http://ayende.comAyende @ RahienCopyright (C) Ayende Rahien 2004 - 2021 (c) 202660I have a wife and kids and it's almost impossible to do any get work done on a pet project. It's not that I don't have passion for my craft but ... the kids are exhausting! (and anyone who compares that to looking after a dog is frankly an idiot). "Me" time is between 9:30 and the time I go to bed, by then I've already done a days work and done a couple of hours of child care. Bear in mind, I've probably not had an uninterrupted nights sleep either. I'm just not going to write good code at that point.http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment46http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment46Wed, 18 Jul 2012 12:30:17 GMTWouldn't it be nice if we all actually earned money on our pet night/weekend projects? Well if we did then they'd slowly become our full-time day projects. Unfortunately, we engineers have cut-throat ourselves into being the cheapest labor outside of cows. Even musicians are smart enough to charge at least .20 cents each song :-)http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment45http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment45Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:51:25 GMTMethods are "verbs" and class names are "nouns" silly .NET bunnies :-) Microsoft and its awkward changes to the norm - I still can't get used to their back-slash !!!http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment44http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment44Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:42:32 GMTIMHO, the .NET Framework Design Guidelines are a bit overrated, particularly when it comes to naming conventions. I've been using a Ruby style naming convention in .NET for years. To me, it is much more readable. I always dread working on code that follows the archaic naming practices. Regardless, I am certainly no fan of Hungarian notation. I suppose everyone has their own tastes.http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment43http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment43Fri, 13 Jul 2012 18:31:14 GMTFor finding out how to find people, i suggest (for fun) to read the "tales from interviews" series on thedailywtf.com Joel's (Spolsky) articles on his hiring endeavours are also a very good read. I can recommend both to anyone interested in the question "how to hire great programmers". Also, there is a worth to read chapter in 37signals "getting real", but i'm not sure what the title was Regardshttp://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment42http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment42Fri, 06 Jul 2012 08:12:25 GMTI wouldn't enforce a standard like Ayende's when I was interviewing people. But you know what? I'm pretty damn sure that the work Ayende and his team are doing at Hibernating Rhinos is a hell of a lot more demanding than the web dev work I'm hiring people to do. I don't think it's unreasonable in the least for him to have demanding standards - even if I probably wouldn't measure up to them myself, at this stage of my life (I would have when I was 20-something, though).http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment41http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment41Fri, 06 Jul 2012 05:13:17 GMTJames, Depending on level, depending on skill, depending on what they are into. I would be surprised if someone isn't spending 2 - 6 hours a week on this if they call this their passionhttp://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment40http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment40Tue, 03 Jul 2012 13:37:52 GMTAyende, roughly how much of their own time time would you expect a typical developer to be spending on pet projects on average? Two hours a week? Five? Ten?http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment39http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment39Tue, 03 Jul 2012 09:24:24 GMT@Ayende Are you hiring beginner programmers now?http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment38http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment38Tue, 03 Jul 2012 08:45:01 GMTThese people saying it's Ayende's loss that he wont hire them?!? If anything it's their loss... I would love to be given the opportunity to work on RavenDB, RavenHQ, and other projects on a daily basis. Just being in JabbR chat room helping people with their questions in regards to RavenDB is fun, getting to dive in and see what it's capable of, but it would be awesome to work on RavenDB full time, and what ever other interesting projects are going on in his office we don't know about. And the guys from Hibernating Rhinos that come into JabbR chat-room now-n-then, are brilliant guys, so much to be learnt from them. Really I think it's your loss for having no passion. People who have no passion in this industry just create technical debt for the rest of us to clean up. http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment37http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment37Tue, 03 Jul 2012 01:40:21 GMTOren, I have very strong opinions about this topic as well, so I have responded with my post: http://daniellang.net/why-startups-cant-compromise-on-hiring-decisions/ http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment36http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment36Mon, 02 Jul 2012 22:03:22 GMTTorkel, https://github.com/synhershko/NAppUpdate/http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment35http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment35Mon, 02 Jul 2012 19:02:22 GMTbusy_programmer, Put simply, yes. You have no visible record of actually being able to do something. If you are interested in working for Hibernating Rhinos, you need _something_ that shows