GitHub is not your new résumé

http://www.brandonmwest.com/development/2013/08/22/github-is-not-your-new-resume.html

32 36 13 years ago

rip747• 13 years ago

`And code on GitHub gives no insight into how someone might fit into a company culture.`

github does give you this insight if you look at how the person participates in discussions in the issue tracker and code reviews. remember github's old moto, social coding? i think the author is hung up on the coding part and missing the social part.

posabsolute• 13 years ago

I agree, if the person has a public repo with a bit of momentum you can even see how he manage his open source project with the community...

This is much more valuable than any list of company you work for.

smallsharptools6• 13 years ago

This is a rant. They must not have much worth sharing on GitHub.

These days if I interviewed 2 developers and one had a very nice resume full of recommendations and stories about successful projects and the other developer had an active GitHub account with their own active projects with many watching them as well as multiple accepted Pull Requests for other projects... I would easily lean toward the developer who has been actively writing code, sharing and interacting with other developers. It shows they have passion, drive, dedication and an eagerness to learn from others and contribute back to the community.

A fancy resume cannot replace all of that.

jboynyc• 13 years ago

It may be a rant, but your anecdotal evidence doesn't prove its point wrong. In fact, a recent influential paper by sociologist Lauren Rivera [1] suggests that cultural "fit" is indeed an important aspect in many hiring decisions.

Rivera finds that interviews are where "fit" is ultimately determined, but résumé screening is a first step: "firms mandated that evaluators assess candidates’ fit along with a variety of technical and communication skills in résumé screens and first- and second-round job interviews" (p. 1007).

1: http://www.asanet.org/journals/ASR/Dec12ASRFeature.pdf

smallsharptools6• 13 years ago

And GitHub is all about fit and culture. What makes GitHub so valuable is more than just making a lot of code available. It allows me to interact with many developers, discuss reasoning behind changes and learn from mistakes and successes. Being able to interact helps prepare developers for working on a team anywhere. I know many developers work in isolation even at companies and GitHub allows them to get that team experience.

And my evidence is personal experience. I do not need a study to know that interacting more with people makes me a better team player. I know that I have benefitted greatly by cutting back on time reading articles and attending meetups and more time with GitHub activities.

LeafStorm• 13 years ago

That presumes that either (a) they have time to spend doing substantial work with open source outside of their day job and other obligations, or (b) they have a day job which allows them both the time and the regulatory freedom to contribute to open source. For many programmers with the desire to contribute to open source and substantial work experience, this is not the case.

adeaver• 13 years ago

It shows they have passion, drive, dedication and an eagerness to learn from others

No, all it shows is that they wrote some code and put it on a website.

The developer that has just a resume might be just as (or more) skilled that the one that uses github but for whatever reason can't post code up like that. To exclude someone simply because they don't have an active github is foolish.

However did you screen, interview, and hire people before github came along?

codyb• 13 years ago

As someone currently looking for an entry level position in development work I agree with this. Currently I'm learning about cryptography and web security. There's not a lot of development work from that I can put on my github account. Especially since Matasano's Cryptography challenges which I've been slowly working through don't allow me to publicly display the challenges or my results. Does that mean I don't have as much drive as someone who's working on machine learning currently and can write a library and post it on github?

smallsharptools6• 13 years ago

These days an active GitHub profile gives a developer a distinct advantage. It helps them form relationships with other debs who can teach them so much, even by just reading their code and commit comments. I watch multiple projects just so I can read about the changes they made, what their thinking was and the changes to the code.

Even if you cannot post code does not men you cannot watch and clone projects so you can learn and stay aware of trends in the community. It keeps you sharp. And it better than any industry magazine out there.

ctdonath3• 13 years ago

A thing is worth exactly what another is willing to pay for it.

The author's work may very well not be worth sharing on GitHub - it may be worth much more than "free".

smallsharptools6• 13 years ago

If you think GitHub is just about sharing code you are missing out.

millstone• 13 years ago

It's also possible that the first developer gave 100% to his job, while the second blew it off to work on whatever he wanted.

gibbitz• 13 years ago

I place myself in the first category. I am going to have to start committing my code samples to github, because 90% of what I write is proprietary and of no use to anyone but my clients and when not bound by NDA, the code would be a waste of other developers' time and would be on github just to be on github, since I and my employer have our own repos. Whenever I'm interviewing I end up pulling code from larger projects and coding a fake context around it to create a sample. I'd love to be more active in the OSS community but I have frameworks to learn, a 10 hour a day job and a wife and kids. No new job for me.

jseip2• 13 years ago

Unless I wrote my resume in html and css and hosted it using Github pages, which I did. #winning

proggR• 13 years ago

I also did that and I got a job with it too. Fancy that.

luuse2• 13 years ago

Any chance either of you could link? I've done it too but i was never completely happy with the result and it would be nice to see how other people have done it for some inspiration.

hackula1• 13 years ago

The one beef I have with the "my github page is my resume" meme is that many developers work in spaces where they do not have the ability to work with open source much. I personally have years of work checked into github in private repos, and if I showed it to a potential employer I could be sued into oblivion. Many of us work on very sensitive systems with loads of legal walls around them. Sure, I contribute to OSS in my spare time, but my public github profile is not even close to a fair representation of my professional work.

