Ask HN: Professional Hacker's Web Presence?
6 comments
Edit: Ok, that's a little bit of a loaded question. Key to the professional hacker / public face: blog, github / google code, twitter and activity in forums (like HN).
How to evaluate a potential employee / contract.. the above, plus LinkedIn, CV / references, portfolio and social networks (if they aren't careful with permissions).
Supplier.. google, twitter (#good / #bad tweets) and credibility of web site.
Partner.. lot's of face-to-face time.
How to evaluate a potential employee / contract.. the above, plus LinkedIn, CV / references, portfolio and social networks (if they aren't careful with permissions).
Supplier.. google, twitter (#good / #bad tweets) and credibility of web site.
Partner.. lot's of face-to-face time.
Loaded? As in the answer is obvious because of how it was asked? I don't mean it that way.
I am curious if there is a combination of online attributes that will generally form a proxy for professionalism.
I am curious if there is a combination of online attributes that will generally form a proxy for professionalism.
depends on what kind of hacker. for a unix greybeard, it's all about the mailing lists. I'd be very suspicious of any applicant for a high level open-source *NIX job who doesn't show up on mailing lists.
Why, exactly?
I think because that's where the bulk of the community is for "greybeard unix open source" technology.
The generalised answer, I would think, is "be visible or at least present in the online community that exists around your chosen technologies".
(I didn't post the parent reply, but I did upvote it!)
The generalised answer, I would think, is "be visible or at least present in the online community that exists around your chosen technologies".
(I didn't post the parent reply, but I did upvote it!)
I just disagree with the current mantra that you have to be so out there and in the public to be a worthwhile programmer. Many great programmers really aren't interested in tweeting every time they figure out what a hashtable is or whatever.I think it would be suspect if one was not aware of mailing lists and didn't at least lurk through them as a resources but as far as being an active participant, I think it's a bit over-hyped.
For many kinds of programming, you are right.
But if you hit a bug in the kernel, you are probably going to communicate with others (probably on a mailing list) in the process of fixing that bug. Same goes for hitting bugs in any other open-source part of UNIX.
I mean, sure, if you are writing an application, this only applies on the shared library bits. But I was specifically talking about advanced *NIX people... people who would be expected to deal with bugs in open-source products.
But if you hit a bug in the kernel, you are probably going to communicate with others (probably on a mailing list) in the process of fixing that bug. Same goes for hitting bugs in any other open-source part of UNIX.
I mean, sure, if you are writing an application, this only applies on the shared library bits. But I was specifically talking about advanced *NIX people... people who would be expected to deal with bugs in open-source products.
I'm a customer of yours. Out of curiosity, what mailing lists do you participate in?
xen-users, xen-devel, NANOG (oh man, I'm about 8K messages behind on that one) freeside-devel opensc-user dns-operations svlug lopsa-tech wear-hard centos-virt freebsd-xen netbsd-xen and a few others. If I'm working on an open source project, even in a minor way I usually subscribe to the list so I can lurk and ask questions in a more intelligent manner... For a while I was on the qemu mailing list (I think I even posted a stupid patch.) I'm leaving off the -announce lists I'm on to listen for security vulns because I don't post there, but they are essential for any computer janitor. I'd recommend a search on "Luke S. Crawford" as most of these lists have public archives that are indexed by google and other popular search engines.
Actually, I'm sure you'll notice that I'm more active here than on any of those lists... this is probably a bad thing for my technical career development. (perhaps a good thing for my career development as a business person, though.)
Edit: just to be clear, I'm not saying you should ask an applicant what lists s/he is active on... by itself that won't give you that much information (well, except maybe that if a SysAdmin is not on a bunch of security announce lists, something is very wrong but expecting them to remember this data without going through their mailbox is pretty unreasonable.) you should figure that out. maybe ask them what usernames they use on technical forms that they'd like to share? (note, as an employer, you have to be careful not to be creepy when you do this. Most of us have a 'professional identity' we don't mind sharing... but you don't want to look like the kind of employer who goes through employee's myspace profiles looking for drunken party pictures.)
Actually, I'm sure you'll notice that I'm more active here than on any of those lists... this is probably a bad thing for my technical career development. (perhaps a good thing for my career development as a business person, though.)
Edit: just to be clear, I'm not saying you should ask an applicant what lists s/he is active on... by itself that won't give you that much information (well, except maybe that if a SysAdmin is not on a bunch of security announce lists, something is very wrong but expecting them to remember this data without going through their mailbox is pretty unreasonable.) you should figure that out. maybe ask them what usernames they use on technical forms that they'd like to share? (note, as an employer, you have to be careful not to be creepy when you do this. Most of us have a 'professional identity' we don't mind sharing... but you don't want to look like the kind of employer who goes through employee's myspace profiles looking for drunken party pictures.)
