
The Impact Github is Having on Your Software Career - kumaranvpl
https://medium.com/@sitapati/the-impact-github-is-having-on-your-software-career-right-now-6ce536ec0b50
======
KiwiCoder
I do a lot of recruiting, for both paid and volunteer coding roles. I've been
hiring for about 13 years, and I've been coding professionally for about 25
years. Before that I coded as a hobby, from about age 11.

Speaking from this experience, and as someone who reviews on average 20-50
coder profiles a week, the public commit history of a coder is almost never a
significant factor. I don't see any trends that indicate this is changing,
either.

The vast majority just don't have much to show, having spent their years
working behind walls on closed software.

Instead of relying on a public portfolio that in most cases won't exist, I
rely on talking to these people directly, programmer to programmer. If we can
code together, on the actual code they would be working on, that's about as
good as it gets.

In other words, I rely on my experience as a coder to help make what are,
ultimately, subjective judgement calls.

~~~
sotojuan
I can confirm from the employee side. I've worked with 40-60 people total that
I at least sort of remember.

Sure, that's not many people and I'm still new to the industry, but I can tell
you that of all of these people only one or two have significant public GitHub
activity. All the rest have empty GitHub accounts (aside from work).

These are all well employed programmers at startups. They're doing fine. The
importance of "side projects" is overrated on the internet.

~~~
misingnoglic
Side projects are mostly important for new grads or students looking for
internships, just to show - "look- I can do code that's not just my data
structures homework assignment."

~~~
shams93
You would think, I've been in the industry 25 years and my side projects are
still my biggest sales tools when it comes to changing jobs or joining
projects. Makes a huge difference to be able to show that I stay constantly on
top of the latest changes and best practices and apis even when my current day
job may be using an outdated stack.

~~~
mkaziz
How much extra time investment does it take you to do that?

------
cableshaft
I think this guy feels this will be true because that's the bubble he lives in
(an open source bubble). His bubble is not reflective of the entire software
development community, however.

Sure, it'd be nice if everything I worked on was available open source, but
let's just look at one example where that's not a good idea: video games.

Good luck getting the game industry to make their AAA games open source,
especially before release, when hundreds of people are chomping at the bit to
have a dirt easy time of cloning whatever game out there and tossing it on the
app stores to make a few bucks off their broken, half-stolen mess of a game.
It's a rampant problem right now (for example, 2048 and Flappy Bird both had
open source versions, possibly unofficial... look how many clones of those
games hit the app stores).

Not to mention, game development often is a creative one where features are
tried and then have to be cut for time, while audiences assume that anything
they see will be in the final game, and if not they were maliciously lied to.
This leads to any information about the game being closely guarded except for
planned waaay in advance marketing campaigns, for most games (indies is a
little different, indies need whatever exposure they can get usually).

So no, not everyone is going to be working on open source software, and that's
not going to change in the 2 year 'Mark my words!' timeline this guy has
provided.

~~~
vvanders
Yup, perfect example.

Ironically game development is one if the areas where tech & algo is discussed
widely and openly(which is what GDC used to be before it became a bit more
commercialized). Most studios are happy to share their latest
pathfinding/ai/rendering techniques which is almost always held close to the
chest in other industries.

~~~
sevensor
Even more perfect because 2048 _was_ the open-source clone, and we're not even
mentioning Threes, the game on which it was based.

~~~
macintux
Yeah, I've always been annoyed at the lack of recognition Threes tends to get.

~~~
scott_s
Threes is great, and I bought it when I realized 2048 was based on it. And the
makers of Threes were right! I have never gone back to 2048, but I _still_
sometimes play Threes.

------
projektir
This way of looking at things is so corruptive. Does everything we do have to
be about reputation? About our CV and how we're hired? About competition? How
many commits does it take to compensate for that state of mind, for what it
does to people? Whenever you bring those things, they only leave a scorched
plain in their wake and the community is forced to move somewhere else.

> One of the principles of open source is meritocracy — the best idea wins,
> the most commits wins, the most passing tests wins, the best implementation
> wins, etc.

Have we learned nothing?

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." \-
Goodhart's law

~~~
brightball
I haven't heard that before, but that is a great quote.

~~~
happy-go-lucky
Closely related ideas:

"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-
making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt
it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to
monitor." \- Campbell's law (1976)

"It is naive to try to predict the effects of a change in economic policy
entirely on the basis of relationships observed in historical data, especially
highly aggregated historical data." \- Lucas critique (1976)

~~~
drivers99
Sounds like perverse incentives[1] in general.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive)

~~~
happy-go-lucky
> In Hanoi, under French colonial rule, a program paying people a bounty for
> each rat tail handed in was intended to exterminate rats. Instead, it led to
> the farming of rats.

