These arguments that the only worthy developers have tons of public facing open source projects are tiresome.
Probably less than 1% of developers have GitHub repos and there's no correlation between skill level and having a GitHub repo.
If you have extensive and current open source contributions, for most people it means you're unemployed, or you're violating your employer's contract terms.
Evaluating a GitHub repo for a summary of skills in not a trivial task, as scanning a resume is.
When all of your work is online, it suggests you are not spending much time contributing value to whoever is employing you.
Companies that can't find developers often have bizarre and useless criteria such as "must have GitHub repository" or "must have LinkedIn" or "must have FaceBook", none of which is correlated with ability.
We hire lots of capable people without GitHub repositories.
I disagree with almost everything you said, but I'm going to take note of one bit in particular:
"there's no correlation between skill level and having a GitHub repo"
There may be no evidence of any correlation, but I'm willing to bet there's no evidence in favor of a lack of correlation, because I'm pretty sure no one has done anything approaching a scientific study on this.
> Probably less than 1% of developers have GitHub repos
And if you count Google Code, Bitbucket, Sourceforge? Github alone has "2.1 million users hosting over 3.7 million repositories". What's your source for your statistic?
> When all of your work is online, it suggests you are not spending much time contributing value to whoever is employing you.
Or that you enjoy writing code so much that you do it in your free time.
> Companies that can't find developers often have bizarre and useless criteria such as "must have GitHub repository" ... none of which is correlated with ability.
Great point, if you spend all your time contributing to online repositories you are probably not doing anything else. But the people promoting this kind of ideas are exactly the ones creating services like github, so I am not surprised that you see these messages over and over at HN.
Depends on what stack you're working with, and the associated broad engineering culture. I haven't hired anyone who didn't have a Github repo in 2 years, out of 18+ FTEs and contractors - but we're a Rails/Scala/node shop building fancy web apps for startups. Not having a huge OSS track record is fine, but not having a Github account at all would be kinda weird these days. If we were doing embedded systems stuff or financial modeling software or game development, probably a lot less relevant. The "show us your Github, not your resume" line in a lot of job posts is more about the specific engineering culture in a particular kind of startup development, not a hard and fast rule for every software firm everywhere.
That said, if you're a Rails developer and you don't have a Github account, I'm still probably not going to read your resume.
The "show us your Github, not your resume" line in a lot of job posts is more about the specific engineering culture in a particular kind of startup development, not a hard and fast rule for every software firm everywhere.
What's the business need for stating it in those terms, then?
Do you expect Rails developers to have their own pet projects that they put a lot of time into? I agree it would be strange if no one had any forks, had never done a pull-request etc.
Pet projects? Absolutely not, although never a minus. ;) More: are you engaged with the community enough to be aware of the current ecosystem, (handwaving) "best practices", libraries/gems, etc. If someone claims to have been building Rails apps for 5 years, but has never heard of Devise and Carrierwave, it's definitely a red flag for me. If you're trying to get a job on the Google search team and can't whiteboard a quicksort it's going to be an equivalent red flag for them. I'm trying to attract a specific type of developers for a specific kind of programming work where caring about this kind of stuff is useful as a signaling factor to me.
It's not about requiring everyone who works for us to be a 23 year old with no family or life who spends every night hacking on shit, just about a baseline standard for community engagement. Lack of Github account with some level of activity (even if that's just starred repos, forks, etc) is a pretty strong indication someone wouldn't meet that level of engagement, and so wouldn't be a good match.
"If you have extensive and current open source contributions, for most people it means ... you're violating your employer's contract terms."
Bingo (at least for me). Both companies I've worked for require you to submit a proposal to an open source review board for approval. I went through the process at my previous job and approximately 2 months later I was given the go-ahead. Not worth it.
These days it often can mean quality bug reports. Many popular open source projects are more responsive to pull requests than simple tickets, so it's entirely possible to have a Github account which is used only for support with opensource projects which your employer relies on.
The related problem I have is when I see a prospective employer that wants to see or discuss hobby projects. I understand that it is seen as an indication of passion for hacking/engineering or whatever, but when I'm at home I'm either drained from a day of focused work, or working on a hobby project related to my employer, like a new visualization or small tool that's fun to construct. It worries me when I think about having to interview out in the world without any good response when asked about hobby projects (except the truth as written above.)
Conversely, I don't have the proper degree, don't live in a tech-heavy part of the country, and haven't been able to get consistent employment in some time. My hobbyist projects are basically my only hope for having any chance of displaying employability. This field is unique in that sense.
"must have GitHub repository" ... none of which is correlated with ability.
This is silly. I interview plenty of people who can barely code.
If someone has interesting projects on github, I'm reasonably confident they can code. Hence, correlation between having projects on github and coding ability.
Evaluating a github repo, while nonsimple, is far more accurate than scanning a resume.
A github repo is probably not worth scrutiny before a phone screen, but if you're at the stage of second interviews and dinners with the candidate, it's probably worth a close look.
It definitely depends on the culture of different companies - for example, I work in finance and my day-to-day work is proprietary and not for public consumption, but my strange personal side projects wind up in bitbucket or github.
Comments
These arguments that the only worthy developers have tons of public facing open source projects are tiresome.
Probably less than 1% of developers have GitHub repos and there's no correlation between skill level and having a GitHub repo.
