
Ask HN: What do recruiters look for in a GitHub profile? - passenger
I&#x27;ve submitted a fair amount of job applications that often request for a GitHub profile.
I&#x27;m however convinced most don&#x27;t look at it or only take a cursory glance at it.<p>What do recruiters look out for?
======
Edd314159
As a hiring manager, I glance at it and take a brief look at anything
interesting. It’s good for talking points at the interview, perhaps to ask the
candidate to expand upon and explain the work.

If the profile is empty, I close the tab and find something else to talk
about. I will never, ever penalise a candidate for an empty GitHub profile. So
many people just do not have time for open source and that’s totally fine.

GitHub activity helps lubricate conversation at interviews, but it should
never be taken as anything other than a superficial representation of the
candidate’s ability or experience.

~~~
travisjungroth
I penalize people slightly for an empty GitHub if they put it on their resume,
just out of annoyance. Why did you put this url for me to follow if there's
nothing here but a half started React tutorial from 3 years ago?

~~~
gregmac
Yeah, this is just like any other thing you call out by putting on your
resume.

Nobody is a expert in everything, of course, but if you specifically put
"TCP/IP" or "OOP" on your resume, you better be able to explain TCP vs UDP or
class vs interface (both real examples from real phone screens I've done).

~~~
PopeDotNinja
As a former recruiter, I just assume all resumes are complete shit. I never
saw much of a correlation between a quality resume and a quality candidate.
Screening for the stuff one uses on the job is what I prefer to do. It's also
nice to focus on the job requirements, too, because it removes any need for
someone to impress me with what the have done. When you can walk into an
interview with "hey, I really want you to get this job, but we need to find a
way for both of us to envision a scenario in which we're working together
successfully", it's amazing how well that usually turns out.

~~~
blazespin
Agreed, I think a resume with just yoe, last 10 years of companies worked
at/positions/years, education, and 4 our 5 technologies/areas currently
interested in working on is enough.

You could probably drop education from it if you have 5 or more yoe.

Frankly you could do this in one 5 or 6 line paragraph without a resume

I never read them anymore. It’s such a waste of time. Totally useless compared
to our phone screen templates.

------
gargarplex
As a recruiter I can answer this! I do not speak for all recruiters. As a
recruiter who is also a programmer, my approach may be nonstandard.

* I want to see thoughtful README files. If the README is whatever was generated default by the framework and not edited at all, that's a huge groan and turn off and you lose tons of strength (credibility) as a candidate.

* I want to see your code looking pretty. Consistent indentation, run through a linter, good comments, and so forth. Would I be able to contribute to and maintain this code?

That's pretty much it. The most important thing that companies want to see is
employment history, either at brand name companies or somewhere where you've
already been doing the job they're hiring for.

~~~
Aeolun
I really don’t see why these things are relevant at all.

It’s a personal Github profile. Why would anyone add thoughtful readme’s or a
clean coding style if they’re the only contributor?

I mean, those things are great of course, but not sure if I’d expect it on
Github.

~~~
BjoernKW
If you use your GitHub profile as part of your personal brand / marketing then
these things absolutely are relevant.

As a developer in a professional context you'll hardly ever work alone or be
the sole contributor.

Even if you use a GitHub profile just as your personal code repository code
still is communication, even if it's just with your future self.

Therefore communication skills are crucial. A well-thought-out README file and
consistent, readable code help others to understand your work. These aspects
often are more important than what the code accomplishes.

Working, even efficient, but unmaintainable code is a risk. Ultimately, code
is a precise specification of what the software at hand is supposed to do. If
that specification is hard to understand it'll be much less useful.

~~~
RussianCow
> If you use your GitHub profile as part of your personal brand / marketing
> then these things absolutely are relevant.

The problem is when others assume this on your behalf. I would take a lack of
proper readme as a signal that the repo isn't intended for viewing and
judgement by others, not as a signal that the candidate has poor communication
skills. If the repo is for a library that the author has published and is
marketing for production use, then sure, but I'd wager that does not represent
the vast majority of repos on GitHub, and to assume otherwise is foolish in my
opinion.

------
Waterluvian
I look for things to chat about. That's it. If there aren't any then I'll find
other things to chat about.

It's almost like a dating profile. You use the items as jump-off points to
start a conversation and get to know the other person better.

