Very poor article. It's not wrong on the points it's raising but GitHub profiles (or gitlab or whatever) are massively useful at showcasing: Code you've actually put out there in the wild (rather...
Very poor article. It's not wrong on the points it's raising but GitHub profiles (or gitlab or whatever) are massively useful at showcasing:
Code you've actually put out there in the wild (rather than homework assignments)
Stacks you have legitimate experience working with (not bullshit you put up on a buzzword-bingo resume)
The less mainstream things you work with, you play with etc (in other words: it highlights whether you're curious)
How you interact with communities
It's not that I wouldn't hire someone who doesn't have a GitHub profile, it's that a GitHub profile makes it infinitely more likely that you'll pass through my filters and quickly get shortlisted (if you're good).
I agree, for me the point of looking at someone's GitHub profile/repos isn't to determine if they are a good dev or not. It is just a very rough filter. Do they have a profile at all? Do they have...
I agree, for me the point of looking at someone's GitHub profile/repos isn't to determine if they are a good dev or not. It is just a very rough filter.
Do they have a profile at all?
Do they have any repos, forked or otherwise?
Have they made any commits?
As a bonus, is anything relevant to what they'd likely work on?
Even if it is a no on all the above doesn't preclude them from getting an interview, but having something makes me more likely to invite them. Now, that doesn't mean this is a good way of filtering, but if you are hiring you need some way to cut the size of the applicant pile (at least that is my experience).
I'm not at the top of the interviewing funnel, I mostly do on site interviews (now not quite so on site) but sometimes also technical phone screens and similar stuff. If a candidate ever mentions...
I'm not at the top of the interviewing funnel, I mostly do on site interviews (now not quite so on site) but sometimes also technical phone screens and similar stuff. If a candidate ever mentions a person project or their github directly I'll always make sure to go there and read their code as if someone were trying to commit it to one of our repos. Of course, I don't expect them to be perfect. But it's another signal to take into account.
I went out of my way to make sure my gitlab is as hard to tie to my actual person as possible and never send it to employers. The shit on my gitlab is trash. It’s where I take my first stabs at...
I went out of my way to make sure my gitlab is as hard to tie to my actual person as possible and never send it to employers. The shit on my gitlab is trash. It’s where I take my first stabs at learning something. My later attempts and better structured versions are in my employers proprietary code base. If you looked at my gitlab you would assume I’ve never programmed before. If someone submits their github as a way to show their skills I have no problem with that. But I wouldn’t want to work somewhere where they dig up my gitlab without asking me or they require a github account.
This article is about averages, but sometimes outliers matter. I don’t think most hiring managers are likely to review source code and decide whether someone is good or not based on it, but it can...
This article is about averages, but sometimes outliers matter. I don’t think most hiring managers are likely to review source code and decide whether someone is good or not based on it, but it can be useful to back up a claim on your resume, showing that you did the thing you claimed you did.
[...] in the latest Hacker News' Who is Hiring thread, there are a bunch of different job ads asking for a Github profile as part of the job application.
[...] this post is about why GitHub profiles just aren't all that useful when looking to hire developers.
Very poor article. It's not wrong on the points it's raising but GitHub profiles (or gitlab or whatever) are massively useful at showcasing:
It's not that I wouldn't hire someone who doesn't have a GitHub profile, it's that a GitHub profile makes it infinitely more likely that you'll pass through my filters and quickly get shortlisted (if you're good).
I agree, for me the point of looking at someone's GitHub profile/repos isn't to determine if they are a good dev or not. It is just a very rough filter.
Even if it is a no on all the above doesn't preclude them from getting an interview, but having something makes me more likely to invite them. Now, that doesn't mean this is a good way of filtering, but if you are hiring you need some way to cut the size of the applicant pile (at least that is my experience).
I'm not at the top of the interviewing funnel, I mostly do on site interviews (now not quite so on site) but sometimes also technical phone screens and similar stuff. If a candidate ever mentions a person project or their github directly I'll always make sure to go there and read their code as if someone were trying to commit it to one of our repos. Of course, I don't expect them to be perfect. But it's another signal to take into account.
I went out of my way to make sure my gitlab is as hard to tie to my actual person as possible and never send it to employers. The shit on my gitlab is trash. It’s where I take my first stabs at learning something. My later attempts and better structured versions are in my employers proprietary code base. If you looked at my gitlab you would assume I’ve never programmed before. If someone submits their github as a way to show their skills I have no problem with that. But I wouldn’t want to work somewhere where they dig up my gitlab without asking me or they require a github account.
This article is about averages, but sometimes outliers matter. I don’t think most hiring managers are likely to review source code and decide whether someone is good or not based on it, but it can be useful to back up a claim on your resume, showing that you did the thing you claimed you did.
From the article: