
Github is Your New Resume - dblock
http://code.dblock.org/ShowPost.aspx?id=232
======
mechanical_fish
I don't want to take the time to build it, so here's a silly programming
project for an afternoon:

Build a bot that can simulate an open source genius via a classic academic
technique: Plagiarism.

The algorithm:

Use Github's API and/or Google to find some popular repos.

Fork those repos into a new Github account named (e.g.) "Nicolai".

For each repo, find some other forks of that repo. Grab some branch names and
commits from those forks and commit them to Nicolai's fork, under Nicolai's
name and with a few Nicolai-specific changes here and there, to commit
messages and perhaps to code comments, to obscure the trail. Sprinkle in some
choice text from, e.g., Zippy the Pinhead, the Tao te Ching, random comments
from Stack Overflow or Lambda the Ultimate... whatever.

Scoring:

For every recruiter who emails Nicolai with an opportunity: one point.

For every interview that Nicolai gets offered: ten points.

For every job offer that Nicolai gets: one thousand points.

~~~
marakfires
I fail to see how that is any different from someone lying on their resume.

If the hiring manager is too stupid to be able to detect the person is lying
about their skill level after a 15 minute conversation, caveat emptor.

~~~
evilduck
Lying on your resume is an explicit attempt to deceive a prospective employer.

Lying on Github (and then presumably not using it on an actual job
application), you're only fooling those who are willing to be fooled.

If someone is going to scrape data off the web about people and evaluate it
for prospective candidates, the burden of separating the signal from the noise
is on them, the internet is full of bullshit. You're obviously mucking with
their process, but you didn't ask to be included in it either. No different
than assuming all the content on blogs isn't plagiarized and then trying to
use that to proposition people to be authors.

------
jashmenn
I recently interviewed at a Fortune 100 company's new "Innovation" group. I
pointed them to the various projects I have on Github as examples of my work.
They reviewed it and liked what they saw.

However, my interviewer told me "we've seen your code on Github. It's great,
but just so you know, you won't be able to keep that up if you work here."

I asked more about what he meant by this and he told me that the company is
extremely secretive and would not allow me to post any code to Github. Some
other developers had already been told to take down some (very general, non-
proprietary) code they had posted to Github.

What came out is that my public work on Github helped me _get_ an offer but I
wasn't going to be able to contribute any new code during my years at this
company.

I certainly don't want a three-year blank spot in my public code "resume", so
I turned down the offer.

This is a bit of the tangent from the OP's point, but I think its related:
Companies need to realize that the benefit of allowing employees to contribute
to open-source isn't merely getting the community to work or review your
team's code, but rather, open-source is a marketing and recruiting tool.

Say you let your employees create and maintain open-source software. Say it is
successful and other people start using that software. If it used widely
enough, your employees are asked to speak at meetups and conferences and say
"Look at this great software I built while working at company X. Company X is
so cool, come work here!" (and every contributor to the project becomes a
potential employee who will already know a portion of your code.)

tl;dr - Companies: allow your employees to freely work on open-source and it
will improve your recruiting.

~~~
kenjackson
_Companies: allow your employees to freely work on open-source and it will
improve your recruiting._

Apple barely lets their employees blog even, and last I checked they're doing
OK by all counts.

Unfortunately, the intersection for people who are passionate about their 9to5
work and those that are passionate about their side-project seems to actually
be fairly small.

~~~
jashmenn
So I agree with you in the case of Apple. But let's dissect for a minute why
this is the case.

Apple can be incredibly secretive and still hire with no problems because

1) they are literally creating world-changing products and people want to be
involved with that

2) they have a reputation for hiring extremely bright people. If you take a
job at Apple you will interact with them (/ be one of them)

But outside of the big technology names (msft, google, fb, etc.) there's a
huge collection of companies where either a) the brand is known but the
company isn't know for being an innovative place in the hacker community or b)
the company isn't known and neither is the team.

In both of type (a) and (b) companies you hear a lot of moaning from managers
right now about how they can't find any good folks to hire.

So I'll qualify my advice a little bit: _If_ you find you're having a hard
time finding "rockstar-ninja-l88t programmers" by posting to Monster.com,
maybe consider that you're approaching hiring in the wrong way.

------
cletus
What about:

\- those that use different VCSs?

\- people who don't have the time (due to their job or other circumstances) to
work on things they can open source?