~~~
linuxlizard
> It's almost like a dating profile.

That's a good description!

~~~
laurentl
I would say that it’s more like a dating profile picture. You don’t have to
add one, but if you do, it better be one where you’re smiling, not the one
where you’re in hung over with a little bit of barf on your pajamas.

------
linuxlizard
I am not a recruiter but help with software/firmware interviews where I work.
When interviewing someone, any and all signals are very useful. For someone
fresh out of university, they can show me their student projects. But an
experienced engineer, their contributions are usually property of their
previous employer and can't be shown.

To me, being able to see an interviewee's code is like being able to see an
artist's portfolio. Alternatively, if an interviewee can point to mailing
lists, code repos, etc, for open source contributions, that also is very
valuable.

Some other folks in the comments are saying they use Github, etc, as a dumping
ground for projects. Still valuable. In my opinion, that means you're
interested enough in the project to at least save the code. Plus, even quick
and dirty code can have valuable information. Does this person understand, for
example, the common idioms in C, C++, Python, etc? (Specific example, using
malloc/free/printf correctly, new[]/delete[], not using for i in
range(len(foo)). Simple stuff like that.)

Note a repo containing "this is code where I'm learning this language, this
library, etc" won't have the best use of the language, obviously, but will be
a good sign this person is learning something new. It's another signal.

Just my opinion.

~~~
Gasp0de
Noob question: Why is it bad to use for i in range(len(foo))? Because you can
just use for bar in foo?

~~~
futureastronaut
It's mostly a bikeshed and a signaling thing. Only a "noob" wouldn't know
about enumerate(), right? The program could be brilliant in much higher level
ways, but mid/senior only-knows-Python hot shot will jump on your anti-idiom
like a dog on a dropped hamburger. Including such anti-idioms in your public
code can filter out people like that.

~~~
SilurianWenlock
Where are you meant to learn this?

~~~
futureastronaut
Python's list of built-in functions is fairly small
[https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#built-in-
fu...](https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#built-in-funcs) (but
to be clear, I wouldn't ding somebody for forgetting about one of them).

------
humbledrone
As a hiring manager, I am careful to avoid drawing any negative conclusions
from looking at a personal GitHub profile, because I believe that sloppiness
or "bad" code is actually just fine in the context of random personal
projects. And of course not everyone programs for fun in their free time, so a
lack of a meaty profile is not something I worry about. (I would sure hate for
someone to judge me for a lack of comments in some random code I wrote a 2AM 8
years ago for giggles.)

But sometimes I can get a really strong positive signal from a GitHub profile.
All else being equal, if a candidate has a meaty personal project, or has been
an active contributor to other projects, etc, I can greatly increase my
confidence that they're a good hire by reading through their code. It can
sometimes show me that they're really capable in some dimension that's hard to
assess otherwise.

In other words, a GitHub profile is not a make-or-break thing for me, but
hiring is always based on information that's more limited than one would like,
and sometimes a GitHub profile can provide enough extra signal to make a
hiring decision easier.

I will say that one specific thing that is really helpful is the presence of
simple README files for original projects that describes what they are and who
the author is.

------
chimen
I ask both Github and StackOverflow profiles. In Github I look for code style
& quality, tests written, open source project participation (often good
indicator of quality code when accepted). In SO I look for issues created as
an indicator of one's struggles and overall expertise. Both profiles offer me
a strong view over one's position and the data really helps me to filter out
prospects.

95% of the times when they respond with "I don't have a Github|StackOverflow
profile" they prove to be juniors or time wasters applying for a high salary.
That's fine if I'm looking for a junior but they often apply for senior
positions.

I trust the data on these two as I consider it to be really difficult to get
by as a programmer without decent activity on at least one platform. HAving
code out there, IMHO, adds better than any CV. It's just data but it helps me
get a clearer view.

