When it comes to hiring, I'll take a Github commit log over a resume any day.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/careers-2-0-now-does-github/

by swah • 15 years ago

125 112 15 years ago

blog.stackoverflow.com

TomOfTTB• 15 years ago

Think of all the good that could be done for the open source world if this led every company to expect open source contributions from their new hires.

Careers 2.0 probably isn't popular enough to change the world that significantly but it does make me want to hunt down someone for a profile invite (though I guess I should save those for people who are actively looking for jobs)

P.S. Careers 2.0 is hosted by Stackoverflow which means hosted on a .Net platform...just sayin'

route66• 15 years ago

Think of all the good that could be done for open source if the company requiring their hires to contribute would be required to contribute themselves or to facilitate contributing under work time.

eddanger• 15 years ago

This is an interesting approach but not all talented developers partake in open source projects.

saurik• 15 years ago

...and for those that do, not all of them are contributing to projects that are on GitHub.

wladimir• 15 years ago

But those that have fun writing code usually do, or have done so at some point. It's some kind of filter, that's true, and there isn't any filter that's always fair.

tomjen36• 15 years ago

That used to be the case two years ago.

Why would I release my software on github for free, when I can release it on Google market for money?

JasonPunyon• 15 years ago

This is true and thanks for the feedback. Do you (or anyone else reading) have any ideas for things that all talented developers would want to list on their profiles that we don't have on Careers yet? Thanks again!

dpritchett2• 15 years ago

While filling out my profile it struck me that I'd love a friend finding service: Find me programmers within 50 miles of my stated location who share interests and experiences in some of the many tags I chose for myself. I'd like to meet them and have a beer.

tomjen36• 15 years ago

Android and IPhone developed programs.

The market is hot right now and it would be pretty nice to be able to show some of the programs that has been written.

scott_s2• 15 years ago

And those developers will have to figure out another way to demonstrate their value.

orijing4• 15 years ago

This puts developers in companies that commit to open source projects like Chromium to be at a significant advantage to those developing proprietary software. I understand where the author is coming from, but this is unfair for those who work on closed-source projects.

Of course I have my own personal projects, but for most of them, I am not about release their source.

raganwald• 15 years ago

Look, I work on a lot of proprietary stuff as well, but even if Github didn't exist, we'd both be subject to the same "unfairness." Here's a job interview, circa 1981:

Candidate 1: "I brought this fanfold printout of the source code for _____ I wrote with me, have a look.

Candidate 2: "I can't show you any of the code, but trust me, it's good."

Github merely drags that conversation forward from 1981 up to 2011. When you and I choose to write code that is locked away in somebody else's vault, we ought to charge extra to compensate for the fact that we might as well have been surfing Oahu.

wildjim• 15 years ago

Isn't this part of the reason for references, but more importantly: probation period ?

WalterBright• 15 years ago

That's funny, in 1982 that's exactly what I did for a job interview - I brought in a listing of source code to show what I could do. I found out later that that's why I was offered the job.

The argument that this isn't fair to many programmers has also been going on at least for the last 30 years. Fair or not, it helps a lot in convincing an employer you're worth hiring.

orijing4• 15 years ago

> When you and I choose to write code that is locked away in somebody else's vault, we ought to charge extra to compensate for the fact that we might as well have been surfing Oahu.

I like that idea. Part of the value from working on open source projects for companies is the public nature of your contributions: It's easy for you to take your commits to Chromium and show it to Facebook or Apple when looking for a job there.

Companies may not like that idea, however.

r00fus• 15 years ago

Considering John Resig is the creator of jQuery, which is open source, yes, he's probably more interested in someone who's familiar with the OSS development model, tools and methodology and can prove it.

