You Are SCREWED Without A Full GitHub - A Wannabe Programmer

is it true that you need to be constantly committing to GitHub in order to land a job in Tech it's time for another spicy take from LinkedIn hi my name is Nick centino and I'm a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft in this video I wanted to go through a topic that it is a post on LinkedIn but I have seen this kind of thing come up before and I think it's worth talking about and that's how much you're contributing to GitHub or publishing code online in order to get a job and this is specifically around getting a job so I think it's really about that kind of context my friend Sean Cooper responded to this where he reposted it with his sort of cool take on it and I thought it was pretty good it definitely caught my attention so I wanted to make sure I had some time to go over this with folks a quick reminder to subscribe to this channel if you're enjoying this type of content and check out the pin comment for my courses on dome train now let's check out the post on LinkedIn this starts off by saying hot take you need to have daily green dots on GitHub I don't know if a lot of people recall this but I think it was last year so this would have been 20 23 there was a post that went absolutely viral I can't even remember who it was posted by because it doesn't really matter but they basically called out something like this saying like you know it's not even worth applying to to roles unless you have like a GitHub profile that looks like this and it has all the green dots there's basically a million memes that came out of this this person saying you need to have the daily green dots on GitHub if you're a CS student or emerging software engineer you are screwed with out full GitHub in my honest opinion you are wannabe programmer without active dots I'm going to pause there for one second just for one second I've been programming for 21 plus years how many of those years do you think that I had an active Green Dot on GitHub let you think about that for a second spoiler alert it's not most of those years just a heads up so let's keep going if a hiring manager asks why you don't have an active GitHub there is really no excuse that you can make up for it it's almost hard to read this kind of stuff and let me pause too cuz I didn't say this in the beginning and it's it's important my goal here is not to Flame or blast this person right I don't know this individual I certainly don't agree with the take that's being presented here if it's not completely obvious but my goal here is not for people to go attack this person that's not what this is about this is really trying to give you a different perspective into what's being posted here because I think this is complete misinformation and I don't want people to be distracted by this kind of thing not a good take in my opinion but let's keep going Active Green Dots means you care you contribute you have momentum okay I think that those are fair points right if you have those green dots that is one way that you could be saying to the public I care about software engineering because I'm doing it hey look here's me contributing and I have momentum because I've been doing it consistently I think that that is a fair statement but it's kind of like the implication here is that is the only way that you can do that and it's just false and not only that you shouldn't be expected that you have to do that which I'll come to later this is a fair statement but you can't sort of invert the statement and say that it's the only way that it can happen goes on to say go out there and commit daily to GitHub get push get paid very clever right that's totally funny it's a great joke um drop your your GitHub handles below follow each other if you want I can roast your GitHub kind of like we're doing with this post we can go roast things that's right and share feedback you know I don't want to get into this like this is this guy's advertisement so I'll even ask the video editor to just basically uh in whatever style he'd like he can go blur this out kind of make it so no one's ever going to see what's going on here and for order of operations sorry if you have to go back in the video and kind of trim this up but I don't want to advertise this guy's garbage I think that's unfair okay Sean goes on to say cool take right we're going to look at the opposite of the spicy take going on here so he's going on to say that the frequency of your commits don't matter it's the quality right so if we're just looking at like the number of commits not really a good way because technically you could just be going to update readmes or something right so if you're going to worry about the number of commits you might as well go back to Counting lines of code and we know that this is not a good metric so if you got days where you didn't commit something that's Co cool I hope you were doing something better your life or devoted to something else more important right I hope those blank dots indicate you're taking care of yourself I hope those blank dots represent something like you playing music playing with your kids or dogs or going hiking when I responded to Sean's post the things that I was adding into this were essentially along the lines of like you know there are other things outside of software engineering right so I'll give you my take in just a moment but don't buy into the idea that single metric indicates your worth or Talent as a developer absolutely agreed especially when it comes from just someone who's trying to drive traffic to his site yes if you haven't watched my other video on a spicy LinkedIn take you can go check it out of the editor put a link above this is really another example of people posting things and this is a pattern right on social media you have a hook to get people's attention you present some information that people can read through and then you try to drive traffic to a site to go read more or get the solution whatever it happens to be so what this guy is doing in terms of a structure of a post is a very effective way to do things so we're not knocking on that but what I'm knocking on here and like Sean's saying is like this is kind of a crappy thing to go have a perspective on like this so I