~~~
souprock
I seem to be in that 5%.

I wrote the /bin/ps program used by Linux. You might have heard of it. I
maintained procps for about a decade. I also did a few Linux kernel changes.
That all stopped around 2006 due to having 5 kids and working at a start-up.

StackOverflow and Github were both created years later, in 2008. I still don't
have much use for either. Occasionally one will show up in a search for
something.

There is no indicator of my struggles. When I had them, I'd walk over to the
office of a more-senior developer and have a chat. Back when I started as a
professional software developer, the web... existed. It wasn't a place with
forums for asking beginner questions. One could turn to Usenet or IRC, but
that was often useless. We used to buy books about computer programming by
traveling to a bookstore, usually paying with cash.

~~~
jki275
I still buy books. I have modernized to the point that I will use a credit
card on occasion.

------
raviolo
I’ve been writing code for over 20 years yet I don’t have anything that I can
share in a public repo. My employer would sue me immediately. I don’t imagine
I will be looking for a job via the “normal process” with recruiters and all,
but if I did, would I need to put out stuff to github? Would I need to spend 6
months just writing random but nice-looking code so I’m not rejected due to
not having github profile?

I think there’s a lot of people like that. Making github a mandatory
requirement is strange.

~~~
plibither8
> _My employer would sue me immediately._

This is the first time I'm hearing about something like this. Why would your
employer sue you?

~~~
lildoggo
Probably because of an NDA the OP signed. Companies don't like it when their
employees share the company's profitable code with the world.

------
andrewingram
The main thing I don't want to see is a bunch of repos where you're just
taking a library/framework for a spin. This isn't because these are bad in any
way, but it can be hard to tell whether they represent your real coding
approach or not, and therefore risk creating unconscious bias. Whereas I'm not
going to hold it against you if you don't have a public profile.

Now that Github allows free private repositories, if you're planning to use
your profile as part of a recruitment process, you're arguably better off only
making your best work public. It doesn't have to be your best code, just
something you're proud of and are happy to talk about.

This may run counter to normal thinking, but I have no way of knowing the
extent to which my assessment is unconsciously coloured by seeing code that
isn't representative of your ability, so I worry about the impact of that.

------
simoleone
A recruiter or sourcer? In most cases (and I _am_ generalizing here) basically
a pattern-matching robot, so the same treatment as your CV. Have words and
phrases they're looking for? Great! No? Meh.

Someone besides a recruiter? Might give it a glance out of curiosity and for
conversation starter material, but if they're overly concerned about what's
there or how much is there - you didn't want to work for/with them anyway.
Honestly, most people that have been in the industry for any time at all
quickly run out of free time and motivation for this stuff, and their github
profiles will be rather barren as a result (unless they work at a company that
publishes open source software, of course... but that's the exception not the
rule).

------
davb
I never look at them, at all. Some of the worst programmers I've met have got
some fantastic portfolio/showcase work on their github. Conversely some of the
best coders have no OSS contributions at all.

In all, I find it to be a fairly poor signal. I get a much better feel for
someone from conversation alone, and some well thought out questions about
someone's previous projects and workflow usually tell me all I need to know.

------
gherlein
To heck with the recruiter. As a hiring manager I look for passion for coding
and learning - and that your profile isn't brand new. If it has periods of no
contribution I don't care - people get busy, have lives, etc. I don't hold the
lack of a profile against someone, but an active profile that shows someone
playing, learning, testing, and especially contributing is someone that jumps
to the top of my list. A passion for doing and learning is something that
cannot be taught. Faked maybe. But that shows up pretty quick too.

------
wccrawford
I'm not convinced that the Github profile is for _recruiters_ alone. As
someone doing hiring at the company, I want to see it myself.

So what am I looking for? Clean code that's more than just boilerplate.
Comments, good logic, some sense of purpose. There can be garbage repos in
there, too, but I expect there to be some that show off who you are.

In short, they want to see who you are. If your Github isn't showing who you
are, you're not helping yourself by providing it to the recruiter.

