
Why we look at job applicants' Github or 'What's your excuse?' - yummyfajitas
http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2013/why_we_look_at_github.html?utm_source=hackernews
======
rayiner
I think he misses the point of at least some of the criticism. It's not a
matter of fairness, it's a question of whether it's a good idea for employers.
You want to exclude all of the brilliant engineers who work on proprietary
software? Go right ahead. But then don't turn around and complain about the
"shortage of qualified engineers."

This part of a broader problem with the industry. Tech companies subscribe to
stupid hiring fads (see Google's earlier reliance on brain teasers) and apply
hyper-specific screening criteria (10+ years of .NET experience), then bitch
and moan when they have winnowed their applicant pool to nothing and can't
meet their recruitment goals.

~~~
theg2
None of my code is available to be open sourced, our github repo's are private
(when sharing is required with outside parties) or self hosted internally. If
a company looks at my github, you'll see a few contributions to some projects
but very minor and few.

If you're making the decision to hire me based on my public github, you're
making a mistake.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Indeed. I've been using github lately too, writing code for a charity even,
but it's not code that can or should be open sourced.

Github-ism is a bit like credentialism, it lowers your risk but risk is where
the interesting stuff happens.

There are two ways to hire, the lazy risk-minimizing way and the non-lazy
investment minded way. If you put a maximum amount of effort into trying to
reduce the risk of hiring you're going to cut your potential RoI off at the
knees. You only hire people that are currently employed, because you want to
rely on someone else's work in evaluating a potential employee. You only hire
people with the right credentials who have relevant experience in exactly the
technologies your company is using right now. You only hire people with very
explicit demonstrations of their coding capability. Candidates that have such
an easy time proving themselves are naturally going to be the easiest to hire.
Not just by you, by everyone. Which means it's going to be more expensive to
acquire them.

You should still acquire employees such as these, but if that's all you're
doing you're throwing away a lot of potential. If you can manage to put
together enough internal talent to be able to interview candidates even
remotely well enough to make an independent and more or less objective check
on their skills and capabilities then that gives you a potentially very
significant competitive advantage.

Some of the best coders I've worked with came from diverse backgrounds and
didn't have the "right" credentials or resumes. Several of the smartest and
proficient programmers I've worked with have not had college degrees. Many
others didn't have CS degrees.

Being able to find these folks and hire them because you can tell they have
talent is a great opportunity to extract RoI from the hiring process, which is
normally seen as just a cost-center.

------
VexXtreme
What a load of asinine drivel. Posts like this never fail to upset me.

What's my excuse you ask?

I write highly proprietary software for algorithmic trading 10 hours a day and
have zero time and inclination to work on an open source project in whatever
little free time I have. I'd rather spend that time on hanging out with my
buddies or girlfriend, hobbies, travel etc. Life is too short to waste solely
on work and work related activities.

> You can come up with excuses all day about why you can’t show me your code.
> I’m going to hire the person who doesn’t make excuses and gets the job done.

Well good luck to you then, judging by the way you talk, it seems that you
likely run a sweatshop and are screening for submissive people who are willing
to work for free and bend over backwards. I wouldn't work for you even if my
livelihood depended on it and I'm sure there are a lot of other self
respecting developers out there who feel the same. Though we'd probably never
meet because there is likely zero overlap between our respective fields of
work. I'd never apply for a job with some Rails sweatshop run by a bunch of
clueless hipsters. What a joke.

------
drhayes9
This line was really interesting to me:

> From the perspective of the employer, Github, Bitbucket and other code
> sharing sites simply do not have these biases - when employers look at these
> sites, there is no demographic information on users to look at other than
> what the user voluntarily puts up.

But there is demographic information there. Ashe Dryden's original article
([http://ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-
th...](http://ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-
community)) called it out in this paper on gender in FLOSS:
[http://flosspols.org/deliverables/D16HTML/FLOSSPOLS-D16-Gend...](http://flosspols.org/deliverables/D16HTML/FLOSSPOLS-D16-Gender_Integrated_Report_of_Findings.htm)

Essentially, I can guess that any particular GitHub user is a white, upper-
middle class man and be right most of the time.

I understand that this article isn't saying "We Use Only GitHub Profiles" when
hiring but acting as though the code present there exists with zero social
context seems willfully wrongheaded.

