Why do you need a public GitHub presence to prove your competance ?
What if you are actually too busy providing solutions at work to indulge in geeky stuff in a public github repository ?
What if you don’t use GIT – you use something else and you aren’t going to change because your SCC solution is perfectly functional ?
Is a track record of producing solutions less important than some geeky piece of tech ?

None of this is required, but it is a useful resource for hiring managers to try and verify the competence of applicants.

None of this is required, but it is a useful resource for hiring managers to try and verify the competence of applicants.

Could look at stackoverflow reputations as well, but then again you could question someone who has the time to spend on there that much, or to mess around with an open-source project, or indeed do you want someone with that degree of geekiness/nerdiness that would want to do that ?

Don’t sit on the fence molgrips, tell us what you really think 😆

Turnerguy

What if you don’t use GIT?

Oooh – you’re one of *those* people..? #Mercurial

Rachel 😉

More seriously Turnerguy

And who is going to be interested in developing government software in their free time ?

Lots of people. Lots and lots. I mean, look at all those that dedicate their time to WordPress and Drupal. I’m trying to get things right for the mentored core Drupal sprints in Dublin in September right now and looks like will will have hundreds working for free all in a great big room.

Why wouldn’t other things like making better public services also receive the same interest, if curated properly?

Rachel

Lots of people. Lots and lots.

I really don’t think so.

The scope of the products you mention is small, government projects are going to be a lot bigger scale, involve trying to interface to other, possibly seriously legacy, systems.

All of which, to be successful, is going to require very good communication, a lot of which will be required during the working day.

Then there’s all the usual political stuff to get past – people working for the government aren’t going to be that helpful when coordinating with outsiders, is my guess. Especially when they can’t rely on any deliverables.

Oooh – you’re one of *those* people..? #Mercurial

no, just not accepting the geekiness of evangelising over something like a revision control system.

it is a useful resource for hiring managers to try and verify the competence of applicants.

So because I’ve never done any open source development I’m shite?

I’ve got better things to do in my spare time tbh. Have a family, ride bikes, that kind of thing.

So because I’ve never done any open source development I’m shite?

that’s not the main reason, or so I’ve heard…

So because I’ve never done any open source development I’m shite?

Of course not – it’s just that kind of devs I work with at the moment need to be able to show that they know their GitHubs from their Jenkins from their CI/CD pipelines and Dockerised orchestrated containers. 😉