
GitHub and Open-Source Is a Boon for the Underprivileged - amasad
https://www.amasad.me/github
======
mmjaa
I have been working productively as a systems software developer for 32 years.
I do not have a degree; I'm a high-school dropout. I've built systems you've
probably used, and/or may still be using.

The #1 technical lever I have found worth exploiting, worth far more than
anything a university can provide, is the willingness to get the job done.

It hasn't mattered if I wrote CP/M code ISR's, PROGRESS 4GL modules, Unix
daemons, Pascal, .. Java, C, C++, Objective-C, Lua, Swift, &etc. - through the
thick of it all, the fact that I was willing to get the job done, no matter
what, is what made the difference.

On the other end of this scale, is a bit of decadence.

From my particularly tainted point of view, the ideological basis of the
current cultural norm of "university==well-paid job" is entirely decadent.
People seem to have expectations that, because they're in a certain class,
they don't have to work hard at developing other real life issues, and too
many times I've seen the well-educated, well-connected, nevertheless
incompetent developer fall to pieces under pressure. I am grateful for these
guys, because they make my life easier.

Yet, those who are in this group, who haven't got a decadent ideal of their
own worth, but rather get things done in computing, whatever it takes: great.

So its really not a matter of educated-enough. Its whether the will to perform
is, through whatever means, inculcated - and then manifest by taking the
actions to get the state of things, done.

Some of the best developers I've ever worked with, have come from utterly dire
circumstances. Some of the worst, too. Likewise for the privileged, candied
elite.

The one differentiator, truly, is the will of the individual. Computers, being
machines of will, equalise us all that way.

~~~
duckduckno
I've recently dropped out of highschool and I've been considering two options:
promptly returning to school and finishing my degree or dedicating time to
self-educate via the internet. Which pathway would you suggest?

I have always felt conflicted about our current education system because it
undervalues creativity and disingenuously puts forth the notion that school is
for learning when clearly it is not. Teachers constantly remind us that
attending school is imperative to our growth yet fail to explain that we are
merely fufiling a social obligation to become stable adults. Education has
always been about the indoctrination of social values and the apparent lack of
effort by teachers to purvey this speaks quantities of their system. Mind you,
I'm not necessarily blaming the teachers nor those who have constructed such
educational pillars but rather I'm antagnozing our modern perception of the
intended purpose of school.

All I really hear about from students these days is which prestigious school
people want to attend but whenever I question them as to why they wish to
attend such facilities they respond with "to get a better job" or "to learn
more and then get a better job." Is there something not inherently flawed with
this kind of logic? We wish to obtain better jobs so we mindlessly waste hours
cramming an entire textbook before an examination only to retain almost no
knowledge of its contents afterwards.

There are cultural nuances regarding this matter and my anecdotal argument is
probably not very strong, but I do believe there is a problem with incessantly
encouraging young students to pursue academia for the sake of acquiring a
_better_ job. As someone who has always been interested with the philosophy
and intrinsic beauty of learning itself, I find our current implementation
repulsive. My aversion to school has led me to study various types of -- or
perhaps attempts at -- artificial intelligence in the hopes that we may one
day supplant this flawed approach to education with a more personalized view
that can take into account my preferences.

That being said, I'm still relatively young and by the duty of such a
description, naive. There is still so much that I do not know about and I'm
wondering now how I should proceed. Being a well informed and tech literate
person, could you possibly offer me some quick guidance? Thank you.

~~~
walki
> I've recently dropped out of highschool and I've been considering two
> options: promptly returning to school and finishing my degree or dedicating
> time to self-educate via the internet.

There is a 3rd option (if you want to work as a programmer):

You practice programming interview questions in your favourite programming
language for a few weeks and start applying for jobs. Companies often hire
young talented programmers without university degree in entry level positions
because they are cheaper.

After having worked in the industry for 5 years no one cares about your degree
anymore. The good thing about this 3rd option is that you are learning on the
job what the other students learn at university and you don't have to pay for
your software engineering education.

Students often tend to overestimate the importance and the benefits of a
higher education. Personally I don't like your second option: "self-educate
via the internet" because it won't help you getting a job and you will
eventually forget what you have learned anyways. For this reason I prefer your
first option and my 3rd option.