~~~
chillacy
I do this too, just to find stuff to dive into in the first 10 mins. The worst
was when somebody’s github was full of tutorial projects that were done in 2-4
hours a piece by following detailed instructions.

------
gabrielblack
In my experience they don't look your Github profile at all. I think mainly
because the average recruiter have no competence to read it (sad but true). I
had two so called independent recruiters pretending to read it, but when I
asked what repository preferred and why I obtained an embarrassing silence.
Worst, the same happened with a couple of programmers during the final
interviews. Recently I had a letter from a big software house, declaring they
was interested to my projects on Github, I asked some questions discovering
that that someone else ( maybe some kind of automatic system) give him a
suggestion, but that wasn't his direct examination.

~~~
scardine
We hire remote software engineers to work with Python/Django/Vue. We believe
talent can be anywhere.

Many companies will ask you to invest a couple hours of your life writing some
toy project as a code exercise (often unpaid). Instead, we ask you to pick any
open issue in an opensource project and contribute a few hours to fix it (we
suggest links to a dozen issue lists filtered by "easy for beginners" tags) -
we call it "social code exercise".

Of course if you have such contributions already you can skip this step. We
will analyse your github profile and give extra points to:

* any PR to projects in our technology stack

* good online citizenship

* constructive, reproducible bug reports

* well written documentation

* test coverage

We penalize:

* unprofessional, disrespectful or toxic behavior while interacting with the community

* non-constructive comments and answers

The rationale is that while pushing the envelope with an opensource stack we
often have to report (and fix) bugs or implement lacking features.

Projects like Python and Django have a high bar for accepting contributions so
any candidate able to land a PR is capable of basic communication in English,
writing acceptable code, documentation and tests.

------
franciscop
Love the question! I'm a developer who has optimized his Github profile as I
could/thought it was best.

If it's okay, let me highjack one thread to ask, RECRUITERS, how would you
improve further my Github profile?

[https://github.com/franciscop](https://github.com/franciscop)

------
hartator
I do look at GitHub profiles when filtering applicants.

Mostly overall activity, consistency in commit messages, and actual code and
PR.

------
bradleyjg
As someone doing interviews, most of the github profiles I’ve seen have a
bunch of forked repos with little to no added code. I don’t understand why
people include a link to that.

A couple of times I’ve seen real code and it certainly didn’t hurt.

~~~
philihp
GitHub doesn’t do a good job with this. IMO they’re sometimes just a fork with
the intention of a PR. Gotta see what they committed on top of it. When it’s
nothing, I’d love to see them hidden or downplayed on the default view.

~~~
detaro
Some people seem to make an organization (e.g.forks-by-$username) and put
their "unimportant" forks in there as a workaround.

~~~
WorldMaker
Also, though limited and sometimes not great, "Pinned Repositories" is an easy
tool to manage (easier than bouncing things between orgs and pseudo-orgs like
`$username-forks`) and typically a strong signal for "I contribute to this".

~~~
detaro
Right, I forgot those are a thing now (and just pinned a few repos). They
certainly help a lot with that.

------
rinchik
When interviewing devs, I always check GH profile. If its empty it's usually a
read flag (meaning that I will have to do more work during the interview).
Coding samples, contributions graph, personal projects can push a candidate
forward very fast.

Worth to note: GitHub itself does NOT matter, the contents your profile and
you contributions do. Prefer GitLab? awesome! Just don't forget to put it in
your resume.