LOL. Thank you.

~~~
zardo
[http://e360.yale.edu/features/perverse_co2_payments_send_flo...](http://e360.yale.edu/features/perverse_co2_payments_send_flood_of_money_to_china)

A modern incarnation: High incentives for the destruction of a harmful
chemical stimulates it's production.

------
Nekorosu
The opinion represented in the article is based on top of several false
assumptions.

1\. GitHub represents the major part of software development world.

No. It's a tip of an iceberg. I don't think I have to elaborate this one.

2\. Open source software development model is an absolute winner.

No. It's just one model of development which fits some kinds of projects
better than the others. Companies tend to open-source tools. Product's code is
usually closed source. Obviously there are a lot of developers who spend most
of their time on closed source projects. Some of them also have life.

3\. Your open source projects contribution helps recruiters to evaluate you
performance for any kind of software development project.

Not true. A lot of jobs are either legacy projects work, niche technologies
work or both. Some niche technologies are closed source. Some legacy
technologies predate open-source culture. The problems you face doing open
source projects are very different from those you face doing b2b, b2c
projects.

Having said that the author's opinion looks invalid to me.

------
ENOTTY
Disagree totally. There are gazillions of software developers quietly plugging
away at gigantic companies with over 50k headcount whose contributions will
never make it into open source. Think business intelligence software,
accounting software, embedded systems developers, etc.

~~~
TurboHaskal
It is still having impact, but in a negative way.

Being rejected as a candidate because of a lacking Github profile is not
unheard of.

~~~
ryandrake
I wouldn't sweat it. Employers have been rejecting great tech candidates for
dumb reasons for decades. I'd argue that if someone won't hire you because you
don't have an account on some Internet service, you probably dodged a bullet
and would not have wanted to work there in the first place.

~~~
endless1234
Though of course it can't /hurt/ to have a kick-ass Github profile, but I also
doubt we'd be at a stage where it'd be required to get a job in the industry
easily.

------
superzadeh
> About me: I’m a Legendary Recruiter at Just Digital People; a Red Hat
> alumnus; a CoderDojo mentor; a founder of Magikcraft.io; the producer of The
> JDP Internship — The World’s #1 Software Development Reality Show; the host
> of The Best Tech Podcast in the World; and a father. All inside a commitment
> to empowering Queensland’s Silicon Economy.

The Software industry needs more humility and less magicians.

I believe that strong engineering skills are worth far more than a Github
profile, and good recruiters will know how to spot this.

If however you are looking to be hired as the new "Rockstar developer" of the
latest trending startup running buzzword architecture, then a good public
brand might be useful indeed.

~~~
richardwhiuk
What is doesn't say in that is that they every contributed to an open source
project.

------
samuli
At least in Finland (don't know about the rest of Europe) the information must
be collected from the applicant and not by doing internet searches [0]. If a
company wants to use any other sources, they must ask the applicants
permission first.

[0]
[http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2004/20040759](http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2004/20040759)

------
peteretep

        > Over the next 12–24 months
        > — in other words, between
        > 2018 and 2019 — how software
        > developers are hired is 
        > going to change radically.
    

Just in time for Linux on the desktop

------
jurassic
I recently read a novel called "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry. One
character, Ashraf Chacha, is a man who works as a tailor. He is extremely
grieved by the death of his wife. He talks about how when she was alive it
never bothered him to spend all of his time reading or sewing - just knowing
she was there in another room was enough. But after she dies, he regrets all
the time he foolishly spent away from her.

I don't want to look back on my life with that feeling. As adults, we have
very little free time and spending it on software seems like a gross
misallocation of resources, even if our careers would benefit. There's more to
life than work.

~~~
ryandrake
I used to agree with that, but competition for employment has gotten so cut-
throat that when you spend time not being productive, not learning, not
building your network, not adding to your resume, you can be assured that your
competition (people wanting your job or the job you also want) ARE doing these
things. Thanks to AI and robotics, we can expect things to get more and more
cut-throat as time goes on. When you're out of work and a few months from
insolvency, you're not looking back and saying "Man I wish I spent more time
slacking off with my friends and family".

~~~
nsxwolf
And yet there's a tech shortage and nobody can find anyone to hire.

~~~
Tomis02
I have a strong suspicion the so-called tech shortage is just an excuse
employers use to justify their own shortcomings.

Programmers generally want, in no particular order: \- a good work environment
\- good pay \- interesting things to work on

If you don't provide one you'd better make sure you well compensate with the
other two. In practice, employers just say "meh, tech shortage" instead of
taking responsibility and admiting "yeah, we kinda suck, the people we'd truly
want working for us don't even consider applying so we're stuck with the
rest".

------
donretag
“All the work you do here will be in the open. In the future you won’t have a
CV — people will just Google you.”