His criteria don't (and shouldn't) apply to every SW hire, even though it's clear his message is "demonstrate > declare".

kenjackson• 15 years ago

Not only that, but it puts those that contribute to other repos at a disadvantage. Additionally, it puts Windows devs at a disadvantage as Git is simply not as usable as Mercurial/SVN or heaven forbid, even TFS, on Windows.

merijnv• 15 years ago

That's not necessarily true. I prefer Mercurial over Git but I prefer GitHub over Bitbucket/Google Code. That's why the fine folks over at GitHub implemented their hg-git plugin which allows Mercurial to interact with Git repositories. That means I get to keep on using my preferred tool together with my preferred site, progress! \o/

HeyLaughingBoy• 15 years ago

On the one hand you're saying this is unfair to those who do closed source projects at work. On the other, you're saying you have personal projects, but you refuse to release the source.

So what are you complaining about exactly? If you don't want to be judged by your own work, then there's no problem: that's your decision. If you do, but you refuse to let anyone see it, then you're creating your own problem, so you have no basis for complaint.

There is nothing "unfair" about this. Rather, you're given a choice about whether or not you want to participate and you have decided that you don't.

orijing4• 15 years ago

You're correct that I am given a choice about whether I want to release my source. But I mentioned a specific example (Chromium developers paid by Google) who are being paid to produce open source work.

I do exhibit some of my smaller projects on github; my larger projects are not online because of competitive reasons.

daleharvey3• 15 years ago

would it be "fair" to a developer who went out of their way to give insight into their talents as a software developer by publishing their code / taking part in open source have that effort be ignored so a companies hiring process is more "fair" to people who didnt take the same effort.

that aside, a companies hiring process isnt designed to be fair, its designed to efficiently recruit the best talent.

mcantelon• 15 years ago

>Of course I have my own personal projects, but for most of them, I am not about release their source.

Any particular reason?

qeorge• 15 years ago

Unfair how? Anyone can participate in open source. Those who do deserve the benefits that come with it (of which visibility is one of the most obvious).

akronim• 15 years ago

Anyone can participate in open source. That's not correct - plenty of employment contracts lay claim to any contributions, which means the projects can't accept them.

scott_s2• 15 years ago

Nothing about the hiring process is "fair" in the sense that it looks at you in the best possible light. It does not maximize for fairness for the individual, but for value added to the company.

Further, the disadvantage you refer to is natural.

kscaldef• 15 years ago

Surely you've got something you're willing to throw up on github? No one is saying it needs to be particularly useful to anyone else; just some actually code you wrote that people can look at.

orijing4• 15 years ago

I do, but they aren't particularly large projects nor anything that involves complex algorithms or systems design...

That would be private code that's in Facebook. (I didn't work on Hive, Thrift or anything open source)

ori_b• 15 years ago

The hiring process isn't meant to be fair - it's meant to get the best results. A good way to see if someone can write good code is to look at the code they've written and to see if it's good.

If the ability to demonstrate that they can write good code with concrete examples puts someone at an advantage over others, so be it.

tomjen36• 15 years ago

Actually in this case it puts people who like git over people who like mercurial, svn, rcs, etc which is unlikely to benefit anybody.

Last time I heard git sucks on windows, svn is still extremly widely used (try writing a game with a large amount of binary assets and use git) and some of the old open source systems still use CVS.

hp3• 15 years ago

As your parents may have mentioned, life isn't fair.

As the ad in the in-flight magazine says (I think I remember right), you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.

The impact on your visibility, personal brand, and ability to find future roles should be a factor when you sign up for a job. Just as you'd consider your job title, for example.

If you're signing up for something you can't talk about or show off -- worse, if you're signing a contract that says you can't do anything that you _can_ talk about on the side -- then you'd better be sure you're getting paid extra, or in some other way getting compensated.

From what I've seen, working on super-secret trading software for Wall Street _does_ pay a lot more than working on an open source project, on average.

If the price is that you have to use references and other means to show future employers what you can do, then that's the tradeoff.

