[Edd314159]

As a hiring manager, I glance at it and take a brief look at anything interesting. It’s good for talking points at the interview, perhaps to ask the candidate to expand upon and explain the work.

If the profile is empty, I close the tab and find something else to talk about. I will never, ever penalise a candidate for an empty GitHub profile. So many people just do not have time for open source and that’s totally fine.

GitHub activity helps lubricate conversation at interviews, but it should never be taken as anything other than a superficial representation of the candidate’s ability or experience.

[travisjungroth]

I penalize people slightly for an empty GitHub if they put it on their resume, just out of annoyance. Why did you put this url for me to follow if there's nothing here but a half started React tutorial from 3 years ago?

[ncallaway]

Agree on this. If you don't have a useful GitHub portfolio that's fine.

But anything on your resume or linked from your resume is fair game.

If you haven't been able to meaningfully participate in open-source work there's no penalty, but don't link to an empty GitHub page on your resume.

[alchemism]

In the rare case that they have an empty GitHub, save for a fork of https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode, I hire them immediately.

[gregmac]

Yeah, this is just like any other thing you call out by putting on your resume.

Nobody is a expert in everything, of course, but if you specifically put "TCP/IP" or "OOP" on your resume, you better be able to explain TCP vs UDP or class vs interface (both real examples from real phone screens I've done).

[PopeDotNinja]

As a former recruiter, I just assume all resumes are complete shit. I never saw much of a correlation between a quality resume and a quality candidate. Screening for the stuff one uses on the job is what I prefer to do. It's also nice to focus on the job requirements, too, because it removes any need for someone to impress me with what the have done. When you can walk into an interview with "hey, I really want you to get this job, but we need to find a way for both of us to envision a scenario in which we're working together successfully", it's amazing how well that usually turns out.

[blazespin]

Agreed, I think a resume with just yoe, last 10 years of companies worked at/positions/years, education, and 4 our 5 technologies/areas currently interested in working on is enough.

You could probably drop education from it if you have 5 or more yoe.

Frankly you could do this in one 5 or 6 line paragraph without a resume

I never read them anymore. It’s such a waste of time. Totally useless compared to our phone screen templates.

[sl1ck731]

If recruiting software didn't penalize for keywords I think it would be less of an issue. Its a struggle trying to figure out what to put in the "list of technologies" type section. I have to put them somewhere to get past crappy HR screening software since explaining every tech in a job description would create paragraphs but just listing it doesn't represent the level of aptitude.

For example, I might use Chef daily. If I put it in a list of other tools I use it can mean I know how to use it for my very specific use case, but usually it is taken as "this guy thinks he contributes to the Chef source code and knows every bizarre scenario involving it" by some tech screener trying to get his rocks off.

I 100% blame every tech recruiter for furthering this mess.

[scarface74]

The secret is don’t base your job search on blindly submitting resumes to applicant tracking systems.

When I am looking for a job, I send my resume to my curated list of local recruiters followed up by a phone call. We talk about what they have available and what I am looking for. I have enough of a history with them that they make sure that my resume shows up on top of the hiring managers stack.

My success rate from submitting my resume to being invited to an in person interview is 100% unless the req was closed. My non rejection rate is close to 100% (I’ve taken myself out of the running because I found a job.)

[hhs]

This is interesting. How did you build your list of local recruiters - through trial and error? And did you use services other than LinkedIn?

[scarface74]

It happened over many years. But basically, I respond to every recruiter if I don’t already have a contact with the recruiting company and they have local offices.

Mostly LinkedIn these days. I only got really serious about my career about 10 years ago. Before that I was your typical “dark matter developer” working at one job for almost a decade.

[scarface74]

I’ll go even further. Don’t put any language, framework, technology on your resume that you don’t want to talk about or that you don’t want to do.

I took C and C++ off of my resume years ago even though I did both for 12 years and I still know all of the ends and outs of C. There is going to be that one old geek (I’m 45) who wants to ask me some obscure question just to prove how smart he is. I definitely leave PHP and Perl off. I don’t want to show up on recruiters search results looking for WordPress developers (I never did WP).

I want to keep the conversation and the interview focused.

[Tempest1981]

Just scanned a resume touting IBM 370 assembly, along with a dozen web frameworks.

[user5994461]

>>> class vs interface

This is java specific, that's not OOP.

[jve]

Interface is a means to achieve OOP. 2 more languages pops off my head:

C#: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-refe... TypeScript: https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/interfaces.html

[stefkors]

So many places seem to require a github profile in their form.

[eponeponepon]

There is never anything wrong with writing "n/a" in any kind of form. There was a long overlap during which any form that took contact details already had fields for email address and mobile phone number, but before either of those were as ubiquitous as they are today; nobody processing those forms ever ignored one with "n/a" for email address.

Granted, it might be less prudent to skip some fields than others, of course.

[dep_b]

"error: n/a is not a valid URL"

[josephorjoe]

Disable their client side validations and find out if they bothered with server side validations...

[parthdesai]

how about www.idonthaveaninterestinggithub.com

[avip]

Seems https://idonthaveaninterestinggithub.com is up now

[vbezhenar]

URL must start from https://github.com/

[zinckiwi]

n://a?

[PopeDotNinja]

+1 for this. I used to be a recruiter, and knew hiring managers looked at GitHub profiles. When I started, I used to to stress out over pushing crappy code to my GitHub account. At some point I realized that anyone judging me for stuff I put into GitHub was simply not someone I would ever want to please. My GitHub is mostly a graveyard for experiments, learning, and goofing off, and that is exactly what I want it to be :)

If you have something really notable in your GitHub account, maybe it should probably be on your CV/resume, too!