\- people who work at companies that essentially own everything they might do
so you can't work on open source? and

\- companies where hiring goes through HR who won't know what the hell Github
is?

Having work on Github is probably a good idea for college students and recent
grads but once people are employed it's value drops off significantly (IMHO).
From a hiring perspective, you're also greatly limited your field of
candidates if you only look at Github profiles.

~~~
swanson
Regarding different VCSs, the point is that code is the new resume and Github
happens to be the most popular place to find it. Links to bitbucket,
sourceforge, google code, etc etc are all equally valuable and would have the
same impact.

Personal time commitments are understandable, but I feel like they are just an
excuse in 90% of the cases. As 37signals puts it, "No time is no excuse". If
you are serious about improving your abilities and buy into the craftmanship
model at all, you can surely find a few hours of month to work on something,
anything. Trade an hour of TV watching for an hour of writing your own blog
engine or a Todo list app. Or write something to improve some small bit of
your life (a program that emails you once a month to remind you to take your
SO out for a nice dinner), put that on github. Don't make it out like you have
to write the next Rails or jQuery to put code online.

The rest of your issues are largely related to workplace culture.

If you work at a company that uses any open source code (and I know there are
some cases that don't due to federal validation and redtape etc etc), you have
probably found a bug at some point. Put in an issue on github - send a pull
request if you feel ambitious or if you had to monkeypatch the code for your
project anyways. I have a feeling that people that work for closed/IP-hungry
companies will go to the same kind of company when they change jobs. And that
is fine, for some people software is just a job; but those are not the kind of
people that read HN or software blogs anyways.

I know you are probably playing devil's advocate here, but every time someone
posts about why developers should have side projects or github accounts, these
points all get brought up and it bugs me.

~~~
econgeeker
You're expressing a prejudice here and advocating discrimination based on it.
It seems ideological. You're saying "Don't hire people if they don't
contribute to open source projects." You _assume_ they are watching TV, rather
than, say, working on an iOS game that they are selling.

Resumes are for deciding who you're going to interview. If github is the new
resume, then you're not going to know about the side projects.

~~~
swanson
I don't want to turn this into a game of forum post logical proofs.

I don't advocate "don't hire if no OSS". I work with smart people that get
stuff done and don't have a Github account. That's fine, it's a personal
choice how you use your time.

What rubs me the wrong way is when people say "It's unfair to look at Github
as the new resume because I don't have enough time to do open source". Like I
said originally, I'm sure someone is going to come along and post about how
every hour of their day is being used for meaningful activities, but for the
majority of people _I_ don't think that's true.

~~~
econgeeker
People are very different. It takes all kinds. The kind of hacker you are, is
not the only kind of hacker there is. There can be very bright, excellent
engineers, who spend their entire off-duty time watching TV. They don't have a
duty to contribute to open source software and choosing not to does not tell
you anything about their skills as an engineer.

I remember once a new coworker telling me -- on his first day, no less- that
he didn't have a computer at home. He was proud of this. He was a new CS
graduate, and for him, computers were not an interest, at all. It was just a
job. I asked him what he was into, and it was sports, naturally.

I didn't like that, it rubbed me the wrong way. I probably would have given
him the thumbs down if I'd been in the hiring loop then.

Turned out he was a good engineer. Better than that, the sport he was into was
one I got into as well and we spent a fair bit of time over the years in our
off hours far away from any computers.

~~~
asreal
Let me guess - Brazilian Jujitsu.

------
mtviewdave
A big problem with github-as-resume for the experienced developer is that it
destroys the idea of side-projects as play. I can no longer just fool around
with something for the sake of fooling around with it. I now have to judge
whether my “fool-around” project is good enough to go on github and be
evaluated by potential hiring managers. And if not, I need to ask why I’m
working on it, rather than working on something that I’d want a hiring manager
to see.

Moreover, everything I put out there now needs to be of professional quality,
including comments, code organization, adherence to conventions, etc. And from
the beginning, because hiring manager might look at logs and frown upon the
fact that I inserted a bunch of comments, and cleaned up a much of memory
leaks, two days before I applied for the job.

For a side-project in a technology that I use at the office, this basically
makes side projects the same as work. Which is going to lead to burnout really
fast.

For a side-project in a new technology, I’d be much less inclined to take my
time to learn something new. My first few attempts at writing something in a
programming language I’m learning are invariably something I don’t want anyone
else to see. But again, why would I take time to work on something that I
can’t put on github, if that’s how I’m being judged?

