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Github has network effects that will always be difficult for challengers to overcome. Even Gitlab is nowhere near taking over. GH is effectively a professional

Github has network effects that will always be difficult for challengers to overcome. Even Gitlab is nowhere near taking over. GH is effectively a professional resume for many people, and if they're contributing to something they want that recorded on their profile. When was the last time a recruiter asked to see your Gitlab or Sourcehut profile? As far as they're concerned those contributions might as well not exist, and like it or not that really matters to people. In short, it's the people, not the code that counts.

Cloudef 3y ago
In my experience github has no value in your cv/resume at all
- phpnode 3y ago
  I'm really surprised to hear that. My GH profile has got me plenty of jobs over the years and also allowed me to skip things like programming tests that are usually part of the interview process.
  - gassiss 3y ago
    half finished projects that you developed on your own don't hold that much value. They may pad those green stats, but those can be faked quite easily. It's contributions to projects with other contributors that really matter.
    - nine_k 3y ago
      Why work on half-finished personal projects when you can contribute to a high(ish)-profile public projects, especially such that your prospective employers might be using?
  - bigpeopleareold 3y ago
    Seems like you lucked out, because this never really happened for me. I wish this was the case! I have a ton of half-finished projects I could show instead of doing tests.
    - foooorsyth 3y ago
      Doesn’t seem like luck if he actually finished his projects. Every undergrad has a github full of half finished projects. Seeing professional contributions to a widely used project is a completely different story.
      - imiric 3y ago
        Even half-finished projects can be a valuable reference if they showcase passion, good development practices, or some specialty skill. Contributions to popular projects are valuable as well, but they should also showcase some of these attributes. Something people often miss is that it's not enough to just link someone to your GH profile. If it's full of half-finished projects, they will likely look at your pinned ones (if you have those set), and not bother with the rest. The crucial thing is linking them directly to specific files of a project, specific PRs and contributions, that showcase the value you can bring. This makes the job much easier for the other side, while highlighting your strengths.
  - voidnap 3y ago
    I've seen jobs claiming they let you skip their tests but none have yet to do so. I have multiple conpleted side projects. They are small non-commercial but not trivial and solve a problem for me. You are fortunate, which is great for you, but your advice will not work for most people.
- anacrolix 3y ago
  I have to agree a stubborn portion of companies refuse to look at it. It's their loss. If a company does not respect open source contributions I think it's a good filter.
  - tomxor 3y ago
    I have so far found it to be a very good filter, helping eliminate BS or candidates grossly exaggerating their abilities. I've yet to experience the opposite but I have hope.
- jcelerier 3y ago
  It certainly does for the people I've been hiring if they talk to me about open-source contributions during interviews
  - theamk 3y ago
    But would you accept their contributions if they were on gitlab, sourcehut, or some other server? Because GP implies only github matters and that does not seem like truth to me.
    - jcelerier 3y ago
      I'd definitely look at their code contributions on any code platform they'd provide on their CV. In addtion to this, sr.ht would hint me "you're actually interested in your craft way beyond what's in your school curriculum". gitlab would hint me "you absolutely don't care about an UI which is slow as mollasses but you maybe have stronger moral principles."
- bitsandboots 3y ago
