open source. If that looks bad to a potential employer then that's not the kind of employer that I want.
- quotedmycode 11y ago
  Yeah, usually on or around my birthday I'll donate some of my personal time to improving open source projects, I certainly don't want that looking bad for me just because I try to help.
- bhousel 11y ago
  They didn't say it was bad, they just said it wasn't a useful signal. One thing I'm seeing more commonly is where a group of people create github profiles with a handful of projects that are obvious homework assignments, and then open and close a few issues and pull in some trivial changes to each others' repos in order to put a few green dots on their contributor graphs. Sad really.
bjourne 11y ago
If you are hiring, and you are only looking at the green dots, then you are doing it wrong. :/
bbcbasic 11y ago
On the one hand you can put green dots in retroactively. So you could be fooled. On the other hand a genuine contributor may be working offline each day for months then do a big commit (squashing down the intermediate local history - can't remember the git term for this). What I think would be good is to instruct candidates to write a cover letter about their side-projects. Talk about each one briefly. With links to online repositories if available (or zip files otherwise).

by dblock 11y ago

tjr 11y ago

Anyone who has a bunch of green dots in the last couple of weeks and a bunch of green dots months ago makes me just discard the github profile as a useful positive signal. Ooh, you just more or less described me. What makes working on public things, say, one weekend every couple of months less interesting than not working on public things at all?

akerl_ 11y ago
It sounds like the thing being watched out for is "they clearly didn't do open source things until somebody said that open source looks good to recruiters", and so their recent work is more suspect. Not sure I agree 100%, but the "green dots start when they start job-hunting" pattern is pretty common.
- tjr 11y ago
  I've been doing volunteer work for the GNU Project since the 1990s. My GitHub profile might not be jam-packed with dots, but I think one would be hard-pressed to seriously insinuate that my few GitHub dots align with the fleeting open source wishes of recruiters... :-) Though anyone looking only at my GitHub profile might reasonably think so, I guess.
- quotedmycode 11y ago
  Considering that they don't have a job, and thus have more free time to contribute shouldn't make them look bad. I have a job, I do my job, I go home. Occasionally (like on my birthday) I donate some of my spare time to projects that I care about, and you'll see contributions for a while then I get back to regular stuff which isn't open source. If that looks bad to a potential employer then that's not the kind of employer that I want.
quotedmycode 11y ago
Yeah, usually on or around my birthday I'll donate some of my personal time to improving open source projects, I certainly don't want that looking bad for me just because I try to help.
bhousel 11y ago
They didn't say it was bad, they just said it wasn't a useful signal. One thing I'm seeing more commonly is where a group of people create github profiles with a handful of projects that are obvious homework assignments, and then open and close a few issues and pull in some trivial changes to each others' repos in order to put a few green dots on their contributor graphs. Sad really.

bjourne 11y ago

If you are hiring, and you are only looking at the green dots, then you are doing it wrong. :/

bbcbasic 11y ago

On the one hand you can put green dots in retroactively. So you could be fooled. On the other hand a genuine contributor may be working offline each day for months then do a big commit (squashing down the intermediate local history - can't remember the git term for this). What I think would be good is to instruct candidates to write a cover letter about their side-projects. Talk about each one briefly. With links to online repositories if available (or zip files otherwise).