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How To Hire Great Open Source Developers?
An anonymous reader writes "This is the first article I've ever read specifically about hiring open source developers, and how to judge their ability not just to code but to work with others. It's reprinted over at ITMJ [part of OSDN, as this site is] from a book by Martin Fink, the General Manager for HP's Linux Systems Division. Brings up a lot of good points, including how you need to make sure your open source people are developing things (on company time) that do the company some good, not just scratching their own itches. Fun quote: 'Discover what pseudonyms your candidate uses online. Look at the archives at SlashDot and other online locales. Does your candidate hide behind secret pseudonyms to trash other individuals? Is there passion without condemnation?'"
Entice them with prostitutes!
Oh shit.
I have been pwned because my
"Discover what pseudonyms your candidate uses online. Look at the archives at SlashDot and other online locales. Does your candidate hide behind secret pseudonyms to trash other individuals? Is there passion without condemnation?" Hmm, I dunno. Sounds like someone might get disqualified just the project-manager doesn't like their opinions. /. writes about more than just OSS you know.
When you're looking for open source developers, you need to make sure they can't just get the program to run well, but also to make the code look neat and easy to read, as there's a good chance lots of other people will be wanting to edit it for their own needs.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
It's articles like these that make me want to hop onto Seek and put up a job offer for OSS developers everywhere!
:(.
And then I remember I don't run a business
--
The last digit of pi is four.
Are you suggesting that unemployed hobbyists are all without decent skillsets?
Boss: What's your Slashdot screen name?
Employee: Anonymous Coward.
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
This seems like it was written during the dot-com bubble. Quote from the article: However, that person may also have very clear expectations that the only projects they will ever work on are open source projects. This is simply not true. Being an open source developer is not a religion. It just means that you believe in the idea. There's absolutely no problem for an open source developer to make closed source for a living. And, more importantly, open source developers (and the comunity) has no beef with that.
Remember - we need to eat as well. While open source gives us satisfaction, closed source gives us our daily bread.
Underholdning.info
Bram Cohen (famous maker of Bittorrent) managed had his carrer boosted only because his open source project - Bittorrent.
His current employers saw his work and hired him on the spot...
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Oh bugger that's me screwed then, he knows I always post anonymously on Slashdot!!!
Culturally, your engineers will struggle between their loyalty to the community and their loyalty to the company.
haha! they make them sounds like confused pets or something.
"Don't be too quick to introduce your Engineer to it's new environment, Engineers are not well known for adapting quickly to change!"
And after I've paid so much money for DVDs of women primarily scratching ...,uh, now that I think about it, that's in a slightly different context. Never mind.
Damn right law might limit restrictions. My time is mine. Not a company's, mine. That's the very definition of personal time. I am not employee #3877643 away from the office, I am a human being who does work for a company during certain prescribed times and under certain prescribed circumstances.
They might well have legitimate rights over what I can contribute, but certainly not when if 'when' is part of my personal time.
Cheers,
Ian
the option of posting as anonymous coward!
Meh.
"Those who still haven't their stupid little IT jobs outsourced will get fired because of their /. Karma"
Damn, and I thought IT was cool... maybe I just have a great hobby and should stay away from IT...
I can't remember where I read it; maybe JoelOnSoftware? Do a google search for any employee, not just open source developers. -greg
-greg -> gakinsATInsomniaDASHConsultingDOTorg
is to google for their email address or nickname on newsgroup postings.
Meh.
My boss copied them into the source tree, but claims that he never made the connection between using my code and then later hiring me.
You write them a nice email: mailto:d_i_r_k_@gmx.net
Cool, isn't it?
We have also met other IT people who just don't get that they are being paid to do something for the company rather then what they want to do.
In these respects proprietary programers are no different then open source programmers.
In case the author of the article hasn't heard it is an employer's market right now for programmers.
There is no reason for an employer to even go to the fraction of the trouble the article suggests.
Steve
Only when I get mod points, duh. ;-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Now, at the risk of feeding the trolls, I do take exception to this sort of attitude.
There are lots of talented out of work people, be they developers, programmers, graphic designers, musicians, teachers, astrophysicists, lawyers, actors... I could go on, but, you know, I don't really want to. People don't always get hired simply for their skillsets. I've said before that some of the most talented people don't get hired because of a lack of specific skills in other areas. People lose jobs, or lose bids on jobs/contracts, because they can't handle talking to "real people." Obviously that's not the only reason, but that's a big one. My father works for a school board, and there are people who would love to work as a teacher, but are terrible in social situations. On the flip side of things, we have programmers who are less than the most competent people in their literal field that don't get hired because they can't work with other people.