~~~
yummyfajitas
There is demographic information, but you aren't using it. Fundamentally the
equation holds:

    
    
        hiring_procedureX(Candidate(github, male)) == hiring_procedureX(candidate(github, female))
    

There is nothing whatsoever preventing a person of any sort from creating a
code portfolio, and it's pretty easy to browse a github profile without
learning anything about the demographics of the coder.

In contrast, basically every other screening procedure out there is
potentially influenced by the demographics of an applicant. Prior
employers/educators might have been racist/sexist, interviews are potentially
subject to similar biases, etc.

~~~
drhayes9
> There is nothing whatsoever preventing a person of any sort from creating a
> code portfolio

You're wrong. Here are some likely hypotheticals:

* I'm lower middle class with four kids and don't own a computer that isn't owned by work. They own all the code I write on that machine and I'd be fired if they found out I was using it recreationally.

* My security clearance prevents me from publicly contributing for fear of getting swept in a security audit and losing my job.

* I've been harassed in the past by dogged pursuers who have doxed me and SWATed me. Publishing anything under my name is a no-go. If I don't use my real name, how do I participate on mailing lists and collaborate with other users?

So, yeah, I _choose_ not to contribute and I own those choices. But pretending
like there's "nothing whatsoever preventing a person" from open source
contribution is, like I said, willfully wrongheaded.

That's the point of this article and Ashe Dryden's and the others linked
before: there _is_ demographic information associated with open source work in
that a particular demographic _overwhelmingly_ is able to contribute vs.
others. They're not making idle suppositions; they're backing this stuff up.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Ashe Dryden and others conflate _able to contribute_ with _do contribute_.
They aren't the same thing.

~~~
drhayes9
From the perspective of someone who can make hiring decisions, how do you
differentiate the two?

Besides, I see it the other way around: they're identifying "can't contribute"
instead of "don't contribute" and asking people who make hiring decisions not
to assume "don't".

~~~
yummyfajitas
Near as I can tell, all Ashe Dryden does is digs up some statistics about the
overall population (women choose to be caregivers and earn less than men on
average) and declares victory.

Among other things, if these statistics implied women can't create content and
push it to free internet services, wouldn't that imply women couldn't
contribute to facebook/instagram/etc?

As for distinguishing the two, I don't. My goal is to find good coders, simple
as that. In the absence of information suggesting someone is good, I need to
assume they aren't.

~~~
drhayes9
In the quest of finding "information suggesting someone is good", ignoring the
known, recognized biases inherent in your sampling method seems like not such
a good idea. You're throwing away data and then saying you have an absence of
information.

Additionally, her statistics are not solely about women. They are about the
multiple, separate groups that encounter obstacles when trying to contribute
to open source projects. They include not just gender but race and health.

You're brushing away a lot of the subtlety of her argument and then
misrepresenting her stance as "victory". On the contrary, she's exhorting us
to work together to make our field more equitable and to recognize the deeper
social realities underneath the shallow veneer of meritocracy.

Two things about your comparison:

1\. There's a huge difference between contributing to Instagram/Facebook and
contributing to GitHub that I'm sure I don't have to explain to you.

2\. Dryden's blog post is not about "creating content and pushing it to free
services". It is _specifically_ about contributions to OSS not being
inherently meritocratic.

I'm not sure why you'd conflate the two.

------
brnstz
You can stop reading after the picture, which happens to be at the top.

Why doesn't every programmer have a great GitHub profile? The same reason not
every mother of 3 children looks like a fitness instructor. Priorities.