If you're not getting paid much, have no spare time, aren't allowed to code in your spare time, etc. then those are some items for the "cons" column that might nudge you to look for something new, all else equal...

emehrkay• 15 years ago

Didnt someone make, and post to hackernews, a resume builder from your github account?

http://resume.github.com/

AashayDesai• 15 years ago

The "My Organizations" section just keeps a'spinnin...

anon46566677• 15 years ago

If you're a company looking for developers, you have to learn to live with developers who are simply good enough. I'm talking about guys and gals who just see programming as a way to pay the bills.

Everybody wants to hire the brightest developers, but there aren't enough to go around. It's a mathematical impossibility.

neild• 15 years ago

...unless you're Apple, or Google, or some other company with the money and cachet to attract the best.

wh-uws2• 15 years ago

You can be a great developer and/or leader and build product or company that bright developers will want to work at.

namdnay2• 15 years ago

Would you even want to hire only geeks?

sfk• 15 years ago

Could someone explain why "being on Github" is synonymous with "contributing to open source" in some circles?

The Github projects are a very small part of the open source universe. You can easily build *BSD or LinuxFromScratch with a substantial userland without ever downloading anything from Github.

natrius• 15 years ago

We're predominantly web developers. A large portion of open source activity in the web development world happens on Github.

wh-uws2• 15 years ago

That and I'm certain jresig wasn't limiting his sentiment to Github. Just using it as an example

djacobs• 15 years ago

I think one answer to your question is "visibility". When you go to a Github project page, you're greeted with standard fork/download/commit links. But you're also one or two clicks away from viewing actual source inline.

Yes, other websites show source inline, but I've found that they are not intuitive at all, and the code (to me) feels hidden.

pjhyett• 15 years ago

Speaking frankly, even on our slowest days, the number of open source commits being pushed to GitHub dwarfs other sites [1]. That's not to say OS development isn't happening elsewhere, but there happens to be a lot of it going on in one particular place these days.

To your second point, you're right. I'd love to be able to convince older OS projects to move to GitHub. Some do[2], but it's an uphill battle.

1. https://github.com/blog/802-still-committing-like-crazy

2. https://github.com/bagder/curl

reemrevnivek• 15 years ago

Apparently, because Github offers a simple API that lets Careers integrate with it. I'd wager that a SourceForge link is next on the feature list.

HowardRoark• 15 years ago

I agree its better than having nothing to show or talk about, but I wish hiring the right person was that easy. There is a lot of junk in Github and there are lots of smart developers outside the Github community.

bphogan6• 15 years ago

Yes there's junk on Github. But I can see that and I can say "no, this person is not a good fit" before I hire them. :)

onan_barbarian5• 15 years ago

Maybe this is paranoia, but I'm beginning to find a lot of threads like this (and a few yesterday about 'how to hire people') actively coercive: "Contribute to Open Source or Don't Get Hired".

There are a lot of increasingly shrill remarks out there about how everyone should be doing open source projects in their 'spare time', so no-one has any excuse not to have a track record of FOSS contributions... frankly, it's bullshit.

I work in a closed-source shop (for some very good reasons, we can't open) and our devs do sterling work of a sophistication not seen in most projects, open or otherwise, solving a very difficult and rather open-ended algorithmic problem. On a good day, we get a lot of sophisticated work done.

Strangely, at the end of one of these good days, no one wants to go home and write a big fucking pile of code - we have girlfriends/wives/families that haven't seen us for 12 hours and probably aren't going to want to use the remaining hours (and typing time) to write MORE code. Even if that was a good idea - we are paid for full-time work here which means ideally we go home and relax, not flail away on endless side projects.

frou_dh• 15 years ago

If "endless side projects" is unreasonable, is "at least one" reasonable?

onan_barbarian5• 15 years ago

No, it is not. For a side project to be remotely comparable to the efforts that, for example, we have put in, it would have to be quite a side project.

Calling attention to (say) a 250-line neat hack - say a patch to a driver, or solving some elegant toy problem - would constitute a detraction from the programmers' major contribution at work over the course of years.

