
Ask HN: Web project on GitHub helpful for finding a better job? - kbrisso
I was thinking of posting a project to Github showcasing my skills. Do recruiters or potential hires look at these things? Has anyone done this and has it helped them? It would be more than a basic project. I was thing of using multiple technologies and deploying to Digital Ocean along with clear instructions. I have 20 years experience as a software engineer at the same job and want to move on. It has been a while since I looked for a job! Thanks!
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totalperspectiv
Yes. And No. I don't think recruiters look at github. Hiring managers might
though, once your resume lands on their desk. So a project like this may not
make you more discoverable, but it may make you more hireable once you've been
discovered. Given that you have 20 years of experience though, it likely won't
add a whole lot. And any questions that they ask you would likely be better
answered by talking about real work experience rather than a toy project.

But it won't hurt :)

A thing that might be more productive would be to see what some of the core
tech some jobs you are looking at use, and then re-implement that from
scratch. You learn a lot, you can post that kind of stuff here and elsewhere
and maybe be discoverable, and you can talk about it during an interview in a
way that promotes you as an expert on something.

~~~
kbrisso
Thanks for the reply - good idea about doing a small project that uses the
companies API or demonstrates what they do.

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dyingkneepad
It can work in favor of but also against you :)

Where I work, once most of the candidates have been filtered out and there are
only 1-5 remaining, managers get help from the senior engineers to assess the
candidate's technical skills before interviewing. In my specific team we try
to find code samples from github and contributions to open source communities
(we love ohloh.net).

But we also do a "technical interview" with some fizzbuzz stuff. More than
once we found candidates with good-looking open source patches but that
couldn't implement fizzbuzz-like stuff on a whiteboard.

~~~
tcbasche
> But we also do a "technical interview" with some fizzbuzz stuff

Why does anyone still think this is a good interview technique that provides
any valuable metrics?

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dyingkneepad
Because in the past we hired some programmers that were really good at BS-ing
during interview and really crappy at programming.

So now we make sure we hire people who know what "a &= b" does in C and what a
#define statement achieves.

~~~
tcbasche
I'm not saying you don't screen them at all with a technical task, but it
should be something representative of what your organisation does, rather than
some overdone toy problem

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dyingkneepad
When I said 'fizzbuzz-like' I meant a _simple_ program that is representative
of what we do in the organization. Fizzbuzz is supposed to be a simple
challenge as far as I'm aware. Stuff like flipping bits with & and |, or
knowing how to use preprocessor macros (since we abuse macros a lot). Or
awareness of function pointers.

~~~
tcbasche
I guess I missed that fizzbuzz now means things like fizzbuzz, rather than
actual challenge

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austincheney
I ran a major code beautifier for about 10 years used by tens of thousands of
developers. Having a major project like this didn’t turn me into a celebrity
or win me any opportunities. I still needed a resume and had to wait for
people to reach out to me as any other regular applicant.

It did, however, differentiate me at interview time. I could demonstrate an
ability to solve hard problems with original solutions in a way others could
not. I could demonstrate product management like an expert where other
developers where not even a beginner. A massive project like this really
allowed me to utterly destroy the competition when trying to get that job, but
only as I talked through the value of that experience.

Having this sort of experience also created some major frictions, though. You
might look like a rock star during the interview but there is a huge
difference between what they want in theory versus practice. If you are coming
into an organization that isn’t as obsessed with product quality or user
fulfillment as you they won’t care how good you are or how good the product
could be. This is especially true of your developer peers who have never
contributed to open source. Instead they will care only for the popular
mediocre way of doing things that you have learned hard to abandon in search
of quality and performance. Any attempt to raise the bar, increase developer
performance, or execution speed with be met with disdain and immediate
hostility.

After going through frictions like those for years I have learned to settle. I
still hate giant frameworks and the billions of packages developers with hide
behind to avoid writing code or learning anything works, but have learned to
accept that nobody cares until the business is ready to fire people. I just
wish developers would at the very least give two shits about writing some
basic documentation but even that feels like asking for too much.

At the very minimum at least learn to write good documentation.

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duxup
As a n00b just out of bootcamp I found it very handy in showing other
technical folks that I can build something front to back that is ... competent
enough given my experience at the time.

Considering the volume of similar bootcamp folks out there, I think it helped
a great deal in that context.

Recruiters looked for fun more than anything else, but I don't think it made
any impression on them / made any difference with recruiters.

BUT 20 years of experience, I'm not sure they'll care as much about something
like a portfolio.

On the other hand it can't hurt and if you're going to do it for fun anyway,
have at it ;)

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probinso
I encourage people to put everything they can on a public host, then hyperlink
the heck out of their resumes. You never know who will look, but for those who
are interested its very nice.

With your existing experience, It is not required to have an online presence,
but is nice.

Recruiters won't likely look, hiring managers may.

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xen0
I am pretty sure that my Github profile had absolutely no effect on any of the
hire/no-hire decisions I was subject to, or even on whether I was entered into
a company's interview pipeline. A couple of work projects from my previous
employer were hosted there and accessible from my profile, so my profile
wasn't barren.

I highly suspect your ability to summarize your 20 years experience well in a
1 page document will matter a lot more. And you don't need a project to be on
Github to be able to talk about it in interview.

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muzani
There are many different types of recruiters. Some will, some won't. It does
give you more dimensions as a person; someone with 20 years of experience and
a project on GitHub is certainly more interesting thatn someone who has 20
years of experience.

That said, it's incredibly common for people to have a bunch of different
things to showcase. You'll hear a lot of people who are "speaker, author,
blogger, consultant" and still are just average skills with average salaries.

If you're going to do it anyway, go ahead and do it, but the return on
investment is probably lower than just grinding Leetcode.