Good luck!

------
sanxiyn
I think the obviously right choice is: Do not require open source
contributions, but do not ignore them. Similarly: Do not require degrees,
computer science or otherwise, but do not ignore them.

~~~
lucb1e
Staying away from extremes and finding a middle way is generally good advice.
Indeed never go 100% for degrees nor 100% for open source contributions.

~~~
Radim
Going a little deeper and not contesting your conclusion, I'd like to point
out "middle ground" is more a result of survivorship bias than a general
maxim.

There are an infinity of choices we make daily that are completely binary,
100% extreme, both on the individual and social group level. They go unnoticed
because there's nothing to gain by pontificating _" Shall I go 100% in with 'I
won't cut off my legs today', or find some middle ground that's not as
extreme?"_ (apologies for the gross example, but articulating inarticulate
choices is hard, by definition).

Our cognitive capacity is limited, so naturally we've evolved to consider only
the choices that matter. We look for the "middle ground" in only a tiny sliver
of decisions.

Which is obvious, but there's an interesting thought in there: To what degree
is the presence of "middle ground" in our minds indicative of some potential
gain, an arbitrage opportunity? Turning the causality around, can we assume
the distinctions that bubble up to our conscious thought are useful hints at
profit? There's something primal about spotting gradients: the only place
where it makes sense to talk about a "middle".

------
onion2k
The point people are making about using GitHub profiles for hiring is that it
ignores great developers who don't write code outside of their job (that might
be due to other interests, family responsibilities, a second job, whatever).
The fact this guy is in a position to write code in his spare time just means
he's not in that group, and the fact his open source work on Github
specifically landed him a job he wanted kind of proves the point people are
making.

~~~
amasad
So I mentioned, multiple times, that you shouldn't exclude people that don't
have a Github profile. All I'm saying is that if you're underprivileged you
have this awesome tool, use it.

And no I didn't have a lot of free time. I was working and going to school but
when you're young you frankly don't need a whole lot of sleep.

~~~
onion2k
_when you 're young you frankly don't need a whole lot of sleep_

You do if you have health issues, or mental health issues, or kids (some young
people have them), or a long commute, or a second job, or _if you 're not
young_...

It's hard to recognize privilege when you have it.

~~~
jakobegger
Maybe we should stop complaining about privilege and call it opportunity?

If you happen to have rich parents who pay for the best college, that's an
awesome opportunity. Nobody should have to feel bad about taking it!

If you are poor, but happen to have a lot of spare time, that's also an
opportunity.

Complaining about privilege is not actionable. Focussing on opportunities is a
lot more constructive: We can look for ways to give someone an opportunity!

~~~
onion2k
_Complaining about privilege is not actionable._

It is actionable though. People can make hiring decisions on a candidates work
rather than what they do in the spare time, just as they do in _every other
industry_ besides tech.

------
albertgoeswoof
The author makes a valid point, however the pushback against using OSS as an
important hiring signal, is that most people are not privileged with enough
spare time to work on OSS outside of their day job. Eg if you have a family,
long commute etc.

And if they already are an excellent programmer and hitting all expectations,
why should they do this? In fact, an employee who’s spending 5-6 hours/day on
side projects might not be the best person for the company.

I don’t think recruiters look all that deeply either, I think you could game
this by writing some docs or readme corrections to all of the top projects on
github and get the PRs accepted.

~~~
sanxiyn
Where is pushback against using degrees as an important hiring signal, given
many people are not privileged with enough money to go to the university?
Where?