Interviewer: I see you have a impressive profile on Github, but can you write
an algorithm for quick sort on the whiteboard?

~~~
Bartweiss
There should be a rule that any formulation of "In the future, you won't...
You'll just..." is guaranteed to be wrong.

It's right up there with predicting that no one will ever need ${product}, or
writing news headlines with yes/no questions.

------
nappy-doo
Would you like to be judged by the number of lines of code you submit? It's
not much different than being judged by your commit graph on GitHub. If we
judge ourselves, and others by this ridiculous metric, we're cheapening our
profession.

We are knowledge workers. We work by thinking and acting. A graph captures
none of the first. The most valuable code I've ever written for an employer
was about 100 lines that took 2 weeks to write. Would the commit graph capture
that?

I have gotten into arguments with my boss about hiring based on commit graphs
and commit counts. I lost. We hired someone who checks in a lot of stuff, but
often has to fix it with other changes. His graph and change count looks
great. It's a nightmare working with him.

In my experience, commit graphs are bogus.

------
emodendroket
> For software developers coming from a primarily closed source background,
> it’s not really clear yet what just happened. To them, open source equals
> “working for free in your spare time”.

> For those of us who spent the past decade making a billion dollar open
> source software company however, there is nothing free or spare time about
> working in the open.

> [...]

> The way to get a job at Red Hat last decade was obvious. You just started
> collaborating with Red Hat engineers on some piece of technology that they
> were working on in the open, then when it was clear that you were making a
> valuable contribution and were a great person to work with, you would apply
> for a job. Or they would hit you up.

Actually, this sounds exactly like working for free. You do some spec work and
if they like it maybe they'll hire you.

~~~
cyphar
> Actually, this sounds exactly like working for free. You do some spec work
> and if they like it maybe they'll hire you.

Except the difference is that the with your doing is also applicable to you
(presumably that's the reason you decided to hack on it). I got my job at SUSE
in a similar fashion, but I never assumed I would get a job out of my
contributions -- I was just a high school student at the time, playing with
container runtimes.

All of that being said, hiring people solely based on their online profile is
a shitty idea. It might be useful to get leads that way, but if you have an
applicant who has no online profile you should consider it an opportunity to
convert them to a free software developer (not as a candidate who doesn't want
to work in the open).

~~~
emodendroket
Well, the thesis of the piece linked seems to be that we're entering a brave
new world where this isn't just an option but _the_ way to get a job.

~~~
cyphar
Sure. But I'm arguing that "contributing to free software is working for free
for some company, in the hopes you get a job" is not really fair -- especially
when you consider that many free software projects are run by the community
(or that you might be a user of the project).

~~~
emodendroket
I agree that there are other possible motivations, but they're beside the
point given the article content.

------
doodpants
15 years ago, you went to Freshmeat or SourceForge to find open source
projects. Now it's Github. In 5-10 years, a different open source repository
might be more popular.

The author seems unconcerned about a particular company having so much
control. Note that he compares not having a Github account to not having email
or a cellphone in general, rather than to not having e.g. Gmail or an iPhone
in particular, which would be a more apt analogy. It's a disheartening
reminder of the trend of the internet moving away from decentralized protocols
to centralized services.

------
pyb
That chestnut is getting a bit old now.

For those of us who do have open source code on Github, the consensus is clear
: despite the hype, most employers don't really look at Github in any depth.
They mostly prefer to grill candidates, rather than look at what they've
actually done. I guess it must be more enjoyable.

~~~
phkahler
>> They mostly prefer to grill candidates, rather than look at what they've
actually done.

When I interview people I like to grill them on what they've actually done.
All evidence you may find on a CV or on github is secondary to what they can
actually speak to. That's my opinion of course, everyone has their way of
finding good people.

------
isometric8
I saw the reality of this on a job posting the other day, the recruiter wrote
that applicants with github work will be given preference. This is pretty
stupid really, a lot of really good developers are working on projects that
cannot be shared or discussed or open sourced. Just because you haven't had
the time between 1am and 3am to contribute to an open source project doesn't
mean you suck as a developer.

~~~
nhumrich
No, it doesn't mean you suck. But it does mean that those with full GitHub
profiles usually spend every waking our programming. If they have e that much
passion and programming hours under their belt, and you can see their code
examples, the chances of hiring a false positive is a lot lower. It's all
about mitigating risk. No one is saying you are worse, but hiring you _is_
more of a risk than hiring someone such as I just mentioned above. It's harder
to really know how good/passionate you are.

~~~
ghaff
>It's harder to really know how good/passionate you are.

Sorry, but I have to really object to this idea that programming every waking
hour with great passion is a positive job qualification. Sounds more like a
recipe for burnout.

~~~
throwanem
It is exactly that. Ask me how I know.

