At Code Anthem, we’re big fans of the Signal vs Noise crew. In their book/manifesto Getting Real, they advise to hire developers based on “Actions, Not Words“:
When it comes to programmers, we only hire people we know through open source. We think doing anything else is irresponsible.
Strong words and a compelling argument. There’s only one problem. I am a damn good developer, and I have no open source contributions. And I know plenty more where I came from, comparable and sometimes superior to our open-source-contributing contemporaries in technical skill and communication savvy.
Supposedly, any smart and passionate developer would contribute to open source.
That is crap. Here’s why:
1. It’s an arbitrary distinction.
Open source is a culture. There are plenty of smart and passionate developers out there who are not part of that culture. And certainly there are plenty of dumb and curmudgeonly developers out there participating in open source.
You might as well not hire developers who don’t drink Mountain Dew or play World of Warcraft, just because there is a large subset of smart, passionate developers who do these things.
It’s like golf of the executive business world. Since the people at the top played golf/contributed to open source, then everyone they want to hire would do so also. There’s a fundamental logic flaw.
2. There are there smarter ways to spend your time.
The stereotypical open source developer works for a bumbling corporate during the day, doing dull work (but necessary to make money) and then comes home to work on his passion, OpenOKHRWUJ Framework. This is romanticized as being the high point of any developer, but how about a few (smarter) alternatives:
- A developer has found a job that is challenging and fullfilling with plenty of technical freedom, leaving no need to express his/her passion in another outlet
- Instead of doing a free project, the developer may spend his evening doing extra work for his employer, doing side contract work to make some extra money or working on a side business (still writing tons of top-notch code, except for money)
- Instead of working at nights, the developer decides to spend time with his family (work-life balance anyone?) or actually get some sleep (god forbid my developer actually be alert and healthy)
While I wouldn’t fault an open source developer for spending his time that way, it’s a hobby. Having other hobbies or spending time with your family or getting enough sleep does not make you a worse developer, it just makes you well-rounded.
3. Requiring open source contributions is sexist.
Open source is dominated by men even more so than the programming community as a whole.
from Women in Free/Open Source Software Development
It’s not because women developers are not as passionate or smart as men developers. It’s because women value work/life balance more than men, because the open source environment is sometimes (read:often) hostile towards women or for a myriad of other reasons.
Actually, it’s irresponsible to require your new hire developers to come from a male-oriented pool. Alas… “Underrepresentation breeds underrepresentation”.
In conclusion, the goal to judge a developer by their “actions, not words” is a worthy one. But the means of using open source as the one-stop-shop to do so is incredibly flawed.
[...] [...]
This is well thought out and well written. I wonder what the representation of women on large open source projects is vs small ones. Perhaps many of the small ones have too few developers to be interesting in a social context, but larger projects might? I am male, so I’m certainly not qualified to say, but I know women are not all scared off from jobs they want to do, so I feel like there is something latent in open source that just doesn’t attract women as much. Perhaps the projects are smaller and have less communication? I’m not sure, regardless an excellent post.
@Tanton Thanks for the feedback. I definitely think some more research in this area is warranted, but at this point I’d settle for awareness.
For me personally, it’s not the hostile environment that scares me off, but rather the time commitment vs payoff. I have a full time job, a side contract and a toddler, and the few minutes I might get to do additional technical work I’ve spent on personal projects like blogging or this startup. I end up doing a great deal of technical work overall and am very passionate about it, but just don’t feel compelled to move over to the open source arena.
While the comments you make are valid, I think you missed the real point behind preference for hiring engineers with open source work experience. You get to see some evidence of the work they did instead of just relying on the blah written in their resume.
What a well-written post. I could not agree more. Though the 37 signal guys have done some really good work, I cannot but question their ability to judge things objectively and scientifically. Not only do they purport hiring only those who work with Macs, but also only those who work on open source?
