The article does not say that conference talks, tweets, books, etc. should be used for hiring decisions and only GitHub should not. It says (right there at the end), that hiring is hard and any shortcut to try and get around that fact is wrong. It just so happens that "don't send us your resume, tell us your GitHub username" just happens to be the shortcut of the moment.
Also, I'd challenge you to find where the article says or even implies that you shouldn't be making stuff because you FEEL like it. Quite the opposite, in fact. You should be making stuff because you feel like it and not because you have some expectation of getting a better offer or being able to show off your GitHub profile at your next interview.
As for the white, male bias...not sure what to tell you. It's real. The statistics don't lie. I'm glad that you have had success as a non-white member of the LGBT community, but as the saying goes: the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
> The article does not say that conference talks, tweets, books, etc. should be used for hiring decisions and only GitHub should not. It says (right there at the end), that hiring is hard and any shortcut to try and get around that fact is wrong. It just so happens that "don't send us your resume, tell us your GitHub username" just happens to be the shortcut of the moment.
Actually, Ashe has that on the Hire Me Page.
>As for the white, male bias...not sure what to tell you. It's real. The statistics don't lie. I'm glad that you have had success as a non-white member of the LGBT community, but as the saying goes: the plural of anecdote is not data.
I understand this is a fact, but how this can be used against Github as a resumé or against OSS on your free time, I have a hard time seeing that. It comes off as incredibly stupid.
> I understand this is a fact, but how this can be used against Github as a resumé or against OSS on your free time, I have a hard time seeing that. It comes off as incredibly stupid.
I really don't think anyone is saying not to do OSS on your free time. That there is a greater lack of diversity in OSS than in software engineering as a profession suggests that whatever it is that keeps minorities out of software engineering might be amplified in the OSS community, but it is not proof of this.
As for being an argument against using GitHub for hiring decisions, I'd pose you a scenario...two recent college grads are looking for their first job. One had parents who could pay for college, so in between rounds of beer pong and slacking off from class, this student found time to write a handful of OSS libraries and posted them to GitHub. The other was raised by a single parent in poverty, and is now working two part time jobs to fund their education. Between work, this person studies hard, does well in class, but has no time left to work on any open source side projects.
Which of these two students will be the better asset for your startup? Which of these two students will reply to your job post that says "don't send us a resumé, just link us to your GitHub profile"? Statistically speaking, which of these two students is more likely to be a racial/ethnic minority?
It doesn't sit well with me that Ashe is trivializing the time commitment with 'oh they're just white dudes', when it's usually more a case of 'they love what they do and they make time for it'. If writing open source gives you the competitive edge in the market then that's great no-one should feel guilty about edging others out of higher profile work because they represent their skills better at recruitment. The drivers aren't geared to social wedging (seriously who even has time for that crap?), I think open contribution is more about skill, creativity and passion than anything else. Race, minorities, gender, orientation has ZERO to do with anything, stats are only corrolary. Where are the stats that OSS engagement is becoming a trending hire filter?
It kind of reads like a no-child-left-behind or no-child-gets-ahead (can't remember which) proponent piece. We all have busy lives and saying its a race/gender etc. issue is way off the mark. I wish that whole section was left out as it just confuses the pretty simple point I think she was trying to make that open source engagement should not be an authoritative filter.
I honestly don't think anyone is trivializing anyone's commitment. Rather, I think what Ashe and James are pointing out is that the opportunity to contribute to OSS is not distributed equally between the sexes and races. Who's to say that more minorities wouldn't contribute to OSS if they had the time, access, and resources?
Or, to take it to an extreme, why is Silicon Valley in California and not Botswana? Do you believe that the people of Botswana are inherently less intelligent? less motivated? less capable?
Or is it their environment which is working against them? Jared Diamond has probably one of the most interesting takes on how these sorts of inequities can arise on a regional level (Germs, Guns, and Steel: http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/03...), but is it such a stretch to imagine that the same sorts of inequities don't exist at smaller scales as well?
Statistically speaking, which one has spent more time coding? OSS is a lot of work - the suggestion that a rich slacker is your typical OSS contributor is really stretching my imagine.
If you are working with the same technology stack we work you will fix bugs and implement new features in your PAID time, not in your free time.