~~~
phkahler
We interviewed a guy and without prompting (that's probably off limits anyway)
he told us how he's divorced and has no real social life, so working long
hours for us would be just fine by him. I wasn't impressed by him to start
with, but that just put the final nail in the coffin for me. Not only did it
sound a bit desperate, I'd prefer someone with a healthy attitude toward work
and life. The other hiring managers felt the same way.

~~~
duderific
I'm glad to hear that attitude still exists among hiring managers. I'm working
at an otherwise great company that doesn't give a rat's behind about work/life
balance. I.e., if you're not still here at 6:30 or 7:00 PM you must not be a
team player. Never mind if you have a wife and small child that you'd like to
get home and have dinner with.

Edited for clarity.

------
joshstrange
> Previously privileged developers will suddenly find their network disrupted.

Good god.... I love GitHub and what it allows for but let's not paint this as
the "commoners" knocking down the walls that protect the "elites" in their
ivory castles. Commiting to GitHub does not, on it's own, make you a better
developer or a better person. In the same way that not committing to GitHub
does not, on it's own, make you worse developer or a worse person.

I've met people who don't have single commit to a public GitHub repo that are
FAR better developers (and people in some cases) than ones I've know that are
deeply ingrained in a public project. In some, not all, cases there are
different skillsets required for OS work vs working at a "closed source"
company. And while we are on that subject I'm quite sick of some of the
attitudes I see on HN sometimes around "closed source" like it's some evil
thing. It's not, people have to eat, have to pay rent, have to support their
families and anyone that thinks you can do easily that while working for a
for-profit company are living in a dream world. How many times have we seen
posts here about how little money is actually given to OS? Sure I'd love to be
able to only work on OS or work for a company that is open but there are very
few success stories in that area. The cognitive dissidence the HN crowd expels
when they fawn over the SasS companies or various other SV unicorns (all
closed source) here and then derides closed source is astounding.

All of this to say the message of "Your GitHub profile will mean everything
for your career" is simply bullshit. _CAN_ it give you a leg up? Of course,
but experience working for a company and in that kind of setting is much more
valuable to the vast majority of companies. Take a look at Linus Torvalds,
undoubtedly a genius and a person who has done immense good for the OS
community, however his temper/attitude are legendary with HN periodically
posting links to his smack downs on mailing lists or the like. That said do
you think many companies are looking for that kind of an employee? I think not
(No disrespect meant to him at all, it works for him and I doubt he is looking
for a job at those kind of places anyways).

Most of the companies I've worked for or interviewed with have either not
cared at all about my GitHub profile or even if they say they do care they
don't give it more than a passing glance at best. Focus on being good at what
you do and if that happens in public on GitHub/GitLab/etc then all the better
but don't bend over backwards to make your profile look good at the expense of
actually knowing your shit.

~~~
uiri
_I 'm quite sick of some of the attitudes I see on HN sometimes around "closed
source" like it's some evil thing._

Proprietary software generally leaves society worse off than if that same
software were free and open source. In that sense, it _is_ some evil thing.

 _It 's not, people have to eat, have to pay rent, have to support their
families_

There are plenty of people who think of stripping, porn and prostitution as
some evil thing. The argument that strippers, porn actors/actresses and
prostitutes need to eat, pay rent, etc. does not detract from that. However, I
do not think that there should be laws against porn nor against proprietary
software.

I do agree with you that it is _much_ easier to find a job doing proprietary
software development. I would be a hypocrite if I suggested that people should
not take those jobs. Companies will fund open source if and only if it
furthers their business objectives. You are correct in saying that open source
projects are, in general, woefully underfunded and the open source company
success stories are few and far between.

I would like to think that the "closed source software is evil" crowd is
mutually exclusive to the "fawning over SV unicorn" crowd.

 _Focus on being good at what you do and if that happens in public on GitHub
/GitLab/etc then all the better but don't bend over backwards to make your
profile look good at the expense of actually knowing your shit._

I agree. If you happen to do good work on GitHub, it can give you a leg up.
Any effort poured into making one's profile "look good" is probably better
spent actually doing good work or, failing that, studying for those silly data
structures & algorithms whiteboard questions.

~~~
joshstrange
> I'm quite sick of some of the attitudes I see on HN sometimes around "closed
> source" like it's some evil thing.

>> Proprietary software generally leaves society worse off than if that same
software were free and open source. In that sense, it is some evil thing.

I can agree with that but it also must follow that the choice is "closed" or
"open" when often the choice is "closed" or not at all. It reminds me of the
piracy arguments that equate 1 downloaded movie to 1 lost movie sale when in
fact if the pirate was unable to download it for free they would not have paid
for it at all and just gone without

>> I would like to think that the "closed source software is evil" crowd is
mutually exclusive to the "fawning over SV unicorn" crowd.

You are probably largely right here. I wouldn't go as far as to say "mutually
exclusive" as it's easy for people to get caught up in the hype of the moment
and chide someone for not OS'ing something or complaining that more stuff
should be OS minutes after they commented about how great Uber/Lyft are (or
similar). I know that I have, at times, felt the "righteous anger" against
something being closed source or been ready to jump on the commenting
bandwagon before stopping to think about it.

------
prh8
This almost seems like more of a hype article for Github than reality. It's
certainly an extreme version of some truths (good and bad), but this is not
how things are going to become for developers, certainly not as soon as
2018-2019.

------
Asooka
> Smart people will take advantage of this — they’ll contribute patches,
> issues, and comments upstream to the languages and frameworks that they use
> on the daily in their job — TypeScript, .NET, Redux.

Yeah except for the tiny niggle that an overwhelming majority of contracts
stipulate that you can't actually contribute to OSS either on or off the job
due to the fact that every single thing you think of while employed (and
sometimes for a period after your employment ends) belongs fully to your
employer.

~~~
jobigoud
I still can't understand how this doesn't fall into the abusive clause group.

------
bjornlouser
"It’s not your code on Github that counts — it’s what other people say on
Github about your code that counts."

In the near future all of our problems will be solved by minor celebrities of
fashionable Github repos.

------
kstenerud
The last 3 jobs of mine have been in a large part influenced by my OSS
projects (one of them was ENTIRELY due to one of my projects).