what you can do. It can be a patch that you submitted to an OSS project that got accepted (which is actually quite common), it can be your own stuff that interests you. Hell, for all I care, go and write something interesting just of the interview, but I want to see your code.http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment34http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment34Mon, 02 Jul 2012 19:01:44 GMTTim, My problem is that I don't like it when people show so little respect that they send such obviously flawed sample code. It shows very little appreciation for both mine and their timehttp://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment33http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment33Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:56:36 GMTSeeR, In that case, you are not compelled to go and work for us. Note that in all the cases that I mentioned, there has been no compulsion from anyone to go and do that. We simply select for people who are passionate for what they do.http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment32http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment32Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:50:07 GMTWhat is the "Auto update library for .NET", anything open source? Looked around for that a while back but did not find anything, ened up writing my own "windows service auto updater". http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment31http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment31Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:13:00 GMTGood post, its my reference/linkage post from now on :)http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment30http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment30Mon, 02 Jul 2012 17:03:31 GMTScott Hanselman recently blogged about an entire class of developers that apparently wouldn't be welcome at RH. http://bit.ly/N4fjOehttp://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment29http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment29Mon, 02 Jul 2012 16:57:06 GMTSo let me see if I understand this. Because I picked a job where I get lots of interesting work, and have enough skill at programming that I have risen to a position at work where I am handling several critical projects, and so simple do not have the mental energy to do outside programming (I relax instead by reading graduate level math and CS books, in order to improve my theoretical background), you would not be interesting in me? Your loss.http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment28http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment28Mon, 02 Jul 2012 16:39:34 GMTI recently interviewed a candidate for a c# job. When asking him to explain certain fundamental concepts, instead of answering, he pulled out a large printout of some code he had worked on. He felt that the code would speak for itself. I took a quick glance at the first page, which began with something like: /// Copyright 2011 - HisLastEmployer... And then of course I had stopped right there and handed it back to him. He was absolutely appalled that I wouldn't consider it. Then I had to lecture him on the following points; 1) That's not your code, that's theirs. They PAID you to write it. You should never violate the intellectual property of your employer. How do I know you wouldn't steal code you wrote for me? 2) How do I know which parts of this (if any) were actually yours? It could all be someone else's work for all I can tell. 3) Can we go back to the original question? If you can't verbally communicate certain fundamental concepts, then I don't care how good your written code is. He proceeded to walk out of the interview. That's one hire I'm glad I did NOT make. Compare that with the next candidate. He included in his resume a link to an open-source project on github, where I could clearly see his contributions in the check-in history. He didn't need to work on it that often, but when he did there was purpose to his code, and his style was clean. When he came in for the interview, he was able to answer my technical questions, and explain his work on the project. He got the job. The argument above about requiring over 40 hrs per week is nonsense. You can put in an hour here, an hour there. Help out on others projects where you can, etc. You don't need to champion your own project and be a slave to it. Sometimes, you don't even need a project, just answer some posts on StackOverflow with some good code samples. All of that will help an employer get a feel for your abilities without violating someone else's IP or limiting you to "classroom code".http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment27http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment27Mon, 02 Jul 2012 16:07:47 GMTIt's not that you have no free time when you have kids. It's that you can't string more than 10 minutes of it consecutively... That being said, hopefully your SO will let you have 4 hours on the weekend to yourself for this.http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment26http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment26Mon, 02 Jul 2012 15:12:17 GMTEveryone who is talking about having Kids, wife, etc.. is missing the point. Unless 100% of the time is occupied and you have zero free time to do any hobbies, then having kids isn't an excuse. If you still have time to watch TV, read a book, etc.. then you could code if you really wanted to instead of these other activities. f you don't want to in your free time then that's fine, there is nothing wrong with that. It just means you aren't a good fit for Hibernating Rhinos. Me personally, even though my free time is limited I'd rather spend it programming then watching TV or reading, as I find it more