~~~
jitix
“meaning that I will have to do more work during the interview”

Isn’t that your job as a hiring manager? Also how do you know that their
github projects actually work in production? Do you do a through code analysis
to evaluate performance bottlenecks or do you do a build-deploy-test do figure
that out? IMO if you want to evaluate candidates on complete end to end
projects you should give them assignments based your your evaluation
parameters and ask them to explain their code/solution

~~~
rinchik
Depends. Depends. No. In some cases.

------
kstenerud
A recruiter will take whatever you've posted publicly, and draw conclusions
based on what you've presented. Whether you agree with it or not, that's
precisely what will happen, even if they try not to.

It's on you to communicate your intent for things you release publicly. That
means a README.md which explains what the reader is looking at. If it's just
some half baked idea you've been kicking around, say so. Tell your reader what
to expect, because if you don't, they WILL expect the wrong thing.

Effective communication is the foundation of any relationship, including work
relationships. Show that you can communicate your thoughts. Guide your reader.
Make it dead simple for them to see the best of you.

Beyond that, it's helpful to have a showcase "portfolio" project that is
written as if you were presenting a finished product to a customer, including
documentation, unit tests, ci, good design, the works. Showing that you can
see a product through from initial design to release will impress people. Do
you need it? No, but it will set you apart from the crowd.

------
m0zg
99.9% of excellent people I worked with don't have a public GitHub profile.
Most of the remaining 0.1% don't have anything interesting there, in part
because their employer claims ownership of everything they create, so
disclosing their side projects publicly is stupid. As the old Russian saying
goes, "the less they know, the better they sleep".

~~~
ndnxhs
Its incredible that anyone would accept such a horrid term.

~~~
m0zg
All those high-paid FAANG jobs come with that term. Most others do, too, but
if you're senior enough and they want you badly enough, you can strike it out.

------
prakhunov
Like other people in this thread have said, I definitely look for projects or
contributions that look interesting, or are job related, to start out having a
conversation.

However, there is one thing I look for that will, usually, be a huge negative
against the candidate. I have run into many candidates where their github
projects are just 100% clones of various tutorials. When a github profile is
only full of such projects it doesn't tell me anything different than what is
on your resume, and my trust in the candidate goes down.

Other than looking at code quality, I actually look into their commit history
and see if they are using the various best practices of git.

------
johnfn
From experience, not much. I have an open source project with millions of
downloads and thousands of stars on the top of my profile. Never once got
asked about it across at least 10-15 interviews with both startups and large
companies.

~~~
zZorgz
It should be on your resume or you may not be giving the attention it deserves
on your resume.

~~~
johnfn
It was in fact the top personal project on my resume (though below work
experience). Dunno how I can give it more attention than saying the millions
of downloads and stars.

~~~
zZorgz
To just toss ideas I changed my resume to be experience vs projects over work
vs ‘personal’ (which could be undermining if one has significant project
experience), where the experiences have multiple strong points and the
projects are short descriptions. Take account importance of each item to you
and recency for order. Millions of downloads is a great metric (github stars
lingo is ‘meh)

Assuming you have put lot of commitment or hard work in it maybe there’s more
to talk about :p. I personally have personal projects I rate higher than
previous employment experience so this isn’t applicable to everyone.

------
wyaeld
No idea what recruiters look for, but when I'm part of a hiring process I'm
particularly interested in evidence about how well a candidate communicates
with other people, whether presenting their ideas or discussing options.

------
jugg1es
I was approached by an Amazon recruiter that seemed to have used some sort of
algorithmic tool that had keyed on specific information about in my github
profile. Specifically, it mentioned that I had more than 1 public repository
with 'stars' from more than 2 people and 1 or more forks. I asked the
recruiter about this and she mentioned that she used a tool like this to find
potential recruits. It didn't sound like it was a company-wide thing, though.

------
alkonaut
I glance at their code to see if there is something that can say whether they
are very good coders or terrible coders. Usually you can't say anything
though.