But I've always made a point of writing OSS code the same way I write closed
projects: Well structured, documented code, proper tests, user guides and API
documentation, architectural diagrams if necessary, and a professional
attitude when dealing with users. Every major repository or sourceforge or
sunsite tarball is a public statement to how I write real products that people
use.

Over the past 20 years I've written close to 500KLOC of finished OSS code.
It's honed my skills, kept me sharp, helped others, and gotten me jobs.

------
anonymous584
Employers do not care about your open source work beyond it possibly
demonstrating a commitment on your part to performing unpaid (and
unappreciated) labor--which they euphemistically describe as "passion." That's
it. Do not expect job offers from it. You'll get ample recruiter spam sent to
whatever email address you associate with your projects, and possibly feature
requests or complaints from entitled corporate users, but little else. In
fact, it's apparently too much to even expect marginally less painful job
interviews with fewer hoops to jump through as a result of your open source
portfolio.

Companies (and VCs like YC) not only do not adequately compensate those who
produce the free software they use to build and grow their businesses, but
they show no greater inclination to hire them, despite using their software.
(Zed Shaw has written about his.) Absent a clear monetization strategy, I
think the time developers spend working on open source side projects would be
better spent building personal wealth, especially considering how many of them
will effectively become unemployable once they turn forty.

------
d--b
Here is some career advice: do not describe yourself as a "JavaScript
Magician, Story-teller, Code DJ". That really doesnt play well to a recruiter
who is looking to put together a team of people who like to work together.

~~~
dexterdog
But what if I really am a ruby ninja and a node hero?

------
dajohnson89
Towards this end, is there a place that matches developers with small projects
needing just a small amount of help? Say, a few small bug fixes or
enhancements? I'd be happy to contribute but I don't want to commit too much
of my time nor do I want to navigate the maze of a larger project.

------
mvindahl
The recruiting industry being what it is, I'm sure that the future holds
plentys of job opportunities for people who can invert binary trees on
whiteboards. Or, on a more serious note, there will also be jobs for anyone
with skills and experience in the field. The job market is good for
developers.

I'd recommend OSS and GitHub not as a prerequisite to landing a job, but as a
means of adding direction to your career. At your day job you don't always get
to pick the technologies and sometimes you drift into the backwater of old
legacy code (which the companies, understandably, need to maintain). Doing OSS
can be a way of getting your feet wet doing exciting stuff of choice, building
experience for your next job and maybe even build a network. Doing fun stuff.
That should be the main reason IMHO.

------
neoeldex
A self proclaimed "Legendary recruiter" Kssshh

~~~
diimdeep
He likes to exaggerate
[http://www.thebesttechpodcastintheworld.com/](http://www.thebesttechpodcastintheworld.com/)

~~~
sitapati
Don't forget this gem:
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/17/job_ad_promises_mea...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/17/job_ad_promises_meaningless_repetitive_work_on_the_net_stack/)

------
daliwali
>One of the principles of open source is meritocracy — the best idea wins, the
most commits wins, the most passing tests wins, the best implementation wins,
etc.

This is so wrong that it's hilarious. Lots of garbage gets popular and there's
tons of gems that go unnoticed. The meritocracy myth needs to die.

------
kabdib
I read a lot of resumes, and interview a lot of developers.

The times I've looked at Github it was either "meh, this doesn't tell me much"
or "Holy shit, run away". And about 5X in favor of running away.

So it's been useful, in a sense, but not as a positive signal.

~~~
zapt02
What would the "run away" signs be on a GitHub profile?

~~~
kabdib
Abject clones of other projects with no local commits, or minimal ones.
Projects that just mashed together some other projects in a package. Projects
that had a bunch of README content, but no actual code, or code that was
minimal. (The few times I've seen school projects, they've been terrible . . .
which is fine for a school project, but why make that public on github?)

My guess is that, in general, the submitters wanted to look good to people
(e.g., HR) who were not technical. They sure didn't pass a "I want to continue
looking at this person" filter.

------
KirinDave
I think that looking at a GitHub profile is tricky. Very few people get to
work on open source projects. And quite frankly, Linux's model of "trying to
get noticed by the admins" doesn't scale well at all. There is a lot more to
it than he's suggesting.

If you want to interview people effectively try this crazy formula:

0\. Ask for a remote tech screen. Ask for a simple piece of work that you can
evaluate and that resembles real work. Make sure it can be built and tested
imperially (the best way is automatically). This should be simple and not 8
hours of work. Don't ask people to code on a whiteboard or do their best
algorithmic design in a high stress interview session, you won't get it.

1\. Be prepared. Know what you're interviewing for and list out he skills.
Read a candidates resume and review the prior work they offer. Read their code
first.

2\. Code review their tech screen.

3\. Make sure to ask questions about their approach to work, leadership and
projects. Encourage them to ask you similar questions.

4\. Have a broad cross section of your company interview. Mix up who does
this, diversity is a plus here. Also, make sure designers and HR folks get a
bit of time, not just engineers.

5\. If the position is senior tech, whitebiarding is acceptable for
architecture or planning or diagrams.

------
mdekkers
_For software developers coming from a primarily closed source background,
it’s not really clear yet what just happened. To them, open source equals
“working for free in your spare time”._

I'm guessing that would > 80% of all software developed globally?

------
steven777400
A decade ago when I was teaching computer programming full time at the
community college, I told my students that their online portfolio would be the
most important thing to differentiate them from their classmates.

I'm actually slightly less sure of this today... It's probably true for
startups/"tech" companies; but many, many programmers work LOB in non-tech
companies and I haven't heard/seen much that the hiring process has changed.
If anything, we've come closer to the consensus that a small "work sample" is
the best possible kind of interview - show up, here's a laptop and a small CR
or project, implement. This has the advantage of being do-able remotely too,
of course.

Pull requests back to languages and frameworks works if you're at the skill
level and motivation to work at the framework level (e.g. Google, Facebook,
Microsoft; the companies making the mainstream frameworks). But it's a dis-
service to ignore many, many programmers working successfully at a lower
level. It seems like the portfolio-as-key to being hired is still not very
true for that category.

------
thehardsphere
> Eventually a vast majority will be working in the open, and it will again be
> a level playing field differentiated on other factors.

Haven't people been saying this for like, 10 years now?

------
jasonpeacock
He writes about network of connections, 1st, 2nd, 3rd degree and so on being
lost when you change companies, but that is incorrect.

Enough people I know and respect have moved on to other companies that my own
network has actually grown. If I chose to apply elsewhere the first thing I'd
do is reach out in my own network, not spam recruiters with my Github account.

Your Github reputation can be used in addition to your network, or as a
substitute if you have no network, but it will not replace the impact of
having others already in the industry/company personally vouch for you.

"Who you know" is still the best way to get your foot in the door, because we
are all still social animals.

