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Comment by voidUpdate | Hacker News Reader

What if companies, idk, looked at the previous work of a potential employee? their github, their portfolio, anything. That way they can see what kinds of work someone can do when they aren't under stress, and they can ask questions about it in the interview, to see their thought process etc

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Anyone that has been working on corporate jobs for a good lot of years won't have a portfolio or a busy github.

I've been coding for 20 years. Almost all this work is in some private repository behind multiple levels of locks protected by a stack of NDAs and Trade Secret agreements.

Not everyone is a hobbyist.

I would create an unwarranted bias towards people working for companies doing mostly opensource. If their previous job was writing safe code for rockets and airplanes, the candidate will very likely be qualified to write embedded code for tractor/cars but incapable of showing previous work due to confidentiality agreements.

I mean, I was hired out of university, and I had a portfolio of programming and a github ready to go to show that I could program, without having a previous job to show code from at all, let along one with an NDA

Do you have an updated portfolio though? For many people working in private industry, they aren't allowed to share code from their job, and their previous portfolio projects are from college, which would not be good enough for a mid or senior level role. Would you hire a (non-junior) frontend developer who shows you a React todo list they made 8 years ago?

You were young without kids or any other responsibilities, so you had spare time to nerd around. Not everybody is in that position. With this requirement you would create a bias towards single parents or folks talking care of the handicapped partner/parent, as well as another bunch of other categories of people.

That’s both easy to game and will filter out candidates that don’t have work to show.

Agreed. It's probably the worst signal actually. Even if not complete imposters, you will probably gt the "bee" type of developer, that likes to do shiny new greenfield projects that don't need maintenance. Or you will filter for the 10x opensource developer that will not probably be interested in your position in any case.

I've been told I didn't need to do the coding test stages on multiple occasions because of my Github. Some absolutely do. I do it myself too when hiring.

That's very time consuming and often isn't practical, especially when hiring needs to start with a very wide net.

You don't need to do it for everyone. Do a cursory pass if people are in the "maybe" pile. Do a deeper pass if you decide to interview them.

Do most companies do a live coding exercise with every single applicant? I only got one, with the company I work at

It varies from company to company, but it is the "industry norm."

What happens is that people whine about live coding exercises; then someone decides to skip them, and immediately makes a bad hire. The lesson is then learned and they resume live coding exercises.

To turn the tables: As a candidate, If there isn't a live coding exercise, it's a red flag and tells me the company isn't savvy. (And I've taken a bad job as a result and now won't take a job unless I have a live coding exercise with someone who I will be working with.)

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