fun. http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment25http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment25Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:51:17 GMTI don't know why this would piss you off, as an interviewer. You have gotten exactly what you were looking for by asking for a code sample and getting lousy submissions: you ferreted out a candidate that was no good. This is much more efficient than scheduling an interview, and wasting several hours of several peoples time to attempt to discover the same fact. What should piss you off is how bad most software developers really are, in practice.http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment24http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment24Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:50:06 GMT@Steve Py - I guess I find it hard to understand because I've always loved programming, since I was 8 years old on my commadore 64. http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment23http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment23Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:21:36 GMTI really don't like your tone in this post. Getting "angry" about candidates CV's and implying you think less of them is a bit much. It's absolutely okay to have a preference for the type of candidate you are looking for. Even better, how that preferred candidate should appear as early as their application. Focusing on the kids coming out of college, don't classify the candidate as a "moron" (implied via the tone of your blog post) simply because they don't meet your preferred qualifications. Pass on them, then move on. Better yet, take this opportunity to teach them. Rather then get upset, why not ask them to elaborate on their submissions AND tell them why you are having them do so. Inform them why you think it is important, helpful, and how it *may* be important when applying at other companies. http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment22http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment22Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:02:02 GMTRemember Ayende is talking about young developers, generally less than a few years out of uni, who are looking for new jobs. If you have an established career already and a busy job, and you feel confident that you can keep up with technology changes, I don't think you necessarily need to be 'coding for fun' as well. But go talk to many other professionals - architects, artists, lawyers, doctors etc. You might be surprised by the level of extra-curricular work they are required to do in order to maintain their career. Besides, an experienced, senior developer should be able to whip out some good portfolio code in a week or two of downtime anyway. I know if I ever lost my job, the first thing I would do would be to take the opportunity and spend a couple of weeks diving into some new things. In a couple of weeks I could bang out 2 or 3 apps that would be enough to impress a hirer.http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment21http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment21Mon, 02 Jul 2012 13:29:17 GMTI'm a physics graduate and when I was at uni I was gobsmacked at how bad the CS students were. I thought I'd be able to go them and ask for advice when I was stuck or confused. Usually they looked at me blankly. Once I was told that I couldn't do polymorphism in C++. The guy who had my job before me was a CS grad from a major university, got a good degree too. I don't even know where to start on how bad his code was., loops didn't seem to exist in his world. The best coders I worked with have usually been educated in other disciplines.http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment20http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment20Mon, 02 Jul 2012 13:22:41 GMTThe real WTF here is that the university was not allowing the use of foreach. "We're going to teach you to code, but you have to do it with one hand tied behind your back!" Unless they're disallowing for loops as well to enforce a functional style, I suppose.http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment19http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment19Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:58:20 GMTOur local community college wants employers to think its graduates are really smart. As a result we noticed that almost every single applicant that applied from this community college had a 4.0 (perfect) grade average but knew almost nothing about programming. So as part of the pre-interview process we started requiring applicants to solve the Fizz Buzz test (and some others of similar difficulty) on the spot before they talked to any of our developer managers. After issuing this test about 50 times, we were surprised to see that only a small minority of applicants even get close to a correct answer. Fizz Buzz http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-developers-who-grok-coding/http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment18http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment18Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:55:12 GMT@Craig Dude, I am not coming at this from some totalitarian manager, who wants his employees whipped all day. Or from some liberal, hip cool thinking manager, who knows that trust gets the best out of his devs. I am coming at it from the view of a dev who is working on the same code base as “some” of these guys. Seeing with my own eyes, the half assed attempts and bugs. Knowing very well their mind was elsewhere.http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment17http://ayende.com/156769/that-ain-t-no-open-source-that-i-see-here#comment17Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:49:56 GMT