WestCoastJustin• 13 years ago

What is the actual beef though? That you are at a perceived disadvantage to someone who has a public profile?

ctdonath3• 13 years ago

Beef?

"Show me your work."

"I can't, it's owned by other companies."

"No job then. There's the door."

And so someone who wrote a million dollars worth of software (actually got paid for) gets beat to a job by someone whose work nobody will pay for.

Yeah, beef.

imsofuture• 13 years ago

Github is absolutely replacing resumes. It doesn't replace an interview, which is what the author seems to be getting at despite the title of their article...

uxp• 13 years ago

That's my take on it as well.

A resume or CV is a piece of paper to get your name on someone's desk, then you get hired by passing the interview. Github is just another way of getting (or keeping) your name on someone's desk.

nicholassmith• 13 years ago

I've done a couple of interviews recently for a C++ developer role, none had GitHub pages. It didn't negatively effect them, they were rated on their strengths from their CV's, interview and a take home programming task but I'd have loved to have seen at least one repo of work.

You don't necessarily need to be using GitHub to produce OSS to the level of something like Rails, but even a micro library would have awesome. It gives you just a little bit more data to look at when you're considering options.

dblock• 13 years ago

For reference, here's my article claiming the opposite: http://code.dblock.org/github-is-your-new-resume

dsowers• 13 years ago

This is why I'm incorporating a bio page into the Silvrback blogging platform. There needs to be something better than linkedIn and Github for showing work/accomplishments. Especially if your interests are diverse. My example bio page: https://www.silvrback.com/dsowers/bio

LordHumungous• 13 years ago

A resume and a GitHub account provide different kinds of quantitative data. Replacing one with the other means you’re throwing out good information. They complement each other and work best together, like hot fudge and ice cream.

He's constructing a bit of a straw man here. I haven't heard anyone suggest that traditional resumes should be completely abandoned, or that a Github account should be the only factor when hiring a developer.

qwerta• 13 years ago

Github is totally replacing resume. But resumes will always be necessary to scale-up career beyond code-monkey to consulting and semi-management roles.

7Figures2Commas• 13 years ago

Given how often resumes are given little more than cursory review (keyword scanning, etc.), I wonder how many companies using GitHub as a screening tool actually take the time to thoroughly review the candidate's work.

Everybody talks about code, but software is about more than code. When looking at a candidate's GitHub repo, is any consideration given to the quality of documentation, if it even exists (which it often doesn't), and how easily a project can be built and used? How many employers actually build and use a candidate's software? Some developers write gorgeous code but gorgeous code != great, usable software.

VincentEvans2• 13 years ago

A few internet-years ago the same was said about having a blog. And then there was a tidal wave of low SNR blogs created by developers employed by offshoring companies looking for an edge. If this article gets traction - github will likely see the same. Be careful what you wish for.

To be honest, from my own modest mountaintop of being 35, (gainfully employed and programming since 14 somewhere in the depths of your typical enterprise) I suddenly find myself repeating the words of others from long ago when I first started in the field (though now I can relate) - look at this as yet another fad: same as those blogs, same as the linkedins and twitters...

I'd like to volunteer that I, though not having contributed to any open source projects, nor published any of the code that I have worked on (it obviously being proprietary to the company I work for), nor having any interest to blog my many unremarkable opinions along with already overbearing gaggle of "experts" - still, am not entirely uninterested and apathetic towards programming, nor devoid of useful engineering skill and reliable experience accumulated over lengthy career. But you won't believe me.

VincentEvans2• 13 years ago

By the way - for a bunch of self-proclaimed introverted geeks and nerds, you lot sure advocate a lot of "social media" sharing.

brianmcc• 13 years ago

I find resumes pretty efficient - I can look them over, and make a snap judgement wrt which ones are worth a phone screen, which aren't. Over many years of doing this, I find a good correlation between first impression and subsequent candidate quality (meaning, I've had to interview folks where the resume screamed "no hire"). Stuff like coherent formatting, brief narrative and concise, useful explanations of roles and technologies are, believe it or not, quite beyond some people.

The thought of trawling someone's repo instead, having to take the time to get an in depth evaluation of what the code's doing and whether that's effective makes me shudder. But then perhaps people doing this just make a first impression of the code, rather than a deep understanding?

Honestly I can see a GitHub being a "nice to have", but certainly not the main deal.

Out of interest, anyone else that's been hiring in the UK seeing any traction with GitHub? I'm in a pretty enterprisey space, and past clutch of CVs we've had haven't so much as mentioned it.

GitHub is not your new résumé

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