~~~
albertgoeswoof
Literally this article, and all the other comments and posts about how useless
a computer science degree is for hiring, and how we should all go to boot
camps. I actually have a comp sci degree (and learned a tonne) but I know
former classmates who skipped through without learning to program properly at
all.

~~~
sanxiyn
Still, I confidently bet someone without GitHub profile has easier time in
hiring market than someone without a degree.

------
alien_
Nowadays most software depends on open source one way or another, and as
developer you will eventually run into issues with the open source software
that you depend on.

Also, larger companies internally operate much like an open source community,
having multiple projects that accept contributions from anyone in the company.

Reporting and fixing public issues as part of your employment is a sign that
you care about the ecosystem that you are part of, giving back rather than
just benefiting from it.

It's not necessarily a showcase of your coding skills, because these
contributions are usually small, but it shows that you will get your hands
dirty if needed and fix the problem at the root, instead of hacking a
workaround in your own code base. It also shows that you have no problem with
learning a new code base and delivering code according to that project's
quality standards.

If you don't have any public activity it may imply the opposite: that you are
just freeloading your community, that you are prone to doing workarounds
instead of fixing the problem upstream or that you are unable or reluctant to
contribute to other projects.

~~~
hocuspocus
> It also shows that you have no problem with learning a new code base and
> delivering code according to that project's quality standards.

If you can tell your employer you'll spend the next sprint or two fixing a bug
upstream, good for you!

From my experience working with complex libraries, when you hit a bug or a
corner case, it is probably not going to be an easy fix. There's a reason many
open source projects are triaging low-hanging fruits for first-time
contributors.

~~~
alien_
Companies should invest in the open source they depend on, otherwise they will
need to re-implement it from scratch or maintain an in-house fork with higher
costs. You may be spending those sprints implementing a workaround that you
will then have to touch again when the problem is eventually fixed upstream,
or you will run a private fork that you're stuck with forever and will have a
hard time maintaining.

As for the complexity, from my experience it's a mix. There are indeed many
complex issues, but often times the fixes are relatively easy and take little
time to fix.

For the hard ones it's often enough if you can contribute to the conversation
to better understand the problem, providing valuable information on how to
reproduce, so that someone familiar with the code base can solve it easier.

------
jakobegger
I think we should stop looking for the One True Way and accept that there are
multiple ways to evaluate job applicants.

Some companies will hire only people from top schools, other companies put a
lot of focus on understanding algorithms; other companies just look at your
previous jobs, and some may just look at your Github profile.

If you are looking for a job, you need to understand that, and apply to the
right companies. Depending on your background, not every company might be a
great fit.

If a CS degree is a hard requirement, and you don't have one, then applying at
that job is a waste of time.

If you're applying to a company that works on Open Source and they have
popular, public Github repos, and you have a blank Github account without any
contributions, you're not going to make a good impression.

------
watwut
Imo, OSS advocates really really want open source contributions to be used as
hiring signal, because that would mean more open source developers. That is
what this all is about, primary. Wish to come back to "open source developers
are superior, because reasons" ideology that was pushed for during open/close
source wars. And close source developers take issue with it not just because
of privilege, but also because you are claiming they are less capable due to
their code not being OSS.

Majority of employed developers don't have regular open source contributions.
Especially those who work in high pressure jobs that already take all they
have - both in time and how much effort you can spend per day. If the company
is trying at least little bit to reward contributions, the people who give the
company more (or come in better rested) get rewarded more then those who work
for company less. That drives employees incentives and behavior.

Yes, there are junior jobs available to people with two months of coding
experience. That is how it should be and there is nothing wrong with company
seeing your OSS code as one of way to prove you can do it. The moment it will
be expected from everyone, guess what, people like me will have tons of
advantages to homeless, former "big scholarship to go to university" student
who had to drop out due to personal reasons.

Senior developer market is not flooded with people with large open source
contributions through. It is just not the case. Why would open source on
Github should be privileged over random portfolio in case of juniors? Or to
open source contributions that are not on Github?

Lastly, I dont think large open source projects can handle influx of juniors
using them to prove themselves - which is what would happen if companies would
really require oss contributions for hiring. Oss projects have often hard time
to stay on top of existing pull requests.

~~~
spamizbad
> Imo, OSS advocates really really want open source contributions to be used
> as hiring signal, because that would mean more open source developers. That
> is what this all is about, primary. Wish to come back to "open source
> developers are superior, because reasons" ideology that was pushed for
> during open/close source wars.