Something I really try to find is how they communicate when writing bugs,
responding to questions, differences in opinion etc. If you find someone who
can respond to an angry user of their library because their feature wasn't
implemented, or that can politely turn down a PR for example, that's really
good sign.

------
userbinator
Depending on the exact environment and position, "I don't use GitHub" may
actually be a positive response, because they might signify someone who is
less likely to accidentally publicise a company's confidential IP. Likewise
for anyone who "stays dark" online, in social media and such.

------
beager
I would hazard a guess that most pure recruiters aren't looking at your GitHub
profile other than ensuring that you've provided one. The hiring manager or
interview team, however, might be interested in it.

Here are some things that I check for in a GitHub profile, as a hiring manager
and as a recruiter (hooray startup roles!):

1\. Repos that aren't just forks. I've seen plenty of profiles where the
majority or entirety of repos are forks. Unless there's some annotation that
talks about contribution to those projects, I assume that those forks don't
contain any actual development.

2\. Code past the boilerplate. A lot of projects start with enormous
boilerplate, checked-in node_modules, and large-app scaffolding. The README
should have a pointer that says "actual code is in src/app/site" or something,
otherwise I click around for where the commit message is something other than
"initial commit".

3\. A real README.md. Bonus points for README.md in the subdirectories.

4\. A "real" photo of you. LinkedIn profile pictures tend to be very
professional and buttoned-up (sometimes literally). Most GH profile photos in
my experience are a closer of the real person though. You're more likely to
see a casual photo, a hobby, someone's dog, a photo of their art, etc. When
that person is working with you, they're going to act more like their GitHub
profile photo than their LinkedIn profile photo. Conversely, when I don't see
a profile photo, that's concerning.

5\. Nothing too boring, or too creative, in the name. The era of screen-name
judging is not over, and you will get judged based on your GitHub handle.
John35082192 makes me think that John reluctantly created a GitHub account and
loathes using it. XxCodeMurdererGoatSlayerJohnnyXx makes me think that John is
a bit of a weirdo, and his code reviews may be... uncomfortable.

6\. Stars. If your real repos have real stars (or even forks), that means that
not only have you creating something cool, but you've created something
useful, and marketed it at least somewhat well. NB: repo stars are not
expected for professional-profile style repos, only if you're creating
something for an actual OSS community.

7\. A real github.io page/repo. Maybe this is the basis of your professional
profile, maybe there's a link to a personal website in your profile, but I am
interested in seeing how you present yourself beyond which repos you show
first.

~~~
cimmanom
What’s wrong with not having a profile photo?

FWIW, as a woman, I leave my photo off github to avoid the assumptions people
make when they know someone’s gender. In fact, there’s research to back that
up: [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/02/data-...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/02/data-analysis-of-github-contributions-reveals-unexpected-
gender-bias/)

