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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?'"
"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.
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
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
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
> 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.
Umm, you likely already know this, but your boss is probably lying to you, and simply didn't let it slip since that would have given you a stronger position during contract negotiations.
(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?
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.
The issue here is that tech guys often are terrible communicators, or worse, actually difficult to work with.
This is why so many tech guys complain constantly about how management is clueless as to their contribution, or does not give them adequate support, etc. It's caused in large part by the tech community being very territorial and often antagonistic. It makes it much easier for the business managers to sit in an isolated room and make decisions about the tech staff without actually discussing it with them.
Yes, most of us work in environments where isolation is the preferred method ( the foolishness of bullpens and pair programming notwithstanding ), but somebody (hey - maybe you, tech guy!) has to explain to the power-that-be how isolation is a requirement, or how having a redundant code repository isn't just a nice idea.
Who's going to explain it to them if the programmers and hardware guys can't? Who's going to explain to the new guy working on some of your old code those little nuances for deployment, freeing you up for that new codebase development?
That's where your 'ability to work with others' comes in handy, and that's why a smart company wants that skill in their tech staff.
(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.