That's a new take. As someone who lived through that "war" in the 90s, the
typical refrain from the "closed source" crowd was that open source developers
were merely hobbyists, whereas closed source was built 100% by professional
software developers.

~~~
watwut
Maybe it depends on who did you socialized with? Among people I knew it was
universally "close source programmers are crap, oss are all geniuses". I also
remember reading thinkpieces like that from people like Stallman (I think). A
lot of heroization of programmers vs unethical managers too.

I remember the thing you said too, but only in context of "it is obviously
stupid" and obvious manipulation from evil Microsoft. I still think that part
was true (that it was manipulation from MS who was remarkably unethical in
this war).

------
zimbatm
Some people say that they don't have time to contribute back because they have
a family and and a life. At the same time, pretty much every company depends
on OSS to operate. Shouldn't contributing be an integral part of work?

In my day-to-day, I depend OSS to get my job done. If there is a bug, I am
allowed take the time to build a patchset and push it upstream. It's good for
everyone. The company benefits from not having to maintain a fork, the
developer gets to build his github profile, the rest of the world can also use
the update.

People who don't have a GitHub profile is also a signal that they either don't
take the time during their normal work hours, or are prevented from
contributing back due to company policy.

------
grosjona
>> At this point, we've heard enough "rags to riches" stories in programming
that it becomes difficult to dismiss this as simply "survivorship bias".

I like the rest of the article but this statement is disturbing. There are
plenty of great open source projects which never got off the ground in terms
of popularity.

Quality is not necessarily correlated with popularity.

~~~
amasad
How so? Programming is unprecedented in it's power for upwards class mobility.
We're just scratching the surface. But it's the only thing we have that:

a) doesn't require a lot of resources to make a meaningful contributions
(access to a computer and the internet) that could land you a really good job.

b) it's probably the only industry that doesn't requires formal education.
Case in point, only one person at my company has a CS degree, and that's me.

~~~
sdoering
On the other hand, if you have two shitty jobs to make ends meet, how to
program and contribute to OSS after that?

There are cases. But most probably are survivorship bias.

I would bet, most current IT professionals have a at least lower middle class
background.

If I take a look at my company, that at last rings true. Not sure about the
US, though.

~~~
sodafountan
Quit one job and live below your means.

I don't quite understand why people seem to think success doesn't require
sacrifice anymore. You can either sacrifice your time and money for a more
streamlined education and get a college degree or you can sacrifice a lot of
your time and take a risk to self-educate.

There's really no middle ground and both strategies can land you a job if
you're good, but becoming good always requires effort and some sacrifice.

------
teddyh
Is this maybe a hint of the lock-in which GitHub will pursue in the future?
Like Facebook, you might prefer to avoid having an account, but due to other
people using the platform as a signal, you feel that you can’t avoid signing
up for GitHub (and accepting whatever terms Microsoft will set on this).

It is also a bit like the problem of academic publishing; you might prefer to
publish in an Open Access journal and on ArXiv, but feel that you have no
choice for your academic career other than to pay dearly for publishing in a
“influential”/“reputable” journal owned by Elsevier, giving up all rights to
publish elsewhere (and whatever other rights they feel they can push).

------
xstartup
It's very true.

Many developers in the west having higher disposable income than their not so
lucky counterparts who might be able to rival them in absolute skill.

But those developers _want to spend more time with the family._

Remote work has not taken off even if we assume it's more profitable for a
company to hire cheaper staff in low COL. This might mean that lots of the
things in a startup has to do with maintaining a perception of _smart geeks
are working on a difficult global problem_.

There is an arbitrage opportunity here by hiring ghost developers from low COL
locations (similar to ghost writers). Why not support developers from low COL?
That's what creates global economic equality right which egalitarian society
always strives for.

So, if anyone comes to your office you'll have people looking seriously
absorbed by the difficult problem but the real work will be done elsewhere, in
return, you get peace of mind and more time with your family. Instagram pages
and blogs will be lush with _happy tech employee faces_ and "long stories of
slaying tech demons".

Is this happening?

------
devxpy
I hate how people don't mention the quality of work one is doing on Github, or
anywhere for that matter.

I've personally seen people make one-liner commits deliberately, to get a good
graph.

On the other hand, some people write code because they actually created
something real, which solves a real problem.

And the difference is quite clear if you're looking for it.

Arguably, the github community suffers from the "celebrity" effect that
facebook/Instagram have.