You write C++ all day at a bank, can't use any open source, and your mind is
filled with the intractable legacy issues, politics, etc. Maybe you're married
and your spouse wants to go salsa dancing on Tuesdays. Should you prioritize
throwing some Ruby into GitHub? If you want to work for a startup, yes, you
should. If you don't care, don't bother.

~~~
laverick
"Why doesn't every programmer have a great GitHub profile? The same reason not
every mother of 3 children looks like a fitness instructor."

Exactly this.

------
showsover
I find that this whole Github portfolio thing is getting blown out of
proportions. A Github profile is a useful extra, but shouldn't be the only
indicator of programming capability.

Neither should education and previous experience.

When hiring, people should talk to each other about something they've done (be
it public code or private code). That should give a first impression.

Then you either hire or not on that first impression, and use the following 6
months re-evaluating your first impression. That's what it's there for.

If either side is not fully content, then's the time to decide to keep or
fire.

~~~
abraininavat
You're asking people to _think_? People don't have time to _think_!

~~~
taude
I just checking in my thinking to GitHub, hopefully I'm now covered.

------
MBlume
> Perhaps the candidate has little experience because previous employers he
> interviewed at did not wish to hire a Black Muslim Lesbian T____ due to
> fears of getting sued.

First of all, I'm confused about how someone can be a lesbian and take 'he'
pronouns. Second, 'black', 'muslim', and 'lesbian' are names for identities,
while 't____' is a slur. Its presence in your post is _incredibly_ jarring and
I nearly stopped reading there.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I can change the language, though I don't know what the right term is.
Transsexual?

I've only met one person of that category in my life, and she referred to
herself by the same term used in the post. What's the official term to use? I
don't want this distracting from the actual point being made.

~~~
abraininavat
Nice to start off the morning with a laugh. I'm not interested in the boring
conversation about whether _trannie_ is an acceptable term to our society, but
the idea you had no idea what it is short for is a joke. As a graduate in
Sociology, how can you understand "how technology shapes culture" and
obviously never have bothered to _know the name for_ large subsets of our
culture?

~~~
yummyfajitas
I wrote most of this, but the name on the page is my cofounder. I just forgot
to create a tagline for myself before posting it. My background is
math/physics/trading.

~~~
abraininavat
That's not an excuse. You seem to have an ignorance about a whole group of
people. I'm fairly sure even the Pope could come up with the word
"transsexual".

I don't mean to imply that ignorance implies anything else about you, but it's
ignorance. You can alleviate it by: 1\. Meeting some people outside of your
apparently somewhat homogeneous bubble 2\. Reading books

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm not making excuses, I'm pointing blame at the right person. (The tagline
describes my cofounder or a fictional person, probabilistically. Haven't
updated it yet. )

------
kasey_junk
"Just please don’t send us proprietary code that you have written because we
don’t want to be sued by your former company."

This is the gist of the problem. The last time I did any serious development
unencumbered by IP constraints was 15 years ago. Anything indicative of what I
write professionally, I can't send you.

If you are fine with ruling me out of your hiring process (and everyone in a
similar situation to me) that is fine. When I'm hiring, I don't like to
restrict my pipeline that much.

Maybe this is my own biases showing, but it seems like the main proponents of
the Github hiring practice are folks who don't have a lot of experience
writing software. For inexperienced developers, I can think of nothing better
than a github profile to prove your worth, but nearly everyone who has written
a lot of software will have been encumbered by IP agreements at some point in
their career and I'm never surprised when someone says they can't show/talk
about something they've worked on.

------
lucisferre
Stopped reading at the unnecessary photo. Sorry, this is getting stupid.

On topic though, I didn't see where he linked to his "portfolio" or his
company's body of OSS work that these OSS rockstars he's planning on hiring
will be able to continue the great work they have been doing. Seems to be all
talk no action here.

I think most of us can agree that FOSS contribution is relevant and
interesting and we'd certainly pay it due notice. I would always consider it,
check it out and even in some cases expect it from any senior hire. However, I
don't think this is a very groundbreaking or controversial idea on it's own.
The idea that it's mandatory on the other hand... well honestly the entire
post is click-bait crap so way comment on that thought any further.

