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Comment by notzorbo3 | Hacker News Reader

You know what's universally hard? Finding people who are good at their jobs. References don't matter, experience doesn't matter, education doesn't matter. Why not? Because it doesn't say anything about actual skill. What does? Side projects, where you can actually see if a person has skills.

> a corporate lawyer purely based on their pro-bono work?

You hire a corporate lawyer based on their public reputation. For a programmer, that's their github portfolio.

Business are in a unique position to actually judge programmers by their merit, not just hearsay or bullshit references or lies on a resume. Of course companies are going to factor that into their decision!

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Some of us have NDAs as part of our job.

Not everyone is happily doing FOSS projects.

I think the big misconception is that a side project has to be a prolific open source project. As someone who has interviewed developers, someone who has _anything_ on a GitHub page stands out in the crowd. Even just a folder with a few batch scripts can go a long way.

Or even just a webapp where you can say "I can't show you the code, but I made it [look, my name's at the bottom!]".

> You hire a corporate lawyer based on their public reputation.

But that reputation comes from his actual daily work. I as a developper don't get paid to improve my github portfolio all day long...

a lawyers public reputation is built through the day-to-day work. Not a programmers can put their body of work on public display

Except that, side projects are nothing like day to day coding in a company. Beyond basic coding skills, they are very different animals.

I use side projects to figure out what aspects of software engineering the candidate seems to enjoy. Do they fiddle with the CSS nonstop to get the margins just right? Are they constantly trying to decrease the memory impact of a function? Does the README read like an appliance manual or a haiku of puns?

Side projects are a strong signal the candidate enjoys this line of work, and ideally I'd want them working on things they would enjoy.

I would prefer if you would ask me about my preferences then guessing them like that. You would got them wrong.

I would also prefer if I did not had to worry about readme or css projecting this or that image.

Actually, the greatest predictor of employee success is their IQ, but that's illegal to test. That's why some employers substitute SAT, ACT, ASVAB, etc. scores, since those are abstractions to IQ tests.

Source?

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-your-iq-strongly-influenc...

>A growing body of research suggests general cognitive ability may be the best predictor of job performance.

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