I for one know I wouldn't want to hire someone, regardless of their boundless talent, if they were a flaming dickhead.
"I'll be a killer whale, when I grow up"
-Wintersleep
Maybe check if they have read The Psychology of Computer Programming. It has a great section on 'ego-less' programming.
Net sa best, mar it koe minder
What more do you need to know?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
just offer to pay them nothing
works so far
There are also lots of talented people who don't get work, or who end up stressed out of work, because employers willynilly throw around requirements for people to do what they can't.
I was part of this ''multiskilling" fad, and was employed to do prepress work. It's my passion, and I love it. I find dealing with people stressful.
So what does my employer do? Add to my job the requirement to serve the front counter of the print shop, COLD CALL prospective clients, do the layout I was originally employed for, go on the road doing sales, and admin the network.
Good work. I ended up quitting, as prepress is shit easy to find a new job in when you have the skills.
Some people can do the multitude of tasks needed, but when you hire someone who's a consistent passionate coder, don't go then expecting them to do bullshit like cold calling clients or sales on top. Jack of all trades and master of none, etc.
While this might be slightly overkill in the general case, it has helped me once to dig for info on a guy who was trying to get a position in my company. If I didn't do that, I would have hired a skilled programmer and a scientologist at the same time, a person who was totally responsible for at least one major legal conflict.
Just don't let the tin foil obstruct your line of vision. It doesn't really matter what does your applicant blog or do in his spare time as long as he is a fine fellow and a nice specialist.
___
On Slashdot, Russians comment on YOU!
When you watch somebody write code, here are some techniques that may be helpful:
0 00 73.html
Always reassure them that you understand that it's hard to write code without an editor, and you will forgive them if their paper gets really messy. Also you understand that it's hard to write bug-free code without a compiler, and you will take that into account.
Some signs of a good programmer: good programmers have a habit of writing their { and then skipping down to the bottom of the page and writing their }s right away, then filling in the blank later.
They also tend to have some kind of a variable naming convention, primitive though it may be...
Good programmers tend to use really short variable names for loop indices. If they name their loop index CurrentPagePositionLoopCounter it is sure sign that they have not written a lot of code in their life. Occasionally, you will see a C programmer write something like if (0==strlen(x)), putting the constant on the left hand side of the == . This is a really good sign. It means that they were stung once too many times by confusing = and == and have forced themselves to learn a new habit to avoid that trap.
Good programmers plan before they write code, especially when there are pointers involved. For example, if you ask them to reverse a linked list, good candidates will always make a little drawing on the side and draw all the pointers and where they go. They have to. It is humanly impossible to write code to reverse a linked list without drawing little boxes with arrows between them. Bad programmers will start writing code right away.
The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing
By Joel Spolsky
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog00000
> Can he/she give examples of contributions that were
> better than his/her own implementations?
Good way to sort out the "programming god in their own minds" geeks.
I don't know much about the act's details, but one thing it states is that a business can't require information which isn't required in order to complete a transaction.
Not exactly the same thing as this, but maybe there is something in the act which does more directly refer to this type of situation.
His current employers saw his work and hired him on the spot...
Uh, am I the only one that found this statement funny?
[Reminds me of the old joke, boss commenting to another boss, "Yes, Bob's retired. The only problem is he forgot to tell us about it."]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I've decided that employment agreements that define intellectual property rights and disclosure really don't amount to much. Every employment agreement that I've read always has language about disclosing "work related" inventions and the company's right to those inventions.
Developers that I've worked with tend to construe those paragraphs very broadly and sometimes get themselves really worked up over the possibality of their employer stealing their million dollar invention. The thing about that is that if a company and employee were ever to get in a legal spat over IP, then most judges and jurys are going to be able to see the dividing line.
The bottom line is to use common sense. If you're employed writing software to analyize widgets and you write a directly competing product on the side, then you obiviously have no case to say that it's not work related. On the other hand, most judges and jurys can see enough difference between widget analysis and personal accounting that they're not going to let a company sue you just because you wrote in the same language and used similar coding practices on your personal time.
Ha, ha! Nobody ever says Italy.