------
chadwickthebold
This blog post really misses the point of the previous discussions about using
Github as a recruiting screening tool. It's fine to use it as a small 'plus'
factor, but to screen candidates who have no public code portfolio out is
silly, counterproductive, and discriminatory.

Also, for a guy who graduated with a degree in Sociology he sure does talk
like an asshole.

~~~
rjknight
Well, of course it's discriminatory. The purpose of a hiring process is to
discriminate in favour of the kind of people you want to hire and against the
kind of people that you don't.

I don't think this article really misses the point of the previous discussions
so much as it argues that the issues raised in the earlier discussions are
outweighed by the usefulness of a code portfolio as part of a hiring process.
That's still debatable but it's something that reasonable people can disagree
on.

~~~
latortuga
I believe the parent was trying to say that it's potentially illegally
discriminatory in the US due to the fact that FOSS is gender and racially
biased hugely in favor of white male participation. If you use it is a
screening tool to cull candidates, there's probably a case for you breaking US
hiring laws.

~~~
rjknight
That strikes me as unlikely. I might just be naive, but I can't imagine being
sued for filtering candidates on their code portfolios.

This is a genuine and non-rhetorical question: how does it differ from
academic qualifications? Both are unpaid work that a person undertakes
[partly] in order to prove their value to potential employers, but nobody is
getting sued for filtering candidates based on academic qualifications.

------
benmorris
This relatively new "show me your github or I'm not interested" fad is getting
old. If you are so narrow minded to judge development proficiency based on
having an open source portfolio, then sorry I'm not even interested in working
for you. You are more than likely going to lose some talented developers with
this approach. I get the fact you want to see some code, there are other ways
though than taking this hardliner approach. Not two days ago I ran across a
job posting on SE that was very clear that if you did not maintain a public
github profile they weren't interested at all, just shocking to me.

My Excuse? My previous employment I coded in .net and php for nearly 5 years
as the only developer at the company. Personally wrote thousands of lines of
proprietary business code I simply can't show you. Routinely put in a lot of
time in and outside of work. I was coding and committing code before GitHub
was cool, hell, before it was even founded. I work on my own now getting a few
ideas off the ground and doing freelancing. I just checked my local SVN repo,
I have about 25 projects in there over a few years (some massive). I routinely
work 12 hours a day for clients and moving my projects forward. None of this
code is public.

1\. I don't use github, nothing again git or github at all. SVN works well for
me, fits my use case and I know it well. I know how to use git, I have a
github account with a few small contribs to javascript libraries I've help
extend, but that is all. It is simply .01% of a reflection of the code I've
written.

2\. I would love to contribute to open source more, but I have priorities,
life, family, my own goals. There simply isn't enough hours in the day.

3\. I could talk ALL DAY LONG about my experiences coding various projects
using whatever framework you want to talk about. I can show you code for my
personal projects, although it isn't public. However, if you want to judge me
on my lack of github/bitbucket, then so be it.

------
Poiesis
Last week I worked about 80 hours (salaried, large co.). I have a wife and
three kids. Any time not spent at work is spent with kids or chores, usually
simultaneously. GitHub is somewhere south of these priorities. If you as a
potential employer are not ok with this, that is certainly your prerogative; I