  As an interviewer it is the opposite to me. If there is a link showing your open source work, I want to review it to see if it indicates anything good or bad, and could be a topic for discussion. Too few people have good content there, so it can be a useful filter.
  - kjs3 3y ago
    Me too. In particular, I look at how they handle pull requests. If it's full of derogatory comments or other asshole-isms, probably not going to be a fun person to have on the team. If they handle the occasional annoyance with a modicum of professionalism, it's usually a good sign.
- criley2 3y ago
  I tend to agree. My company (and many other companies) don't let you use a personal github account for company code, so we have separate accounts for the businesses private repo. Obviously these contributions can't appear on my personal github account. The other issue is that commit activity is just a very poor signal for engineer quality. I've met truly terrible engineers with the brightest green activity boards you'll ever see. And I've met absolutely brilliant wizards whose activity board is very sparse. Seniority is another issue -- as you grow in an org, you won't always grow in a way that leads to more contributions. I personally am spending a lot of time pairing, a lot of time leading, and a lot less time busting out individual tickets with constant commits. I've also found that instead of taking 30 commits over 2 weeks to finish a project, the more experienced I get, I can do the same work in 5 commits over 3 days. It's just the nature of experience. But which one looks better on the github activity graph?
- theshrike79 3y ago
  As someone who has done hiring, we specifically asked for Github links and we checked the code there. Granted this was mostly done for junior-level positions to gauge their level of proficiency in pretty much the basic tooling for the job.
marcosdumay 3y ago
You mean that if you sent links to your Gitlab or Sourcehut profiles (or even your personal site) when asked for your Github profile, those recruiters would refuse to look at it?
- phpnode 3y ago
  yeah i think they're much less likely to look at it, unless they're already significantly interested in you as a candidate for some other reason. We're in a competitive marketplace and having a profile that stands out is definitely an edge
  - account42 3y ago
    Wouldn't a personal site stand out more if everyone has a GitHub?
    - phpnode 3y ago
      remember that a recruiter is probably spending about 30 seconds assessing your job application, and that you're one candidate out of dozens. In that environment they're going to go with the easy route and showing them a bunch of pinned, interesting repos with a healthy number of stars in a format they're used to is going to help them to quickly put you in the "maybe" pile rather than the "nope" pile.
- yau8edq12i 3y ago
  If you replace "refuse" by "not bother to", the sentence suddenly becomes very believable. When you have dozens of resumes to sift through, and one applicant is difficult for no apparent reason, it's very easy not to bother. It's going to require a bit of effort to switch to the gitlab context and figure out the interface if the recruiter isn't used to it, which is annoying. Unless you already stand out for some positive reason, you don't really want to stand out for being annoying.
  - danmur 3y ago
    Well I personally am sick of seeing github profiles that are just a bunch of trash commits. List specific projects, what you contributed, and a link to who cares which service on your resume. Way easier to read
thrdbndndn 3y ago
I just find GitHub's interface very intuitive and easy to use. Even GitLab isn't close despite being very similar; and it was miles ahead of sourceforge, Google Code etc. (This is from someone who is not a dev by profession and had no idea about version control at the time.)
- mdaniel 3y ago
  One will never hear me defend GitLab's UI as "good" or "helpful" and for damn sure nowhere near fast, but in their defense the number of things they need to provide an interface for is much, much larger than GitHub's. I could very easily see them making better use of "and the rest of it" to put the 80/20 front and center versus the "cheesecake factory menu" approach they have going now