I view this new fixation on open source contributions as a continuation of the pathological distrust for programmers' skilled contributions that used to be expressed through high-stakes (or even low-stages) white-board coding challenges. I'm not sure which is more irritating.

epochwolf• 15 years ago

Even if you manage to maintain a side project, there are plenty of valid reasons (legal and not) to not release the code in public view.

lbrandy2• 15 years ago

This is one of those posts that is made, and upvoted, based on what everyone wants to be true, instead of what is true.

The simple, unassailable truth is that having strong contributions to open-source projects is a massive advantage in any resume-scanning and hiring situation. And as a hiring manager, seeing extensive open-source work is better than seeing a resume. That means the advice is ALWAYS good advice. There is never a situation under which the proper career advice is to not do good visible work.

This doesn't mean it's a requirement, or should be a requirement, but it IS a reality. If you choose not to participate, that's fine, but it comes with an inarguable cost. You can try to convince us all that it shouldn't, but it does, and it probably always will.

onan_barbarian5• 15 years ago

I'm not trying to convince you of anything.

I am well aware that strong open-source contributions are an advantage. What I find objectionable is not this advantage. It's the fact that failing to secure this advantage is being portrayed as an obvious professional failure that can be simply rectified by working an extra few hours a night on side projects.

It is propaganda from open source people, many of who have achieved considerably less in their open source projects than a casual inspection might suggest. Usually I come away from people's open source projects with a cheerful acknowledgement that this person (a) likes cool stuff and (b) appears to be able to write working code of a kind. This is good - but not that good.

There's a big difference between 'I wrote some code, look at me' and 'I contributed a competitive register allocator to LLVM' or 'I rewrote the scheduling algorithm for major open source FooOS'. The latter are 'strong contributions' and deserve the 'massive advantage' of which you speak. A handful of pet projects constitute a code sample that suggests that the person can form syntactically correct code.

marciovm123• 15 years ago

This has been going on forever with Academia, where the right to freely publish profoundly impacts where one chooses to work.

Anyone who dreams of becoming faculty must do work that is publishable, which often means taking substantially lower-paying "research" versus "corporate" internships throughout their younger years.

julioody• 15 years ago

Understand though that, while your points are valid, it it's certainly more valuable to an employer to be able to see your skills in action than not.

At the same time, seeing how you handle version control, how you deal with contributors and bug reports, all that matters. Being able to see that is much better than taking one's word for it.

So yes, as someone who previously worked on a shop where no code would get out, I can relate to the feeling. But the above is still true. A few things you can do about it:

- open not the products you have entirely, but modular parts of it. - should the previous suggestion not be an option, get the company to run a blog, and have you/your workmates share solutions at a discussion level. - get the company to allow developers to work 10%, or 20% of their time, on open source. It'll help keeping you guys sharp, at the same time it helps you putting a name out there.

frederickcook• 15 years ago

For a shop whose pre-requisite to hiring a developer is that they have code publicly available, you can bet cultural fit is the other thing at the top of their checklist.

Saying "no one wants to go home and write a big fucking pile of code" probably means that regardless of technical aptitude, you wouldn't fit in well with the kind of folks who love and encourage doing just that in their spare time. Most of the developers on our team have and love "endless side projects."

Not bullshit, just different.

bphogan6• 15 years ago

The problem is that I can't believe a word you said. I can't see examples of this awesome super top-secret code because it's all closed-source, as you say, for good reasons.

I also can't trust your references, because you'll only give me ones that will say good things about you, and any digging at your work history will only uncover "yes he worked here" responses.

I want to see open-source contributions because I like being around people who are passionate about solving problems with code, and it is my experience that people who contribute to open-source projects, or start their own, are of that mindset.

I don't think that they are the only people who are passionate, but I want to make a choice so I can get back to solving problems.