I thought I already told you: "When a position requiring your particular skillset becomes available, we will put your resume back on file."
"I'll be a killer whale, when I grow up"
-Wintersleep
what's that? how can you PROVE i'm not I_M_God2U ?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
You bring up a good point there too, it's not always the worker's fault that they're out of work. It could be that damned employer, or the guvermint. But you know.
The thing is, there's a fine line between expecting an employee to be flexible and expecting an employee to work well beyond the call of duty. It's a bonus to have an employee who can work beyond that which s/he was hired for. However, it's becoming less and less a "bonus" and more and more a "prerequisite." Doing extra has become a requirement, for one reason: people are willing to do more. If work wasn't going so cheaply nowadays, you wouldn't have to do as much.
"There're fewer jobs out there, you gotta multitask!" Hmm. Sounds to me like a good equation towards getting people to do more work for less pay.. even if there aren't fewer jobs out there. But that's just tin-foil hat thinking.
"I'll be a killer whale, when I grow up"
-Wintersleep
I normally post to Slashdot under the names "Rochard Stallman", "Bruce. Perens", "DemocratsMustDie", and "GayMarriage4AllRightNow". I've publicly exposed criminal behavior on the part of my previous nineteen employers (you have a lot of jobs when you're really four people), including IBM, SCO, Ford, Microsoft, Red Hat, NASA and NAMBLA.
But that's not what I'm really afraid of. My admission of homosexual activities with ESR is the real problem. Anyone who would consider that guy in a sexual way clearly has no social skills at all.
It doesn't matter how skilled you are, if you can't work with people. That doesn't mean you have to be a super-suave kinda guy. It just means you have to not be an angry at the world, self-centered, condescending bastard. That's all!
Exactly. There are certainly multiskilled people out there - but within limits. My prepress design work is pretty damned good, and my passion. I'm also a bit of a mac geek, and overcoming networking glitches and much technical stuff on the machines we'd use is my other strength. I think that's worthwhile
I was also reminded of this when looking at the qualifications required for a school bus driver needed for a school nearby. They wanted someone with a heavy equipment license (more than is needed for a bus here), could do landscaping on grounds, act as groundskeeper, have tertiary child psychology qualifications and be an accredited mental health nurse
Bet the position hasn't been filled by someone with that full skillset.
The author seem to have most experience with Linux, and generalize a bit too much from that. Most larger open source projects do not have single all powerful maintainer, but are oriented around a central CVS repository where multiple people have write access.
Also, the "count the hops to the manager" does not make sense for many projects aside from Linux. Usually there is at most a single hop to someone with CVS write permission. If the person is a regular contributor, he will most likely have CVS write permission himself.
The Linux bitkeeper inspired hierarchical structure is rare.
(or whatever that Watchmen quote is)
'Discover what pseudonyms your candidate uses online....'
BS, I say. There are many reasons why people take nom de plumes and pseudonyms, but all come back to the fact that "-and I just wanted a certain level of anonymity". Not fullblown anonymity, just enough to make your online personal dealings disjoint from any sort of RL responsibilities you have.
There's a reason why you're not supposed to talk about religion, politics, and all that stuff on first dates or job interviews: because it's inappropriate (unless the job is, obviously, at a church, for a political party, etc.). Employees are expected to leave their personal lives at the door when at the job. But employers should feel peachy about betraying that same confidence?
When writing some free COM app or TPS report coversheet, what does an employee's view on gay marriage, Palestine, or the RIAA have to do with anything? And even if the employer was doing something as inoccuous as suggested in the article and just "seeing if they are passionate without compromise"... who here doesn't think they could find something they'd hold against you?
Candidates are looking for jobs, not friends. Neither should employers.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Most employers end up using some other criteria to pick new hires anyway. Seriously, how often have you been on an interview and really hit it off with the technical people (if the company even bothers with a rigorous technical interview), demonstrated your broad background and wonderful achievements, only to be told that they are really looking for someone with more domain knowledge?
My point is that for the most part, large employers in particular are using other criteria to determine hiring practices, with actual technical skills rated down on the list next to "good grooming".
Any one who bothers to read this article is already several steps above this point and probably has their own decent methodologies to weed out the bad ones.
If at first you don't succeed, redefine 'success'
The school bus driver example is an interesting one, because I have a bit of indirect experience with the hiring of school bus drivers in particular. Seriously.