But I digress.

Comparing a Github account to a college degree is crazy.

Once a piece of paper, and the other is a full history of the guy's work,
presented at a mouse click away.

I am about to clear the first year of my univ, and honestly couldn't care less
about what the univ taught me. I can't even recall most of it.

What I can show you is my Github profile, where I did real work, and built
real software that actually works (including some IoT projects that I
personally use myself, every day)

Not to mention the other projects that didn't made on Github, but did make it
on a Bitbucket private repo.

------
buro9
Ignoring the debate around "that tweet" Github is great for those with an
interest to be able to self-teach and self-learn. To acquire experience from
doing, by being able to see how others have done it before or to take that and
use it.

Github is to this generation of programmers, what View Source was to the early
web generation of programmers.

Without View Source in 1996, and with no resource to education or work at that
time, I would not have learned how to make complete web sites and then have
moved to automatically making those websites (HTML generation via a CMS).

Github is important and critical, but not for hiring those already in the
industry... for learning and to make this industry accessible to those who are
under privileged in terms of access to education, mentoring, code clubs, etc.
And then for recognising those people during hiring and giving them the break
they deserve.

------
sanxiyn
As someone without a degree who got the first job based on open source work,
this rings true.

~~~
Nekorosu
It's anecdotal evidence. I don't have a degree and I don't contribute to open
source because I have something better to do in my free time. Still, I have a
decent developer job.

~~~
gitgud
Well, what's better to do in your free time?

------
stealthmodeclan
One thing is that since people from not so reputable university get to have
very few interactions with those from elite universities, we assume elite
university students are lot better at programming.

Today, you can directly take a look at their craft on github, this has given
much confidence to those from lower rungs of the society like, hey! I can
create better than this person even tho i am not from such an ellite
university. This along with the meritocracy in tech levels the playing field
where the ones from better universities should found startups by using their
connections instead of working for companies

------
rectang
It is unavoidable that privilege affects who contributes to open source and
how much. Whether or not this is bad is a philosophical issue: is it bad that
life is unfair?

The harm comes when people deny the existence of privilege and other forms of
luck, and attribute success to their own moral superiority and the moral
inferiority of others.

~~~
golergka
Fairness and morals in general are leaky abstractions that only apply to a
subset of all possible situations.

The most "fair" system can't survive a single generation of you allow parents
to invest their resources in competitive advantage for their children – which
is one of the most basic human desires.

~~~
rectang
The pull towards corrupt aristocracy is strong all right! But it's worth
resisting.

~~~
golergka
Depends on your personal situation. It's possible it's also worth joining it.

------
switch007
The same underprivileged who feel there is no option but to sign a contract
assigning all IP to their employer, which at best dissuades them from doing
much open source, and at worst, precludes them from doing any coding which
isn't for their employer? (I'm talking about the world beyond California,
here)

~~~
cup-of-tea
Who is signing away code they write in their own time? If you do that then
that's your fault. It's not normal at all.

~~~
tom_
It's been a clause in every employment contract I've been given. I signed the
first one, because I wanted the job; the second company folded between my
signing and the start date, so it was moot; I didn't sign the third contract
at all, but I worked there for 7 years, which apparently is tantamount to
acceptance :(

Some companies have put this clause in contracts for shorter-term project-
based contract work, but I've just crossed it out, generally with no pushback.

~~~
cimmanom
I've been able to negotiate a rephrasing of this in every contract I've been
presented with that contains it.

What you're willing to give the company is probably the same as what's really
important to them: rights to IP you create _in the course of your work for the
company_ or during work hours or using company resources.

There are ways to phrase this such that - if you're a reasonably desirable
hire - the vast majority of HR departments will be willing to substitute for
the blanket terms.

If you're not sure how to negotiate this, explain that as an example you want
to be able to continue to manage the website for your rotary club / kids scout
program / whatever; and that the current phrasing would give the company the
rights to that website, which there's no reason they'd want, and prevent you
from giving back to your community.

------
duxup
Even compared to say 20+ years ago, it is amazing how many fully capable
services and how much high quality and polished software is free.

