Re:Developer Skills Report
by mgkimsal on Wednesday January 24, 2018 @08:34AM
(#16222477)
> 3. It's hard to trust someone's public code. It's trivial to clone a few open projects and take credit for the work, and a hiring manager doesn't have the time to dig in to everyone's projects to see if they've ripped the work off from somewhere.
A public code repo is more than just code.
* It's documentation
Is there a decent README or other background info on how to get setup? Sample data? Tests?
* It's activity
Was this a fork with one patch and nothing since then? Or is it a long-term project with regular/periodic activity?
* It's community
Is this project getting bug reports, feature requests? How is the owner dealing with them? Ignoring them? Being rude? Actively engaging? Delegating? Honestly admitting they don't have the time and asking for help?
There's a whole mess you can judge about someone that goes beyond "code" when looking at a repo. I know someone who was hired at a company a couple years back who was brought in because of a friendship but the "github" profile was referenced as justification. "This person has a lot of projects and stars - they're definitely active!". The person had starred other projects, and had cloned about 40 repos, and made (trivial) changes in about 5 of them. They had no original code. The person had been brought in to lead a team of about 6 developers, and left within 2 months because they had no experience working with actual production code or working with people on a team. That was quite apparent from their github profile.
A public code repo is more than just code.
* It's documentation
Is there a decent README or other background info on how to get setup? Sample data? Tests?
* It's activity
Was this a fork with one patch and nothing since then? Or is it a long-term project with regular/periodic activity?
* It's community
Is this project getting bug reports, feature requests? How is the owner dealing with them? Ignoring them? Being rude? Actively engaging? Delegating? Honestly admitting they don't have the time and asking for help?
There's a whole mess you can judge about someone that goes beyond "code" when looking at a repo. I know someone who was hired at a company a couple years back who was brought in because of a friendship but the "github" profile was referenced as justification. "This person has a lot of projects and stars - they're definitely active!". The person had starred other projects, and had cloned about 40 repos, and made (trivial) changes in about 5 of them. They had no original code. The person had been brought in to lead a team of about 6 developers, and left within 2 months because they had no experience working with actual production code or working with people on a team. That was quite apparent from their github profile.