[stevemk14ebr]

I wouldn't have been hired for the jobs i've had if it wasn't for my Github. I don't think false-negatives should lead you to disregard the ability to find that perfect developer. Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set?

[kazinator]

The article's problem is that its arguments apply to trying to use GH as a search tool for candidates.

For instance, the fact that some accounts are fakes for a TV show, or that some projects are jokes and listicles, has nothing to do with the particular GH project of a candidate that you're interviewing, having found that candidate in ways having nothing to do with GH.

Sure; GH being full of crap makes it impossible to use for searching for developers. (Not to mention that, oh, people don't use real names, and you don't know whether they live across the street or across the ocean).

The main valid point is that a great developer might have an inactive GH account.

"If you're looking for a thief, it isn't useful to look into pockets. Many pockets contain nothing, or lint. And those that contain something are almost always legitimate: stuff that the pocket owner owns. Some pockets are fake; just ornamental openings that are sewn shut, with no actual pockets behind them. The best thief I ever nabbed had nothing in his pockets; everything was in a big duffle bag in the trunk of his car."

[el_benhameen]

A software designer at my company can add our software to his or her portfolio because the design itself is publicly-accessible. I can’t add our software to my portfolio, though, because while the final product is available to the public, the code itself is not. So I can point to the software without actually showing my work, or work many extra hours to have a portfolio of code. Which I guess is life, but I think it’s fair to point out that maintaining a code portfolio is far more time consuming than a design portfolio, for instance.

[toomuchtodo]

> Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set?

It is not. If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken. It is a slippery slope where we allow employers to dictate uncompensated signaling necessary for a role.

Observe how it worked out for everyone who got a degree because employers won't hire without one, and then they don't get hired regardless of that degree. So we'll all toil on public Github projects in hopes that'll be what convinces an employer to hire? Will we all need to intern for several months for free next?

@always_good: Hiring is hard. If you succeed in hiring the right people, it won't be because they jumped through your hoops, but because they were passionate, had some of the skills and could grow fast, and a huge helping of luck.

[_seemethere]

That's not entirely true. Candidates have to meet employers halfway.

Employer's have a limited amount of time and money too, why should they waste those resources having to mine for someone's skill level when there's plenty of candidates out there that will display that on some online site.

[toomuchtodo]

> Candidates have to meet employers halfway.

Perhaps in a recession, but in the current market, the employer must meet the candidate. That's how supply and demand works.

To confirm (as an example), check out the last HN Who's Hiring [1], and compare to the next one. I assure you, most of the positions go unfilled because demand is exceeding supply. A company can either make their filters more reasonable, pay more, or a combination of the two.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282819

[always_good]

There may be more jobs available than developers, but all of those jobs aren't equal.

For the good jobs, you're competing against other good people. Good luck playing coy.

There were also more women than men in my university, but that didn't free up the cutest girl in the bar.

[toomuchtodo]

> For the good jobs, you're competing against other good people. Good luck playing coy.

Everyone does not need the best job. They all just need good enough jobs that continually must improve because demand outstrips supply. See Basecamp for an example; I'm confident developers reading that post began to think about their compensation after reading that.

"Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in San Francisco, but now we pay everyone as though all did"

https://m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-doesnt-employ-anyone-in-...

[souprock]

Sometimes an employer has more than one slot to fill, or the business is growing and gets another slot to fill. I may post the same thing next month, but that doesn't mean we haven't hired. There is an ongoing need.

[Benjamin_Dobell]

> If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken.

That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken.

> Observe how it worked out for everyone who got a degree because employers won't hire without one, and then they don't get hired regardless of that degree.

I don't have a degree, I got my first job because I walked into the interview with a portfolio; more specifically a fully functional completed piece of software that I live demonstrated. This wasn't an open-source project, but I sent them the code to be reviewed nonetheless (I own the IP).

The reason some people with degrees don't get jobs is because people with portfolio's (irrespective of degrees) can demonstrate their skill-set, where as waving around a piece of paper and having no demonstrable skills makes it extremely difficult for a potential employer to evaluate you.

> It is a slippery slope where we allow employers to dictate uncompensated signaling necessary for a role.

I do somewhat agree with this. However, your portfolio need not be open-source work, it's just common as there's some proof (version control, although not tamper-proof) indicating you did the work you're claiming you've done.

[scarface74]

That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken.

I haven't had any publicly accessible work to show off since I posted a HyperCard stack on AOL and freeware FTP sites while I was in college in 1995. I've been working as a professional developer since 1996, have never been asked to show code and have a pretty good track record for getting jobs based on solely my interview skills and knowledge.

At this point in my career, few companies waste time even asking me about technical trivia. I talk about the projects of the teams I've been on and led. I've gotten jobs over the past 10 years where I didn't meet half of the requirements going in.

[always_good]

Surely the argument isn't that a portfolio is a necessary positive signal, but rather that it's just a positive signal.

In other words, would you take the stance that having some quality work on Github can never work in your favor?

What about other positive-but-not-guaranteed signals like having a quality blog where you cover technical topics? Can that ever work in your favor? Or is it pure noise that can never demonstrate value?

[scarface74]

I have to admit my own bias against actually doing side projects. While I will read technical books dealing with high level concepts, I've never done a side project outside of work.

I'd rather try to champion technology at my job and do a proof of concept or if that isn't possible, change jobs.

I've been able to find jobs where what I am good at is a "requirement" and where what I want to learn is a "nice to have" and learn the nice to have.

I find it carries a lot more weight to be able to talk about how you have used technology at work than a side project unless the side project was a really popular open source project.

Then again, I never work for companies with a large development team where I can't have a large, resume building impact.