They mean to say the would not hire someone who has worked in, say, developing real-time medical software because they don’t contribute to open source or use a Windows workstation (and thus is inevitable unqualified to work in their little web niche?)
It is a very arrogant, subjective and completely unscientific and unprincipled proposition.
Exactly how is “We think doing anything else is irresponsible.” a compelling argument?
Couple of points from a developer who has a better knowledge of HR than most.
A as pointed out its indirectly discriminatory against women which is of course illegal in most countries.
B just hiring people just like me is why companies tend to have a monoculture Google is one example – This again leads to discrimination (race and sex mostly) but it also causes other problems Google’s security fiasco over handling wire taps and a similar fiasco over a DC losing power and not recovering properly (they had neglected to hire any real Electrical Engineers and Electricians with experience of big systems.) are just two examples.
As someone who is involved in Open Source communities, I think the model of the Open Source developer who does it as a hobby in the evening after a day of proprietary coding is actually something of a chimera. They do exist, yes, but anecdotally most serious Open Source developers are either university students (young ones without many interpersonal responsibilities), or at least roughly that age, or are paid to do it as at least some part of their normal job. Some of the young ones ‘graduate’ into paid Open Source work, a small number keep it as a serious hobby (often on top of paid Open Source work), a larger number retain the connection to the community without keeping up time-consuming contributions and many become proprietary developers.
That’s something of a side-note though, because you’re right: it pre-selects for a very small group of people who are very likely to be male and also quite similar in certain other ways, especially usually having had a significant amount of leisure time at some point in their lives.
[...] Anthem’s Don’t Judge a Developer by Open Source (via Meg in the Open Thread) argues that companies that rely on Open Source coding contributions as [...]
I’ve posted a related item to Geek Feminism: http://geekfeminism.org/2010/04/09/is-requiring-open-source-experience-sexist/
It’s certainly sexist to judge applicants on open source experience and Cannonical is guilty of this on almost every job posting they make. I’ve been upset about sexism in Floss for a long time. On a side point, you don’t have to “move over the open source arena” to get experience on an open source project.
Some of the best open source projects I benefit from as a user are started and completed by a single person with little to some programming experience in a single weekend. Since these projects are open source, poor code gets improved later.
While this doesn’t mean the playing field will be leveled, it does mean that a single person, man or woman, can gain open source experience in a couple of days time. Open source projects also don’t require continous commitments beyond what you feel like contributing. I haven’t programmed for the project I started for more than a year, but I do still answer questions and discuss bugs. Other more talented programmers have rewritten all my code ages ago.
Many open-source projects also contain lists of “easy” coding tasks. These tasks can be done in hours by skilled programmers, or completed with guidance by hobby programmers.
By only hiring “Open Source” developers, they’re narrowing the field to developers that have both a demonstrated level of competency (their code is visible to all) and that share a common ideology.
You may not like it, and it has no bearing on your personal competence, but it’s no different than the vegan restaurant hiring a like-minded chef. There are lots of great chefs, but they happen to only want vegans.
Their $$$, their choice.
Terry
I agree completely with this article. I’ve seen so many people talking about how being involved in open source is important to getting yourself hired. I would love to contribute to some open source projects, but I have a daughter now so family time is a big priority. At the end of the day, after working for 8 hours on a great platform (iPhone OS) I have absolutely no desire or reason to work on open source projects.
I don’t think this is sexist. The *motivation* to look at open source developers is not sexist.
Statistically women are a minority, and statistically it could be the case that most of open source devs wear casual clothes. Are 37signals biased against suits? Do not think so, those are just a posteriori consequences from a statistical viewpoint.
I think this is just about evidence. A person with a strong open source record has proven some stuff to the eyes of the recruiter, and has public work that can be evaluated. You can see how he writes code, how he relates to people in mailing list… there’s a good deal of public stuff to gauge.
Of course there are world-class people that have no open source out there. But it is an option not to look there, if the obvious path also gives you world-class people, but with more information about them, that may be enough.