This is what we are looking for in your github profile. If you don't have it, may be you are fit for the work, but clearly you are not playing the same game yet.
I use Symfony at work. I would love to contribute some of the patches and helpers I have written to Symfony, or release them as an independent bundle, but (a) I'm the only programmer on the project so I don't really have time, and (b) my company doesn't really do OSS, so I would need to explain all this to our legal department before I could get authorization to release it.
There's a difference between a potential candidate putting their Github profile on their resume and having hiring managers filter out all candidates who do not have a profile.
I think this is the key question. Using the absence of a GitHub profile to dismiss candidates is one thing, but using the presence of a strong GitHub as a positive is a different story.
> I understand this is a fact, but how this can be used against Github as a resumé or against OSS on your free time, I have a hard time seeing that. It comes off as incredibly stupid.
The OP is arguing that if a company values or gives extra weight to candidates with OSS and/or Github contributions, they are by definition skewing their candidate selections towards white men. The main criticism is that the desire for easier metrics to make higher decisions has built in bias problems that will exclude whole groups of people.
As for the white, male bias...not sure what to tell you. It's real. The statistics don't lie. I'm glad that you have had success as a non-white member of the LGBT community, but as the saying goes: the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
The thing is, something can be both a filter against 'underrepresented groups' AND a valid criterion for hiring.
Requiring a CS degree probably biases in favor of white and asian males and against black females. It is also a very valid filter for hiring programmers (pace the self-taught).
Not much can be done about this fact except for increasing the pipeline of underrepresented groups into CS degrees, recreational programming, OSS participation, and so forth.
The point is, the lack of diversity in the Open Source community is greater than the lack of diversity in CS education programs. You'd be less likely to hire a black female if you said "send us your GitHub profile" than if you said "show me your CS degree".
Why are females with CS degrees less likely to have Github pages than males with CS degrees? Is it because of the testosterone which tends to make males show off more than females? If not that, then what?
Marginalized people in tech - women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and others - have less free time for a few major reasons: dependent care, domestic work and errands, and pay inequity.
Women are far more likely to be a primary caregiver of not only children, but other ailing and aging relatives. 59-75% of caregivers are women.1
52% of women caregivers with incomes at or below of the national median of $35k spend 20+ hours each week providing care. The largest racial demographics in this group are black and hispanic2.
Women perform more unpaid labor (most visible in domestics and child care) than men. On childcare alone, mothers spend more than twice as much time per day as fathers do. On average, working fathers spend only 10min more per day on child care when they are not working, whereas working mothers spend nearly twice as much when not working3.
Due to additional pay inequity contributing to less access to paid childcare, women of color perform far more child care than white women.
Those with medical conditions requiring that they regularly visit medical facilities or perform other health-related activities such as getting additional sleep, regularly exercising, doing physical therapy, being away from backlit screens, not sitting in a chair for an extended period of time, resting their hands, etc are all affected by what becomes an extended workday.
Those with a longer commute have less free time. Those who make less money can't afford the same housing costs as those that make more and are able to live in a city, so they are negatively impacted here again.
Women earn 76-89% of men's wages. 6
Women of color earn as little as 55% of white men's wages. 7
I know many women that either don't contribute to OSS because they've been dismissed for being women - being too pretty, not pretty enough, being forced to prove their competence more than their male counterparts because they're women. I've talked to women who use gender-ambiguous github names and don't post a picture of themselves as their avatar because of how quickly this happens. In addition, the sexual harassment, slurs, and other derogatory language that are used directly or indirectly at these groups of people causes many to not want to participate at all.
The cited stats are from the general population, not specifically women with CS degrees. I'm curious to see if the same stats hold up in this smaller population.
Many different factors need to be used as part of a full portfolio. Look at their resume, their github (if any), their formal education and self education, their work projects, and so forth.
Also, I'd challenge you to find where the article says or even implies that you shouldn't be making stuff because you FEEL like it. Quite the opposite, in fact. You should be making stuff because you feel like it and not because you have some expectation of getting a better offer or being able to show off your GitHub profile at your next interview.
As for the white, male bias...not sure what to tell you. It's real. The statistics don't lie. I'm glad that you have had success as a non-white member of the LGBT community, but as the saying goes: the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".