Now, first off, you're right, that position was probably filled by someone without those specific qualifications. The thing is, though, the person who filled that position is probably going to end up doing that job anyway. In Canada, at least, education budgets are getting slashed to a ridiculous degree, and school boards are less and less able to hire someone to drive the buses and someone else to cut the grass. If the bus driver has nothing else to do, s/he sits in the bus garage playing cards or sleeping. A fine, hard day's work, wouldn't you say?
Now, the thing about the child psychology and mental health nurse qualifications seems a little silly. I can understand where that would come into play, but it's hard to see that as being something advertised as being a qualification for the job, even if it wasn't a requirement.
"I'll be a killer whale, when I grow up"
-Wintersleep
I once did this. I was interviewing a candidate for a job. He made the short list, so I googled him. Found out his pseudonym which he happened to use on /.. Some postings were consistent with some points on his CV, confirming it was him.
/. profile definitely wasn't the only thing that had him eliminated from the shortlist (he probably would have been cut anyway), it was a factor.
He also made a few posts about the technology we were chiefly hiring him to work with. The comments were rather negative (and against the broader view of the group he would be working in). I want people who can be passionate about what they do. No, I'm not just looking for "yes people" to maintain the status quo, but there is a certain base. Who is going to work harder and enjoy themselves more - someone who enjoys the technology or someone who doesn't?
While his
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Became a landlord of flathouse. Then your tenants will keep you living while you work on open source. At least, it works for me. Actually, I spent more time on playing games than on coding for past eight years, in-between fixing kitchen sinks and replacing light bulbs. The best effect is I got free 512k internet connection throught one of my tenant, just by allowing them to place a microwave antenna on the roof "for free".
And how to become a landlord? Get an excellent karma in real world first.
There you are, staring at me again.
Your example sounds like someone set a ridiculously high bar for social interaction, but "don't be a total flaming dickhead" is a low one. It's the social equivalent of writing hello.c and if someone can't do even that much then they don't deserve to get hired anywhere. Not even at Mall-Wart. Everyone has to deal with someone, even if it's only their boss, and they need a modicum of skill to do that. While it might be unreasonable to expect that people have (and exercise) too many different skills, requiring that people behave like adults is perfectly sensible and the sad truth is that many OSS "luminaries" (Al Viro is the clearest example) fail that test.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Is it just me, or isn't it a bit unfair to expect potential employees to reveal their online names? I mean I wouldn't want my boss seeing what I post on the animalsex.com boards...
Seriously though, I don't think it's fair to poke into people's personal lives just to see if they have ever said anything negative about Open Source.
Hmmm, I have an interview next week, better make myself look good... Open Source is great!
First, read the resume and call the prospect up before the interview. Ask general questions like "describe your ideal job". Describe your job and ask the person to explain how their background and skills predict success in the job.
... do you want to work with this person? Does their cultural style fit? Does their work ethic come through?
If they get past the initial call, invite them to visit the work site and turn the interview into a 4 hours session.
Have multiple teams of the potential hire's peers do team interviews. Make them get to know each other sessions the aim of which is to give the applicant access to the answer to any question they want to ask. And insist that honesty be used in giving the applicant the answers. You don't do yourself a favor in bringing on someone who doesn't fit because you mislead them.
I always say "'Asking how that turkey is to work for' is a fair question and I'll be disappointed if they don't give you an honest answer".
After the interviews, ask only one question of the prospect "do you want to come to work here to do the job that has been described in the conditions you now understand?"
After the interviews, ask only one question of your people
Listen carefully while they explain their reasoning.
They don't want someone unpleasent around. They don't want someone who can't pull their share of the load.
I guarantee that the group wisdom will be better than yours even though you are the experience hiring manager.
I'm 6 for 6 using this approach over about a 5 year period. Zero undesired turnover in the group during that period.
No, programmers are programmers, whether they program proprietary or free software. However, when they code free software, you can actually see both their code, and how they intercat with other programmers on a project. This way, you can avoid the primadonas.
Getting programmers with both good coding and people skills are what this article is about. And given how widely different the skills of programmers are, it is hard to see how any trouble in the hiring process to get the best is too much.
You seem to miss the point of the article. The point was not to "bribe" programmers to work for the company by offering them to work on free software. The idea was that if the company wanted to contribute to some free software projects fpr strategic reasons, like HP does with various Linux related technologies, how to get the people who can ensure that the contributions are accepted. These people you find in the free software communities.
