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A comment on The difference between a programmer & a hacker. Parent comment

Re:The difference between a programmer & a hacker by minhajuddin on Tuesday April 24, 2012 @08:18AM (#3883577)
The companies which ask you for 'your github profile', really want to see your code. When, people are passionate, they do things outside work. This article on Feynman is relevant: http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html?r...

If you are passionate about football, do you play football? or atleast watch others play football? That's definitely not your work. Why do you do it then?

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Re:The difference between a programmer & a hacker by jrabone on Tuesday April 24, 2012 @08:30AM (#3883610)
Um, no, they don't. They're desperately trying to find a proxy for "is a good hire" without spending a lot of time on it. GitHub is just the latest in a long line of such.

I have some sympathy with them; recruiting is hard, vital to get "right", and susceptible to gaming by unscrupulous individuals. It's also hard to get rid of people once they're in (at least in the UK). However, this is WHY you have to spend a lot of time on it. There are no shortcuts. Adding another checkbox "Has GitHub account with code in it" to the process is futile. You know, it won't surprise me to see "faked" accounts with lots of (scripted) commits showing up. Easy to do. Or better, I'll sell you a convincing looking repository with some code and a cheat-sheet of what to say when asked about it at interview. Hey, cool new startup idea!

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Re:The difference between a programmer & a hacker by minhajuddin on Tuesday April 24, 2012 @08:40AM (#3883642)
I think the OP says, it is one of the first filters, which I think is a good one. This is definitely no substitute for a thorough interview.
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