Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Family guy and web developer

GitHub is not My Resume

I've been searching through various contract opportunities over the last few weeks. Client work is slowing down and I have some availability over the next few months. Might be a good idea to look around then! One common feature of each ad is that most of them have included is this:

Include a link to your GitHub profile.

For the non-developers amongst you, GitHub is a web based source code repository service where developers and organisations can keep copies of the code they are working on and have worked on. To this end, it's often referred to as a resume for developers. Not every developer has a GitHub account though (there are alternatives like BitBucket) and certainly not every developer has an active GitHub account.

Are recruiters (both agencies and companies) basing their candidate search on developers who have active GitHub accounts?

Does my GitHub account reflect the capabilities of myself as a developer?

I certainly hope not.

In the past I moved my repositories over to BitBucket to give it a try. I left my GitHub account open but there was little on it. Now, I'm back to using GitHub and I make use of it by keeping some projects I'm working on there. Most of them are private. They're ideas that I would rather keep to myself. For little projects and other stuff, I throw them up on my GitHub account as public. Not as bragging rights to my capabilities as a developer but to share my code with other developers.

If most agencies were to look at my GitHub profile at the moment and make a decision based on that alone, they would skip right over my application. The problem is though that my GitHub profile is one facet of my career as a developer. I have a good history as a developer and a variety of experience. I have a couple of recommendations on LinkedIn and an up to date CV there. I'm running my second attempt at a product with DailyMuse after I killed the failed Journalong product.

I'm certainly not a developer that lives and breathes code. Once the work day is over, I might hit the trails on the mountain bike, take my son to the golf so he can practice, or just go for a walk with the family. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's so many other things I do outside of work that doesn't involve writing code. Yes, I have a number of little side projects on the go. Most developers do, but they're low on my priority list.

While my career is important, it's also important to get the balance right between what you do for your career and what you do elsewhere. I do write code outside of work, but most of the time I'm doing other things like spending time with my family, riding one of my bikes or something else that isn't writing code.

GitHub isn't my resume though. It's one aspect of my resume. It's something to consider yes, but the real value in a software developer isn't the amount of code they write. It's in the way they approach problems, present solutions and communicate with others. And I think I do that rather well.

Are You an Early Adopter?

I'm generally not, but that's okay.

If we didn’t have any early adopters ironing out the kinks, there’d never be a now-safe choice for the late majority. And if everyone always jumped on the latest thing on day one, society would waste needless cycles churning through the broken glass of beta software.

— The Stories We Tell Ourselves by Signal vs Noise

I now know that I bring scale to the products that I wait for.

Big Food is Out

I can't say if this trend is happening in the UK, but in the Lang house we've almost completely eliminated processed foods in favour of fresh home made meals. The simple pleasure of cooking with fresh ingredients is hard to give up when you've mastered a few basic dishes.

Wrote my first bit of Rack middleware yesterday for a Rails application. Not so hard to do once you know how it passes requests through.

I hope the @ElderslieGolf juniors are playing well in their match against Kilmacolm. Couldn’t make it to let Ethan watch.

There's no excuse for the lack of blog posts around here recently. I've tried to kickstart my daily posts a number of times in the last couple of months but each time ends up in failure.

At first I had problem with ideas for writing. My ideas list had run dry and I struggled to fill it again.

Then when I had an idea for a post, I would quickly dismiss it on the grounds that it isn't worth publishing. I didn't have confidence in the idea to write about it to begin with, let alone actually get to the step of deciding whether it is publishable or not.

Now I'm so focused on other work that I am struggling to fit writing back into my schedule. I'm stretching myself in too many different directions.

None of these are valid reasons for not writing. They're excuses. I aim to do better in the future with regards to my writing.

I Should Be Blogging

I really should. My problem at the moment is that I have too many things on the go at once. Something will need to give.

If you're struggling to blog, read this post by Curtis McHale. It will be a reality check for some. A reality check that is needed.

I know I needed it.