~~~
orangecat
Excellent points. If github-as-resume becomes commonplace, we can expect to
see lots of methods for gaming it, as Goodhart's law would predict:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodharts_law>.

------
econgeeker
One of the key motivators that made me start my own company was this kind of
nonsense. Poor managers, having made bad hiring decisions, are always looking
for some way to short circuit the process. The entire recruiting agency
industry exists for this very purpose (and look how little they know about
engineering!)

This does provide a very useful feature for confident, quality engineers:
Whenever someone asks for your github ID as part of the hiring process, you
can say "Next!"

Seriously, you're an engineer. You can be choosy. And signs of pointy-haired
boss syndrome are a good way to choose.

This is one of them.

The correct way to interview someone is to have a stakeholder in the business,
who is a competent engineer, look thru the resumes, pick the ones they want to
meet with, and bring them in. Talk to them, one on one, for about 30 minutes.
(You should know after about 5 minutes, but you want to give them more time so
they don't feel like they're being brushed off if you aren't willing to give
them the job right then and there. Also, be ready to make an offer, or tell
them you'll be making an offer, right then and there.)

If your startup doesn't have a stakeholder in the business whose competent
enough to do this, then you still need your technical cofounder. Your
technical cofounder cannot be "too busy" to interview engineers.

~~~
llimllib
Frankly, I think you're out of your mind.

You should hire people based on absolutely as much useful information as you
can ethically get your hands on. Why waste the information in a person's
github profile?

Resumes suck, and are damned near useless. Bringing people in based on resumes
wastes your lead engineer's time because the % hit rate on them will be very
low. You will, at the very least, need to phone screen somebody that you only
know from a resume, a process which takes a surprising amount of time.

Talking to people is totally useful, and necessary, but not sufficient. It's
prone to passing bullshitters (esp since you have your best _technical_ person
interviewing) and useless smart people (who don't get shit done), and to
failing good employees who don't speak well or are having a bad hair/brain day
or are very nervous.

When you go to hire, use all the information you can. Look at their github,
interview, have the person write code, have lunch with them to see if they get
along with the team. Don't fail them for missing any one part of the
interview, but take it all into account.

Especially in a small team, you're making an decision with an enormous impact
on the future of your company which is difficult and painful to undo. Don't
waste any information.

~~~
econgeeker
I find it interesting that you presume the hit rate on bringing people in
based on resumes would be very low. I can tell a good engineer from a bad one,
pretty well, using resumes.

Phone screens, however are a waste of time. It is difficult to establish
rapport with someone over the phone, for both parties, and I've seen some
people actually ask programming questions over the phone.

One very good engineer I hired, back before I was running my own show, did
terrible on the phone screen.

I brought her in, though, because I saw something in the resume. She's asian
and had a real problem talking on the phone, but eventually got the job and
was great.

You are making a decision with an enormous impact. Therefore, it is critical
that you do it based on a truthful assessment of the candidate-- not
ideological prejudice.

~~~
tjr
I once was given a phone interview because a friend of mine knew the hiring
manager. The manager really didn't want to waste time with me, he said,
because I had just graduated from school, and thus I couldn't possibly be
useful to him.

But at my friend's insisting, he gave me the interview, and summarily
dismissed me.

A few weeks later the manager was fired from the company for some sort of
unprofessional behavior, and replaced by someone who had just graduated from
school.

~~~
econgeeker
I'm not sure the point you're making, but I should have said "phone
interviews, _at least for me_ , are a waste of time."

I would have brought you in face to face... a recommendation from someone
already working there is a very valid positive signal.

------
tzs
There are two issues with this.

1\. It excludes developers who have managed to find jobs that are sufficiently
challenging, difficult, and interesting that their jobs keep them fully
occupied, and so they simply do not have the time or energy left over to
contribute to a bunch of open stuff on Github.

2\. What happens after you hire someone? Do you have any policy to ensure that
the job won't take too much of their time, or won't be too challenging and
interesting, so as to leave them the time and energy to continue working on
various open stuff on Github?

~~~
lowglow
I love Github, but I certainly must agree with point number 1. I work as a CTO
at a start-up here in SF full-time (which means, 8am-2am). We have to a lot of
developers and designers around the world which means when I'm not coding,
chances are I'm managing. This leaves me very little time to contribute to my
own personal projects, much less open source projects.

I'd say that using Github as a resume is a great idea for Jr. Developers and
students looking to get some "cred" in the real world. But that really just
refers back to knowing your industry and being professional about your work.