~~~
sitapati
*Countries. When you change countries.

------
ivan_gammel
The main logical failure of this article is the wrong assumption that the code
published some time ago does always reflect current skills or relevant to the
current needs. What you have written even couple years ago is quite often no
longer important: progress is fast, new design patterns, new libraries, new,
more advanced coding approaches become popular, you learn, you continuously
improve your skills only to be judged by what?..

Sometimes, in some cases, it makes sense to filter candidates by looking at
their GH. But I would not bet on that: the better filter is the code being
written today, which is unlikely to be available for most of the developers.

~~~
Scea91
So you are basically saying that for example 3 years of experience is as good
as 20?

~~~
ivan_gammel
Yes, they can be as good or even better, because not every experience is equal
in relevance or quality of results.

------
lithos
If this becomes more true I'm glad that I choose electrical engineering over
software whatever-you're-called-now.

I can't imagine spending three years of weekends developing x companies
software for a chance at an interview.

------
5ilv3r
One thing not mentioned is that the reputation of the programmer is tied to
contribution quality. MOST programmers make low quality contributions because
they are hired en mass to develop a project at a price point. They code for a
buck. They are the outsourced projects, the rushed projects, and the tools
made by people who obviously have no clue what they are doing.

Github will allow the cream to rise to the top, sure, but those "Just a job"
programmer roles are going to exist for a long time. This is because many
companies simply want contract fulfilling crap, not quality code.

------
rampage101
The vast majority of programmers are not competing for magic internet points.
It was a few years ago there was this massive craze to create good looking
Stack Overflow and GitHub profiles. Most people are not giving away their time
for free... if they are contributing to open source it usually benefits their
company or hobby project somehow.

Another issue is what happens to GitHub if they are not successful as a
company. There was a story a few months ago here about how the company itself
is losing money. How much will your profile be worth if GitHub goes out of
business?

------
nmeofthestate
If a recruiter checks my github they'll find a project to internet-enable some
bathroom scales.

Hire or No Hire?

~~~
amirmansour
Hired my good sir! When can you start? Good thing you posted it on GitHub,
otherwise how else can we know you can code. /s

------
amirmansour
I don't think most people doubt the utility of Github, but this writing seems
to be from a person living in a bubble.

Most people don't get the time and resources to work on open source. Some
times, you can't even open source something, despite wanting to. For example,
when I was in academia, I wanted to open source some worthwhile projects I had
completed, but was never allowed to by superiors, because they considered them
as competitive advantage IP.

------
dudul
Am I the only one who thinks that writing code is only one aspect of a
software developer's job? Sure you can write good code and submit cool
patches. How about talking to product owners? How about learning the ins and
outs of an industry? How about identifying how to evolve a product in the real
world? How about mentoring other developers?

OK, a nice GitHub profile is a plus, but as a hiring manager it is never a
make-it-or-break-it kind of thing.

------
kenoyer130
I do a lot of interviews and I tell the interviewee that a github project with
a clean commit history is worth the same or more then a college degree. Been
burned many times by people who can do tricky CS stuff but don't actually do
anything on the job. It doesn't have to be a large project, just enough to
show me you know the basics of source control work flow and also how to
communicate.

~~~
vkou
> just enough to show me you know the basics of source control work flow

Does this really take that much time to teach on the job?

I haven't used source control outside of work, but I had no problem figuring
out CVS, SVN, SeaPine Surround SCM (What a flaming pile of crap), or Perforce.

