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by rvz·7y ago·view on hn ↗
Depending on how significant your patches are (No hello-world-123/typo/style fixes) putting 'Contributed to the Firefox Browser' on your CV/Cover letter and I find your email in the source code or AUTHORS file is a instant on-site from me. You don't need to show me that you can program/write tests or use version control. This saves me lots of time on finding candidates that are experienced, rather than throwing a leetcode/hackerrank puzzle which can be easily cheated or plagiarized.

I think I might have said this before on another HN thread, but of course as an interviewer, I sometimes double-check the CVs and candidates to look for 'hidden qualities' such as open-source contributions. If one recruiter overlooks a candidate, I really ask them why and if the candidate DOES have significant and relevant patches, I actually bypass their decision and I bring them in onsite.

I find these technical programming tests useless for finding qualified candidates unless you are preparing for a programming olympiad or some other competitive programming competition. But open-source contributions allows me to find the patches you made on code reviewing tickets and see it in the open.

It would be better if more companies used open-source contributions as acceptable evidence of relevant experience these days.

4 comments
Unfortunately, that's not how big company recruitment processes work: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en
(disclamer: I'm a noogler, and I failed google on-site once).

I think that citing this example every time "hiring at Google/Big tech" is discussed on HN is useless.

We know that there are a lot of false negative and and lot of chance in the hiring process (so many things can fail in a process involving so many steps and people).

There are also legitimate rejections, like hm, bold statements ("90% of your engineers use my software"), fingerpointing or not being able to seek for assistance when you don't know something.

I discussed interviews with many people, and I'm convinced that solving the problem with the theoretically-optimal solution is not the only way to get a positive review. Being open about things I didn't know helped me: for instance "Hm, I'm not sure about how to do this exact thing, I'll use the function do_this_thing() and implement it later if I still have time, if that's OK for you" buys you time and allows to keep the discussion focused on the main problem.

I don't think his statement, while bold, is at all unfounded. If he truly was rejected for not being able to invert a binary tree on a whiteboard, but has a proven track record of writing excellent software, I would agree with him that there are some serious issues with the Google/Leetcode/2nd-year-CS-trivia style of interviews.
>I would agree with him that there are some serious issues with the Google/Leetcode/2nd-year-CS-trivia style of interviews.

I think both you and your parent are in violent agreement.

It's not as if many people who were in FAANG haven't admitted there are serious issues with the interview process. Even advocates of the process are open about it.

No one has found an interview process that lacks serious issues. Hiring people solely on the basis of major contributions to software has its own serious issues.

placeholder function strategy is something that should be stressed more, it's always what the interviewers want you to do if you are stuck on some detail of the algorithm in my experience.
I never heard about it!
Well, he was invited for a on-site interview at Google rather than being a direct hire. But after this rejection, Apple directly hired him to work with the Xcode team.

In both cases he bypassed the recruiter and leetcode stages which are common steps before the on-site interview at most companies.

I would agree with the OP that on average open source contributions seems to have very low impact on the chances of getting hired somewhere, and about potential roles.

I also submitted patches to various projects, including some quite impactful ones that the associated companies used and that e.g. increased performance significantly. Also have written a library that one of the companies (in the extended FANG circle) needed but didn't achieve it to write on their own for a lot more time.

I have never been asked about any of those things in a typical interview loop. I think this is due to a mixture of interviewers not knowing the technologies themselves (there are actually a very low amount of developers who know their foundational technologies in detail) and interview loops mostly standardized on CS basics (extended FizzBuzz).

If the main goal is to land a good job I wouldn't recommend people to try to get recognition with open source projects. Doing Leetcode exercises, having a good network and doing some job-hopping from time to time might help a lot more.

However I still think contributing to OSS projects can be awesome, and can provide a very satisfying feel to oneself.

Are you currently hiring? I’ve made many contributions to the VSCode and ApolloGraphQL projects over the course of several internships. Currently looking for a full time position.
Your hn profile is a bit sparse; who are you, and where do you work? :)