Comment by intertextuality | Hacker News Reader

Comment by intertextuality | Hacker News Reader

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intertextuality

This is an unbelievable attitude.

"Oh so you call yourself a mechanic, huh? Well you aren't blogging about cars and mechanic-related things in your free time, so I'm suspicious".

"Oh, an architect, huh? You don't have an online presence, which is worrying".

I'm baffled as to why people expect programmers to spend most of their time behind a computer, and to make social git commits or blog about it on top of that.

I program professionally. It's true that I sometimes program after work on personal projects and write for my blog, but I also devote my time to studying Korean, and Japanese kanji. I also draw, spend time with friends, or occasionally play videogames. Programming is exhausting and oftentimes the last thing I want to do is look at code or write about it after work.

And of course, people have things like kids or other responsibilities in their life. College students may have extracurricular activities or work. Not every college student has oodles of free time as you so broadly assume.

We shouldn't have to justify NOT blogging or pushing to github. How dare I have any interests outside of computers and programming. Blegh.

Before I go to a mechanic I am checking their review online.

Before I hire an artist that would make some graphics for me I would ask for a portfolio. Nobody in graphic industry is surprised when someone asks to show some of their works.

Same with IT, you would try to do some background checking. See if there was some recommendations from person's past employers or some sort of porfolio.

Should it be everything I would use to evaluate person? Hell no! But if I can see someone's actual achievements it gives me much more insight and confidence about how I am evaluating the candidate.

Would I miss some good candidates? Probably. But the strategy is not about not missing all good candidates, it is about ruling the bad ones. E.g. in Germany if you were hired, everyone though that you were ok, but then they found out that you are shitty, they cannot just fire you. They have to give you head ups that you are underperforming, then they have to make a formal evaluation to make sure that it isn't about them oppressing you and finally they are obligated to propose a recovery plan for you - only after you fuck it up the company is allowed to fire you. So you might end up with a guy not doing enything for 6 months. In such perspective it can be better to miss 2 good candidates than to hire one bad one.

You don't quite get what I was saying.

A review is not written by the mechanic themself once they get home from work, is it? My point was that people don't expect mechanics to go home and start blogging about new tools that they use or the latest in car news. It's an absurd concept, yet it's seen as normal for criticizing and penalizing prospective software developers. Artists are in a totally different boat, where they actually do need a good portfolio to demonstrate their personal style and past work, etc. For programmers they do it through known concepts called "resumes" and "interviews".

> But if I can see someone's actual achievements it gives me much more insight and confidence about how I am evaluating the candidate

If I have an accomplishment but I don't blog about it or post on github, did it actually happen?

Not only is this quite preposterous, I literally cannot share code if it was developed under an NDA. I only can discuss vaguely / without specifics in interviews.

> Would I miss some good candidates? Probably. But the strategy is not about not missing all good candidates, it is about ruling the bad ones.

Again, you are arbitrarily penalizing people for not being on their computer 14-15 hours a day. You are penalizing people with children. You are penalizing people like me who have interests outside of programming.

Not only is your reasoning absolutely absurd, you are -still- missing out on good candidates. It's lazy, and I would not want to work at a place that hires like this, because it means they do not value personal lives outside of work at all.

People like you are why people feel like they HAVE to blog and HAVE to contribute to open source projects- on their personal time. Fuck that. It's a sickening practice and as I said, it's not expected in other fields. Why is programming the exception here?

> Before I go to a mechanic I am checking their review online.

I've tried that but it's very unreliable. Online reviews are heavily gamed. Bad mechanics have many good reviews. Good mechanics have some bad reviews, or no reviews at all because they are a tiny two-man shop.

How I found a good mechanic was to first take to all the places people recommended. All these were bad. Then I went to a place I saw in my neighborhood run off of a guy's property. Wow, they were great. Went there for years. Then they retired and closed.

Tried a few other places with small jobs. No luck. Tried online reviews. No luck. Saw a hole in the wall on the side of the road in a bad area. Tried taking it there. They are great. They not only have absolutely no online presence, the business doesn't have a name, and they only accept cash. But they always fix my car right.

> Before I hire an artist that would make some graphics for me I would ask for a portfolio. Nobody in graphic industry is surprised when someone asks to show some of their works.

That is very reasonable. But if you ignored their portfolio, and asked them to spend 4 to 50 hours doing a custom project for you at no charge to prove they were good enough, after which you plan on ghosting them, do you think they would be within reason to tell you no thanks? What I just described is the "standard technical interview" in our field.

Myself I have an established reputation and don't apply to jobs any more, unsolicited job offers come to me. Nearly all which I ignore. Anyone asking for work samples should just look around at work I have done during my career. I don't do custom work for free. However I will do such work if I am interested and paid my standard consulting rate.

It's unrealistic to expect people to be willing to spend 14-15 hours a day in front of a screen.

While I don't spend the majority of my time programming any more, I still sit in front of a computer most of my work day.

My son has shown a great interest for programming and I really wish I had the time to do it with him more. But the last thing I want to do when I get home is sitting in front of a computer. My love and passion for programming are the same, and fortunately I get to spend most of my active programming and architectural time on things that can consume me completely. But I have a deep integral need to do things like cooking, gardening, training, reading etc.

Oh boy talk about straw man. Look, I directly said I do NOT do this for professionals. If you spend the majority of the day behind a computer programming, you are NOT obligated to have a blog or projects.

And again, I am NOT talking about programming for hours on end for students. 50 commits a year is approximately working on a side project once a month for a weekend, or going to maybe 3-4 hackathons in a year. Maybe that's an unreasonable burden, but that's not exactly a lot of programming.

And y'know what? Other jobs require extracurriculars too. If I wanted to get a job in politics, I'd have to take unpaid internships. If I wanted a job in business, I'd have to network. If I wanted a job in medicine or law, I'd have to study for the MCAT/LSAT. Programmers are no different. If you want a job, you do need to practice outside class.

Again, if you didn't read this and simply want to make an angry reply, I am NOT speaking of full time professionals. Simply students.

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