Likewise, I've never used a bug tracker before work, but figuring out
Jira/Bugzilla/(Whatever garbage HP sells) is much easier then reversing a
linked list... Or explaining the *Nix everything-is-a-file model - both of
which are parts of the typical CS degree.

------
whack
I have to say that this post was inspiring to read. It's everything that
software developers had dreamed of and idealized. Owning your own career.
Building your own brand. Doing your work in the open. Your career progress
being decentralized and determined by the trust you've built in your network
of colleagues, and not by some pointy haired business guy.

Unfortunately, I don't think any of the above is realistically going to happen
at any point in the next 10 years. The majority of paid-for-code is
proprietary, meaning that your 9-5 work-product can never be "googled" by
outsiders. As a consequence of this, recruiters and hiring managers will
continue to treat open-source work as second-class-indicators, behind your
resume, CV and references. It's going to take a major paradigm shift in
engineering/business culture, before any of this changes.

That said, the author might be wrong about the timeframe, but he does paint a
noble vision for the future. One that I'm sure future generations will be
working in, and one that I hope I can experience one day.

------
restalis
_" You just started collaborating with [insert your open-source choice]
engineers on some piece of technology that they were working on in the open,
then when it was clear that you were making a valuable contribution and were a
great person to work with, you would apply for a job. Or they would hit you
up"_

Clear to whom and to what degree or how exactly? Then even getting over this
stratagem, they might ...or not! Maybe not, most likely. I understand that
this might hurt some feelings or dispel some fantasies, but this is exactly
the way you (as workforce asset) are encouraged to think, and not in your best
interest, really. The reality, more likely than not, is that a business has to
be run and the people responsible for it have to cover the business model's
needs with some X number of engineers. If the business is doing well and the
men with the ropes see real benefits in hiring more, than there you go --
green light for the lucky department for getting a new pal along. The circle
of developers in that area already know the contributors and just open the
gate for one(s) they like. That, of course, has nothing to do with absolute
quality of the contributions. It's not necessarily the best of open-source
contributors that get hired, it's not even the best contributors of some
specific open-source commercial project like Red Hat, it's just the best (read
"convenient") in the area they need at the moment. Realizing that we're
talking about an entity living under business laws of survival, you also have
to assume it has to employ some of the same prosaic principles in order to
survive, just like anyone else. The rest is propaganda. Be assured that your
position as free contributor suits the recipients a great deal already and
they won't change anything about it just because.

That being said, I agree that the exposed work works very well for
engineering, just as for any other portfolio-based enrollment.

------
austincheney
The article is both very true and not yet completely true. Some developers
still believe having a large community or online social media presence is
important. It might very well be, but it has no bearing on code.

Code is objective. It solves problems, passes tests, does something new, and
performs better.... or it doesn't. Social media presence has no bearing on
this at all. Yet, each impart a type of online trust. One is capabilities
(competence) trust and the other is marketing or branding trust.

For people who don't know the difference or don't understand the value in the
code marketing/branding trust is the only thing that exists. For everybody
else trust in branding loses value quickly and must struggle to compete with
the other more objective trust factor. It should be noted this "everybody
else" category is the minority but is more influential on things get built of
prioritized.

------
colehasson
What tools and changes do 'we' want for how 'we on github' is perceived as
part of our identity?

'We' is including a domain of engineers, students, employees, employers,
scholars, bug complainants, star-ers, watchers, forkers, and jobCreators...

'Our identity' is including a domain of identification, participation,
faithfulness, ownership, responsibility, responsivity, lineage, heritage,
autonomy, unity, temporality, follows, followed-by, and profile pictures...

Them 'perceiving' may now be an employer, fellow engineer, or utility
algorithm, but I would like to plan for possible futures with higher orders of
transparency in all these products.

I ask HN because I know this community will be a transforming force that
anneals or explodes the potent artifacts of github. My opinion may be that
github is a value, but my observation is that it has given me value. Now, what
may we hypothesize together?

~~~
colehasson
I miss the HN I grew up with (2017ish). This post's comment thread is the most
important and maybe consequential so far, that I've read, of 2017. [comment
bait]

------
Humdeee
When asked for a github profile or evidence of contributions I immediately
apologize in advance on the application (I actually use bitbucket and have no
public repos). I explain that every side project I have ever done outside of
school is aimed to help the public user but also serves as a means for
financial side income. Therefore, it is confidential and professional code
that I will not share.

This creates 2 things as a byproduct:

\- It keeps my standards high as it's a paid for product

\- It forces me to actively maintain the projects and even provide a tiny bit
of customer service

I really don't care if people have a problem with this. It's their problem at
that point, not mine. I have no issue demonstrating anything or talking about
it, but we're not going over lines of code in my stuff. I choose not to treat
my code hosting platform as a social network.

~~~
sitapati
You could put it in a private repo on Github and have the contribution graph
visible.

If you work for someone else you can advocate for this. If you employ coders
you can use it as a talent attraction piece, or just do it because it's a good
thing to do for them.

------
pselbert
I find it difficult to imagine doing extensive web work (Rails, Django, PHP,
JS) without ever touching GitHub.