~~~
dblock
Everyone missed the part where I found myself contributing to several open-
source projects, naturally.

Here's an example: we use this gem called "analytical". Its configuration
didn't support test vs. dev vs. production. I could have hacked on top of it -
it would have added some gross code to my project. Instead I changed the
original - turned out to be less code overall and didn't pollute anything in
my work project. My pull request
(<https://github.com/jkrall/analytical/pull/17>) still hasn't been accepted,
but we use the fork.

I just think that the reason you're not contributing to OS is not time, it's
that you choose to design within the box.

~~~
rreeves
Interesting considering he works from 8am-2am. How on earth do you come to the
conclusion he's not contributing to OS because he chooses to design within the
box?

------
unshift
this may be true in startup land, where hires are evaluated by the
engineers/managers/founders but it's absolutely not the case in the world of
BigCorps. many recruiters (including internal ones) are less technical than
anyone would like and have to operate on looking at key words in a resume
before deciding what to pass along to managers. a github account with a bunch
of code in it would be so confusing they'd just move on.

if you're looking for work, it's worth knowing how to put together a good
resume just so it gets you by the HR department.

i've also had experience where i was required to write (non trivial) sample
code with my application, only to find out months after i started the job that
nobody even looked at it.

code samples and projects are great to have, and especially helpful if someone
cares, but the resume isn't dead yet.

~~~
galenward
Maybe a better title would be "Github is Your new Resume... At Progressive
Companies With Strong Engineering Organizations."

I think Daniel nailed it.

~~~
dblock
Thank you. I wasn't writing about dinosaurs :)

------
programminggeek
I like the idea of GitHub as a resume, but most of the code I drop in GitHub
is closed source and I don't spend a lot of free time hacking on other
people's projects. So, while a GitHub resume is a great idea if you do a lot
of open source hacking, it is not nearly as useful if you are working on
private code.

~~~
gaius
Yeah. I mean, accountants and lawyers don't publish accounts and cases they've
worked on pro-bono do they?

~~~
almightygod
not yet but I think as far as making use of the web, devs are on the early
start of a trend. Think about blogs, they were widely used in the tech
community before mass adoption, now my mom even has one. I suspect you will
find more and more industries figuring out ways to share their professional
experience online

------
mtogo
_So do yourself a favor and move to Github!_

How, exactly, would i be doing myself a favor with this? I'm not such a big
fan of git and i avoid github on moral grounds[1]. Other code hosting services
work great for me and i see no reason to switch both my hosting and my VCS.

I don't disagree with the argument that your code should act as your resume,
but it could have been worded a lot better.

[1] I can't in good conscience support the guy who posts things like this
routinely: [http://dev.pocoo.org/~blackbird/github-vs-
bitbucket/bitbucke...](http://dev.pocoo.org/~blackbird/github-vs-
bitbucket/bitbucket.html) and <http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/>

~~~
eropple
Wooooow. I already wasn't a fan of Git or Github, but those links are
vomitous.

"Waah, they copied us!" Maybe. "PLAGIARISM!" Not so much.

------
Loic
No, github is not your new resume. Remember the post from Marco? You need to
own your identity[1]. You do not own your github account.

If you really want to show that you are a good coder, you need your own
website as a central point with aggregation of your information from other
sources. Github is really nice, but in 5 years, they may have sold themselves
to BigCorp for BigMoney and the BigCorp could completely destroy github.

Be it github or the next "cool company", do yourself a favour, build your own
site at the centre. Of course, you can open source the code on github or the
next cool git/svn/hg hosting company too. Double win.

[1]: <http://www.marco.org/2011/07/11/own-your-identity>

------
courtewing
Along these lines, David Coallier created a tool to generate your github
"résumé" awhile back: <http://resume.github.com/>

As unshift mentioned, the entire development community is not quite at the
point where a github account can be used as your go-to résumé, but it is
certainly becoming more and more useful in the job market.

~~~
dblock
cool, thanks for mentioning resume, I've never seen it!

------
wladh
While this works for freelancers/students/startupers, it doesn't work very
well for people working in bigger companies. If your interests are related to
your day job, I think it's quite risky to put your code on GitHub, even if the
code is not "official". While I do have a GitHub account with some code in it,
that code is not really representative. If having a relevant GitHub account
becomes a pre-requisite, you may be overlooking some good people.