[_asummers]

I've started doing this -- my resume has an "Open Source and Public Speaking" section for putting in noteworthy GH accomplishments.

[gumby]

I’m curious: why bother to use GH then? Why not simply have various repos in your filesystem?

It feels to me like having a blog site and only putting notes, scraps and drafts in it. Maybe there’s some functionality i’m not seeing?

[Washuu]

I push to Gitlab from home so that I can pull down to the computer in the shop. Fleshing out an idea is much more comfortable in the home than standing up in front of a an old computer.

[PopeDotNinja]

It's a good question, and I don't have a specific answer. I guess the short answer is because I want to. It's convenient for a number of reasons.

[wildpeaks]

You could keep experiments in private repos if you worry about showing crappy code.

[JshWright]

While you don't actively penalize folks, it's worth pointing out that candidates with an active GitHub profile often _do_ have an advantage in the scenario you describe.

[xemdetia]

Yes, I would agree that it helped but only based on the logic that a resume/cv is a document designed to advertise your accomplishments. If your accomplishments are best shown by your GitHub then include it, if it shows nothing don't! It's the same as advertising a volunteer group or something on a resume, a group with high participation and clear commitment to some purpose (if relevant to the job in question) is worth more than a random meetup group that met only once and when pressed the candidate clearly shows that it was invented for the resume. That's potentially 10 minutes or so the candidate could have talked about something else which is an actual strength.

[praneshp]

Similar to how a much better developer has an advantage over me in an interview

[WrtCdEvrydy]

I like to think people who are further into their career and keeping up with development have a github with lots of stars... the github doesn't make the developer, the developer makes the github.

[hhmc]

Your statment is built upon the pernicious idea that all good developers should write code in their spare time.

[WrtCdEvrydy]

I said 'stars' meaning they at least follow the market trends.

[jordan801]

I've been super concerned about my empty stackoverflow and github accounts. This is reassuring. Thanks for sharing!

[drdaeman]

> So many people just do not have time for open source

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine someone senior enough (in terms of experience, not years) who haven't ever hacked a FLOSS dependency to do something it originally didn't.

Of course, it could be that the source wasn't on GitHub, or that author did effort to persuade upstream into accepting their changes and then repository was removed, or that the code is in the company's internal systems (which can be a good idea for various reasons). However, I'd say that most typical scenario is "you see it, you find it on GitHub, you fork it, patch it and leave it there - just in case". I have a bunch of those, and I'm just archiving those repos when I recognize they're not relevant anymore. It's not like I'm paying for those - and having an ancient fork had helped me once, when someone from my old place had a problem and asked me if I still remember how things worked there.

I mean, many (most?) of software engineers are directly working with free software every day. And, sadly, world isn't that perfect this software provides everything one might need without any tinkering. :) So, in a certain sense, "no time for open source" is a little bit questionable.

But, yeah, there are valid reasons why a good engineer may not even have GitHub account at all. Unless you're drowning in a torrent of great-looking resumes (and you're not GitHub Inc.), no harm in not making GH account a mandatory requirement.

[throwawaymath]

> On the other hand, it's hard to imagine someone senior enough (in terms of experience, not years) who haven't ever hacked a FLOSS dependency to do something it originally didn't.

No, I find that pretty easy to imagine.

[dragonwriter]

> On the other hand, it's hard to imagine someone senior enough (in terms of experience, not years) who haven't ever hacked a FLOSS dependency to do something it originally didn't.

I can think of plenty of developers working in non-OSS (either internal/nonlicensed or proprietary licensed) shops who, even if they have and work with OSS dependencies, and even if they might hack on them for the sake of the projects they work on, have never, by (or at least as a result of the requirements of) employer policy, contributed a thing back.

Of course, that's because I've spent most of my career in that kind of environment, which is why I've got very little on my GitHub none of which has a direct relationship to my paid work.

[peruvian]

In the past year we grew our team from 6 to almost 30 and counting. About 10 of those 30 are senior engineers (between 8-15 years of experience). So far everyone's been very skilled and great to work with.

We work in GitHub, and of those who use their personal profile for work, all of them have "empty" profiles and no meaningful OSS contributions. They spend their free time with their family and in other hobbies.

People who hack on OSS for fun are usually good developers, but good developers rarely hack on OSS for fun especially once they get older.

[drdaeman]

I didn't mean hacking OSS side projects for fun, on free time. Why everyone reads it like that?

I meant, using FLOSS libraries for the actual job, during normal work hours. Depends on the industry, of course, I guess.

[zrobotics]

The trouble is, many of the people who responded to you had a legitimate point. I've done embedded development with OS libraries that I've extended, but there was 0% chance of me opwm-sourcing any of that code. I didn't even ask. Not everyone works in a field that is conducive to OS models. Consider that there are people who work in the military space who read this site, and the thought of open-source would give their managers aneurysms.

[zrobotics]

The trouble is, many of the people who respond

[userbinator]

I mean, many (most?) of software engineers are directly working with free software every day.

I think there's many more working on proprietary software, we just naturally don't hear about it due to its nature. Open source is prominent only because it's public.

[drdaeman]

Yes, I meant that lots of proprietary software links with and relies on FLOSS components.

E.g. I open Slack (a random pick - it's open on my desktop right now), a proprietary software app. And in the "about" section there's a huge list of FLOSS libraries they use: https://slack.com/libs/desktop

Moreover, I'd say, every website out there (and web is a giant niche) uses lots of FLOSS components.

And for GitHub contributions, I meant that once in many years there happens to be a library that's out of date but otherwise useful, or lacks some nice feature.