~~~
petsormeat
Same here; I'm woman, _and_ over 50. I use a landscape snapshot from an
enjoyable daytrip for my profile photo. Is this, like removing graduation
dates from a resume, an undesired tell?

~~~
burfog
Most companies would discriminate in your favor for both reasons. I suppose it
is unpleasant to be the token woman or the token old person though. It sucks
to suspect that you are being kept around to meet somebody's quota.

------
ddebernardy
The only company I worked with that made much use of it was open-source inside
and out. They mostly hired developers that had been OSS contributors.

They'd use GH to evaluate coding style and as a proxy for skill level.

It was a _terrible_ proxy IMHO, because a lot of the projects or contributions
they were looking at were years old. (People change and grow.)

Anyway, if there's a takeaway here it's this: Delete old repos that you
wouldn't feel comfortable putting forward as examples of how you _currently_
work. Or refactor the code to match what you'd currently do. Or don't maintain
any public GH profile, frankly -- there are plenty of great engineers out
there who have a family and no time to contribute OSS.

------
chiefalchemist
Not to get off topic but...Recruiters? Haven't I heard more than one of
companies that (promise to) analyze code for quality, etc.? That is, resume
aside, they can grade the quality of code / coder?

I'm not sure how often these come into play, but I would also bet that outfits
that do don't brag about it.

------
zZorgz
Speaking as someone with a decent github profile, we need to get out of the
notion that github profiles are important. Anything substantial or noteworthy
of interest should really be on the candidate's resume. Even personal websites
are more worthwhile going through than github profiles in my opinion.

------
tootie
I'm on the technology side, but I review and interview candidates pretty
regularly. Unless you have an actual notable repo with stars or something (and
I've literally never seen a candidate with stars on a repo) then I don't care.
Maybe if you have a cool picture of yourself?

------
xarien
It's a good arena to discover talking points especially if the candidate is
not a good interviewer. There are a lot of good engineers who simply do not
interview well and this is a fantastic way for me to pry some positives out
that may otherwise have been missed / glossed over.

------
TaylorAlexander
For me, my github profile shows my personal interests. I work on a bunch of
robotics stuff for fun, and then try to get jobs related to things I like. So
if the job is a good fit the github profile serves as an extension of my
resume. At the very least it shows my passion for the field.

------
s3nnyy
Tech recruiter here.

The list of repos give a rough idea about the tech stack the person prefers.

That's it.

If it is Javascript or Python (I can read & assess the quality of the code of
these languages) I sometimes dig into some project, if it is not a fork.

------
dyeje
I've never met a recruiter who discussed my GitHub beyond asking for the link.
As for interviewers, my GitHub has only been brought up a handful of times.

------
sekizkarakter
I don't think they look at to GitHub profile at the very first place. I see
that most of then even not checking what is written in my linkedin profile.

------
saagarjha
Related question: how many recruiters actually look at GitHub pages? Does this
number change if one is linked in the resume they’re looking at?

~~~
linuxlizard
Yes, please put your GitHub, GitLab, etc, profile on your resume. When
interviewing, being able to see someone's code quality is golden.

~~~
saagarjha
But do you actually look at them? I have my GitHub profile in my resume, but
I’ve never once been asked about anything on there, nor has a recruiter let on
that they had looked at it.

------
early
Github commit history is an excellent measurement of your willingness to work
overtime for free. Of course companies will love you for that

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JesseAldridge
\- Stars

\- Green squares

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dominotw
i know this from tons of experience.

Everyone asks for github profile but no one actually has the time to analyze
it. I asked an interviewer about it and said he admitted he hasn't looked at
it.

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pcmaffey
Since most people’s work is going to be in private repos, Ive always thought
the most consistently valuable signal is the contribution graph.

But that’s just my opinion.

~~~
cimmanom
And some of us are contributing to private repos hosted on bitbucket or
gitlab. Just saying.

~~~
pcmaffey
For sure, I'm not saying it's a universally valuable signal, just the most
valuable one relative to other signals on a github profile.

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tdeck
An email address, in my experience.

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nukeop
As a rule of thumb, people who offer their own code publicly, are usually in
the top 10% of developers. People who have ever contributed to another
project, even if in a minor way, are in the top 5%. And people who contribute
or develop their own projects with any regularity, are the top 1%. Exceptions
exist, but this pattern emerges on a large enough scale.

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StacieMcnamara
Why do you need GitHub? There are many places where you can send a resume.
here [https://uk.jobsora.com](https://uk.jobsora.com), for example. There are
a lot of vacancies for any choice

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tptacek
Suckers.

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purple-again
I want to know what other people will see when they look at my employees
GitHub Account. If I see nothing that concerns me, I move on. All of our
companies code is private so an empty GitHub is not concerning.

Daily stars in the seize_the_means_by_any_means repository is going to get
your resume tossed.

~~~
febeling
I don’t understand the second paragraph. Could you explain?