If you're making the hiring people work harder, you're going to miss out. Being able to show examples of your work is the best way to do it.

How do you feel about tests? or "write this program that does [x]" spec projects instead?

technomancy3• 15 years ago

> The problem is that I can't believe a word you said.

It comes down to this: filtering by OSS contributions gives you many false negatives (as the OP has complained) but virtually zero false positives. In hiring, a false negative is a bummer, but a false positive is disastrous. It would be irresponsible of me as an interviewer not to take this into account.

If it someone's pissed because they fall into the false negative bucket, that's rough, but I'm the one calling the shots and taking the risks.

onan_barbarian5• 15 years ago

Thanks for the sarcasm: "awesome super top-secret code".

Realistically, the code and details of are covered by NDA. The task solved, the huge difficulty of same, the overall success of the task being solved, demonstrable fluency in related but public areas of computer science, and the commercial success (modest or otherwise) of the code would not be.

If you don't understand this, or couldn't say the same things about what you're doing, maybe you're not working at the same level, and you are welcome to go fire up the GitHub account and solve tic-tac-toe in Haskell or whatever the hell it is that's meant to be so impressive.

The closest analogy I can come is - say you wrote a pile of LEDA (not a invite to debate if this is a good product, but it's certainly substantial) and you've got references who are in a position to know that say, 'yes, Joe Bloggs really did write all the graph algorithms or geometry algorithms or whatnot in this package'.

Well, you're within your rights to 'not believe a word you've said'. But this falls into the thing I'm complaining about - the whole pathological distrust of programmer achievements. How do you think engineers or commercial research scientists in other fields ever get hired, for fuck's sake?

vgurgov• 15 years ago

'The problem is that I can't believe a word you said'

Thats fair, but the thing is that its YOUR PROBLEM(as a recruiter), not mine as a great "closed source" engineer

I know bunch of people who work on very cool and interesting problems/projects binded NDAs and have no problem on finding a new job if they want to. Hell Facebook, twitter, google are all closed source(mostly) so wouldnt you hire ex-Facebook engineer if he has no open source commitments?

Lets face it - its employees market, where companies compete for bright engineers. If you are saying that you only want open source commitments - thats fine, but you are betting on smaller market and missing some great talents. So you are more "lazy" recruiter, who dont want to look deeper, do facts check, test candidate etc. But again its your own problem, not mine.

tlrobinson• 15 years ago

Some companies have a culture built around open source software (e.x. Github), and some don't. The latter will value open source contributions less (or none). If you have no desire to be involved in open source then perhaps you'd fit better in those companies.

Also, contributing to open source projects doesn't necessarily need to happen in your "spare time". Companies contribute to open source too.

j_baker• 15 years ago

I think there's a question of degree involved. A lot of employers seem to want you to have a github account that proves that you're glued to your computer 16 hours a day (fortunately, they have no way of finding out if you dream about code too).

That said, I don't see anything wrong with wanting people that have some open source contributions. It doesn't have to be anything along the lines of having written the linux kernel in your spare time. However, it should be something that you put serious time and thought into.

hp3• 15 years ago

You'd go with a graphic designer with a portfolio you could look at every time, right? Say the graphic designer's previous employer didn't let them put stuff in the portfolio -- I don't know, maybe they only worked on NSA internal marketing -- that's the designer's problem. They aren't going to say "no fair," they're going to find a way to do some work to put in a portfolio.

Wouldn't have to be open source work, just work you could show.

It's tough to hear, but the goal of a new employer is not to give us what we deserve for working hard and being skilled.

The employer's goal is to maximize their chances of hiring someone good.

If a hiring manager has two people that seem about the same but they can see the code one of those people wrote, it's a no-brainer to go with the one who has a portfolio.

Agree with you that some lame open source patch doesn't matter. But if someone's done significant work in public, or even has non-open-source code they're able to share, ignoring that would be an insane choice for the hiring manager to make.

onan_barbarian5• 15 years ago

This assumes that all programming in analogous to 'graphic design'. This analogy breaks the moment you consider that perhaps at least some programming is more analogous to, say, civil engineering or in-house material science research or in-house statistics... none of these other professionals are going to be able to disclose their 'portfolio' in any meaningful way.

Yet, mysteriously, civil engineers, material scientists and statisticians somehow keep being hired and the work keeps getting done. Baffling, I know.

Cymen2• 15 years ago

It is becoming increasingly rare to work on an island away from open source. A lot of companies use open source in some way and having an in-house developer familiar with the projects they use or relay on can be quite useful. And the improvements that the company is willing to pay for but aren't a competitive advantage can be committed to the open source project. It's a win for everyone.

Do you work on an island?

optimusclimb• 15 years ago

You people are insane. Going out on a limb here, as I hate making my life public - I worked at Factset Research Systems for just about four years. They are a publicly traded company (FDS - NYSE). Guess what - They would allow precisely 0% of the code I wrote for them while working there to be shown to another company.

So what you are saying, is that, given that, unless I went home and coded and contributed to an open source project during my free time, I am a shitty engineer, not worth your time. Get real. Incidentally I work elsewhere now. They asked me to solve a programming task before an on site interview, and then...shock, I had an onsite interview process.

Do you think that when a heart surgeon from NYC applies to work in Seattle or LA, they say, "That's great that you didn't kill anyone at First General on 57th street, but, do you have any published video of you doing surgery pro bono we can watch so that we know you're not full of it?"

patio11• 15 years ago

For-profit companies are certainly allowed to attempt to convince me that working for free for them is both morally required and in my own best interests. I promise to listen attentively.

Ditto other cultural fit issues like "Your personal life should come second to our business desires", "Marriage and children are unreasonable burdens to saddle us with", "You should be loyal to us; we may reciprocate, but if not, it is just business", etc, etc.

statictype• 15 years ago

I don't see what this has to do with the issue being discussed - that having made open-source contributions is an important factor in getting hired.

We're not talking about companies demanding that you do open-source work for them before getting hired. It's about the idea that having some code publicly available somewhere is a good way to improve your chance of being hired.

lpolovets• 15 years ago

From personal experience with interviewing and screening ~100 candidates over the last two years, I can say that high-quality open source contributions are a big plus for an applicant. I can also say that we've never even considered rejecting someone due to a lack of contributions.

It's great that there are companies which look down on you not using your spare time to do extra programming -- you probably wouldn't want to work at places like that anyway.

celticjames• 15 years ago

If I might reframe the issue slightly, I don’t think the problem is that coders are expected to make FOSS contributions. The problem is that coders are expected to do significant amounts of unpaid work. We all laud Google Summer of Code because it lets young people get some traction without starving. Other companies that want the benefit of hiring people with FOSS experience need to put their money where their mouth is and fund FOSS contributions. There is an awful trend of corporations wanting experienced workers but doing nothing in terms of internships, apprenticeships and mentoring.

Pahalial• 15 years ago

The thing to me - as someone who is more devops than dev, works at a currently 100% closed company, and does not have a public track record on github - is that this article and argument are both kind of silly.

Github track records aren't just about the fact of seeing your code; it's about the fact that you're proving you can work with the OSS community projects. That's a skill set in and of itself, as demonstrated by the recent extremely public bickering between gnome and canonical, for example. If you have a demonstrated track record of navigating OSS project drama like that and still getting your patches pulled into trunk, a company that wants to build a relationship with an OSS project is vastly more likely to hire you.

Re-reading your comment on preview, it sounds like you're looking at this like "Okay, I've coded all day on closed-source, now I need to go do up some erlang on some personal bullshit project and commit it to github, with unit tests and a meaningful commit, just so I have a track record to point to in a year or more when I'm looking for a job."