I would like to say that is a rather interesting perspective on how to hire individuals within the OSS communities at large. But then i would also say that is a rather closed asumption that they only evolve around OSS. I did like how the article addresses alot of our frugalness as aposed to our drunkeness of money gushing from our wallets. But personally, i think that OSS is more importantly based on how well someone contributes to a project and the quality of their source, not how many projects they contribute to, or how often, but rather the complete and utter respect someone gets for fixing a certain bug or mending issues that people had over a particular API implentation. I guess i could be reitterating what the article said, but i thought it was rather refreshing to see that some form of managment exists which some of us could tollerate.
Unfortunately, most open source developers are not like Linus. My experience with contributing to open source projects is that there is a lot of argumentative, adversarial behavior.
For many open source developers, the open source project is their main contact with other people. They've chosen to be part of a project because they are so negative that they don't have much other social interaction. They are constantly angry, have no awareness of their own psychology, and use the open source project partly as an outlet for their anger.
The article raises many interesting points, such as this one: "Request a detailed list of actual contributions to a variety of open source projects. When evaluating candidates from competing companies, it is not possible to request actual contributions to proprietary products. The beauty of open source is that everything is open and public. You have the ability to measure the quantity, quality, and technical capability of your candidate before ever hiring. Your managers and other employees are a good source to use to analyze historical contributions and give you the feedback you need."
The openness is a big advantage for someone who wants to hire a programmer.
It is a regiously held belief.
Making closed source software is wrong. Even if you do OSS work on the side.
(on the extreme side) Selling software as a commercial product is morally wrong.
Myself, I think as you do, but don't think that we represent the whole of the OSS community with this stance.*When I say OSS, I'm actually lumping together two groups: 1. Open source people who are more concerned with OSS as a method than an philosiphical point. "free as in speech" They aren't as concerned with how other people make money. 2. Free software people, who view it as an entire philosophy. This category seems more worldview restrictive. They very much care how other people make thier money. (i.e. BSD style license vs. GPL, the main differnece is the ability to create commercial forks like OSX)
If I'm giving code away, then I am not going to care if someone else out there finds a way to make money off it as long as they don't make false claims about who did what. I'm giving it away for the world to use as it sees fit.
Some people feel exploited if someone else makes money off the code they gave away. I don't get that, but I respect it as thier choice to make. To me it's free either way; to them it's only free if all derivations are also free.We may disagree, but we can still work together, as long as we are honest about what we are really working for.
Phew! that was long...
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
I want employers to research me. Please! This will be especially true after I've got my next project off the ground, which barring catastrophe should be before I'm job hunting again.
So many of you are padding your resumes (yes, you... knock it off!) that it makes it hard for me to get into the "interview" stack. I don't believe in padding the resume (and besides, if I padded it it would become downright unbelievable... yes, I actually do know those ten languages fairly well, even if I am just a recent college grad, am I supposed to claim 20? As it is there are already some skills I'm deliberately not adding because they're not really good enough to justify it), and I need some way to let you know that I really have the skills I mention.
For instance, I claim the ability to write coherently. Anybody can write coherently for the length of one resume, all that takes is the help of a friend. Get to my website and you'll see that I really can write even large, book-length essays reasonably well. You can find my code and download it.
If anyone's not going to hire me because of my opinions, which are mostly "ethics are good" and a general technolibertarian slant, then I don't want to work for them. (In my case, this is unlikely to be an issue, since my strongest opinions are "YRO"-type issues and all that really eliminates from consideration are surveillance technologies I couldn't work on anyhow. YMMV due to differing opinions.)
How else am I going to rise above all your padded resumes?
(I've heard that in my current job I was the third of three candidates after the final screening. Our resumes were virtually identical, but I was fresh out of college with a Masters degree (actually I had significant work experience, easily three year's worth of a full-time job, but it's hard to get over the "fresh out of college" stigma), while the other two had many years of industry experience. Fortunately, when they were interviewed, they bombed, because the resumes were padded, and mine wasn't. Padded resumes may get you interviews, but you should almost hope they don't get you a job; you'll be in over your head in no time if you're hired on the basis of one.)
(And a note: I can write, but that doesn't mean I give my best stuff to Slashdot or spend forever proof-reading my posts; why bother? I'm sure you can find errors in here. Save your sarcastic jokes; I'm claiming I can write, not write perfect rough drafts into a Mozilla text box.)