I'm a former network guy who is learning web development. The amount of
software I've installed is kinda crazy compared to what I used with
networking. Everything I've used is free and crazy high quality, I haven't
felt like I'm missing anything. In the networking world it is a lot of custom
software and proprietary software. There are free options for some things but
they're not nearly as polished or fully functional out of the gate.

------
ImaCake
I think this misses the point. A resource like GitHub shouldn't just be used
by the underpriviliged to score a better paying job. It should be used by
underpriviliged groups to gain access to the tools and knowledge that rich
groups take for granted. Then the underpriviliged can build their own system
without simply buying into the existing systems.

This is the same argument we make against closed access research papers. The
goal isn't to make it easier to hire poor people. The goal is to give poor
people knowledge and resources so they can build themselves up.

------
satysin
I like platforms like GitHub as it makes it easy to have a public portfolio of
your work. Not that there is anything wrong with not having a portfolio but it
certainly makes life easier when trying to show clients/employers your skill
set.

Pretty much all designers have some kind of public portfolio such as a website
with example of their previous work. I see GitHub as a centralised (and, for
the most part, respected) place to put your work for developers, even if you
don't want to use it for collaboration but simply as an advertising platform.

However it does lead to the same kind of problem you get with employers not
looking at a candidate who doesn't have a LinkedIn profile. You will
inevitably miss out of some excellent people who don't wish to/can't use such
a platform.

~~~
aitrean
Design work is extremely different from developer work. Design work is usually
publicly available, and each piece often stands on its own. Paid developer
work is usually not publicly visible, and a lot of projects require working
with teams. The type of work that goes on a Github profile, therefore, is
usually unpaid work where you get to create your own project, and pick your
own codebase. In this sense, you're comparing apples to oranges.

------
reidrac
For me, having some open source on GitHub, bitbucket and launchpad, has been
useful in few job interviews because it kind of helped to avoid the "coding
exercise" and it was a good data point to prove I know how to use git and good
development practices.

But that wasn't the main driver for me working on open source. I think it is a
nice side effect, but it shouldn't be a requirement; and definitely GH is not
your CV (specially when there's so much open source _not_ in GH!).

That said, when I've been in a position that I could influence the hiring
policy, I gave value to open source contributions because it did align with
the ethos of the company.

I guess it may not be important depending on who's hiring, but it is always
useful if it is there and what you see is good stuff.

------
KirinDave
> Because open-source is good at cutting through the bullshit, it also makes
> it an equalizer.

That's one heck of a premise.

~~~
ahartmetz
You mean open source doesn't cut through the bullshit? It totally does. People
can put anything on their resume and sometimes bullshit their way through
questions trying to figure out whether they've actually done these things. If
all else fails, they can claim trade secrets.

