Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/09/is-a-resume-relevant-in-the-age-of-online-courses-and-open-source-projects/

by dbh937 • 14 years ago

35 49 14 years ago

arstechnica.com

gorbachev• 14 years ago

I work for a company that makes recruiting products to fortune 500 companies. They don't offer online courses to cashiers working for big retailers, or to truck drivers working for transportation companies.

Jobs at technology companies might be what ArsTechnica and Hacker News readers go for, but those jobs are such a small percentage of the jobs filled every day in the US.

janardanyri• 14 years ago

As one data point: a resume has never been relevant to my career. I've never gotten a job or a contract through a resume.

Completed live projects instantly visible on any browser or smartphone with a quick technical explanation have always been far more valuable for me.

You don't need to ask anyone's permission to build amazing software.

(Unfortunately, you continue to need permission to build many other things.)

nsxwolf• 14 years ago

All my work is on code I don't own and isn't public facing. I can't take our proprietary code, wrap it up, and put it on GitHub. I also can't provide logins to our proprietary systems for employers to look at.

I certainly hope a resume remains relevant for people in my position, because it's really all I have.

danielweber2• 14 years ago

Yes, "show me the github" is one of the worst trends for software developers' careers.

I'll always ask for live code from people at interviews, if only to filter out the total posers.

kanzure2• 14 years ago

> Yes, "show me the github" is one of the worst trends for software developers' careers.

On the other hand, there are benefits to posting code online that they can review. Instead of spending hours writing code for each company that you're interviewing with, you can just write code that you're actually interested in and throw it online.

Say you're talking with 20 companies. Each of those 20 interviews have an associated overhead of 3 hours (if you're lucky): 1 hour screening call, 1 hour technical call, 1 hour live coding call. So 60 hours of screening, versus writing some code that might actually be usable by others in the future.

Don't be afraid to say no to live coding interviews. Unless you have nothing to show :-).

windle• 14 years ago

I've met total posers that can whip up the little snippets that people have time for in an interview... and I've met great coders who crash and burn a live code session due to interview stress.

I've consistently found open-source code to be a much better sample since the person being interviewed is not under such pressure when writing it. And yes, the pressure from being in a room with 3 ppl watching you is very different from "deadline pressure" to complete a task when employed.

I don't think the github resume is going to be the standard for quite awhile, but I know it makes my job when hiring much easier when we can discuss code and techniques used in an open-source project the interviewee wrote, than arbitrary questions that only prove he's recently memorized an algorithm book.

The real thing developers should think about, is the competition. This is what made "has college degree" an easy filter for employers. If you have 800 applications, tossing the ones missing a github repo in addition to the college degree trims it down a bit more.

Will you miss some possibly great people? Absolutely. Same with the college degree filter. But you'll still likely end up with a bunch of "would like to hire" candidates and it'll be easier to see what their work actually looks like. If you're applying for a job, you should absolutely consider how to stay ahead of the competition, and I'm sure companies in the future when bombarded with so many applications will add things like this to the resume filter.

acdha2• 14 years ago

I've been in similar positions but one note: do you really work 100% on proprietary software? If you've used any open source projects you can demonstrate skill solely through high quality bug reports for the tools you use, even if your main code is closed. I've certainly seen people participating in e.g. Linux, Python, Apache, etc. threads which made it clear they were solid developers.

sebastianmarr• 14 years ago

A resume is a listing of what you have done in your life that could be relevant to the job you are applying for. If that is an online course and a couple of open source projects, then this can be just as helpful to your future employer as a list of companies you have worked for.

To resume means to summarize. Your GitHub profile is not a summary, it is a raw dump of everything that you have done without weighting.

So, of course a resume is still relevant today. And it is still up to the applicant to present himself to the employer, because most of the time the applicant is looking for a specific job when the company is not looking for a specific employee.

_red• 14 years ago

For what its worth, one of the last hardware devs we hired happened exclusively online. We were adding some biometric hardware to our current software stack and came across a small project online of someone who wrote a java library for the hardware in question.

After a series of emails, we proposed that we should pay him a few months consulting fee - to help us integrate. As a bonus of course, he could take the improvements and fold them back into his his open-source project.

Things continued like this and eventually he proved useful in other ways, so he is permanent hire now.

In this day and age, there really is no excuse for having "no experience" (in the software world at least). Moreover, who really cares about what university you went to if you can prove your immediate usefulness in other ways?

jonbischke• 14 years ago

This is exactly why we started Entelo. We felt that online sources are quickly becoming the "new resume" and that if you draw the trend lines on the data, if it's not obvious now, it will be very soon. Remember, none of the sites referenced in the post (Github, Stack, Coursera, etc.) existed five years ago. What will exist five years from now?

Also, an emerging trend is "Github for X". You have sites like Grabcad (Github for Mechanical Engineers), Dribbble and Behance (Github for Designers), Benchling (Github for Biology), Proformative (Github for Accountants), etc. As these professional communities grow they'll increasingly be looking at by employers.

It's early for this trend but we believe deeply in it.

droithomme• 14 years ago

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.

coliveira2• 14 years ago

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.

hansef2• 14 years ago

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.

jeremyjh• 14 years ago

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.

jebblue3• 14 years ago

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.

rhizome3• 14 years ago

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?

mgse• 14 years ago

"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.

acdha2• 14 years ago

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.

daenz• 14 years ago

> 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?

JoeAltmaier• 14 years ago

He has as many sources as the original article - experience.

endianswap• 14 years ago

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.)