I've always considered that sentence a little ambigious... How did you define the ability to work with others ?
... thats not like playing in an football team !!
Is that the ability to understand and use API devellopped by others ?
Or, the wisdom to not rewrite all the code you consider bad ?
Or, the social skill to entertains good relations with coworkers ?
Or, the intelligence to query others when you're stuck on a problem?
The truth is, for sure, all at once... and i think i got all these quality to "work with others" but, in my job, i work alone 90% of the time...the analyst build the architecture and the designer make the template, then, i wrote the business logic, setup database and functionnality all alone.
I work with others, thats a fact, but i don't have and i don't need an "ability" to work with them!!!
Almost every time i see a job opening in IT, there is a mention about our "ability to work with others"... WHY??? we work alone the majority of our times
Is that so important ?
Or is that an obsession of managers who percieve all of us as chico-albinos-dungeon-geek that can't communicate ?
"Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." - Nietzsche
One must always be willing to take pride in their work - not to do so is practically a crime in any line of work. But if you attach your ego to your work, you will never be able to handle someone else taking your code and, well, basically, take it apart & rewrite it if necessary - for whatever the reason happens to be - whether it's because the spec has changed, performance indicates that block of code, etc. If your ego gets in the way, your feelings will likely hurt you in the arena.
I tried to mention this recently in response to the article about open-source coding devaluing software development, but none of the moderators saw it.
Anyhow, as any law student knows, volunteering in the community is an absolute necessity. Many employers won't even consider you if you haven't done significant volunteer work during law school, and you're expected to do so during your career.
The computer industry should be no different. Pro bono work should be considered the NORM.
Let me prove myself on the job I'm hired to do and please leave my slashdot account, my credit score, my medical history, and my weekly garbage to myself thank you.
When I see one of those letters starting with "Dear sir" on a free software development mailing list, I know it is someone outside the cumminity writing (or someone being ironic). People working professionaly on free software tend to learn that an informal attitude goes better with the community.
/. is a fine place to learn how potential employees for free software projects work in such a setting. And no, this does not mean you should look for people who act with this weird "workplace professionalism" at /., such people will not fit in here, and they will not fit in in a most free software projects. Just be the nice guy you are here, as you will hopfully be in other informal settings.
So an informal forum like
This is a bad day for Taco Bell and Captain Hemos, but this about does it.
'Great Open Source Developers' is a disgusting oxymoron. Anyone who doesn't understand this is/has either
1. under 13
2. jacked off too much
3. not got laid enough
4. likes peeling bananas
5. congenitally mentally disenfranchised
6. a total failure at everything
7. less IQ than a tomato
(And before you accuse me of being greedy, I do contribute to open-source projects in my spare time.)
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
I'm sorry, but I have to do a shameless plug. Though I'm entry level, I think I have a fair ammount of innate talent in addition to my degree. If anyone knows of anyone looking for an entry level developer, you could get $500 from me
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Being that the document is written by someone at HP, I expect the first steps go something like this:
1. Build an office building in India.
2. Hire an Indian.
(Yes, I'm bitter. I need a good hit to my karma once in a while... [No pun intended.])
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Never hire someone who posts alot. They will spend more time reading Slashdot than actually doing work for you.
This is the code....
Then hire me.
Dumb shits.
Opensores hippies work for free (although they hate Indians who work for money).
Do what everyone does, start a Sourceforge project and then spam newsgroups and boards looking for "collaborators".
A good programmer doesn't need to be reassured that you will take the fact that they don't have an editor into account. They know they are good, and they know that if you are too stupid to take that into account, they don't WANT to be hired by you. Remember the job candidate, if they are worth hiring, is interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them.
A good programmer might or might not be in the habit of writing their braces before filling in their contents *with an editor*, but on paper, it seems more prudent to leave the closing brace out until it's needed. A good programmer *MAY* choose to add the closing brace, but if they be good, then it won't be too far down the page from their opening one since long blocks of code are hard to read. Whatever they do, their closing brace habits are insufficent information to draw conclusions about the way their mind works. A programmer that never creates inscrutably long blocks of code may not need a habit of adding closing braces before filling in code to remember to keep their braces matched and indented correctly.
