
Ask HN: Would you hire a coder just by looking at GitHub contributions? - ceekay
Do you still need to see him write code in an interview and convince yourself that he is good ?
======
jedberg
Absolutely not. I've interviewed people who had amazing Github profiles who
couldn't write a simple loop on the whiteboard. Either they hadn't written the
code in their github, or they code only by copy/paste.

ps. It might be a good idea to be slightly more gender neutral in your
question. :)

~~~
benaiah
About your PS: using "he" and its associated pronouns as the neuter pronoun is
a well-established and common occurrence. It's not being sexist, or non-
gender-neutral, it's just a way to have neuter pronouns without awkward
constructions such as "they" or "he/she". Those are fine, but they read
awkwardly to some people. Using "he" is a perfectly acceptable alternative.

~~~
jedberg
I'm aware that technically he/him are both gender neutral, as they derive from
"human"(Latin) and not "man"(German).

None the less, in today's common usage, it has lost that multifaceted meaning
and the preferred language today is using the 3rd person as the gender neutral
pronoun, or s/he or he/she.

~~~
benaiah
While "they" may be the more common usage (though I personally doubt it), it
doesn't really matter: it's fine to use whatever you want, and there's no
reason to call him on it when it's not actually sexist. I have no problem with
you using "they", but I don't see any reason to have a problem with the OP
using "he", either.

That's the only point I was trying to make.

~~~
cabalamat
> While "they" may be the more common usage (though I personally doubt it), it
> doesn't really matter

In your opinion. It matters to some people.

> it's fine to use whatever you want

Be aware that if you use the "he" form with some audiences, you will get a
negative reaction. As to whether this is "fine" it depends on the purpose of
your communication.

~~~
V-2
It's meaningless in this context. Stop nitpicking

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yareally
I know several ROM/app developers in the Android community (including one
close friend) that have been approached solely based on their contributions to
their own Github account and organizations they are a part of on there. At
least one of them was not even a college graduate and was offered competitive
pay + benefits by several different companies. However, each also ended up
going through at least part of the traditional interview process as well
(phone calls, in person, etc). I don't believe any of them had to write code
though.

In all of the cases, the companies were interested in not only their Android
development skills, but that they had shown they could collaborate/communicate
well with others. Each had also been a core contributor a major Android ROM
project for at least 2 years, besides maintaining their own side projects.

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kureikain
Here is my stored. I was hired via somebody looking at my Github repo. My
English wasn't that good to have a good interview with many company I tried
before. My Github wasn't that great to attractive top notch company. My skill
isn't that good to be a killer dev.

I was just a so-so dev who really loves to code, and the company hired me
based on that. Only looking at my Github repo.

~~~
penguat
I'd like to know how you find working for/with them - is communication ever an
issue?

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SimonPStevens
I would still want to spend some time talking with them. It's rarely all about
just pure coding ability. I want to know if they can communicate effectively
and if they can work as part of a team. If someone showed a great set of open
source contributions before interview, I wouldn't necessarily need to see them
code in the interview and would focus on the other things important to the
role.

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lhnz
There are lots of fake github profiles with tonnes of forks with no code
committed. Be careful.

You have to look at the code to see if they're good, and you should have a
conversation about it to find out their thinking process.

I'd always give a coding/architecture/design test before getting them in to
interview as this would allow me to see how they solve _new_ problems.

~~~
EnderMB
It's also worth noting that even good developers might not understand GitHub.

I worked with a guy (around 8-10 years experience, and a good senior
dev/technical architect) who spoke to me about someone he was interviewing for
a mid-level role. He told me that his GitHub profile was great, and that he
had a ton of great code and specs that he had written. In fact, he had forked
most of this great code, and the only code that was his was a few tutorials
from some books he had read to try and learn C# a year or two ago.

He wasn't a bad developer by any means. He didn't get the job because we
couldn't get the budget to land another dev. However, there's a big difference
in perception between a good developer on merit, and someone that has written
some commonly used tools.

------
brey
I still want to see the thought process behind problem solving, and associated
communication, especially when in unfamiliar territory - code output alone
doesn't show that.

But the existence of a github account is strongly correlated to a hire. It's
depressing how many candidates haven't even heard of github...

