I'm not a big fan of this development. There's a lot of software developers out there who work on projects for their employers that can't be open sourced. It also places those who lack free time to hack on code in their off hours (perhaps due to kids) at a disadvantage.<p>For students, it is not clear that the code they generate is their property so posting it on github is legally dangerous. I've also had professors say posting code is cheating.
While I think Alex is super smart and usually thoroughly enjoy his writing, I strongly disagree with this post for one reason - the way he looks to hire completely disregards learning, adaptation, and growth in a potential hire, and this is <i>super</i> important.<p>This is certainly not the first time I've encountered this strategy, in fact it seems to be the dominant mindset among successful companies - 'We are only going to hire people who are super good at what they do already. In fact, I want them to be better than me. We only want the best engineers out there, because we are one of the best companies out there, so we look extra carefully at your credentials and if they are not on par with industry leaders, you're out.' Right?<p>Wrong. If you invest in some stock for a company that is already doing well, there's a decent chance of you making money off it, sure. There's also a decent chance that you won't. It's a pretty standard and usually safe investment. Where the real money comes from is when you do research and find a company that's not already successful, but that you see a lot of promise in. This is (obviously) the entire driving force behind startups and venture capital, and the strategy behind the success of wildly successful investors.<p>You are winning when you see passion for learning and potential for growth in a candidate and pick them up based on that. This way you don't have to pay out as much as you would for someone that already is well recognized within the industry, and you get a lot more loyalty, and a chance to build this employee and support them along their path to greatness. In the end, if you can find these kinds of people and grab them earlier on, you profit far more than other companies that fight over the few current industry leaders and burn through money and effort to keep them on board.
We're moving into a world in which people will increasingly be judged by their work product online (e.g., Github commits, Quora answers, etc.) versus what they say about themselves (e.g., their resume or LinkedIn profile). This change won't be overnight and won't be complete of course but over time could create a virtuous cycle where the importance of having a better "living resume" (your online work/portfolio) will drive increased activity for all of those sites which will in turn make those living resumes more robust.
Next article will be titled "GitHub is dangerous". Just like in a resume, a candidate can easily embellish. Of course you can't trust what someone claims to know. You must verify it.
I don't think I would enjoy working for someone I was better than. I approach work as a learning experience. I usually pick to work for people I can learn from.
Is it that disadvantageous to prefer BitBucket? When people say they check GitHub is that short for checking for publically available source code, or is Git Hub the one-stop-shop for coding credability?
Regarding github, I have a lot of code on github, I store most of my code that's personal there. As you would imagine, most of it's crappy, or incomplete.<p>There are however multiple projects that I think deserve priority when looking through my github, but as far as I can tell, there is no way for me to make it clear what those are.<p>Additionally, if I fork a project, it's likely just so that I can add a fix and issue a pull request, that's additionally something I don't think people need to see.<p>I worry that someone going through my GitHub profile will see all of my old, incomplete work, and leave before they get to my better projects, any thoughts on how to resolve this.<p>As an example, here is a link to my GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/Arelius" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Arelius</a>
Off-topic. How do the "kudos" work? Does it use my IP? Cookies? I tried on different devices on the same network and the vote didn't sync. I cleared my cache and it was still there.
I think it depends on the job market you're in. In the US and Europe an open-source profile is expected, but over here in Hong Kong its fairly uncommon. The good ones have either flown away to the US, or already been snatched up.<p>But, as Alex says, once we've sifted through CVs to find the best and invited them to interview, the paper doesn't matter anymore. Human interaction, pair programming, whatever, it's all more important than what's written on a piece of paper.
In my company (masterbranch.com) we target this problem. We help developers to showcase what they really know by tracking their code an presenting it in a nice way. We also offer companies reliable information about the candidates, that they can review before interviewing them.
<i>Often, when I'm reading a resume I'm thinking: “This guy is great, look at all this experience. He clearly knows Ruby and JavaScript like the back of his hand, and this interview is just going to be a formality”</i><p>For what it's worth from the other side, I've been repeatedly amazed at how much interviewers have managed to read into or project onto my resume. And I'm not talking about recruiters, for whom a single keyword instance qualifies you as an "excellent match!" but actual working engineers and engineering managers.