want to now share with you my opinion on this and disclaimer and the credentials here are that I've been a hiring manager for 12 years so let's go back to this guy's post right if a hiring manager asks you why you don't have an active GitHub there is really no excuse that can make up for it okay before I totally go on a rant here what I do want to say and maybe this is what this individual is trying to get at because I've said you know things like this before if you are trying to go land a job people will say like how much of this is important like how many projects do I have to go build what boot camp certification College University right people are trying to say what do I got to do to make sure that I can get a job the reality is I think that with competition obviously there's a lot of competition right now but in general there's competitions for jobs what I would say is the more things that you can do to stand out from other people the better your chances what's really misleading about posts like this is that it's indicating this is the only way to do it you must do this thing right like if you don't have this you're screwed I think it literally says that right like you're screwed without a full GitHub so I think that what I recommend to people is that you want to do other things to stand out about your competition so if you are concerned if you're like I don't know if I'm you know if I'm going to be able to compete I would say well what are the people applying for these jobs doing right if you have insight into that if you're like well all of them have gith hubs all of them do this I would say well if you want to stand out you can either try doing those those things too or find other ways to get recognized maybe you're better at networking right maybe you can have a more effective path to talking with a hiring manager you know a recruiter something like that to get the opportunity in the first place so there's different options here right there's a million different ways that you can try to go stand out without having to do this this take it's like this is this guy's opinion and I like to say like you know everything's subjective I guess but like this is an objectively wrong opinion and it's just Incorrect and the reason I say this is for a couple things number one you're not screwed without a full GitHub it's just not true does it help could it help absolutely it could help if you have more activity on GitHub it could help by no means are you screwed without a full GitHub that would mean if I so I've been like I said I've been programming for 21 years I'm a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft I've been at Microsoft for just under 4 years I've been managing teams for 12 years I don't have a full GitHub does that mean that I couldn't possibly go get a software engineering job because of that it's just incorrect objectively incorrect so let's rule that one out next part says if a hiring manager asks why you don't have an active GitHub there's no excuse that can make up for it this is also objectively Incorrect and Shawn gave some great points and I'm very glad that he did because at the end of the day right software engineering this is our career but there are other things in our lives that are not our career there are other things in our lives that are not our career that could even help you skill up it doesn't mean that you have to go dedicate all your time to Skilling up but like you should be able to go spend time with your family or your pets or your hobbies right you are a human being you should be doing those things please as Sean pointed out you know this could be great for your mental health and your well-being like you should be doing these other things it would be weird it might be weird if you had done literally nothing but coded I mean that might be cool that might be cool if you're really into software development but not everyone's like that as a hiring manager for 12 years I would just not expect anyone to have a GitHub like that in fact I would like I would have questions for the person that does I would say wow that's very impressive what other things do you like to do because I want to know about the person and I want to know what their interests are right if it's if it truly is programming all the time cool it's not going to you know break your chances if you don't have that kind of thing this is objectively incorrect I've hired many people that don't have a full GitHub page you know active commits every single day and in fact I really truly do hope as a hiring manager that people have hobbies that they enjoy if they have hobbies like I love to program I will program in my spare time but certainly I'm not just going to go commit it to GitHub every day like that just is kind of ridiculous th this post is just Incorrect and I'm hoping that by you know you watching this video I want to give you that perspective that like when you see stuff like this you need to be reminded that there are many ways that you can go accomplish your goal of getting hired it does come back to you need to be able to stand out you need to make sure that people can identify you right so you're applying for jobs how do you make sure that you stand out amongst the group how do you do your interviews properly and when you're employed you know how are you going to make sure that you're doing a good job I've done a bunch of live streams on this I will continue to do it but the point here is like you don't have to have a GitHub that's completely filled um and even if you say were really focused on trying to skill up so that you could go apply for jobs there's other ways to do it right it doesn't have to be on GitHub and that's just the reality of it so I hope that this is helpful I'm sorry for folks read this kind of thing and they're persuaded into thinking that this is the only way to go approach it a big shout out to Sean Cooper for you know reposting this and giving a what I would call a good opinion he's also an engineering manager he has some perspective into this I think this person's profile says they're a you know a CEO at some place like that's cool um but like this is just it's a bad take so hope that helps thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time take care