[toomuchtodo]

> That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken.

I have been working in tech for 18 years, as both an IC and a hiring manager. I do not believe it to be inaccurate. It's how I do hiring in my current role.

I also do not have a degree. In my current role, I was hired on the spot leaving the conference room after my interview. In my role before that, I had three video conference interviews and a take home project.

> I do somewhat agree with this. However, your portfolio need not be open-source work, it's just common as there's some proof (version control, although not tamper-proof) indicating you did the work you're claiming you've done.

I used to be an sysadmin|linux|network|infrastructure engineer. Now I'm in security architecture. What work would you have someone like me show that I did the work I claimed to be doing other than me explaining to you what I did and how I did it? No Github repo is going to be able to properly illustrate the work I've done, or the breadth and depth of my knowledge and understanding.

Public repos are a poor signal. Just my two cents. You want to figure out how people think, that's what an interview is for.

[Benjamin_Dobell]

> I also do not have a degree. In my current role, I was hired on the spot leaving the conference room after my interview.

Sounds like a broken hiring process.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all saying you're bad it your job. I'm saying your employer got lucky.

> I used to be an infrastructure engineer. Now I'm in security architecture. What work would you have someone like me show that I did the work I claimed to be doing other than me explaining to you what I did and how I did it?

There's absolutely nothing stopping you publishing part of your solutions to Github, along with published articles explaining what you did and why you did it.

You've simply chosen not to, and you've artificially limited your hiring prospects by not doing so. You could have a better job.

[toomuchtodo]

> There's absolutely nothing stopping you publishing part of your solutions to Github, along with published articles explaining what you did and why you did it.

Except my intellectual property copyright assignment from both employers. This is pretty standard, even in startups. Your suggestion is unreasonable.

> You could have a better job.

My current job is pretty phenomenal (I do security for financial markets). Definitely interested if you know someone paying more than $230k/year for my skill set. Cash is king.

[Benjamin_Dobell]

> Except my intellectual property copyright assignment from both employers. This is pretty standard, even in startups. Your suggestion is unreasonable.

I'm not suggesting you publish their IP. However, you've the legal right to learn (utilise and transfer between employers) skills that you learn on the clock.

You are absolutely entitled to publish (in one form or another) your personal learnings. Your contract with your employer may (if you have an extremely restrictive contract) simply prevent you claiming you're using those skills as part of your current role.

If employers had the right to prevent you utilising skills you learned on the clock, you'd have to somehow unlearn skills and start from scratch at every new job - that's not how it works.

[FLUX-YOU]

>If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken.

No one does this. It's just that talking is not evidence enough like it is for other industries because interviewers don't know the right questions to ask. So they add code challenges to fill in the gaps.

It's saying "your previous experience doesn't actually matter that much and we only care if you can actually put code down in the limited fashion of our technical tests". People are naturally annoyed at having to prove they know the basics after 3-5 years in the field.

There's definitely some who hire engineers based on conversation only though. If they can, why can't others?

[always_good]

> If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken.

Easier said than done, especially if you're talking about whiteboard interviews.

Nobody can even agree on what this perfect barrage of probing looks like.

[mdip]

> If an employer can't ascertain your skill level through the interview process, their hiring is broken.

I think the better way of putting that is "Interviewing is broken". Determining that a candidate meets a minimum level of skill-set is possible to do in an interview, however, determining much beyond that is highly elusive. I've had candidates that were incredible "Used Car Salesmen", who the previous interviewers wanted to "skip the technical interview" and just hire the guy outright because he was so convincing only to have his outcome in the technical interview end up being terrible (and I've had candidates get the job where this fact was discovered too late)[0]. I've had candidates that I've had to have a fight nearly come to blows to get a candidate hired because they were so nervous that they completely bombed the interview, and that "accurate portfolio of their skill set" was the only thing, outside of my insistence, that got them hired (out of the few this has happened with, all were good hires, too).

I'm not asking anyone to jump through my hoops (especially now that I'm working at a place where I, thankfully, no longer interview candidates). I don't ask candidates to white-board code (I wouldn't let them if they wanted to), but given a candidate who has a solid portfolio against a candidate who does not -- assuming all other things are equal (or the portfolio is incredible) -- I'm going to hire the one with a portfolio. And I feel it is a personal responsibility of mine to keep that stuff up-to-date. I could do a better job of it, myself, but if I failed to get a job because I lacked in that area, I wouldn't blame anyone but myself.

[0] I blame myself for this one -- he could talk up and down about concepts; was hugely into functional programming at a time when that was less mainstream. He not only knew all of the buzzwords, but he knew the "why"'s behind them. Academically speaking, he was incredibly knowledgeable. It wasn't until he had to actually learn an existing code base and contribute to it that it was discovered he lacked in execution. A manager on his team felt that he "froze up" ... would write something seven different ways and keep coming back to it while writing follow-on features until all he was doing was modifying code he'd already written to yield the same result, just slightly differently. I, arrogantly, assumed he was too good for the half-rate programmers we hired but upon running into someone who worked with him at the company he came from, it was discovered that he was not actually employed by them at the time he was interviewing as he'd been let go a couple of weeks prior ... and he had the same problem there.

[FLUX-YOU]

>Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set?

That's what a resume is for. It explains the what and how I performed my last jobs. GitHub is possibly how I did my own hobby projects which have different requirements.

We're not artists who can easily keep a copy of the code we produce. That's a problem with asking for more effort on my own (unpaid) time.

[tytytytytytytyt]

> Is it not your responsibility as a developer to keep an accurate portfolio of your skill set?

Lots or most devs don't need to.