And I'm not saying that wouldn't work, but more that that's not the point at all, and any company hiring based on that is exactly as clueless (albeit a bit more up to date) as the company hiring based on a minimum of CCIE + RHCSA when looking for developers.

namdnay2• 15 years ago

Not only that, but "passionate" people aren't always a good fit. I prefer to work with someone who may only regard software engineering as a job, but who has common sense etc.. instead of some hacker kid who is going to try to make things as complicated as possible just for kicks.

nwp• 15 years ago

I frequently fork projects on Github, add features/fix bugs, send a pull request and then delete my fork after my changes have been integrated. I've started to consider keeping my forks around for this reason alone but that strikes me as a waste of Github's disk space...

technomancy3• 15 years ago

I keep stale forks around mostly to game the language high-score board: https://github.com/languages/Emacs%20Lisp

Go elisp! You can do it!

technomancy3• 15 years ago

> that strikes me as a waste of Github's disk space...

Oh, and forks don't take up much disk space since they share structure with the original repository. If the changes have been merged to the mainline, then the marginal cost of your fork is close to nil; probably just a few rows in the database.

anon-user-112483• 15 years ago

I'm going to chime in here with all the various for/against comments going on and at least TRY to make some sense out of all this - or at the very least, show others how some of us "haters" see it, and explain to other "haters" how it's just the way it is - period.

Using GitHub or other OSS contributions/commits as your actual resume, or the litmus test for, "can I have the job, boss?" has been something I think we've all seen coming down the pipe for a few years now - I know I saw it way back when. Personally, I live in the midwest, not the SF bay area, so "trends" like this are a bit slower to catch on out here, but the last several job interviews I've been at, somebody has always asked me: "Do you have a GitHub account?"

This situation has people on both sides of the argument - for and against. And I'm going on record right now as saying, absolutely, 100%, without question, BOTH sides are right.

The truth is, from an employer's perspective, this just makes sense: prove that you can do the job. A resume doesn't do that - it proves that you can hand a piece of paper, sometimes even written by some one else, and BS your way through an interview.

On the other hand, employers frequently trot out teams of developers - some as many as 15 (that I've seen personally) to pepper a candidate with lots of hard questions during an interview. Inevitably, there's always that one nerd in there with serious penis envy who tries to re-assert his "dominance" by trying to "outsmart" the job candidate to make him or her look bad by throwing some super hard core question that makes said nerd look like a badass at the poor guy doing his best, and then trying to make the interviewee look like an ass when s/he can't answer it. The truth is, these guys have time - days - to prepare these interview style "litmus tests" for candidates, but when interviewing for the job, you go in blind not knowing what to expect and have to come up with everything from memory. /rant

This makes for a craptastic experience for the candidate, and a very time consuming and costly experience for the employer. Looking at a collection of code related to the job in question is a much faster way for them to get a handle on where the candidate is at, without the need for such involved processes in many cases, saving time and money for them and the candidate, and saving the candidate some serious anxiety.

However, there's another side to this coin. From the perspective of those of us who would rather NOT go home and spend all night 4+ days per week writing MORE code, this puts us in a bad spot.

The way I see it, you have two kinds of developers (basically): those who are SUPER into what they're doing - which is great (really! no sarcasm intended) - and those who enjoy what they do, but recognize that it's work. Good, old-fashioned, hard work. W-O-R-K. Blowing up some asshole in Halo Reach or having sex with your girlfriends (yes, plural) is a hell of a lot more fun than researching "most efficient sorting algorithm". So when we're not at W-O-R-K, earning a living, we need SOME way to kick back and release, or we'll absolutely explode. That's called "common sense".

This presents a problem: those who, for whatever reason, be it inability to get a date, or absolute true "nerdvana" enjoyment of writing code, end up doing ADDITIONAL development work, strictly for work's sake, now have a somewhat (emphasis on somewhat) unfair advantage over those of us who can do the same job, and are willing to work just as hard (for pay - after all, I can't pay rent with hugs and good will), but have other obligations (kids, for example, is a big one) and just plain can't put in another 20+ hours per week required to COMPETE - yes, I said the C word - with others who can.