~~~
technomancy
> you may be overlooking some good people.

Every heuristic overlooks good people.

This heuristic has the advantage of having next to no false positives, even
though it allows for lots of false negatives. Given that false positives are
absolutely disastrous while false negatives are merely unfortunate, it's a
trade-off I'm happy to make.

~~~
wladh
I guess the majority of repos are either bigger and useful open source
projects or just small toys. If you're looking at somebody with repos from the
first category, most likely his resume will mention "author/ contributor to
project X". For the people in the second category, only thing you'd infer is
that they can somewhat code. Which you could assume as well if they worked on
any delivered project. There are obviously exceptions in both cases.

------
lucian1900
GitHub in particular is problematic for those of us that don't particularly
use Git, and use other hosts for their code.

Something like ohloh is much better suited to being a CV.

~~~
stevelosh
If you're using Mercurial instead of Git you can create a mirror on GitHub
with little effort (unless you're doing something pretty crazy with your DAG):
[http://hgtip.com/tips/advanced/2009-11-09-create-a-git-
mirro...](http://hgtip.com/tips/advanced/2009-11-09-create-a-git-mirror/)

This also lets git users contribute to your project, so you get the benefit of
GitHub's community without having to deal with git.

~~~
eropple
Interesting, but this doesn't address the other problem--I fundamentally
dislike Github! (I use Bitbucket because of consistently stellar support from
Atlassian and an overall pleasant working experience.) And going outside my
current, working ecosystem for benefits I consider dubious at best--the
overwhelming majority of open-source projects get no outside commits, ever,
and magic Github pixie dust doesn't really change that--isn't really a good
use of time.

For me, Git and Github are both problems with this "GitHub's your resume"
thing, not one or the other.

~~~
enjalot
I'm sure a bucket full of your source code on bitbucket will serve the same
purpose when interviewing. I'm on the job hunt and in interviewing with some
YC startups we haven't really gotten to my github, since they more were
interested in some of the closed-source projects I've done at other jobs. I
think the overall point of the article is to be able to show people you can
code rather than just list it as a bullet point in a document.

~~~
eropple
The assumption, however, that everyone uses Github results in processes having
a dependency on Github. Which is stupid.

~~~
eru
We use github, but have a fallback server.

~~~
eropple
Sorry--I meant social processes. If the mindset is that "Github is your
resume," then the focus is that _Github_ is your resume, and the line of
thinking goes, so to speak, "if it's not on Github, they don't have it." Which
is not good.

While social networking makes sense to have a single central location makes
sense (but not totally so, see G+ v. Facebook), writing code does not.

------
krobertson
I recently started a new job and their recruiter found me through my Github
profile. Aside from that, I put my Github link on my CV and have for a while.

Additionally, when I am interviewing others, I always like to see a Github
link or will Google them to find a Github account. Even though people may work
a lot in closed source, it is interesting to see the activity history, to see
which projects they've forked, patched, written, or contributed to.

It sometimes varies based on the community you're in, but the Ruby community
is very collaborative and sharing contributions. Even when I've worked in
largely closed source codebases, I'll still encounter bugs in other libraries,
fork them, fix it, and send a pull request. Those all show in my repo list and
activity feed.

------
NathanKP
I don't use a public Github because my interesting code often isn't something
I want to share with the public, particularly if it happens to include AWS
credentials, API keys to various services, etc. All my most interesting sites
have been money making endeavors as well, so I don't see any reason to give
away the source code, or share it with the public. I do share the URL of the
finished product, though, and that has been enough to land me quite a number
of job offers, including the one that led to the startup position I am filling
right now.

I've never made a traditional resume, and I've never made my code publicly
accessible on Github but I've gotten along fine.

~~~
mattdeboard
You should really be factoring out sensitive information from your repos
anyway.

------
theblueadept111
"Your first job should be at an organization that embraces open-source and
lets you contribute to existing projects. Other companies simply don’t deserve
you."

