

That ain’t no Open Source that I see here - facorreia
http://ayende.com/blog/156769/that-ainrsquo-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here

======
kstenerud
"Here is the deal, if you aren’t coding for fun, you are not suitable for a
developer position in Hibernating Rhinos."

OK, fine. SO PUT THAT REQUIREMENT IN YOUR JOB DESCRIPTION! If this is a deal
breaker and you fail to inform the candidate, the person wasting everyone's
time is YOU.

To put some things you dismissed into perspective:

\- Sometimes a company already knows that the candidate is leaving, in which
case they are being helpful by telling you it will take some time to get a
release on the code they want to submit.

\- If someone passes you proprietary code without permission, bravo! You've
just weeded out an untrustworthy candidate and you didn't even need to take it
to the in-person interview! A huge time saver!

\- Junior programmers straight out of school rarely have a bunch of open
source code. They're fresh out into the field, looking for someone to mentor
and guide them as they grow. There's a mountain of things they need to learn
and another mountain they need to unlearn, and they're wide open to whatever
culture you find important. If you're not up to the task, don't hire them.
Don't even approach them.

Getting all bent out of shape over these things is a symptom of much deeper
issues within yourself.

------
tjr
I usually find this sort of reply distasteful, but it seems appropriate in
this context...

 _I don’t know if I can’t send you the code, I’ll have to ask my employer.
(Which seems really silly thing to do, considering you want to get the code to
show it to some other company that you want to hire you)._

The parenthetical phrase is not a complete sentence, and should have been
placed before the period following "employer". "Which" should not have been
capitalized. "seems really silly thing to do" is missing an article. The final
period would be rendered redundant by proper placement of the parenthetical
phrase.

 _Here is the deal, if you aren’t coding for fun ..._

A colon after "deal" would be better.

 _driven by whatever the crazy professor think is a valid coding standard_

"crazy professor" is a singular noun. Either use "thinks" or "crazy
professors".

 _I can understand crazy coding standards, what I can’t understand is why
someone would submit something that would raise so many red flags so quickly
as part of a job application process._

This sentence just doesn't flow well, but that aside, the comma should be
replaced with a semicolon, or it should be broken into two sentences.

And I'm sure there are more errors.

But why do I care? If someone is going to write an angry rant about how a job
candidate submitted code that used suboptimal coding standards, then it would
be more convincing if the author would avoid writing this angry rant using
suboptimal grammatical standards.

Thanks!

~~~
eru
You might try sending this to the author (e.g. as an email) for them to fix
it.

------
jiggy2011
If you have just graduated University then it's likely that the only code
samples you have will be from that and universities are known to enforce one
particular style of notation which may or may not be what is used in industry.

I imagine that the number of university students who contribute anything
meaningful to open source apps in addition to their studies is very small.
This might be the small number of people he is interested in recruiting but
being pissed off because every CV you get in isn't like that seems strange.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Contributing to open source while in University has major benefits:

1) skill development through practice and peer review 2) skill development
through exposure to "real world" problems rather than the toy problems of
school 3) portfolio development for job hunting 4) network building for job
hunting

If you're in University, you should be working on open source projects for
these reasons and others. I suspect the article author is trying to help
spread this meme. Open source contributors really do have a major advantage
over their peers, but many students do not realise this.

Others don't know how to start, but that's a different problem.

Besides, open source is fun, and you probably have way more time and resources
during University than you will later in life.

~~~
jiggy2011
I agree that contributing to open source is a good way to learn many
development skills, however:

 _Besides, open source is fun, and you probably have way more time and
resources during University than you will later in life._

Not necessarily, if you are doing CS at a top university and aiming to attain
the highest possible grades this requires a huge investment of time and effort
to most people.

Also it is not like a 9-5 where you can 'clock off' there is always an
uncertain feeling of 'if I put another hour into this , then that might just
bump me up an extra grade'

Not to mention that if you just started programming at university your code is
probably going to suck pretty hard for the first 2 years at least, to the
point where no serious open source project is going to want your patches.

Ultimately if Universities believed that this was important to job prospects
in the industry as a whole they would make open source contributions a
required part of the curriculum.

~~~
bryanlarsen
"Not necessarily, if you are doing CS at a top university and aiming to attain
the highest possible grades this requires a huge investment of time and effort
to most people."

I would argue that you're better off with a B and a full portfolio than an A
and an empty one. It depends on where you are applying, though.

"Also it is not like a 9-5 where you can 'clock off'"

Until you have kids.

"no serious open source project is going to want your patches."

That's not necessarily true. Often either your patches are small and trivial
and can be accepted or they are large and useful enough that the other
developers will provide feedback. This feedback is often more useful to the
student than just getting the patch accepted.

And nobody can reject your patches if it's your own project you're building.

~~~
jiggy2011
The pressure that students will get from professors and parents will be to
prioritize academic work above all other activities.

Also the majority of "good" tech jobs in the UK usually have a minimum degree
requirement of a 2:1 (the majority of students achieve a 2:2) and will just
bin anything that doesn't match that.

There is a fundamental choice that the industry really needs to make as a
whole here. When you compare CS to a degree in (say) photography, a large
component of a photography degree will be to build up a portfolio to show off
whereas this is not a priority in CS.

If employers shout loudly enough that they want to see students who have
produced real code for real projects then universities can adapt to that.
Otherwise there is a very confused message being sent "We want people with an
excellent academic record, a big git log of OSS commits, oh and they should
also be well rounded with excellent interpersonal skills" , there are no doubt
a few people like that but good luck to the companies all competing to hire
them.

------
__abc
I really don't like the tone of this post. Getting "angry" about candidates
CV's and given the impression you think less of them is a bit much.

It's absolutely okay to have a preference for the type of candidate you are
looking for. Even better, how that preferred candidate should appear as early
as their application.

However, don't classify the candidate as a "moron" (implied via the tone of
your blog post) simply because they don't meet your preferred qualifications.
Pass on them and move on.

Better yet, this is also a chance to teach if your up to it. Rather then get
upset, why not ask them to elaborate AND tell them why you are having them do
so. Inform them why you think it is important, helpful, and how it _may_ be
important when applying at other companies.

------
asadotzler
It sounds like what you're looking for is someone who won't have a life
outside of work or whose life outside of work looks a lot like their life at
work.

I wonder if "you must also spend your free time coding" is an attitude that
discourages female participation in software engineering.

------
orangecat
Note to self: never work for this guy (or "Duke" from the comments). I do in
fact have side projects, but making them mandatory shows disrespect for my
time away from the job.

------
tzs
I would not be hirable there. I have had the misfortune of only working at
jobs where there has been (1) a lot to do, (2) much of it very interesting,
and (3) the quicker it gets done the better. Trying to throw in any
significant open source work on top of this would push me past the burnout
point.

When I get off work, I sit down on the couch, put on something relaxing on the
TV (Science channel, Discovery, History, Nat Geo, etc. or a sitcom or
Futurama, Simpsons, or South Park), and then pull out a math textbook or a
theoretical CS book or an interesting research paper, and work on expanding my
theoretical knowledge. I've also added a lot of Udacity and Coursera to the
mix.

(I assume it goes without saying that I also waste a vast amount of time on
Reddit and HN...)

