<story><title>The dispassionate developer</title><url>https://blog.ploeh.dk/2021/03/22/the-dispassionate-developer/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>notsuoh</author><text>Taking that a step further, we often actively discourage looking at OSS contributions during resume review for the same reason we don&amp;#x27;t offer take home interview assignments: it&amp;#x27;s biased against people who don&amp;#x27;t have a whole lot of extra time at home. When we have done either of the above, the singles who work part time have a bunch of time to perfect their work suddenly have a lot to show over the single parents who may be working full time or more.&lt;p&gt;I say &amp;quot;often&amp;quot; because OSS contributions can still be an indicator of something, but it&amp;#x27;s not really clear what. Maybe it indicates drive to contribute to OSS, maybe technical ability, maybe no hobbies or commitments outside their day job. In our experience it&amp;#x27;s often the latter, but even so, it&amp;#x27;s biased against people who don&amp;#x27;t have the time to contribute even if they desired to do so.&lt;p&gt;So we typically just stick with the resume for actual experience and college coursework, if any, but not the college itself. Using these heuristics we&amp;#x27;ve managed to build a pretty strong pipeline of people with all backgrounds of education or experience.</text></item><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>On the hiring side, it’s rare to see someone come through with significant OSS contributions. A small bug fix here or there is about the most I see from 90% of resumes.&lt;p&gt;Every once in a while we see someone with a lot of open source contributions, or even full leadership of a popular project. These people would really prefer if we believed that OSS contributions and GitHub profiles replaced resumes or CVs, because it’s where they shine. Unfortunately, doing so would exclude many great hires who have done a lot of great work at private companies that doesn’t show up on their GitHub. We’ve also had trouble hiring prolific OSS contributors who spent their days working on OSS contributions instead of doing their job. One candidate wanted their contract to state that they could spend half of their paid time working on their OSS project. We passed.&lt;p&gt;In my experience, anyone claiming to have a single dimension credential preference for hiring (usually GitHub portfolio, Ivy League education, ex-FAANG) is simply hiring for people who look like themselves. They’re not a good fit for unbiased hiring.</text></item><item><author>Derpdiherp</author><text>Maybe it&amp;#x27;s the jobs that I&amp;#x27;ve worked, or the country I&amp;#x27;m in ( UK ). But I&amp;#x27;ve really not seen this shift towards looking at portfolios of open source work rather than CV&amp;#x27;s. Every company I&amp;#x27;ve worked for has requested a CV, and often does some form of test or in person interview centred around programming problems. The tests vary in quality and depth.&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&amp;#x27;t think of myself as a passionate developer. I have a family, I value my free time. I spend work time growing my skill set as it&amp;#x27;s required, anything else I do is rarely related.&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that there&amp;#x27;s a silent majority of developers such as myself, that do enjoy programming and have a &amp;quot;passion&amp;quot; for it, but do not let this passion dissuade them from family time, or having more varied down time.&lt;p&gt;I think for a lot of people it&amp;#x27;s a dangerous game to be spending every waking moment working for a company, then spending your down time scraping together stuff for open source contributions etc.&lt;p&gt;I salute those that can and do though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>WalterSear</author><text>&amp;gt; for the same reason we don&amp;#x27;t offer take home interview assignments: it&amp;#x27;s biased against people who don&amp;#x27;t have a whole lot of extra time at home.&lt;p&gt;This is just another single dimension hiring credential, that will result in limiting your hiring pool to people like yourself. My code ran on 70+ million machines last month, but I&amp;#x27;ve come to decline any  timed or proctored technical interviews.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not that I&amp;#x27;m too good for whiteboarding or timed tests, or that my options are so open that there isn&amp;#x27;t significant cost in doing so - quite the opposite: I&amp;#x27;m come to find the process so traumatic that going through with it isn&amp;#x27;t worth it for anyone involved: those jobs just aren&amp;#x27;t open to people like me.</text></comment>
<story><title>The dispassionate developer</title><url>https://blog.ploeh.dk/2021/03/22/the-dispassionate-developer/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>notsuoh</author><text>Taking that a step further, we often actively discourage looking at OSS contributions during resume review for the same reason we don&amp;#x27;t offer take home interview assignments: it&amp;#x27;s biased against people who don&amp;#x27;t have a whole lot of extra time at home. When we have done either of the above, the singles who work part time have a bunch of time to perfect their work suddenly have a lot to show over the single parents who may be working full time or more.&lt;p&gt;I say &amp;quot;often&amp;quot; because OSS contributions can still be an indicator of something, but it&amp;#x27;s not really clear what. Maybe it indicates drive to contribute to OSS, maybe technical ability, maybe no hobbies or commitments outside their day job. In our experience it&amp;#x27;s often the latter, but even so, it&amp;#x27;s biased against people who don&amp;#x27;t have the time to contribute even if they desired to do so.&lt;p&gt;So we typically just stick with the resume for actual experience and college coursework, if any, but not the college itself. Using these heuristics we&amp;#x27;ve managed to build a pretty strong pipeline of people with all backgrounds of education or experience.</text></item><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>On the hiring side, it’s rare to see someone come through with significant OSS contributions. A small bug fix here or there is about the most I see from 90% of resumes.&lt;p&gt;Every once in a while we see someone with a lot of open source contributions, or even full leadership of a popular project. These people would really prefer if we believed that OSS contributions and GitHub profiles replaced resumes or CVs, because it’s where they shine. Unfortunately, doing so would exclude many great hires who have done a lot of great work at private companies that doesn’t show up on their GitHub. We’ve also had trouble hiring prolific OSS contributors who spent their days working on OSS contributions instead of doing their job. One candidate wanted their contract to state that they could spend half of their paid time working on their OSS project. We passed.&lt;p&gt;In my experience, anyone claiming to have a single dimension credential preference for hiring (usually GitHub portfolio, Ivy League education, ex-FAANG) is simply hiring for people who look like themselves. They’re not a good fit for unbiased hiring.</text></item><item><author>Derpdiherp</author><text>Maybe it&amp;#x27;s the jobs that I&amp;#x27;ve worked, or the country I&amp;#x27;m in ( UK ). But I&amp;#x27;ve really not seen this shift towards looking at portfolios of open source work rather than CV&amp;#x27;s. Every company I&amp;#x27;ve worked for has requested a CV, and often does some form of test or in person interview centred around programming problems. The tests vary in quality and depth.&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&amp;#x27;t think of myself as a passionate developer. I have a family, I value my free time. I spend work time growing my skill set as it&amp;#x27;s required, anything else I do is rarely related.&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that there&amp;#x27;s a silent majority of developers such as myself, that do enjoy programming and have a &amp;quot;passion&amp;quot; for it, but do not let this passion dissuade them from family time, or having more varied down time.&lt;p&gt;I think for a lot of people it&amp;#x27;s a dangerous game to be spending every waking moment working for a company, then spending your down time scraping together stuff for open source contributions etc.&lt;p&gt;I salute those that can and do though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>I prefer to look at everything the candidate has to offer.&lt;p&gt;Don’t penalize people for not having OSS contributions, of course, but it doesn’t make sense to ignore them. Whatever credentials the candidate brings to the table should be taken into consideration.&lt;p&gt;Not everyone has the opportunity to go to colleges or get a first job at a well-known company. If someone chooses to prove themselves via OSS contributions, let them.</text></comment>