Oh, I had to laugh at that. Good luck explaining that one to the wife. I'm
sorry honey, the pay way great, the benefits were good, there was an excellent
health plan and even a stock buy-in option.... if ONLY they had agreed to
embrace open source so I could work there.

~~~
dblock
You're implying that a company that encourages open-source contributions sucks
at pay, benefits, health plan and stock. You should know that generally
startups, which by definition encourage more open-source contributions, have
comparable pay, benefits, health plans and stock after their first round of
financing. There's more risk in theory, but the numbers since the financial
crisis are against this theory.

------
jim_h
I wonder if programmers are going to overwork themselves at some point.

Judged by programming OUTSIDE of work time. Not having free time to do this is
not an excuse.

gf/bf/wife/husband/son/daughter/parents/dog/cat/friends/life will have to
understand that you need time for your craft.

I currently have time to do programming in my spare time, but I worry that in
a few years my time won't be as free.

~~~
walketim
What is wrong with only programming 10 hours a day?

~~~
jim_h
I was actually being sarcastic, except the first and last sentence. I should
have been more clear.

------
timruffles
If that was to become true, it'd be great to be able to curate your profile.
At the moment your repos appear in order of newness, and an unchanged fork of
someone's repo could be the first thing potential employers see.

------
Fixnum
> College and Personal Projects

At the risk of stating the obvious, I'd strongly recommend against putting
school projects in a public repo. You might disagree with the ethics of it,
but if someone submits your code to your own school, you could conceivably be
held responsible for facilitating plagiarism.

~~~
dblock
I am shocked. What kind of pojects are those? Does anyone believe that
students were waiting for this "internet" thing to share source?

------
shaggyfrog
At first I thought "No, LinkedIn is my New Resume."

But then I realized neither are. Because when a recruiter wants a resume, they
want to see a concise document that details exactly how your experience
matches their job requirements. Github can't be that because it would require
that (probably non-technical) recruiter to slog through a lot of stuff to get
to what they want to see. Which none of them will actually do.

------
mattdeboard
I put my stuff up on Github in part because I like being part of a community.
It also has the nice side effect that it shows that I'm intellectually curious
and like trying out new things. If someone is looking for a new hire with
those qualities, it'll be a big benefit.

If they're not I don't really want to work there to be honest.

------
arasraj
I certainly believe this to be a trend. I have been interviewing with
different startups and they all have seemed to respond more to my github page
than my resume. They all want to hear about personal projects and your thought
process through them. Maybe I'm biased towards startups though.

------
sjs
I use zerply. The name is terrible but I like their service and don't see
myself updating my "traditional" cv in the near future. That could change but
I'll resist it.

Might be a nice recruiter filter too. If you tell them you don't have a resume
and point them at your github or whatever else and it's not good enough you
probably dodged a bullet. If they are fine with it then perhaps you found the
proverbial needle in the haystack and could give the recruiter a chance.

------
qnm
Github[0] gives Junior developers another way to get an interview. Those with
minimal professional experience are able to show - to some degree - that they
can code, use a VCS and have an understanding of the push/pull/fork
contribution model. Bonus points for contributions, bug reports etc.

I don't believe it replaces one, but for those without a well-seasoned resume,
a Github profile works well as a conversation starter.

[0] Or any public VCS, of course.

------
Okvivi
Anything that can quickly prove you are awesome can be your resume. TopCoder,
your LinkedIn profile, the list of hacks and demos that you've put together
yourself, I think they all fit this category.

Did you create some awesome project on GitHub (or on any other CVS for that
matter)? Then you have something to show off.

But none of them in themselves will help you get hired. They will maybe help
you get to the interview.

------
pcote
Not in my experience. Most job boards are dominated by technical recruiters
so, to get in through them, you play by their rules.

In their world, web presence of projects almost never counts. The rationale is
that "anyone can point to my work and claim they did it." The preference for
assessment is still resume keywords, good references, and multiple choice
tests.

~~~
dblock
There's a huge trend of engineering managers to take things in control to
avoid this. Every time I had an HR person between me and a candidate they
managed to screw something up. Here're some better job boards.

<http://wearenytech.com/jobs> (New York based)
<http://careers.stackoverflow.com>

~~~
pcote
I'm liking this trend you speak of but it hasn't reached everywhere yet. I
live in the middle of Connecticut and there are 2 companies total that post
anything on the Stack Overflow boards. So, the reality of the situation would
seem to leave 3 options for people in my neighborhood.

1\. Play by the rules of the local recruiters. 2\. Telecommute. 3\. Move.

------
Aloisius
On a related note, you can actually add your github repo details to your
LinkedIn profile via their OpenSocial app. I have found it super useful when
looking at people.