Some arguments I've seen or heard that I'll comment on:

"But it's not THAT hard!" Nothing easy is really truly WORTH doing. I can write some seriously easy code in under 5 minutes that'll look bad ass from a quantity point of view - until you actually examine it close up and see that it's just bullshit. The stuff that REALLY makes you shine is finding new, interesting, and USEFUL ways to solve hard problems. Nothing else is really as worthwhile. And there's a point that you get to, after doing it for 50+ hours per week, that you just say, "enough!" and have to decompress. Other people see it differently - they still enjoy it and do it in their free time. I truly wish those people well and want to encourage them to keep doing it!

"Well, if you aren't the kind who'll do the OSS commits, you aren't a culture fit anyway." This is 100% Grade-A bullshit. Just because a person doesn't want to spend their free time - that they'll never get paid for - creating additional software, outside the scope of their workplace, essentially doing MORE work simply for work's sake, does NOT mean s/he is a bad culture fit. _It means they have self respect._ If you're going for the super hard core, hipster silicon valley, "my shit doesn't stink" start-up environment, that may be true. But in a nice place I like to call "the real world", those companies cutting the checks GET IT - at the end of the day, you gotta get paid for your work. Even though they understand this, they'll sure as shit take advantage of other people who have no problem with playing the role of "happy little nerd behind the desk that we don't let talk to anyone and just codes all the time". They're perfectly happy to use this kind of job competition to squeeze more out of some one beyond what they're paying them for, and don't give a damn when that poor person eventually has a breakdown because they've been working 80+ hours per week for several months, maybe even years.

My bottom line on this is pretty simple: like it or not, this trend isn't going anywhere because it has advantages for parties who are interested. Unfortunately, I really think that it's going to create an even more hyper-competitive environment for people looking for jobs. We'll get to a point where we'll have maybe 20-35% of applicants who are truly really HARD CORE into what they're doing and truly, with every fiber of their being, enjoy writing code on their own time, but then we'll find a larger segment of people who do it somewhat begrudgingly, seeing it for what it is - work for work's sake. This is going to breed a very strong sense of competition in the engineering and development job market that allows companies to treat developers - especially younger ones, recent college grads, etc. - as what they'll be painting themselves as: subservient nerds who work for peanuts just for the CHANCE to have a job, even being paid in stock options that are totally worthless at Startup #1119128418911818119.2.

There's no way in hell I'm going to work 40+ hours per week doing something that, sure, I enjoy, but get bitched at by some asshole in his Armani suit that "it isn't gettin' done fast enough!", then go home and write more code just for the CHANCE to do it all over again. Fuck that.

And those who will do that? Many will end up submitting crappy OSS contributions that do nothing to move the industry forward, because they're only doing it for the sake of being able to compete in a job market - NOT because they truly love what they're doing. And that's really the major thing that irks me about this trend.

But again, it's happening and there's nothing that can be done to change it. That's why personally, I'm looking at changing job functions. Systems administration, or project management maybe. I'd much rather be the asshole in the Armani suit DOING the chew out, making bonuses of over $500k/year that keep going up, with a relatively easy job (especially compared to modern development), than the poor guy he's chewing out, despite that person doing a seriously awesome job under very difficult circumstances, for very low/poor pay that keeps decreasing due to increasing job market competition, who works twice as much and twice as hard, and STILL has to put up with assholes like "Mr. Suit".

Fuck that shit.

tomjen36• 15 years ago

>can I have the job, boss?

Thats your problem right there - it is a sellers market right now, so if they start making too many demands for stupid things you can get a job elsewhere.

You are a great programmer, good companies know they need to qualify themself to you.

Do you think suit guy got his job with that attitude?

When it comes to hiring, I'll take a Github commit log over a resume any day.

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