Surely, in the course of your daily work using giant open source projects
you'll file a bug, comment on an issue or even submit a pull request. Most
large applications are built off of dozens, or hundreds, of open source
libraries—all of which have bugs at various times.

I don't expect all web developers to have side-projects or libraries, but I
would expect they'll interact with open source projects in some way. This way
of thinking clearly doesn't apply in more closed source worlds like games,
finance or giant enterprise—but it certainly holds for startup/web work in my
experience.

~~~
QuantumGravy
My day job involves extensive web work. I've found plenty I could contribute,
but I'm at an oldschool corp. that just isn't going to approve open source
contributions on company time, using company resources and source code. On the
flip side, they also don't care what I program outside work. It's just that my
personal projects aren't web related and don't lend themselves to being open
sourced.

------
tmsldd
No thought your digital visibility helps to get through a job interview.. but
it's hard to generalize.. if you get the job, your past disappears pretty fast
and all that matters is the current sprint.

I've building a team of about 70 sw engineers and one of my best hires was an
art student who learned code a few years earlier and the other had just
finished his graduation. Both are not really what one would consider as social
skilled.

If you give people a chance, a challenge, a good environment and respect
them.. they will surprise you.

------
pjmlp
Github impact on software is only having to know yet another source control
management tooling.

Everything else only matters to the startup scene in Silicon Valley, or
startups in other parts of the world that want to look cool and pretend they
are actually located there.

Or students believing the hype and trying to create a portfolio to cater to
such companies.

Many of us work with software that isn't allowed to go outside the virtual
walls of the intranet and the last thing we want to do after 8 - 10 h work, is
to sit again in front of a computer.

------
ryan-allen
I don't agree with the premise that people will be contributing back to the
open source software they use.

Most consumers of Typescript for example, would be unable to contribute to the
core codebase, the same goes for Rails, Redux, React, etc.

The actual percentage of consumers vs contributors I would reckon at less than
0.01%, possibly lower.

As a developer looking for a job, I would use GitHub to build a small project
end-to-end to demonstrate competency, but that's just me and the slice of the
programmer world I live in.

------
sqeaky
I agree that in principle a strong portfolio is a great way to communicate
software development skill. What I don't understand why he feel "now" is
different.

Github isn't exactly new and there is plenty of time for others to innovate in
this space. Why haven't we seen this effect already? If it could happen fast
it would already have happened. Why won't it be a slow taking a decade or more
like the proliferation of Social networks?

------
cja
I'm in the UK. Over the last decade I've spoken to hundreds of recruiters that
are looking for developers. I've never felt that any have technical knowledge.
None would know what Github is, or care. They have a list of keywords and use
them to search LinkedIn for candidates. If Github was one of those keywords
then they'd care about it, but not enough to learn what it is.

------
robodale
What about those of us who have no interest in their githib profile, who
instead use their spare time to build their own products/services. In my case,
I make a significant percentage of my total earnings from side projects yet
prefer to stay a full-time employee. To me, working _for free_ on someone
else's project on github is an opportunity cost I simply cannot justify.

------
therealmarv
Code commits do not reflect quality. And GitHub is not the only one side
singular open repo (thinking of GitLab where I also contribute a lot).

------
tomc1985
What is it with posts on Medium and people making these broad proclamations?
Calm down folks, have some humility...

------
jstewartmobile
This article is a kind of half-truth. Sure, RedHat may reach out to you if
you're consistently providing value, though that's probably the exception.

Look at how much OpenBSD code gets used in highly profitable commercial
products, then compare it to the level of donations they get from the same
companies...

------
golergka
What a wonderful bubble author must be living in. I work in game development,
and most of the tools I use are close sourced - and outsourcing anything of
our own code is almost always out of the question.

Please, please stop assuming that "software development" is a thing that you
personally are inside of.

------
mark-r
So what do you do when someone else already has your name on Github? My name
is not that common, and someone Googling me could reasonably assume that the
code they find on Github is mine - but it isn't.

------
jwatte
For somebody on their first or second job, GitHub might matter.

Once your time is actually overcommitted by all the things you can do for your
employer, half of which aren't even code, GitHub is the wrong priority.

------
Tomis02
I know job posts where having a Stack Overflow account with a certain amount
of reputation was a must-have. Surprised to see the article not mention that
:)

------
gravyboat
Yawn, another one of these? Sure some companies look at your GitHub profile,
but this post is just conjecture based on one person's very small bubble.

------
chiefalchemist
Commits are like hits (of the late 90's fame), or time of possession in
football (aka soccer). That is a pointless metric.

#FakeCommitNews

------
awinter-py
ok but the actual impact on my career is that github distributes for free
something that I sell.

~~~
sitapati
Private repos with visible contribution graph.

------
legostormtroopr
This is such a double edged sword - GitHub as the central node in the network
of trust, means GitHub has unprecedented control over developers in that
network.

Someone doesn't like you or your repo, and can convince GitHub to evict you -
you're off the network, and all your contributions are gone.

------
spo81rty
If a potential employee contributed to an open source project that is a plus
and something to talk about. But I would NEVER expect it. 99% chance their
previous employers would have kept all of their source code private and not
public on github.

