On the hiring side, it’s rare to see someone come through with significant OSS contributions. A small bug fix here or there is about the most I see from 90% of resumes.
Every once in a while we see someone with a lot of open source contributions, or even full leadership of a popular project. These people would really prefer if we believed that OSS contributions and GitHub profiles replaced resumes or CVs, because it’s where they shine. Unfortunately, doing so would exclude many great hires who have done a lot of great work at private companies that doesn’t show up on their GitHub. We’ve also had trouble hiring prolific OSS contributors who spent their days working on OSS contributions instead of doing their job. One candidate wanted their contract to state that they could spend half of their paid time working on their OSS project. We passed.
In my experience, anyone claiming to have a single dimension credential preference for hiring (usually GitHub portfolio, Ivy League education, ex-FAANG) is simply hiring for people who look like themselves. They’re not a good fit for unbiased hiring.
Every once in a while we see someone with a lot of open source contributions, or even full leadership of a popular project. These people would really prefer if we believed that OSS contributions and GitHub profiles replaced resumes or CVs, because it’s where they shine. Unfortunately, doing so would exclude many great hires who have done a lot of great work at private companies that doesn’t show up on their GitHub. We’ve also had trouble hiring prolific OSS contributors who spent their days working on OSS contributions instead of doing their job. One candidate wanted their contract to state that they could spend half of their paid time working on their OSS project. We passed.
In my experience, anyone claiming to have a single dimension credential preference for hiring (usually GitHub portfolio, Ivy League education, ex-FAANG) is simply hiring for people who look like themselves. They’re not a good fit for unbiased hiring.