
At GitHub we hire "The Girl or Guy Who Wrote X" - blasdel
http://ozmm.org/posts/who_we_hire.html
======
maxklein
That's stupid. How many "x" are there in the world? It's just as easy to make
a successful company as it is to make a successful open source project. I once
wrote an open source CD burner component. It was challenging to do, I learnt a
lot, but nobody collaborated, and the people who used it only occasionally
wrote a thank you to me.

If I wanted it to be popular, I would have to go through an entire different
process - I'd have to pick something in an area that is already popular (like
rails), I'd have to maintain a blog, I'd have to have a persona, I'd have to
basically market the project.

Only then do I become the dude who wrote x. And my reward is to go work for a
tiny company? Would it not make more sense to just use that energy and found
my own company? Would I not learn a lot more in the process?

I use about 15 open source tools. In my world, there are perhaps 100 projects
that are somewhat important, and could possibly be used. So your pool of
candidates reduces to 100?

~~~
jimbokun
"So your pool of candidates reduces to 100?"

Inherent in this question seems to be the idea of posting a job somewhere, see
who applies, then use a filter of "author of open source project we use."

My take was more that they look at the open source software they like and use,
then go out and try to charm, bribe, seduce and otherwise persuade the authors
into working for them.

I don't know how many employees GitHub has, but if it is in the < 10 range and
they are only looking to add 1 employee at any given time, and are willing to
stand pat if they don't find an ideal candidate, a total pool of 100
candidates might be enough.

~~~
jackowayed
I think there's like 6 or 7, including the 3 founders.

And yes, your interpretation definitely seems to be more of what they're
talking about.

------
truebosko
You know, I fully agree that this is a great strategy on hiring people but it
also makes me worry about a large group of people who produce high quality
code that is closed-source to the company they work for and when the work day
is done, they may have other things (kids, relationships, lifes tasks) that
get in the way of being able to sit down and work on an interesting project.

Many people out there still love to code after 5pm but don't have much time
for it. Not sure how others feel about this though.

~~~
batasrki
I fully agree with the closed-source part. I've written tons of Ruby and Rails
code for a company who is protecting their IP, so there's no way for me to say
"Hey, I've written this and you might like it and use it". This, however,
seems to be a requirement of the small startups.

It gets really frustrating, because the interview will be so much harder.

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antirez
I think this is a wise hiring strategy. First of all: github is a ruby folks
stuff, so "X" don't need to be Apache. It needs to be an interesting project,
maybe related to the Ruby community or Web development. So there are a fairly
large "X"es.

Also to write free software that is recognized as useful, is a major hint of a
possibly good programmer: it means that he is passionate, and is able to
identify a problem an write and design a good solution. And there is a
meritocratic salt in this soup, as open source can be considered, in some way,
a way to show that you as a programmer are worth of consideration.

So I admire github for this hiring strategy.

Edit: is just my feeling or I'm feeling some open source hostility in this
thread?

~~~
silvestrov
"Real Artists Ship" - Steve Jobs.

Shipping something demonstrates you're able to do all the required aspects and
are not just an armchair philosopher.

Previous code is the best indicator of future code. The CV is the least
usable.

~~~
davidw
Err... isn't that exactly what antirez is saying? People who write open source
software are shipping real, working code that you can go look at to get an
idea of how they program.

~~~
jimbokun
Yes, he is agreeing with antirez.

~~~
silvestrov
Yep. I have a friend who is a "writer", ... except that he has never published
a book or a novel.

------
whatusername
Except of course they haven't hired the programmer for when X = 'git'

~~~
davidw
He's a slippery fish. I remember when I was at Linuxcare, in the middle of the
dot com boom, and all the Linux companies would have just fallen all over
themselves to hire him, but he never went for any of them, which I think ended
up being an excellent choice.

~~~
smanek
Didn't Linus work for Transmeta for most of the boom?

~~~
davidw
Yeah, but I can't believe that all those companies didn't make him some _very_
tempting offers.

~~~
antirez
and... I really hope Linus is not in need for a work, otherwise there is
something wrong in the open source world.

~~~
dschobel
Speaking of which, how does Linus pay rent? Speaking engagements? Or is RH or
someone paying him as a good will gesture?

~~~
messel
I think he also received a buttload of stock from Redhat? as a thank you for
pushing the OS forward. I'm researching where I heard this from now (anyone
have a link?)

Ahh here it is: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds>

"Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading developers of Linux-based software,
presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation.[13] In
1999, both companies went public and Torvalds' net worth shot up to roughly
$20 million.[14][15]"

------
old-gregg
If that was Linus or Guido asking this on a job interview, I could have
understood.

But when authors of proprietary, closed-source font-end to someone else's
outsourced work (git) ask that question it sounds rather cynical: if you've
made the decision of keeping your "X" to yourself, why shouldn't I?

~~~
apgwoz
Have you looked at <http://github.com/defunkt>? For the record, he open
sources lots of stuff. It may not be github that's open sourced, but notice he
says "open source" ." open source people don't always agree on making sure
everything is open. If he'd called it "free software" then that be a
contradiction, and surprising.

------
cglee
This works well when you're a Github, so YMMV. For me, since I don't run a
popular revenue generating app (yet), it's difficult to woo the superstars -
the people who, by definition, are at their peak (ie, most expensive).

People like me need to find the future superstars - the Lebron Jameses before
they become "The King". It's easy to acquire realized talent, just throw money
and equity at them. But it's much harder, and perhaps more rewarding, to
discover the budding talents that flourish in the right environment. And I
mean rewarding mostly in the sense of rewarding your bottom line, and
sometimes in the sense of personal fulfillment.

------
sown
I wrote an OSPF packet injector. But no one uses it. :(

~~~
KirinDave
I wouldn't say it doesn't have value though. Bring that code with you to any
of your interviews. If they ask you about coding, offer to leave a hard or
soft copy with them. Interviews in the software world are such a pain in the
ass because _people cannot easily judge how good a software engineer you are_.
Every method you have to help your interviewers see that can help.

------
megamark16
Well, at least this post and thread got me to go update my GitHub account and
create my first repository. I registered forever ago and never actually did
anything with it, although maybe that was partly due to the fact that I wasn't
very familiar with git back then. Now that I've been using git for my personal
projects for the last 6 to 8 months I think I'm ready to start interacting
with the gitosphere.

------
peterwwillis
They did that at a company I worked for. Really big "X", guy was incredibly
smart. Ended up doing absolutely no work because he was "the guy who wrote X"
and could get away with it.

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messel
Your projects are your resume. Love the concept!

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edw519
_Simple: at GitHub we hire "The Girl or Guy Who Wrote X," where X is an
awesome project we all use or admire._

A few suggestions:

Change "we all" to "many people".

Change "or admire" to "to make money" or "to get their jobs done".

Suddenly you've opened this up to a much larger population of programmers who
have done great work. Who says that the valuable work you've done has to be
open source?

If you say, "I've written the software that thousands of people use to process
millions of orders," there are plenty of people who will want to hear more.
Then you can tell them.

~~~
davidw
There are obviously tons of good programmers that their particular "hiring
practice" leaves out. However, perhaps those programmers would not be as good
a fit at their company? They're talking not just about good coders, but about
the culture of the company.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Whether or not one's code is open source may have little or nothing to do with
one's cultural preferences. But it has everything to do with one's
_employer's_ "culture".

------
saurabh
IMHO there should be an option to flag articles as arrogant on HN.

