GitHub is an awesome way to manage code, but its usefulness doesn’t end there. If you want to pursue a career as a developer, it’s a vital way of demonstrating your skills.
Recruiter Shon Burton points out that GitHub is a developer-specific example of a more important general career principle: employers will examine your online activity, social or otherwise, to help determine whether to hire you. It’s particularly relevant if you want to work for major software companies:
Today it’s much harder to get hired as a software engineer at Google or Apple or Twitter if you haven’t been sharing your work on a site like GitHub. That’s a huge change from five years ago. Hiring managers will literally say, ‘No GitHub? What’s wrong with this picture?’
Hit the full post for more discussion of how to promote yourself online.
Here’s How A CEO Evaluates Job Candidates On Social Media [Business Insider]
Comments
10 responses to “If You’re Not Posting Code To GitHub, You Won’t Be Hired”
Yes, because I have the rights to publish the work I develop for my employer… What a stupid comment.
Being employed as a programmer hardly prohibits you from doing any other coding or helping with any of the opensource software you perhaps use.
It literally is the best way to get your foot in the door as far as I see it, as anyone can see even your email/conversation chains in contribution to anything you help with (only half of github is related to your own work, after all – that’s how opensource works), allowing prospective employers to see literally everything about how you ACTUALLY work, not how you SAY you work.
It’s up to you, but to me, the more exposure the better.
The title of the article is sensationalist as ever. I can only gather that these guys are under some mandate from the publisher or other stake holders to do that ongoingly the same as when you see blanket topics pop up (like 5 articles a week on the same topic/thing), as though anyone cares about such clear overhype.
I suppose it would make these writers more valuable if these sites ever closed down and they had to go and work at popsugar (urgh).
(Hmm I wonder if it’s possible to tag @dannyallen)
Sure, if you’re doing that in your own personal time. But when you’re on the work clock, you’re getting paid to do a job, not progress your career externally.
In roles where I’ve had to hire developers, I have tended to prefer developers who engage in personal software or hardware projects. My (totally anecdotal) experience is that these people will be more interested in developing so will tend to do a better job. I also think they tend to have a slightly broader range of skills.
I suppose looking at someone’s github commits could be one way of looking at whether they are engaged in their own projects, but I think it captures too narrow a segment of that group (or more to the point, misses too many people in that group).
Isn’t it better to not have an online presence, less likely to be hacked and poached?
Also don’t they tell you with ideas and designs, get patents first, then show everyone your work.
Not sure you understand how opensource generally works.. 😛
What CEO evaluates job candidates? That’s HRs job, damn it!
And who sets the mandate under which HR hire? 😛
A complex system of policies and procedures kick started by a need for a skillset. Usually by the time HR gets to the hiring stage, the reason for hiring has been forgotten.
Always conflicting information with job advice.
I’m sure with the way that most recruiters are, they won’t even know what github is, let alone spend the time and effort looking up your projects on it.