alongside a number of excellent posts explaining why this idea needed to die.įor the most part, it has-the overwhelming majority of employers today are not under the impression that a robust GitHub is necessary to prove one is a worthy hire. Quality GitHub projects, particularly for experienced applicants, are likely viewed as supplemental evidence of coding ability and conversation pieces for interviews. The "GitHub is your résumé" trope emerged in response to employers doing this.
ELEMENTS OF PROGRAMMING INTERVIEWS GITHUB CODE
That new ability to show code gave birth to some unfortunate expectations, and a number of employers began equating GitHub repos and open-source contribution as an exclusive requirement for employment consideration.
The rise of the open-source movement, the drastic reduction in barriers (both cost and complexity) to hosting, general public access to publishing on mobile app markets, and the popularity of repository sites all contributed to a programmer's new ability to show a portfolio of code to employers. Few professional programmers had code that wasn't directly related to their day job (and was often proprietary), and even personal websites were a rarity.Īs technology trends changed, so too did some of the concepts around hiring. Given the available technology up until the early 2000s, demonstrations of coding prowess were often limited to answering technical questions or writing and editing relatively short programs in an interview setting. In past decades, engineers were chosen for interviews based on their résumé content and positive referrals from colleagues. Being that this is a recent trend in the evaluation of developers, many wonder what employers are looking for and what a good GitHub account generally looks like.īut first, how did GitHub become a widely used developer evaluation tool in the first place? A portfolio of code Junior and intermediate coding professionals today are likely to be asked during a job search, "Can we see your GitHub?" by recruiters and hiring managers, and the youngest in the industry may be unaware of how relatively new this practice is.