Wear-hard! I didn't think that one would still be alive and kicking. It's not exactly what most employers would be looking for, I guess. I lost interest in wear-hard when I realized that smartphones pretty much did everything I needed a wearable to do and also got out of my way when I needed them to.
But all these mailing lists, they take serious time . For me, they're really the first thing to go.
But all these mailing lists, they take serious time . For me, they're really the first thing to go.
I was wondering if anyone was going to catch that one. Wear-hard, certainly, won't take up much of your time. It's just about dead these days, but every now and then someone talks about their rig which usually triggers a bunch of responses like yours. I don't think smartphones are quite there yet. Most of the way, though. A bluetooth twiddler would about do it.
Lists I can ignore (e.g. everything but the security -announce lists) go in their own folders to be ignored, most of the time. but they are a good substitute for HN, if you want a more technically oriented and less business oriented discussion, and they are essential if you really want to figure out a tough bug or add a new feature, so having a presence on the mailing lists (even if you don't read them every day) is really useful.
Lists I can ignore (e.g. everything but the security -announce lists) go in their own folders to be ignored, most of the time. but they are a good substitute for HN, if you want a more technically oriented and less business oriented discussion, and they are essential if you really want to figure out a tough bug or add a new feature, so having a presence on the mailing lists (even if you don't read them every day) is really useful.
See, I know OS researchers (very published) that spend 100% of their time in the kernel and never bother with LKML. And these people are pretty damn good! I think it's just not the best method to guage.
well, if you are published, that should also show up online.
People who are published usually are a higher pay grade than I'm allowed to hire for, so I don't worry about it too much, but choosing people who are published, I think, would actually be a very similar metric (though, much more expensive) to looking at people's patches.
People who are published usually are a higher pay grade than I'm allowed to hire for, so I don't worry about it too much, but choosing people who are published, I think, would actually be a very similar metric (though, much more expensive) to looking at people's patches.
I've worked with a lot of truly top-notch Unix folks, and VERY few of them have a meaningful mailing list presence.
are you sure? I mean, I know sometimes months or years after I leave a place I recognize an ex-co worker on a mailing list.
If they really don't post, then what do they do when they find bugs? fix it and keep it to themselves?
If they really don't post, then what do they do when they find bugs? fix it and keep it to themselves?
Yes. I'm sure. (I just googled a couple of the most prominent names.)
They work around it, or more often they realize that somebody else has found the same bug and just track that. Or they'll feel generous and submit a fix via some bug tracking system other than a mailing list.
If you're using that as a proxy for unix-fu, you should know that it's a REALLY shitty proxy in my (roughly 20 years) of experience.
They work around it, or more often they realize that somebody else has found the same bug and just track that. Or they'll feel generous and submit a fix via some bug tracking system other than a mailing list.
If you're using that as a proxy for unix-fu, you should know that it's a REALLY shitty proxy in my (roughly 20 years) of experience.
It's ironic that I immediately tried to contextualise your opinion by finding out who you were, but your HN account is new and your pseudonym is anonymous.
Although, if your opinion is correct, it doesn't mean anything that I can't look you up online.
Speaking from my lesser experiences, the best professional *nix programmers I have worked with left some traces of themselves online, but I don't think it correlated that closely with their skills. They definitely don't have web sites proclaiming their Ultimate Hacker Ability - why would they need such a thing?
Although, if your opinion is correct, it doesn't mean anything that I can't look you up online.
Speaking from my lesser experiences, the best professional *nix programmers I have worked with left some traces of themselves online, but I don't think it correlated that closely with their skills. They definitely don't have web sites proclaiming their Ultimate Hacker Ability - why would they need such a thing?
The number of posts, certainly, doesn't correlate with skill. But the quality of post, I think, does. I know many people who are obviously better than I am who post a lot less than I do. However, a person with sufficient skill could take a sampling of those posts, and a sampling of my posts and pretty quickly come to a conclusion as to our relative skill levels.
Although, if your opinion is correct, it doesn't mean anything that I can't look you up online.
That's on purpose. I establish new HN accounts from time to time because I despise the fact that many people will upvote old users more readily, or will cite 'user for a long/short time' as though it means something.
That's on purpose. I establish new HN accounts from time to time because I despise the fact that many people will upvote old users more readily, or will cite 'user for a long/short time' as though it means something.