0x09• 14 years ago

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.

kingkilr• 14 years ago

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.

jebblue3• 14 years ago

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.

theorique2• 14 years ago

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.

isagalaev• 14 years ago

Agreed. My most popular github repo is a JavaScript library, while professionally I'm mostly manager and my technical background is mostly in Python.

yummyfajitas• 14 years ago

"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.

coliveira2• 14 years ago

Employers will not retire resumes because they know better than anyone else that online activity is classified as marketing rather than individual achievement. If you generate this kind of online activity, good for you, it makes it easier to find a job or to sell a product. It may even replace a traditional job. But having a degree from a top university, having a position in a well know company, receiving a prize recognized in the industry, these are things that really count as achievement. Unless you're talking about internet marketing positions, these are the things that really matter to an employer.

knieveltech4• 14 years ago

"having a degree from a top university"

If you're applying for a position at a company that has HR minions guarding the gates to the hiring manager, then yeah this is great. If you're being hired by an individual with development experience this isn't likely to cut a lot of ice.

Here's why: several of the best developers I've ever met do not have degrees. Some didn't even bother graduating from highschool. I've worked with many developers that had degrees from name brand schools that couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map. Everyone I know in industry has had similar experiences.

"having a position in a well known company"

This at least gets you some name recognition and opens the doors to quality networking opportunities, but there's no guarantee that Name Brand Corp. didn't make a hiring mistake when they brought you on in the first place, so again, time for some healthy skepticism from the hiring manager.

"receiving a prize recognized in the industry"

Either this kind of opportunity is so rare that it's effectively out of reach for the overwhelming majority of developers in $industry_segment OR it's a valueless rubber stamp (see also: MS certifications).

"Unless you're talking about internet marketing positions, these are the things that really matter to an employer."

Your talking points imply that you define "employer" as medium to large corporation with a formal HR department and it's hiring practices stuck in the 90's. Typically a great gig if you're into grinding B2B middleware code for industry median pay and two weeks vacation. If that's what you're into that's cool I guess.

Compare/contrast an experienced FOSS contributor for a well-known project. Fending off recruiter calls and getting cold called for consulting gigs three or four times a week is the norm. Tech interviews are typically pared down to seeing if your personality will fit with the rest of the team because they already know you can code.

Resume? No thanks. Show me your code and then let's have a beverage and chat.

jebblue3• 14 years ago

>> Resume? No thanks. Show me your code and then let's have a beverage and chat.

What is this hipster hiring? Give it 10 or 20 years bud you'll be singing a different tune or afraid to try to get hired as a coder and just pulling manager duty 3 or 4 levels up in the middle quietly re-assuring yourself that you could code and get a job in that new language eebbityfribitz ... if you really wanted to.

rhizome3• 14 years ago

I'm gonna guess you have zero experience with Microsoft certifications in any form or scope beyond the online banter-mill.

"Isn't likely to cut a lot of ice." I've heard that before...is it from "Mad Men?"

rayhano• 14 years ago

A London-based start-up is working on future-facing CVs. The premise is you say what you're going to do, and then do it. Over time you build up something stronger, with social proof. It's called WikiCV: http://WikiCV.me

tluyben2• 14 years ago

As someone who screens a lot of resumes; it's a good short overview and it's relevant. Github/open source projects/online qualifications don't show all there is to experience. Sure if someone started a bunch of projects to try to right the wrongs in the software world then this is a good sign. But if that person doesn't have or believes he/she doesn't need a resume then that's not a good sign. A resume is often a first line of defense; there will be a stack of them and those are screened pretty quickly at most companies. Something needs to attract enough attention to even check out your github and online qualifications. Your github account right there in your list mobile/email/skype/github is a pre, even if it's empty though :)

dfc• 14 years ago

"The problem is that I have no idea how to tell employers that those (SO, GH, etc) are the places to look if they want an accurate description of what I can do."

So you are looking for a concise and centralized resource for listing your qualifications for a job. And you are asking if a resume is still relevant? It seems like the way to tell employers about your github, SO, udacity, etc, profiles is to list them on your resume.

spitfire• 14 years ago

Some of the most interesting developers can't talk about what they've done.

You'll never see the flight computer system of an F-16, but it's probably a much cooler project to work on than an iPhone app. Or nuclear reactor engineering.

Is a resume relevant in this day and age? As a device to portray the best of what you've accomplished yes. For a few people, the answer will be no, that's best done through portfolios like github and open source projects.

In the end, everything old will be new again but with a twist.

ismarc• 14 years ago

I am actually a fan of well written resumes. The problem is that a resume is not a CV or even a listing of all skills/qualifications of an applicant. A resume should be a highlight reel of the skills/experience/qualifications of the applicant THAT PERTAIN TO THE JOB BEING APPLIED FOR. The cover letter then explains how those skills go together and what the applicant is looking for. Github, open source projects, web sites, examples, etc. are supporting evidence once they've gone from an unqualified lead to a qualified lead. But that's the difference that people seem to forget, a large majority of job positions are filled from unqualified leads and spending 20 minutes per applicant with nothing indicating they even have the minimal skills necessary.

adrianhoward• 14 years ago

GitHub et al only provide a very small part of what I'm looking for on a CV/Resume. It's an vital small part - but a small part nevertheless.

The biggest unanswered questions I'm trying to figure out are:

* what value are you going to bring to the organisation (from the value you demonstrate bringing to your previous positions)

* how well you're going to fit into the team (from how you talk about your previous roles)

* how well you understand the position and the organisation (from how you target the information you present)

GitHub et al don't really help with these much.

What GitHub et al do is make fact checking / reference chasing easier. You include some links to github and lanyrd and your background looks more credible - but by themselves they're not going to get you the job.

DrStalker• 14 years ago

How many people can look at a github project and tell how good a coder you are, how well you work with others, what sort of team you mesh well with, what industries you've worked in and so on?

And how many of those people are the ones making hiring choices?

cpt1138• 14 years ago

And how does a resume do any of those things?

Is a resume relevant in the age of online courses and open source projects?

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