GitHub is not your new résumé
brandonmwest.com
brandonmwest.com
"Show me your work."
"I can't, it's owned by other companies."
"No job then. There's the door."
And so someone who wrote a million dollars worth of software (actually got paid for) gets beat to a job by someone whose work nobody will pay for.
Yeah, beef.
github does give you this insight if you look at how the person participates in discussions in the issue tracker and code reviews. remember github's old moto, social coding? i think the author is hung up on the coding part and missing the social part.
This is much more valuable than any list of company you work for.
These days if I interviewed 2 developers and one had a very nice resume full of recommendations and stories about successful projects and the other developer had an active GitHub account with their own active projects with many watching them as well as multiple accepted Pull Requests for other projects... I would easily lean toward the developer who has been actively writing code, sharing and interacting with other developers. It shows they have passion, drive, dedication and an eagerness to learn from others and contribute back to the community.
A fancy resume cannot replace all of that.
Rivera finds that interviews are where "fit" is ultimately determined, but résumé screening is a first step: "firms mandated that evaluators assess candidates’ fit along with a variety of technical and communication skills in résumé screens and first- and second-round job interviews" (p. 1007).
And my evidence is personal experience. I do not need a study to know that interacting more with people makes me a better team player. I know that I have benefitted greatly by cutting back on time reading articles and attending meetups and more time with GitHub activities.
No, all it shows is that they wrote some code and put it on a website.
The developer that has just a resume might be just as (or more) skilled that the one that uses github but for whatever reason can't post code up like that. To exclude someone simply because they don't have an active github is foolish.
However did you screen, interview, and hire people before github came along?
Even if you cannot post code does not men you cannot watch and clone projects so you can learn and stay aware of trends in the community. It keeps you sharp. And it better than any industry magazine out there.
The author's work may very well not be worth sharing on GitHub - it may be worth much more than "free".
To be honest, from my own modest mountaintop of being 35, (gainfully employed and programming since 14 somewhere in the depths of your typical enterprise) I suddenly find myself repeating the words of others from long ago when I first started in the field (though now I can relate) - look at this as yet another fad: same as those blogs, same as the linkedins and twitters...
I'd like to volunteer that I, though not having contributed to any open source projects, nor published any of the code that I have worked on (it obviously being proprietary to the company I work for), nor having any interest to blog my many unremarkable opinions along with already overbearing gaggle of "experts" - still, am not entirely uninterested and apathetic towards programming, nor devoid of useful engineering skill and reliable experience accumulated over lengthy career. But you won't believe me.
A resume or CV is a piece of paper to get your name on someone's desk, then you get hired by passing the interview. Github is just another way of getting (or keeping) your name on someone's desk.
You don't necessarily need to be using GitHub to produce OSS to the level of something like Rails, but even a micro library would have awesome. It gives you just a little bit more data to look at when you're considering options.
This one isn't updated for mobile, but it does print nicely.
I created a basic portfolio to share on GitHub. I'd like to see more developers do that. It's quite easy to do with markdown and GitHub Pages.
The thought of trawling someone's repo instead, having to take the time to get an in depth evaluation of what the code's doing and whether that's effective makes me shudder. But then perhaps people doing this just make a first impression of the code, rather than a deep understanding?
Honestly I can see a GitHub being a "nice to have", but certainly not the main deal.
Out of interest, anyone else that's been hiring in the UK seeing any traction with GitHub? I'm in a pretty enterprisey space, and past clutch of CVs we've had haven't so much as mentioned it.
He's constructing a bit of a straw man here. I haven't heard anyone suggest that traditional resumes should be completely abandoned, or that a Github account should be the only factor when hiring a developer.
Everybody talks about code, but software is about more than code. When looking at a candidate's GitHub repo, is any consideration given to the quality of documentation, if it even exists (which it often doesn't), and how easily a project can be built and used? How many employers actually build and use a candidate's software? Some developers write gorgeous code but gorgeous code != great, usable software.