In most social situations, having a history of contributing to the group is important. This is part of why I try to spend time on mailing lists for software I use/am likely to use even when I don't need help. If I have a history of helping others, others are much more likely to help me when I need it.
well, the phenomena of using bugzilla and other web based bug tracking systems is a fairly recent one. And certainly if they are posting good stuff, it doesn't really matter if they are posting good stuff on a mailing list or on a bugzilla or what have you. I'm just making a historical observation that the people who have been around a while tend to use mailing lists.
but yeah, I do think there is something a little fishy about a SysAdmin who doesn't have any public evidence of collaboration. I mean, sure, they could be really good and just have worked places that don't let you give your changes back, but eh, you can say that about any other metric. You must have added a feature to something at some point. You must have been the first user to find a particular bug at some point.
The biggest problem with this metric is that search kind of sucks for mailing lists. I mean, usenet used to be /the place/ for this sort of thing, but usenet is dead, and as far as I can tell, much of the usenet archives that at one point I could access via dejanews are gone (groups.google does not have some of the posts that I know are there.)
but yeah, I do think there is something a little fishy about a SysAdmin who doesn't have any public evidence of collaboration. I mean, sure, they could be really good and just have worked places that don't let you give your changes back, but eh, you can say that about any other metric. You must have added a feature to something at some point. You must have been the first user to find a particular bug at some point.
The biggest problem with this metric is that search kind of sucks for mailing lists. I mean, usenet used to be /the place/ for this sort of thing, but usenet is dead, and as far as I can tell, much of the usenet archives that at one point I could access via dejanews are gone (groups.google does not have some of the posts that I know are there.)
FWIW, if you look at any of the senior people who work for me, they'll have little to no activity during their tenure. Here's why:
1) One individual has final responsibility for our platform. We run a modified version of FreeBSD, which includes both changes that are only appropriate for our own use, and some changes that are more generally applicable.
The other devs and admins submit any patches they need on all the servers to the individual, and he deals with them. Sometimes they stay private, sometimes they go public, but when they go public they go out in his name. He has responsibility of tracking when they're accepted upstream, and when they're included in the base distro.
2) The vast majority of our platform is very, very tried and true. We use a few cutting edge bits of software (new versions and new features), but that's the exception. As such, most of our bugs are found well in advance.
3) The most troublesome bits of our platform are commercial or completely proprietary, so support on those parts doesn't hit a public mailing list anywhere.
I was trying to understand why your response annoyed me so much, and I realized it's because if I had to lay off my best unix guys, you advocate that employers google their name, see nothing on the mailing lists, and pass on them. That annoys me.
I take a lot of pride in being a good employer, and meanwhile you're standing there advocating anally-extracted screening criteria that would hurt my guys.
1) One individual has final responsibility for our platform. We run a modified version of FreeBSD, which includes both changes that are only appropriate for our own use, and some changes that are more generally applicable.
The other devs and admins submit any patches they need on all the servers to the individual, and he deals with them. Sometimes they stay private, sometimes they go public, but when they go public they go out in his name. He has responsibility of tracking when they're accepted upstream, and when they're included in the base distro.
2) The vast majority of our platform is very, very tried and true. We use a few cutting edge bits of software (new versions and new features), but that's the exception. As such, most of our bugs are found well in advance.
3) The most troublesome bits of our platform are commercial or completely proprietary, so support on those parts doesn't hit a public mailing list anywhere.
I was trying to understand why your response annoyed me so much, and I realized it's because if I had to lay off my best unix guys, you advocate that employers google their name, see nothing on the mailing lists, and pass on them. That annoys me.
I take a lot of pride in being a good employer, and meanwhile you're standing there advocating anally-extracted screening criteria that would hurt my guys.
So where could an automated heuristic find your guys to make an estimation of them? Citeseer? Company about page?
Aside from personal references--as if they were "in a stack of resumes."
Aside from personal references--as if they were "in a stack of resumes."
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github (or something similar, but only if used heavily) is the most paramount, I'd say.
By looking at a well-used github (/gitorius/bitbucket...) account you can evaluate someone's: - communication skills - code quality - areas of expertise - creativity - ability to see things through to the end
By looking at a well-used github (/gitorius/bitbucket...) account you can evaluate someone's: - communication skills - code quality - areas of expertise - creativity - ability to see things through to the end
Do you refrain from hiring anybody without a github account?
If it were an employer's market you could probably get away with that.
Why would an employer want to do that?
A github account just makes it slightly more likely that the candidate's experience involves more open source, and less proprietary code.
Personally, I'd rather filter candidates based on factors that relate to their performance. After all, bad hires are very expensive... as such, most of these shortcuts strike me as incredibly misguided nonsense.