would even agree that spending that amount of time at work is not ideal.

------
danso
Lede photo says: _" Hot woman still looks hot like a good woman should look,
even after having babies. So why can't you code more?"_

Amusingly enough, that photo stoked a fat-shaming controversy, something
acknowledged by the OP. I guess there's a great meta-explanation for using the
photo or something [http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/health/Maria-Kang-Fitness-
lovin...](http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/health/Maria-Kang-Fitness-loving-mom-
posts-controversial-Facebook-photo-accused-of-fat-shaming-women)

------
nmc
In my opinion, GitHub is not at all a "code portfolio". It is a "social git
application", or a "social collaborative version control system".

My GitHub page is not my portfolio, neither a Coding Museum of Myself. GitHub
is made for easily writing and sharing code, not __showing off__.

Except from that fundamental misunderstanding, the rest of the argumentation
seems valid, and I agree: a code portfolio can be a good hiring tool.

But GitHub isn't one.

------
hackinthebochs
Firstly I don't think anyone really needed a 1000 word essay on why hiring is
inherently probabilistic, I think that much is obvious.

The ultimate issue surrounding using github as signal is whether the presence
of a github profile is inherently meaningful signal independent of every other
factor. People who advocate github are usually implying (either explicitly or
implicitly) that someone who codes outside of their day job (and then uploads
it to share with the world) is more "passionate" and therefore a better coder.
Many people disagree with this. It's been repeated ad nauseum why this
reasoning is faulty: everything from getting your fill of creative work during
your 9-5 to maintaining good work/life balance. Just the presence of a github
with some activity is not an indication of passion or more importantly quality
code.

Of course, people who defend using github like to say well I can know a
candidate better by looking at their code samples before hiring them. Again,
this absolutely goes without saying. If you want a code sample, just ask for
one. I'm sure most people can provide _something_ for you to peruse. If not,
keep a simple task handy that you can give them to crank out in a few hours.
Such an easy solution to this non-problem.

The reality is this is all just the rationalization here. What's really going
on is people use github because that's what they're into. "It's _obvious_ that
I'm a top developer, therefore my behaviors are indications of top
developers". Bullshit. This is just another symptom of the "hiring in my own
image" phenomenon that's rampant in this world. Those of us who claim to be
rational must recognize this and realize it's nothing but narcissism.

And no, the claim that anyone who is against using github as signal are people
who aren't passionate/would be rejected/etc. I have plenty of code that I
write on my own to scratch particular itches. Everything from machine learning
scripts to greasemonkey scripts to patches to borked java applications. None
of them were written with wider consumption in mind, and so I am not prepared
to release them to the world. If you want to see it I have no problem showing
it to you with the understanding that it may not be polished and not always
follow best-practices when working on a team. Anything I produce is a
reflection of myself so anything I release to the world must have a certain
level of effort and polish put into it, otherwise I simply would not be
comfortable.

------
minimax
_If you do the coding test before interviewing the candidate, you are wasting
the time of many candidates who will be screened out for being insufficiently
hipster, having Windows on their resume, and similar non-coding related
reasons._

Is he being cheeky? Why would you screen someone out for not being a hipster
or having Windows on their resume?