Open source contributions can't be faked (except by real name collision), and
in any case, there is much more detail available than a few lines or bullet
points in a resume.

~~~
KirinDave
> People can put anything on their resume and sometimes bullshit their way
> through questions trying to figure out whether they've actually done these
> things. If all else fails, they can claim trade secrets.

They can perform similar tactics on github: like mirroring an obscure but
technically in-depth project without attribution, paying someone to write code
and then committing it in your name (I've seen this done!), or making sure to
get lots of extra commit density by doing one feature or bugfix after
successfully landing a series of reformatting PRs.

An applicant planning to fake their way past you is genuinely hard to catch
unless your process is tuned for it. The idea that there is a one-size-fits
all interview process and that process is as simple as, "Check their github"
is lazy to the point of malpractice. It's a goofy premise, and it's playing
right into the hand of people who want to abuse you.

And this is just addressing the problematic nature of modern tooling for
_positive_ signals. Given the pervasive nature of harassment culture in the
open source world, you should ALWAYS excuse the absence of open source work.
It cannot be a requirement because the open source world can often become
extremely hostile and/or political.

------
tranchms
“For example, it's hard for me as an individual Muslim to change the fact that
some people hate Muslims, so it's better for me to focus my energy on things
that I can control. This, however, doesn't mean that as a society we shouldn't
discuss issues of discrimination.“

Whoa.

------
trjordan
Thinking about Github-as-resume as strictly positive or uselessly noisy
probably means you have an overly simplistic model for evaluating candidates.

I'll share a model that's worked for me in the past. Before you even write the
job description, define the 3-7 traits you need to hire against. These can be
as fuzzy as "gets shit done" or as specific as "5+ years marketing SaaS to
$100k+ accounts" or "is effective at resolving incidents while on-call." You
need to be able to rate people on this. Binary is fine ("yes they can get shit
done"). 3-4 levels is good (bad / good / total superstar).

Don't go overboard with granularity: you need to fit this all in your head for
a couple candidates at a time when you compare them. As you go through your
process, try to get good information about at least one of these areas at each
step.

My favorite thing to do is, between in-person interviews, be able to tee up
the next interviewer with "I got mixed signals about communication style. Can
you dig in?" When you wrap up, make sure you cover all the boxes. Don't get
smitten with a candidate with amazing experience who can code circles around
everybody else who's never worked in a 25+ person team (assuming that's what
you agreed was important). When you're ready to make a decision, you now have
a reasonable set of trade-offs to make. I tend to create rubrics where solid
scores in 3 of 5 categories is a Hire, to allow us to compare different types
of candidates.

Ok, back to GitHub.

GitHub can give you VERY STRONG SIGNALS for some of these issues. It's great
to be able to know up-front that somebody is comfortable working with teams
they don't personally know well (typical in big open-source projects). The
convese to that is that I generally expect some strong signal up front from
any candidate. If not GitHub, give me a respected company on your resume. A
recommendation from a mutual friend. A well-written cover letter. When folks
complain about 100s of resumes, it's because the problem is this lack of
signal.

An aside: it's on you to allow folks with non-traditional backgrounds to
succeed at this step. Write a better job req, or go email likely candidates.
Diversity requires multiple ways in. Once you're a bit further, this cuts the
other way. If "good communication in pull requests" is important to you, don't
spend any time here with candidates who have strong Githubs.

You already have all the data you need. Spend your time elsewhere. There is no
extra credit. GitHub can help you a bunch when evaluating candidates, but it's
crucial to stay away from this notion that _anything_ during an evaluation
that looks like a silver bullet. You always have to do the work of
interviewing well, and it's always specific to your company.

Finally: if you have a process that allows you to fully evaluate a candidate
by reading their public GitHub, you're almost certainly hiring for the wrong
things.

------
smonff
Also, what about Stack Exchange profiles?

~~~
JanisL
Speaking as someone who has been on there and posted a substantial number of
answers I think the correlation between professional development skills is
much stronger with open source contributions than "points" on a QA board.

------
pmorici
This title feels like political click-bait. The first two paragraphs describe
what most people would consider a privileged background and the core of the
post goes on to discuss the merit of using GitHub as a hiring signal. What the
author is really describing is how GitHub can be a way to get your foot in a
door or stand out from the crowd where you otherwise don't have any social
connections.

------
realSlavojTrump
There's evidence in the literature that shows that there are systemic biases
against women in github pull requests, even when in the aggregate women may
display greater levels of competence.
[https://peerj.com/articles/cs-111/](https://peerj.com/articles/cs-111/)

To suggest that pull requests are a good hiring signal (as the author does in
explicitly endorsing the "screening" of open source maintainers) ignores this
bias. That can be positive or negative, depending on your commitment to
diversity in our field.

~~~
janeroe
> systemic biases against women in github pull requests

Did you read your link?

> The hypothesis is not only false, but it is in the opposite direction than
> expected; women tend to have their pull requests accepted at a higher rate
> than men! This difference is statistically significant

~~~
detaro
... unless they can be easily identified as women from their profile, at which
point their acceptance rate drops.

~~~
tziki
The acceptance rate of both men and women dropped if they were identifiable as
men or women. The study doesn't make any attempts to explain this.

~~~
detaro
Yes, and the one of women drops below the one of men, and that's clearly what
the initial reference to the paper was talking about.

~~~
tziki
But only in the case of 'outsiders'. In the case of 'insiders' the acceptance
rate of men drops more than that of women when their gender is known (no
p-value provided so hard to tell if statistically significant).

~~~
realSlavojTrump
A person trying to use github as a hiring signal is going to be an outsider at
some point.

