

GitHub is not your new résumé - thinkingserious
http://www.brandonmwest.com/development/2013/08/22/github-is-not-your-new-resume.html

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hackula1
The one beef I have with the "my github page is my resume" meme is that many
developers work in spaces where they do not have the ability to work with open
source much. I personally have years of work checked into github in private
repos, and if I showed it to a potential employer I could be sued into
oblivion. Many of us work on very sensitive systems with loads of legal walls
around them. Sure, I contribute to OSS in my spare time, but my public github
profile is not even close to a fair representation of my professional work.

~~~
WestCoastJustin
What is the actual beef though? That you are at a perceived disadvantage to
someone who has a public profile?

~~~
ctdonath
Beef?

"Show me your work."

"I can't, it's owned by other companies."

"No job then. There's the door."

And so someone who wrote a million dollars worth of software (actually got
paid for) gets beat to a job by someone whose work nobody will pay for.

Yeah, beef.

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rip747
`And code on GitHub gives no insight into how someone might fit into a company
culture.`

github does give you this insight if you look at how the person participates
in discussions in the issue tracker and code reviews. remember github's old
moto, social coding? i think the author is hung up on the coding part and
missing the social part.

~~~
posabsolute
I agree, if the person has a public repo with a bit of momentum you can even
see how he manage his open source project with the community...

This is much more valuable than any list of company you work for.

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smallsharptools
This is a rant. They must not have much worth sharing on GitHub.

These days if I interviewed 2 developers and one had a very nice resume full
of recommendations and stories about successful projects and the other
developer had an active GitHub account with their own active projects with
many watching them as well as multiple accepted Pull Requests for other
projects... I would easily lean toward the developer who has been actively
writing code, sharing and interacting with other developers. It shows they
have passion, drive, dedication and an eagerness to learn from others and
contribute back to the community.

A fancy resume cannot replace all of that.

~~~
adeaver
> It shows they have passion, drive, dedication and an eagerness to learn from
> others

No, all it shows is that they wrote some code and put it on a website.

The developer that has just a resume might be just as (or more) skilled that
the one that uses github but for whatever reason can't post code up like that.
To exclude someone simply because they don't have an active github is foolish.

However did you screen, interview, and hire people before github came along?

~~~
codyb
As someone currently looking for an entry level position in development work I
agree with this. Currently I'm learning about cryptography and web security.
There's not a lot of development work from that I can put on my github
account. Especially since Matasano's Cryptography challenges which I've been
slowly working through don't allow me to publicly display the challenges or my
results. Does that mean I don't have as much drive as someone who's working on
machine learning currently and can write a library and post it on github?

~~~
smallsharptools
Getting active on GitHub was important to me after interviewing last year at a
couple of great places. I learned I was out of sync with the developers I
wanted to work with. So I got more active on GitHub by sharing code I created
which I thought was useful to others. And when I used other libraries I looked
for ways I could improve on them and managed to get some Pull Requests
accepted. There were lots of benefits. One great benefit is regularly reading
code written by developers with more experience than you. And if you form
relationships with these same developers and they start coaching through
changes on their projects you can accelerate your learning. This work csn even
lead to a job. Being active on GitHub is a distinct advantage for sure.

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VincentEvans
A few internet-years ago the same was said about having a blog. And then there
was a tidal wave of low SNR blogs created by developers employed by offshoring
companies looking for an edge. If this article gets traction - github will
likely see the same. Be careful what you wish for.

To be honest, from my own modest mountaintop of being 35, (gainfully employed
and programming since 14 somewhere in the depths of your typical enterprise) I
suddenly find myself repeating the words of others from long ago when I first
started in the field (though now I can relate) - look at this as yet another
fad: same as those blogs, same as the linkedins and twitters...