Good programmers will use *sensible* variable names for loop indices. Sometimes, especially when the index is not used more than once in a loop, a long index name might be equivalent to a comment and just as readable as a short name. Sometimes, especially if they are doing something wierd, and if they doubt *your* intellegence or ability to follow their clever trick, they might use the long index variable name to make it blatently obvious to *you* what they are doing. Names like row and col, are short enough not to look noisy, and more descriptive than names like i and j if appropriate. You would have to know the motivations behind loop variable name choice to make any judgement, and since you are not a mindreader, you can't.
As far as ( 0==strlen(s) ) goes, it's less readable than (strlen(s) == 0). Making strlen(s) the main object of the sentence makes it stand out in one's mind, and since strlen(s) is liable to change ( whereas 0 is a constant ) that is the most readable way to write it. ( 0 == strlen(s) ) does have the advantage that ( 0 = strlen(s) ) will be caught by even stupid compilers, but that seems of marginal value. I wouldn't fault someone for writing it that way since they may have been forced to use a retarded compiler which has warped their mind over the years through no fault of their own.
Good programmers don't write linked lists. They use STL, or a language that provides that functionality for them. The first reaction of a good programmer might be to point that out to you. If forced to write one anyway, they might just whip it out since it's really not THAT complicated.
Eat at Joe's.
That's easy...just hire me...
run away! run away!
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
(just pretend all of
the above is in caps)
"I ditched that job six months ago. It's fine if you're going to be "on call" at scheduled, planned times. I will not submit to an employer who thinks that they own me. Unfortunately, there were a lot of "sheeple" at the job who just took it. (I guess they're the ones making life hard for the rest of us!?) "
Yeah! Yeah! Globilization all the "sheepls" fault.
In case you haven't notice, people can't be as picky as the Dot.com era. Stickup all you want, just as long as you're willing to live with the consequences.
"We have also met other IT people who just don't get that they are being paid to do something for the company rather then what they want to do."
Yes, and how many of those people are of the "we're doing it for the love" type? And if you assign things that they "don't love", will they leave quicker than someone doing it "for the money"?
"There is no reason for an employer to even go to the fraction of the trouble the article suggests."
Yes, but as the "doing it for the love" crowd will remind you, there are a lot of "doing it for the money" people that don't belong in IT. Therefore you have to go through all that to weed them out.
I don't think they exist. Maybe you should switch to a better model to get great developers. Here's a hint: Great developers usually like to make money, hence none in Open Source.
"I've always considered that sentence a little ambigious... How did you define the ability to work with others ?"
Not shooting up your workplace is a good start.
And yes, Microsoft products are really good because they make money from them, because it allows them pay their developers well (and keep the good ones). It's a direct effect.
"Great Open Source Developers..."
Isn't that like "Jumbo Shrimp"?
Volunteering your time for open source projects is fine and everything, but I don't think it has the same social value as pro bono legal work. It's more of a hobby than anything else.
I would find more value in volunteering your services to charitable organizations and the like, which might not have the budget to contract for IT work. One thing that puzzles me is how difficult it is to find opportunities of this nature. It's a lot easier to send unsolicited contributions to an open source project than to find anyone who wants some free programmer time.
The concept behind the original article defies belief. Why write a paper about how to hire great open source developers? You can pick them off the street for chump change. We're all starving artist types, and will work for food, at this point. At this point in the market, companies can pick and choose. All I'm going to say is, when the labor market gets tight again, we're going to remember, and they're all screwed.
Under the reign of the little fat bastard with the bad perm, they are already used to not eating. Great open source programmers!
Back in 97' when the Doom source came out I joined a mod project over at the local college.
The project is no longer around, but at the time my boss was pretty impressed with the work we were doing. I think that after I started to describe to him how the engine worked, and how we (I) wanted to change it, as a developer he saw me in a different light.
I'm not sure this would have happened if Id hadn't OSS-ed their code. It would have taken longer to impress the guy if he only knew me as a guy who wrote CGI programs and Servlets.
We're still together, and now I'm his technical lead on a big project.
p/g
Microsoft Fucking Sucks!! Up The Penguins!!
Why hire them when they'll happily work for free?
Best of luck with the job search. It took me a good five months out of school to get my first real job (graduated 2001).
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
"Who do you post as?"
"Oh, some guy I know."
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
The AC does not care about karma. He speaks his mind, and when he's done, he lets others fight.
I'd say this is truly enlightened.
Na, I used to work for microsoft and that was discouraged. I once through in a comment of: //this allows the NSA to gain access to the computer
and they fired me.