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IBM Seeks Patent On Judging Programmers By Commits

Posted by timothy on from the combine-with-eye-tracking dept.

theodp writes "How'd you like to be deemed unworthy of a job based upon a scan of your GitHub updates? That's what proposed in a newly-published IBM patent application for Automated Analysis of Code Developer's Profile, which proposes weeding out developer candidates for certain roles based on things like the amount of changes one typically makes with each commit, how frequently and regularly one makes commits, what hours of the day one makes commits, the percentage of commits with conflicts that one resolves, and the 'depth' of one's commit comments ('shallow', 'mid-range' or 'deep'). Big Blue explains that commit or repository interactions can be used to produce a 'conclusion report' that compares a developer to others who have profiles on the repository, which helps management 'avoid wasted time with ineffective developers."

3 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Tool for idiots by Hentes · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This exactly. If you can't hire "efficient" coders, it might be a clue that you need more efficient managers.

  2. The Daily WTF by doomday · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This sounds like it belongs on thedailywtf.com. So would anyone who writes copypasta look good according to these statistics? Would people who write short, carefully considered, effective, reusable code look bad? This type of application has the effect of forcing people to start optimizing their code to maximize the metrics, rather than working to produce an excellent product.

  3. An actually useful metric I heard was used by mbkennel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    15 years or more ago, I had a friend in a high-level consulting company (as in contract programming stars, not powerpoint pushers). Their usual m.o. was to pay 2x the going rate and expect 5x to 10x the productivity and brains.

    They had a contract with IBM fixing bugs in I think AIX or something (lucrative and endless). They shared the bug data base with IBM's own workers, who were working on the same project.

    Clever gits that they are, they mined the bug data base algorithmically to look for old bugs which were opened, had many people work on them unsuccessfully, but were eventually closed. They identified one IBM employee (out of dozens/hundreds) who was able to fix demonstrably hard bugs (that other employees had tried and failed to address) consistently.

    So, they made him an offer he couldn't refuse.