I'd like to volunteer that I, though not having contributed to any open source
projects, nor published any of the code that I have worked on (it obviously
being proprietary to the company I work for), nor having any interest to blog
my many unremarkable opinions along with already overbearing gaggle of
"experts" \- still, am not entirely uninterested and apathetic towards
programming, nor devoid of useful engineering skill and reliable experience
accumulated over lengthy career. But you won't believe me.

~~~
VincentEvans
By the way - for a bunch of self-proclaimed introverted geeks and nerds, you
lot sure advocate a lot of "social media" sharing.

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imsofuture
Github is absolutely replacing resumes. It doesn't replace an interview, which
is what the author seems to be getting at despite the title of their
article...

~~~
uxp
That's my take on it as well.

A resume or CV is a piece of paper to get your name on someone's desk, then
you get hired by passing the interview. Github is just another way of getting
(or keeping) your name on someone's desk.

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nicholassmith
I've done a couple of interviews recently for a C++ developer role, none had
GitHub pages. It didn't negatively effect them, they were rated on their
strengths from their CV's, interview and a take home programming task but I'd
have loved to have seen at least one repo of work.

You don't necessarily need to be using GitHub to produce OSS to the level of
something like Rails, but even a micro library would have awesome. It gives
you just a little bit more data to look at when you're considering options.

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jseip
Unless I wrote my resume in html and css and hosted it using Github pages,
which I did. #winning

~~~
proggR
I also did that and I got a job with it too. Fancy that.

~~~
luuse
Any chance either of you could link? I've done it too but i was never
completely happy with the result and it would be nice to see how other people
have done it for some inspiration.

~~~
smallsharptools
[http://brennanmke.github.io/Portfolio/](http://brennanmke.github.io/Portfolio/)

I created a basic portfolio to share on GitHub. I'd like to see more
developers do that. It's quite easy to do with markdown and GitHub Pages.

~~~
luuse
Yeah, i prefer that approach but i find that a lot of recruiters still insist
on a resume despite having linkedin. Thanks for the link and inspiration
though!

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brianmcc
I find resumes pretty efficient - I can look them over, and make a snap
judgement wrt which ones are worth a phone screen, which aren't. Over many
years of doing this, I find a good correlation between first impression and
subsequent candidate quality (meaning, I've had to interview folks where the
resume screamed "no hire"). Stuff like coherent formatting, brief narrative
and concise, useful explanations of roles and technologies are, believe it or
not, quite beyond some people.

The thought of trawling someone's repo instead, having to take the time to get
an in depth evaluation of what the code's doing and whether that's effective
makes me shudder. But then perhaps people doing this just make a first
impression of the code, rather than a deep understanding?

Honestly I can see a GitHub being a "nice to have", but certainly not the main
deal.

Out of interest, anyone else that's been hiring in the UK seeing any traction
with GitHub? I'm in a pretty enterprisey space, and past clutch of CVs we've
had haven't so much as mentioned it.

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dblock
For reference, here's my article claiming the opposite:
[http://code.dblock.org/github-is-your-new-
resume](http://code.dblock.org/github-is-your-new-resume)

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LordHumungous
>A resume and a GitHub account provide different kinds of quantitative data.
Replacing one with the other means you’re throwing out good information. They
complement each other and work best together, like hot fudge and ice cream.

He's constructing a bit of a straw man here. I haven't heard anyone suggest
that traditional resumes should be completely abandoned, or that a Github
account should be the _only_ factor when hiring a developer.

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qwerta
Github is totally replacing resume. But resumes will always be necessary to
scale-up career beyond code-monkey to consulting and semi-management roles.

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dsowers
This is why I'm incorporating a bio page into the Silvrback blogging platform.
There needs to be something better than linkedIn and Github for showing
work/accomplishments. Especially if your interests are diverse. My example bio
page:
[https://www.silvrback.com/dsowers/bio](https://www.silvrback.com/dsowers/bio)

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7Figures2Commas
Given how often resumes are given little more than cursory review (keyword
scanning, etc.), I wonder how many companies using GitHub as a screening tool
actually take the time to thoroughly review the candidate's work.

Everybody talks about code, but software is about more than code. When looking
at a candidate's GitHub repo, is any consideration given to the quality of
documentation, if it even exists (which it often doesn't), and how easily a
project can be built and used? How many employers actually build and use a
candidate's software? Some developers write gorgeous code but gorgeous code !=
great, usable software.