If you have extensive and current open source contributions, for most people it means you're unemployed, or you're violating your employer's contract terms.
Evaluating a GitHub repo for a summary of skills in not a trivial task, as scanning a resume is.
When all of your work is online, it suggests you are not spending much time contributing value to whoever is employing you.
Companies that can't find developers often have bizarre and useless criteria such as "must have GitHub repository" or "must have LinkedIn" or "must have FaceBook", none of which is correlated with ability.
We hire lots of capable people without GitHub repositories.
I disagree with almost everything you said, but I'm going to take note of one bit in particular:
There may be no evidence of any correlation, but I'm willing to bet there's no evidence in favor of a lack of correlation, because I'm pretty sure no one has done anything approaching a scientific study on this.I'm guessing probably more than 95% of the code I've written is covered by NDA's but it would be good if there was a formal study.
> Probably less than 1% of developers have GitHub repos
And if you count Google Code, Bitbucket, Sourceforge? Github alone has "2.1 million users hosting over 3.7 million repositories". What's your source for your statistic?
> When all of your work is online, it suggests you are not spending much time contributing value to whoever is employing you.
Or that you enjoy writing code so much that you do it in your free time.
> Companies that can't find developers often have bizarre and useless criteria such as "must have GitHub repository" ... none of which is correlated with ability.
Source?
He has as many sources as the original article - experience.
Great point, if you spend all your time contributing to online repositories you are probably not doing anything else. But the people promoting this kind of ideas are exactly the ones creating services like github, so I am not surprised that you see these messages over and over at HN.
Depends on what stack you're working with, and the associated broad engineering culture. I haven't hired anyone who didn't have a Github repo in 2 years, out of 18+ FTEs and contractors - but we're a Rails/Scala/node shop building fancy web apps for startups. Not having a huge OSS track record is fine, but not having a Github account at all would be kinda weird these days. If we were doing embedded systems stuff or financial modeling software or game development, probably a lot less relevant. The "show us your Github, not your resume" line in a lot of job posts is more about the specific engineering culture in a particular kind of startup development, not a hard and fast rule for every software firm everywhere.
That said, if you're a Rails developer and you don't have a Github account, I'm still probably not going to read your resume.
Where to begin ...
>> not having a Github account at all would be kinda weird these days
and this ...
>> if you're a Rails developer and you don't have a Github account, I'm still probably not going to read your resume.
Thanks for the heads up hansef.
The "show us your Github, not your resume" line in a lot of job posts is more about the specific engineering culture in a particular kind of startup development, not a hard and fast rule for every software firm everywhere.
What's the business need for stating it in those terms, then?
Do you expect Rails developers to have their own pet projects that they put a lot of time into? I agree it would be strange if no one had any forks, had never done a pull-request etc.
Pet projects? Absolutely not, although never a minus. ;) More: are you engaged with the community enough to be aware of the current ecosystem, (handwaving) "best practices", libraries/gems, etc. If someone claims to have been building Rails apps for 5 years, but has never heard of Devise and Carrierwave, it's definitely a red flag for me. If you're trying to get a job on the Google search team and can't whiteboard a quicksort it's going to be an equivalent red flag for them. I'm trying to attract a specific type of developers for a specific kind of programming work where caring about this kind of stuff is useful as a signaling factor to me.
It's not about requiring everyone who works for us to be a 23 year old with no family or life who spends every night hacking on shit, just about a baseline standard for community engagement. Lack of Github account with some level of activity (even if that's just starred repos, forks, etc) is a pretty strong indication someone wouldn't meet that level of engagement, and so wouldn't be a good match.
"If you have extensive and current open source contributions, for most people it means ... you're violating your employer's contract terms."
Bingo (at least for me). Both companies I've worked for require you to submit a proposal to an open source review board for approval. I went through the process at my previous job and approximately 2 months later I was given the go-ahead. Not worth it.
These days it often can mean quality bug reports. Many popular open source projects are more responsive to pull requests than simple tickets, so it's entirely possible to have a Github account which is used only for support with opensource projects which your employer relies on.
The related problem I have is when I see a prospective employer that wants to see or discuss hobby projects. I understand that it is seen as an indication of passion for hacking/engineering or whatever, but when I'm at home I'm either drained from a day of focused work, or working on a hobby project related to my employer, like a new visualization or small tool that's fun to construct. It worries me when I think about having to interview out in the world without any good response when asked about hobby projects (except the truth as written above.)
Conversely, I don't have the proper degree, don't live in a tech-heavy part of the country, and haven't been able to get consistent employment in some time. My hobbyist projects are basically my only hope for having any chance of displaying employability. This field is unique in that sense.
I scoffed at this article for being too hopeful.
"must have GitHub repository" ... none of which is correlated with ability.
This is silly. I interview plenty of people who can barely code.
If someone has interesting projects on github, I'm reasonably confident they can code. Hence, correlation between having projects on github and coding ability.
Evaluating a github repo, while nonsimple, is far more accurate than scanning a resume.
A github repo is probably not worth scrutiny before a phone screen, but if you're at the stage of second interviews and dinners with the candidate, it's probably worth a close look.
It definitely depends on the culture of different companies - for example, I work in finance and my day-to-day work is proprietary and not for public consumption, but my strange personal side projects wind up in bitbucket or github.
Agreed. My most popular github repo is a JavaScript library, while professionally I'm mostly manager and my technical background is mostly in Python.