[http://www.linkedin.com/opensocialInstallation/preview?_ch_p...](http://www.linkedin.com/opensocialInstallation/preview?_ch_panel_id=1&_applicationId=122233)

------
kgo
I had this crazy idea that I'd buy a vanity domain with my name in it. Use it
as my personal email, which is used an all kinds of technical newsgroups.
Setup a web page where I described myself, linked to various projects, source
code, etc. A site that has a better indication of my personality than github
ever would, and has some projects that will never go in github for various
reason.

After seeing the last one of these articles, I actually put a note on my
github site directing people to my primary site. Seems silly that I felt I had
to do this, but oh well.

It's also a shame that the last few patches I did, involving smartcard
hardware for gnupg, doesn't get me any bonus points, since that project, like
a majority of major projects, hosts its own version control. Not to mention, 9
times out of 10 when I open an issue on a github project, I hear nothing back,
making me really unmotivated to fork the project and fix something.

~~~
sc68cal
I did the reverse - had a vanity domain and all that stuff, then just tacked
my Github account onto it.

Also, why not find your patches from <http://git.gnupg.org> ?

------
wes-exp
You're not your Github account. You're not your Facebook account. You're not
the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your
f'ing open source project.

I don't espouse the negativity in Fight Club, but the quote that I've adapted
seems particularly relevant here.

"Facebook users 'are insecure, narcissistic and have low self-esteem'"
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1310230/Faceb...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1310230/Facebook-
users-narcissistic-insecure-low-self-esteem.html)

I consider Github sort of the developer equivalent of Facebook. Let me clarify
that. If you're posting stuff on Github just to impress recruiters and fellow
engineers, then it is. If you're using it in a constructive way, less so or
maybe not at all. The point I'm trying to make is that there are parallels
between the two.

Look. It's good to provide recruiters (by recruiter I mean a real engineer
here who is evaluating candidates) evidence that you're skilled. There are
many ways to do that. One way would be to bring in code and discuss it.
Another way would be to work through programming problems in the recruiter's
presence. I'm not talking about "a-ha" brain teasers but real, actual
programming. After all, that's what a programmer is (theoretically) being
hired to do.

But please do not encourage an arms race where programmers fall over each
other trying to see how much code they can post publicly, and how much work
they can give away.

I'm highly skilled and my time is precious. I don't spend it looking in front
of the (Github) mirror, and I actually charge money for it. Charity is a good
thing, but you shouldn't do it to boost your ego and image. And further, if
that's all you spend your time doing, I would wonder why you want to work in
private industry where the purpose is to make money so we can be employed. You
know, engineers at Apple might not have Github accounts, but they are employed
and support their families. Apple's work also lifts tons of people out of
poverty in China. How many people does your open source project feed?

You guys need to step off the ego train and direct your energy into stuff that
actually matters. And you will be happier for it.

~~~
dblock
I actually agree with a lot of stuff here. One should contribute to things
that are useful for your job or your future, not spend time polishing your
github resume.

------
sc68cal
I came to this conclusion a while ago and tossed Github Badge
(<http://drnic.github.com/github-badges/>) on my personal site.

~~~
almightygod
cool, similar to coderwall

~~~
sc68cal
Ah - I just gave coderwall a try this time. Github's authorization prompt is
much clearer now as to what I'm allowing access to.

------
freedrull
Its really only true for startups at this point. I've had plenty of interviews
with the interviewer scratching their head when I mention github.

~~~
prodigal_erik
I'd be fine working with devs who don't _use_ github, but very alarmed at the
prospect of working with anyone who _never heard_ of it (or bitbucket or
sourceforge). That betrays a striking ignorance of what's going on in the
profession. Actually it might be a decent litmus test, if you have the luxury
of avoiding navel-gazing employers.

------
beaker
I must be getting old, but this post strikes me as silly to the point of
seeming like a troll. If any hiring managers are seriously discarding
candidates that don't use github, well, I think the market will ultimately
dictate the utility of this shortcut.

------
pkrumins
Exactly what I said over a year ago
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1472985>

~~~
dblock
Ah, but you were waaay ahead of your time! Now someone else (me) stole your
thunder ;)

------
salsakran
If you're using this sort of approach, check out www.gitalytics.com, a site I
made to automate this sort of search when I was doing it.

------
walketim
No it's not. Github it's a shared repository tool.