~~~
gaius
These days, now that word has gotten out, it's not unusual to see fake
GitHubs, with an unmodified fork of another project in say. HR is not equipped
to evaluate this, it needs an engineer to git clone and take a look.

~~~
mordae
Hmm, it's not that hard:
[https://github.com/plt/racket/commits?author=mordae](https://github.com/plt/racket/commits?author=mordae)

You can find "repositories contributed to" in people's profiles.

~~~
gaius
Your HR department knows to do this? I call shenanigans.

~~~
marco-fiset
An HR department should not be hiring software developpers.

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mzarate06
No. I wouldn't hire anybody based solely on one signal.

Great hiring requires evaluating more thoroughly than that. Have no less than
one conversation with any candidate you're considering. Get a feel for their
history, how they communicate, if they've any experience or passion in your
domain, etc. E.g. All else equal, I'd more likely hire a candidate for my
music start up that had experience integrating music apis, was an avid music
lover, etc. That's not _required_ , but helpful.

And yes, I'd still have any candidate write code in an interview. Too many
times simple sql queries, OO, or basic understanding of data structures have
defeated candidates, despite code samples that implied otherwise. If a
candidate can't write simple code to solve simple problems, they likely can't
help the company solve much bigger problems efficiently.

------
ceekay
Thanks for the info. My point was more to the tune of - when you can tell so
much more from a candidate's github work -- his algo's, coding, coding style,
commit notes, commit times, descipline.. why would you want to poke his coding
again ? Why not just discuss his prior github work and clear the coding part
of his interview ? Agreed on the need to check if you can work with him, team
work, problem solving ..etc. But isn't github eliminating the need for vetting
coding ? Fake github profiles is surprising! Never heard of that before!

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aaronsnoswell
GitHub doesn't tell you if they will be a fit for the organisation! Of course
I would still need to interview them.

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wldlyinaccurate
Always interview the person. Always give them a code test - _at the very
least_ a simple 30 minute test.

My current employer currently hires people without doing any sort of code
test, and we have recently had to let people go because they just weren't very
good. 30 minutes could have saved us a lot of wasted time and money.

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jaseemabid
I have received countless offers, with an average, not so great github profile
(@jaseemabid). Looks like this works :)

~~~
contingencies
Had a quick look at your profile: there is something scarily Indian (in the
chaos sense) about combining Lisp with a BBQ joint :)

~~~
jaseemabid
@contingencies BBQ nation is one place where you can spend 4 hours happily
talking about anything under the sun (read lisp) and enjoy the food.

PS: I'm having a tough time with elisp, but its almost there :P

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kingnothing
Github doesn't tell me if he's someone I want to work with, so yes, a real
interview is imperative.

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UK-AL
Lack of github profile is not a no hire either. Just means they might not be a
open source enthusiast.

~~~
txutxu
There are opensource enthusiast which do not use github.

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Dirlewanger
Absolutely not. Online presences, while a plus, should never be used as a
hiring requirement. Also, what if they contribute to a bunch of private repos
(e.g. their previous company)? You have no way of knowing this beyond what
they will tell you.

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mbesto
I'm going to support what could perhaps be a unpopular opinion - there is a
lot more to a good programmer than simply writing good code.

I'd take communication skills over someone's ability to optimize a while-loop
any day.

As a slightly tangential argument for hiring in general, I would like to offer
that no matter what position you are hiring for, only looking at one facet of
someone's abilities is very poor judgement.

~~~
dingaling
Another useful angle is to investigate their personal domain; who is hosting
DNS, are they using DNSSEC, do they run their own code on platforms they have
built-out? Where are their MX pointing?

Gives a good understanding of how much or little they understand
implementation & deployment.

And, of course, check that they can sign their e-mails with their own PGP key
:)

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alan_cx
Not that long ago, if you hired an artist based on his work, you might have
ended up with a Godwin related situation...

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kohanz
Only if the job I was hiring for was to write code in a vacuum or a closet. If
they needed to interact with customers or my team, I'd have to assess their
personality as well.

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seivan
Yeah.