~~~
yummyfajitas
I've gone through the whole hiring rigamarole, done the coding test, etc, and
been rejected at the last minute due to a lack of culture fit. (And
justifiably so.)

The point is that I'd rather have that happen after a 20 minute phone
interview than after a 2 hour code test.

~~~
sanskritabelt
Looking at your blog, I wouldn't want to work anywhere that would consider you
a culture fit.

------
thehme
Humm. First, this blog post was not a quick read while taking a quick break to
read a hackernews post, so read if you have time. Second, while being able to
see what a developer's programming style and their interests are like via a
code repository, not having a code repository does not mean someone is not a
good programmer worth hiring. It seems like those who will ONLY hire someone
if they have an amazing github are asking for people who do NOTHING but
breath, eat, and sleep code; someone without a life, someone who does not
cook, have pets, loves someone, or has other interests than being in front of
a computer uploading code to github. When you leave home at 7AM to be be at
work at 8AM, and work until 5:30PM, and then you get home to cook dinner, feed
your pets, clean a little, MAYBE get to the gym, it's already 11PM or
midnight. When exactly do these employers think someone has time to do stuff
other than work and take care of real-life responsibilities? I mean, yes,
programmers could use the weekend and some if not most do, but if moving to
another job means having an amazing code repository, this would not be built
over one weekend, maybe not even several. There are brilliant programmers out
there who simply do NOT have TIME to spend it creating code for employers to
see on a code repository site, so requiring one is in fact discriminatory to
those programmers who just cannot spend the time adding to the code
repository.

I have personally seen how employers think they are so awesome that they will
not even consider a programmer for hiring because of lack of a github. All I
can see say is that in the case I have seen, all those employers missed out on
hiring a great programmer, one who is truly dedicated to work and programming,
one who really does live programming while still having and enjoying life.

------
jt2190
While _" [l]ooking at a code portfolio for people who program is fundamentally
no different from looking at past experience, at educational credentials, or
at any of the other standard resume screening techniques..."_ may be true, I
think that it sidesteps another important consideration: What does requiring a
code portfolio signal to potential applicants about the employer? Does it
signal that the employer will be inconsiderate of those who can't share their
professional work, or those who don't have lots of spare time for side
projects? Does it signal that an employer is more interested in the placement
of curly-braces than the ability to communicate verbally? Does it signal that
the employer is solely interested in getting tomorrow's work done, or do they
balance increasing the value of their codebase with increasing the value of
their employees?

------
aestra
Maria Kang makes no excuses, unlike developers without github profiles.

It's pretty ironic you used this picture, since she got a lot of negative
press for it, and she mostly used it to promote herself and her blog.

Women are already under enough pressure in society to look "perfect" and this
picture shamed them into not looking like the model. So women software
engineer are supposed to spend tons of time at the gym to look like the model.
They already do most of the child rearing (as well as house keeping and
errands), and on top of that in order to get a job they are _required_ to code
in their spare time just to get a job.

I live pretty far away from my parents (about 200 miles), and my dad is in
poor health. He almost died a few months ago. I spend a lot of weekends
visiting because I don't think I have much time left with him. Yes, that is my
choice.

Factors outside of my control prevent me from moving anywhere else.

------
tawan
There are tons of potentially good candidates you would miss by rejecting per
default when there is no public code to see. Just look into the comments here.

The group I want to point out. Very experienced programmers who have been in
the business more than a decade who get paid for doing what they think is
interesting and challenging because they are so good so that they can choose
their job and still get paid. Most of the time they throw themselves into work
and their current project. Why on earth would they want to invest more time
into a little pet project which is probably ten times less interesting than
their current job?

------
dangerlibrary
A little googling suggests that the author does not have a Github profile.

------
stevewilhelm
Should we use the same approach for determining which products or services we
should use?

If so, Mr. Carp and his company BayesianWitch are in trouble. I can't find
either of them on github.

~~~
arethuza
Good point - it doesn't seem unreasonable to demand to see BayesianWitch's
source code in Github to see why anyone would want to work there?

~~~
yummyfajitas
The company hasn't existed long enough to have much of anything.

This blog post (with some example code) can give you a flavor of the sorts of
things we do:
[http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/time_varying_conversi...](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/time_varying_conversion_rates.html)

~~~
FireBeyond
No excuses, remember. What about your personal Github profiles?

~~~
yummyfajitas
It'll take you a minute to find if you are interested. Have at it - more eyes
make code better and all that.

------
scrabble
From my perspective a GitHub portfolio might not be required to get hired, but
if the code you've shared is bad code then it could keep you from getting
hired.

Edit: That doesn't mean I wouldn't have one. I do have one. I just imagine
that a bunch of developers sitting around judging someone on publicly
available code may not always be considered a positive.

------
tsaoutourpants
I don't write open-source software. I also have a backlog of potential
clients. If a company demands a Github, I say thanks, but no thanks.

------
consonants
BaynesianWitch - The company that used the word 'tranny' in an A/B tested
public statement intended to incite and offend their audience. Stay classy,
BaynesianWitch.

------
static_typed
From the blog, it has the following piece of code:

def outcome(hiring_procedure): allowable_candidates = [c for c in
all_candidates if hiring_procedure(c)] candidate_values =
[risk_profile(value(c)) for c in allowable_candidates] return
candidate_values.sum() / len(candidate_values)

What happens if we get to the return line, with an empty candidate_values?
ZeroDivisionError ?

~~~
yummyfajitas
The short answer is, that code is a lie. It should actually have been the
integral of risk_profile(value(c)) dP(c).

But the python code is close enough to illustrate the point, and I've found
people are far more likely to read and understand python code than equations.