Cloudef 3y ago

In my experience github has no value in your cv/resume at all

phpnode 3y ago
I'm really surprised to hear that. My GH profile has got me plenty of jobs over the years and also allowed me to skip things like programming tests that are usually part of the interview process.
- gassiss 3y ago
  half finished projects that you developed on your own don't hold that much value. They may pad those green stats, but those can be faked quite easily. It's contributions to projects with other contributors that really matter.
  - nine_k 3y ago
    Why work on half-finished personal projects when you can contribute to a high(ish)-profile public projects, especially such that your prospective employers might be using?
- bigpeopleareold 3y ago
  Seems like you lucked out, because this never really happened for me. I wish this was the case! I have a ton of half-finished projects I could show instead of doing tests.
  - foooorsyth 3y ago
    Doesn’t seem like luck if he actually finished his projects. Every undergrad has a github full of half finished projects. Seeing professional contributions to a widely used project is a completely different story.
    - imiric 3y ago
      Even half-finished projects can be a valuable reference if they showcase passion, good development practices, or some specialty skill. Contributions to popular projects are valuable as well, but they should also showcase some of these attributes. Something people often miss is that it's not enough to just link someone to your GH profile. If it's full of half-finished projects, they will likely look at your pinned ones (if you have those set), and not bother with the rest. The crucial thing is linking them directly to specific files of a project, specific PRs and contributions, that showcase the value you can bring. This makes the job much easier for the other side, while highlighting your strengths.
- voidnap 3y ago
  I've seen jobs claiming they let you skip their tests but none have yet to do so. I have multiple conpleted side projects. They are small non-commercial but not trivial and solve a problem for me. You are fortunate, which is great for you, but your advice will not work for most people.
anacrolix 3y ago
I have to agree a stubborn portion of companies refuse to look at it. It's their loss. If a company does not respect open source contributions I think it's a good filter.
- tomxor 3y ago
  I have so far found it to be a very good filter, helping eliminate BS or candidates grossly exaggerating their abilities. I've yet to experience the opposite but I have hope.
jcelerier 3y ago
It certainly does for the people I've been hiring if they talk to me about open-source contributions during interviews
- theamk 3y ago
  But would you accept their contributions if they were on gitlab, sourcehut, or some other server? Because GP implies only github matters and that does not seem like truth to me.
  - jcelerier 3y ago
    I'd definitely look at their code contributions on any code platform they'd provide on their CV. In addtion to this, sr.ht would hint me "you're actually interested in your craft way beyond what's in your school curriculum". gitlab would hint me "you absolutely don't care about an UI which is slow as mollasses but you maybe have stronger moral principles."
bitsandboots 3y ago
As an interviewer it is the opposite to me. If there is a link showing your open source work, I want to review it to see if it indicates anything good or bad, and could be a topic for discussion. Too few people have good content there, so it can be a useful filter.
- kjs3 3y ago
  Me too. In particular, I look at how they handle pull requests. If it's full of derogatory comments or other asshole-isms, probably not going to be a fun person to have on the team. If they handle the occasional annoyance with a modicum of professionalism, it's usually a good sign.
criley2 3y ago
I tend to agree. My company (and many other companies) don't let you use a personal github account for company code, so we have separate accounts for the businesses private repo. Obviously these contributions can't appear on my personal github account. The other issue is that commit activity is just a very poor signal for engineer quality. I've met truly terrible engineers with the brightest green activity boards you'll ever see. And I've met absolutely brilliant wizards whose activity board is very sparse. Seniority is another issue -- as you grow in an org, you won't always grow in a way that leads to more contributions. I personally am spending a lot of time pairing, a lot of time leading, and a lot less time busting out individual tickets with constant commits. I've also found that instead of taking 30 commits over 2 weeks to finish a project, the more experienced I get, I can do the same work in 5 commits over 3 days. It's just the nature of experience. But which one looks better on the github activity graph?
theshrike79 3y ago
As someone who has done hiring, we specifically asked for Github links and we checked the code there. Granted this was mostly done for junior-level positions to gauge their level of proficiency in pretty much the basic tooling for the job.

marcosdumay 3y ago

You mean that if you sent links to your Gitlab or Sourcehut profiles (or even your personal site) when asked for your Github profile, those recruiters would refuse to look at it?

phpnode 3y ago
yeah i think they're much less likely to look at it, unless they're already significantly interested in you as a candidate for some other reason. We're in a competitive marketplace and having a profile that stands out is definitely an edge
- account42 3y ago
  Wouldn't a personal site stand out more if everyone has a GitHub?
  - phpnode 3y ago
    remember that a recruiter is probably spending about 30 seconds assessing your job application, and that you're one candidate out of dozens. In that environment they're going to go with the easy route and showing them a bunch of pinned, interesting repos with a healthy number of stars in a format they're used to is going to help them to quickly put you in the "maybe" pile rather than the "nope" pile.
yau8edq12i 3y ago
If you replace "refuse" by "not bother to", the sentence suddenly becomes very believable. When you have dozens of resumes to sift through, and one applicant is difficult for no apparent reason, it's very easy not to bother. It's going to require a bit of effort to switch to the gitlab context and figure out the interface if the recruiter isn't used to it, which is annoying. Unless you already stand out for some positive reason, you don't really want to stand out for being annoying.
- danmur 3y ago
  Well I personally am sick of seeing github profiles that are just a bunch of trash commits. List specific projects, what you contributed, and a link to who cares which service on your resume. Way easier to read

thrdbndndn 3y ago

I just find GitHub's interface very intuitive and easy to use. Even GitLab isn't close despite being very similar; and it was miles ahead of sourceforge, Google Code etc. (This is from someone who is not a dev by profession and had no idea about version control at the time.)

mdaniel 3y ago
One will never hear me defend GitLab's UI as "good" or "helpful" and for damn sure nowhere near fast, but in their defense the number of things they need to provide an interface for is much, much larger than GitHub's. I could very easily see them making better use of "and the rest of it" to put the 80/20 front and center versus the "cheesecake factory menu" approach they have going now