
A new way to hire: contributing to open source projects - Callicles
https://medium.com/datalogue/open-source-hiring-84df05fdb357
======
wink
This sounds horrible. And I say this as someone who's been contributing to
open source since.. like 15 years? What does meaningful even mean? I sometimes
spend hours and days trying to reproduce and triage a bug, not even talking
about fixing it. How is any reasonably sized open source project different
than a closed source inhouse code base (ok, usually the docs are better or
exist at all) - do they really expect people to spend multiple working days on
a job interview?

If you as an interviewee happen to find the proposed projects interesting or
be contributing anyway, it's actually quite awesome, but even a big open
source advocate this hiring method doesn't really seem practicable to me.

~~~
tetraodonpuffer
> do they really expect people to spend multiple working days on a job
> interview?

if you read the article they say their previous interviewing practice was
homework that took about a week to do (described as "high effort") so it does
seem they are looking for substantial contributions.

From the perspective of spending a week on an ad-hoc coding effort vs a week
on an open source contribution I can definitely see the value, especially
considering that it seems it's up to you what you do (you are submitting your
"this is what I did" together with your application and not "I want to
apply"/"fix these github issues") which also means you can decide the effort
level and most important when you spend it.

Reading the article it seems nothing prevents you from working on this for 3-4
weekends and then applying, which seems completely reasonable and honestly not
a bad way to go at it. It really seems a win-win-win: for the company, they
get to evaluate you as a candidate, for you, you have a meaningful
contribution for your resume even if the application doesn't work, and for the
open source ecosystem as a whole, which gets some bugs fixed or features added

I mean, these days to interview you'd still spend several weekends refreshing
algorithms and practicing so as long as this is the whole of the technical
interview and not just the initial part plus a day of whiteboard algorithm
quizzes it'd be a nice alternative.

I am less sure about the "cooking together" part of the hiring process, but if
that's the culture they want to foster I guess that's their prerogative, on
the other hand I do believe this should be stated up front and not be a
surprise, given how not everybody would be willing or able to partecipate due
to dietary restrictions and preferences.

~~~
timgdelisle
Dietary restrictions and preferences 100% welcome! Grew up with a celiac
sibling and one of our team members is vegetarian. Similarly to design, in
food, restrictions lead to creativity! (Founder of the company)

~~~
tetraodonpuffer
thanks for chiming in and clarifying, best of luck with your hiring! as I was
saying I definitely think it's a net positive for everybody to harness your
interviewees' effort to improve open source packages that you care about as
opposed to just wasting it on contrived exercises not benefiting anybody.

~~~
timgdelisle
There's also the fact that if more companies adopt this approach candidates
could technically do a single open source challenge to apply to multiple
companies :)

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sonofgod
If there's someone from Datalogue --

It's really hard to work out where you're based; I'm guessing New York from a
tag on one of your medium posts. This is usually important to be able to
discover when you're recruiting!

There's no way to get in touch with you that isn't "we'll contact you" with a
mandatory phone number (which you're not getting).

I was initially interested in applying but now I'm not.

If you are about, could you let us know how well Open Source Interviewing has
worked for you in the past? Or is this the first time you've done it?

~~~
oatsandsugar
Hi sonofgod,

On Datalogue's recruiting page
([https://datalogue.github.io/recruiting/](https://datalogue.github.io/recruiting/))
there is a recruiting email address (recruiting [at] datalogue [dot] io) if
you would like to get in contact directly.

The form with phone number field is just for demo sign-up.

Feel free to reach out directly

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gorbachev
My current employer requires clearance for open source contributions. They
generally speaking approve all requests, but I'm not sure "it's required for
an interview I'm doing" is going to be a compelling reason for them.

~~~
nfriedly
haha, same here, although I send enough requests that it might just slip
through unnoticed :D

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nfriedly
I don't know. On the one hand, I get that "work for free and maybe we'll hire
you" is going to block quite a lot of otherwise qualified applicants.

On the other hand, I've seen plenty of worse ideas around hiring. At least
this will result in some positive impact on the world.

I'll also give them credit for requesting contributions to other companies
Open Source products rather than just their own. There was one company who I
had actually done some free Open Source work for in the past. When I contacted
them about an open position, they essentially told me "that past work doesn't
count and you need to do more free work on our newer platform we'll consider
hiring you". That was a serious let down.

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donretag
"So we invite the candidate over for dinner."

If you are still working around dinner time, I already failed your cultural
fit.

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xxSparkleSxx
Do free work if you want to be employed!

No thanks. Will my employer give money away to poor people just to show what
good people they are?!

STOP MAKING WORK ABOUT MORE THAN A BUSINESS TRANSACTION.

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alansmitheebk
A week-long technical assessment? Cooking meals as part of the interview
process? Jesus H. Christ. Now I've heard it all. We as a community have got to
start pushing back on the increasingly obnoxious interviewing process for
software development jobs. What other field do you know of that would put up
with this sort of thing?

~~~
timgdelisle
Would love to hear out a better solution.

We cook because we enjoy it. Its the last part of the interview and meant as a
meet and greet of the team, not as an assessment of your cooking skills.
Knowing that you enjoy the people you work with, in my opinion, is better than
going in dark your first day on the job.

In terms of other processes, I've got through much more laborious interview
processes. In the consulting world we'd prep for hours and then go through
several rounds of case interviews and getting to know partners. One of our
team members is a lawyer with similar experiences. As a software engineer I
like to showcase my work. Having the ability to give back to the community and
the liberty to pick the project that I contribute to sounded pretty good to me
when the team pitched this approach.

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v1n337
Am I missing something here?

None of the examples they've cited at the bottom of that post are actual
contributions to a popular open-source project, but seems more like stuff
that's been built as a standalone project.

~~~
iamzaf
This was my contribution:
[https://github.com/mljs/matrix/pull/50](https://github.com/mljs/matrix/pull/50)

I previously contributed to the mljs libraries and used the opportunity to add
a new feature and demonstrate that I knew how to unit test etc.

~~~
lj3
Did you get the job?

~~~
iamzaf
Yes, I currently work here.

Should have made a disclaimer!