A github account just makes it slightly more likely that the candidate's experience involves more open source, and less proprietary code.
Personally, I'd rather filter candidates based on factors that relate to their performance. After all, bad hires are very expensive... as such, most of these shortcuts strike me as incredibly misguided nonsense.
Because they can see first hand the quality of the code (plus all the other meta information that comes along with commit logs). How do you evaluate proprietary code at anywhere near that same level?
I think that the answer to the first part of your question ("public face") depends on a lot on the choice offered in the second part "employ/contract/partner/supplier".
Also, to a lesser extent, on the kind of work you're talking about (startup hacker, co-founder, web programmer, systems programmer, open source hacker, IT dogsbody?).
Can you be more specific? Assuming the question is for your benefit, what are you looking to be? If the question is for your own analysis, who are you looking to hire/partner/contract to?
Also, to a lesser extent, on the kind of work you're talking about (startup hacker, co-founder, web programmer, systems programmer, open source hacker, IT dogsbody?).
Can you be more specific? Assuming the question is for your benefit, what are you looking to be? If the question is for your own analysis, who are you looking to hire/partner/contract to?
Lets say your boss gives you a list of ten name/email address pairs every morning at 10:00, and you have to give him a list of the three most professional candidates, in order, by 11 because your competition will hire them or something.
What script/Google search query/yahoo pipe/metrics could you use to automate this task?
What script/Google search query/yahoo pipe/metrics could you use to automate this task?
I'd say that this is still meaningless without context. Who is your boss? Who are you? Who are the potential hires for? Where did the names come from in the first place?
If I'm reading your reply correctly, you're actually looking to write an algorithm for an automated "find-a-hacker" engine?
In which case, I'd say the first bar to surpass is from another comment here - the guy who said his website is pretty crummy but it comes up first when you google "PHP programmer edinburgh"
If I'm reading your reply correctly, you're actually looking to write an algorithm for an automated "find-a-hacker" engine?
In which case, I'd say the first bar to surpass is from another comment here - the guy who said his website is pretty crummy but it comes up first when you google "PHP programmer edinburgh"
I do not know your name, but for example, projectgus gives me 3400 Google results: blog, twitter, github, and then the rest of the top ten are "something something Project - Gus Winters, something, ..."
So 3400 is a poor rating metric. But what metrics from the list of HN, StackOverflow, /., reddit/prog, yahoo answers, MIT Media Lab, web site PR, Citseer mentions, etc. could constitute a good ranking? Sure, a Nobel Prize is a shortcut. I am talking about a proxy or data model for finding and sorting.
If it can be automated, it will be.
So 3400 is a poor rating metric. But what metrics from the list of HN, StackOverflow, /., reddit/prog, yahoo answers, MIT Media Lab, web site PR, Citseer mentions, etc. could constitute a good ranking? Sure, a Nobel Prize is a shortcut. I am talking about a proxy or data model for finding and sorting.
If it can be automated, it will be.
It would still seem to me like it would be context sensitive, in the sense that you want different information to hire different types of professionals and also that people put different aspects of their life online.
To follow on from your example of me - googling projectgus gives you my both my personal blog and my twitter account as the first two results. My twitter account title gives you my real name, and if you google that then you immediately find my current employer, and some details from an old employer, and then a long tail of quasi-related noise.
Whether or not you'll find anything relevant to what you want depends on what you're looking for. I don't have a resume posted online, which means that although I'm a professional programmer most of my programming experience doesn't immediately show up anywhere on the internet.
However, it's possible you could infer a lot of it from my posts on various little mailing lists and forums (for example, a handful of posts on Erlang-Questions because I spent about a year writing Erlang and a few posts on the Hibernate forums because I've done a little bit of Java middleware development.) Maybe.
Of course, nobody just says "let's see if Angus is a hacker we can hire". Someone might say "oh, you need more Erlang programmers? I know a local programmer called Angus who has programmed in Erlang" (for contrived example). In which case, you google my name + Erlang and you can see that I've programmed in Erlang. Although my online Erlang presence is, in my opinion, underwhelming and you would not decide to approach me on that basis. Which, in my opinion, would be a mistake. ;)
However, even though you wouldn't get specific information about me, you would be able to read my blog and find out I like Linux & open source, I own an Arduino, I like taking apart cheap chinese gadgets, and I like writing. Which is possibly all useful information, again depending on exactly what you were after me for in the first place.
Although I didn't put that information online to get jobs (if I did want to do that, I'd have a resume section online or a LinkedIn profile or something, and maybe the above paragraphs of rant would be redundant.)
