On 12/18/2017 01:52 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
On Monday 18 December 2017 16:05:10 Rob Gaddi wrote:

On 12/18/2017 08:45 AM, Larry Martell wrote:
On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 11:33 AM, Marko Rauhamaa <ma...@pacujo.net>
wrote:
However, one great way to stand out is a portfolio of GitHub
projects. Several people have gotten an offer largely based on
those (after they aced the technical interviews). For example, we
just hired someone who had written a game in sed. That doesn't make
him an "interesting person," nor do we look for game or sed
developers. But that silly exercise deeply resonated with our team.
We expect to have great synergy with him.

I have been excluded from even getting an interview because I did
not have a portfolio of GitHub projects. I think that is a bad
filter. I work 60-70 hours a week for pay, and I have a family and
personal interests.

When I'm hiring I don't necessarily need a candidate to have an
extensive open-source portfolio, but I need to see some kind of
portfolio, just as a bar of "This is what I consider my good work to
be."  The idea that someone is going to have years of experience, but
not a single page of code that they can let me look over always
strikes me as odd.

I've known Larry for years via another list. He has worked on a lot of
stuff in the financial arena, wrapped in non-disclosure clauses that
prevent him from even saying what color he dots the i's with, so he gets
work as much by word of mouth as other more conventional paths.

To not hire him because he doesn't have a big portfolio could be a
mistake, Rob. Its up to you.
--
Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology -- www.highlandtechnology.com
Email address domain is currently out of order.  See above to fix.


Cheers, Gene Heskett


Not a big portfolio, anything. Shell scripts that you're using to simplify your home login. The garage door monitor you rigged up from an Arduino. The Python script I wrote to fill a USB stick with a randomly chosen selection of MP3s.

I as well don't have a huge portfolio of GitHub projects that I spend my life maintaining, but I refuse to believe any of us get away with not writing any code outside out professional lives. Personally, I'd argue I can get a better read of a programmer from the 120 line toy they tossed off one day to solve an immediate need than I can from the 50 kLOC proprietary project they share with two other developers and are NDAed to the hilt on.

And as for Larry in particular, he's posted a portfolio's worth of code to this mailing list just in trying to help folks through their issues. For an actual interview I'd want it cleaned up to what he'd consider to be acceptable documentation standards for a project, but "demonstrate competence" is a well-cleared bar. I just don't have any work at the moment that would justify bringing that big a cannon to bear.

So I stick to my point. If you have literally nothing that you can show me at an interview, I'm dubious.

--
Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology -- www.highlandtechnology.com
Email address domain is currently out of order.  See above to fix.
--
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