Hi All, I’ve been lurking this conversation for a bit and it’s been really interesting to hear different perspectives. I’m a geophysics PhD who is also employable / sometimes employed as a programmer (including some closed source work right now). This all resonates a lot with me.
I guess that I wonder if some of the recommendations are putting the cart before the horse. There are some characteristics that are often associated with open-source developers that might be genuinely beneficial. They often (1) are community-minded, and have a strong social conscience, and (2) have the technical competency, problem-solving skills and persistence to not only use, but also contribute to projects that are often not very well-organized or approachable. To make meaningful contributions to open source one needs to be pretty driven. This is often—but not necessarily—a characteristic of PhD graduates. Personally, I also don’t see open-source contributions as something that should necessarily go in a cost/benefit analysis the same way as hourly wages should. Sometimes I get involved for xkcd #386 <https://xkcd.com/386/> reasons, but more often it’s because I love the project and I want to help. I know how hard development can be, and these people are giving away for free something from which I derive substantial value. I also don’t pirate software for much the same reasons, and I think there’s a sort of implicit social contract with open source projects to “help as you are able”. I think some of those same characteristics are what can make good open source developers into good employees. However, I think these are effects, not necessarily causes. Committing software to an open source project on GitHub is often correlated with these behaviours, but that doesn’t mean that these behaviours magically manifest themselves just because someone signs up on GitHub. Telling PhD candidates to go contribute to open source might be missing the point. Telling PhD candidates to find something that they are passionate about and lend a hand might be closer to the source of the matter. For many of us (or, at least, for me) that’s programming, open source, SC, etc. Of course, at the end of the day we all have to eat, so maybe emulating those behaviours is still a worthwhile goal. Cheers, Brendan — Brendan Smithyman Postdoctoral Fellow Western University, Earth Sciences Biological & Geological Sciences, Rm. 1045 London, ON, Canada N6A 5B7 c. 778.990.5957 > On Feb 29, 2016, at 7:59 AM, Erik Bray <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 7:46 PM, Terri Yu <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> The panelists at Versatile PhD did say that contributing to open source >> projects was a good way to develop an online portfolio. But it sounded more >> like they were just repeating conventional industry advice. It didn't sound >> like any of them had worked on anything open source themselves. I was just >> trying to suggest that for academics who don't have the CS background and >> software internships, getting involved in the open source community would be >> a good way to develop software skills and find a community that will support >> someone with an atypical background. Also, it's not that easy to jump into >> an open source project and start making contributions as someone who is new >> to the community and new to software. Suggesting to someone that they >> should go make open source contributions to pad their resume, without giving >> them any guidance or even explaining to them the FOSS ethos -- that seems a >> tad irresponsible. That's why I put the emphasis on joining the FOSS >> community rather than focusing on making contributions. No open source >> project maintainer likes getting random pull requests. > > +1 to all of this. I've been having a rough time with Google Summer > of Code lately, actually, because of this. Students are told they > need to get into FOSS--and they are jumping more and more quickly to > get into GSoC; getting involved in projects months before GSoC is even > announced for the year. A few do a good job at this; they lurk for a > while, try to learn how some project is developed, and when the time > is right make good, useful pull requests. > > There are increasingly many, however, who are taking a sort of spray > approach where they just hammer with random pull requests that take > more time to review than to actually do the work ourselves, and often > are not very good. It depends though. Even the authors of the "not > very good" ones are sometimes responsive to guidance and learn > quickly. Others require more hand-holding than it's worth. > > But I agree with Terri that it *is* still sound advice to get involved > with the open source community (and, as it always needs to be > reminded, this doesn't just mean coding!) For those who can find the > time and the will, it's an invaluable way to learn and demonstrate CS > skills. > > At the same time I also agree with others in this thread who are > skeptical about pushing this as THE way. I agree that one's GitHub > profile is not a CV, and having worked on closed source projects > myself I know how important it is to judge a candidate not just on > what code they can show. > >> Honestly, I think it's pretty tough nowadays for a PhD non-CS graduate to >> break into the software industry. In most cases, wouldn't a company prefer >> to hire some CS bachelor's graduate who's done 2-3 internships? Those >> people can hit the ground running. The only reason to hire a non-CS PhD is >> if they have some specialized domain experience that's relevant to the >> product. > > Yes, it's not easy, though it can be done. Making friends with > someone who *does* have a software engineering background and can > vouch for you can't hurt. I've given multiple recommendations to > friends who wanted to get out of their original science field and into > the software industry :) Unfortunately that's a privilege that can be > hard to come by sometimes. > > Erik > >> On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 12:42 PM, Timothée Poisot <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> I agree with Greg wholeheartedly. Communicating the idea that 60hrs week >>> is not only normal, but expected and a requirement for success, to PhD >>> candidates, is a step in the wrong direction. >>> >>> If I were to look at a candidate github profile, I would look at how they >>> behave in issues and pull requests as opposed to how frequently they push >>> code or the number of projects. >>> >>> Sent from a mobile device. Pardon the typos/brevity. >>> On dim., févr. 28, 2016 at 12:04 PM, Greg Wilson >>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> I've grown disillusioned with the idea of using GitHub as a resume - I >>> think that expecting people to spend 20 hr/week *on top of* their 40 hr/week >>> job is doing harm to people's mental health, their family lives, and any >>> hope we have of fixing computing's diversity problem. Ashe Dryden's article >>> http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community >>> sums it up better than I could, and I like this quote: >>> >>> when you use GitHub for hiring you’re taking a tool that people use as a >>> collaboration space and backup service, and using it for an unintended >>> purpose: judging whether people are any good or not. >>> >>> >>> from James Coglan's follow-up at >>> https://blog.jcoglan.com/2013/11/15/why-github-is-not-your-cv/. >>> >>> Cheers, >>> Greg >>> >>> -- >>> Dr Greg Wilson >>> Director of Instructor Training >>> Software Carpentry Foundation >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Discuss mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> >>> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org > > <http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org>
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