I hope this discussion helps you in whatever process you decide to automate. I understand that you're talking about something a bit different, but at the same time I think it would be hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all approach that was entirely based on scraping other data. Finding something more specific, in the same vein as Haskellers.com except without the user-submitted data, might be plausible.
Stack Overflow Careers, for instance, uses Stack Overflow as its data source but OTOH it still relies on the user to submit other details, in order to make the information relevant to employers.
To follow on from your example of me - googling projectgus gives you my both my personal blog and my twitter account as the first two results. My twitter account title gives you my real name, and if you google that then you immediately find my current employer, and some details from an old employer, and then a long tail of quasi-related noise.
Whether or not you'll find anything relevant to what you want depends on what you're looking for. I don't have a resume posted online, which means that although I'm a professional programmer most of my programming experience doesn't immediately show up anywhere on the internet.
However, it's possible you could infer a lot of it from my posts on various little mailing lists and forums (for example, a handful of posts on Erlang-Questions because I spent about a year writing Erlang and a few posts on the Hibernate forums because I've done a little bit of Java middleware development.) Maybe.
Of course, nobody just says "let's see if Angus is a hacker we can hire". Someone might say "oh, you need more Erlang programmers? I know a local programmer called Angus who has programmed in Erlang" (for contrived example). In which case, you google my name + Erlang and you can see that I've programmed in Erlang. Although my online Erlang presence is, in my opinion, underwhelming and you would not decide to approach me on that basis. Which, in my opinion, would be a mistake. ;)
However, even though you wouldn't get specific information about me, you would be able to read my blog and find out I like Linux & open source, I own an Arduino, I like taking apart cheap chinese gadgets, and I like writing. Which is possibly all useful information, again depending on exactly what you were after me for in the first place.
Although I didn't put that information online to get jobs (if I did want to do that, I'd have a resume section online or a LinkedIn profile or something, and maybe the above paragraphs of rant would be redundant.)
I hope this discussion helps you in whatever process you decide to automate. I understand that you're talking about something a bit different, but at the same time I think it would be hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all approach that was entirely based on scraping other data. Finding something more specific, in the same vein as Haskellers.com except without the user-submitted data, might be plausible.
Stack Overflow Careers, for instance, uses Stack Overflow as its data source but OTOH it still relies on the user to submit other details, in order to make the information relevant to employers.
One heuristic is to connect a person's name to other identifiers, such as email addresses, phone number, web domain, whois, unique user name at any popular site, university affiliation, etc. Then search for each one, and perform some map/reduce on the results for each search.
I will take a look at Stack Overflow Careers, btw.
I will take a look at Stack Overflow Careers, btw.
Also worth noting that this process of "Google stalking" me only works because I have a relatively unique name.
Doing it by email address might work, although most people make an effort to keep their email addresses away from automated harvesting. :).
Doing it by email address might work, although most people make an effort to keep their email addresses away from automated harvesting. :).
With Erlang, I think you could be identified easily. At some level of detail everyone is, and if I needed an experienced Erlang programmer, I would probably know where to look.
But how about with PHP or C instead?
But how about with PHP or C instead?
With Erlang, I think you could be identified easily. At some level of detail everyone is, and if I needed an experienced Erlang programmer, I would probably know where to look.
But how about with PHP instead?
But how about with PHP instead?
I just googled the name of your website. I hope you don't actually think that is stalking.
Of course not.
I put it in air quotes because I couldn't think of a better word for "using google repeatedly to find out everything you can about someone" (referring to the process that I described, ie more involved than simply googling me.)
I put it in air quotes because I couldn't think of a better word for "using google repeatedly to find out everything you can about someone" (referring to the process that I described, ie more involved than simply googling me.)
Meaningless is a little strong. I'm asking generally. And clearly Google is not tuned to answer this.
I publish a lot on my personal blog ( http://www.puremango.co.uk ). Other than that it's twitter, reddit and HN. I do have linkedin but I don't really use it at all.
I invite employers to read over my blog posts and my CV which I put online ( http://www.puremango.co.uk/2009/08/php-cv/ ).
That's about it really. If I don't want something associated with me, I try not to do it really...
I invite employers to read over my blog posts and my CV which I put online ( http://www.puremango.co.uk/2009/08/php-cv/ ).
That's about it really. If I don't want something associated with me, I try not to do it really...
The Eric Schmidt Solution to web archives?
http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-...
http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-...
I'm a web dev so obviously i've got a website. Its very neglected but it still ranks in google for "Edinburgh PHP Developer" which is exactly the people i'm after so its fine for now.
How do you evaluate a candidate professional for employ/contract/partner/supplier online?