That being said, I do think the “irresponsible” bit is perhaps going too far. I don’t think this approach is the only valid approach (though it is the one I personally prefer).
Xavier, disagree with your point completely. I don’t think the author is implying that preferring open source experience is an intentional act of sexism. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to find most sexist behaviors within programming communities to be coming from a place of aware intention. Making sure one acts from a place of inclusivity requires a lot of extra work and awareness; it’s not a talent that people just magically get once they decide that they’re for the idea of changing the gender disparity in computing.
Stating the statistical distribution of women in computing as a matter-of-fact defense is flawed, too. Those numbers exist in the first place because sexism is a problem in the industry / community, and there’s plenty of research to back that up – geekfeminism.org is a great starting place, as they tend to report on a lot of these studies.
Well if you are really interested in contributing to open source and your employer understands its benefits you can still be paid to do open source work during your normal working hours and still enjoy your weekends and have a life.
All you need to do is USE the software you are creating or mantaining in your paid projects. They don’t need to be frameworks, just interesting libraries that solve a problem you are having.
So whenever you are doing open source you are also being paid (and more benefits like low coupling and easy reuse, world auditing and contributions, etc.)
@Addie perhaps we have different definitions of sexism.
For me sexism is intentional or it is not sexism. Artificially changing the percentages is for the politicians. If I want a web designer to help in some project (to detach the case from 37signals), I go and look for a good professional. I don’t care about the gender.
You could perhaps point to the community as a whole as the thing that introduces sexism and thus the ultimate cause for the odds. It is hard to refute that and I don’t like to discuss non-refutable affirmations, but anyway what I don’t think you can say is that I am sexist because a mere probabilistic thing as far as I am concerned is what makes the chances higher for a male nowadays.
Sexism lies in the motivation in my view, is what biased people apply when they do prefer some gender. If you are not biased, in my definition you are not sexist.
I don’t think it’s sexist to look for developers in the open source community. Learning the skills to work effectively in the community takes a while. (I’ve seen many people struggle while they try to figure it out.) If a job requires open source experience, I think looking for that on a resume makes sense.
In my opinion, we should encourage more women to participate in open source rather than tell companies not to look for that experience!
@Xavier I don’t think it’s particularly useful to define sexism as only “intended sexism”. To me it’s more like “taking steps to exclude women when it’s not qualified for the job”.
A key point about this case is that they require all of their hires to come through open source, not just prefer it. They say that hiring ANYONE else would be irresponsible. They say that on a whole people in open source are more passionate than people in it. Are men more passionate than women?
So in your example, where you were looking for a web designer, you might have a selection of men and women. Then you tell them “Oh, and when we meet to discuss this project, we will meet at a strip club”. Sure, some women might be ok with that (and some men might not be) but overall you are excluding women when you do that – and it has no bearing on their ability to do the job. You don’t intend for that exclude women, but it is and it’s sexist.
You might say “Well, women could come if they want to” but that’s ridiculous because for most women that would be very uncomfortable. You might say “It’s the strip club that’s making a hostile environment for them, not me” but of course that’s not true either – by requiring that as part of the job, you’re contributing to the hostile environment.
Now, I’m not saying that they CAN’T do it, of course they can. It’s their money and people certainly have worse hiring practices than that out there … but they’re not just hiring that way, they’re also publishing that hiring practices online and in books. If I can’t stop them from requiring it, then at least I can raise awareness for other businesses looking to improve their hiring practice.
@Stormy You bring up a good point that if open source work is part of the job, then it makes sense to look for that – although that’s not the case for 37 signals. For them, they are just using it because it’s an easy way to see someone’s code contributions and because people in open source clearly have more passion for coding than people who don’t (not!)
Oh, please. Open Source is not “hostile towards women”. That’s a load of crap. I for one don’t care one bit about gender. I’m a developer in open source, and no one’s ever discriminated against me. I’ve also worked for several very large companies, and yes, they are mostly dominated by men – but women *do not have to want the same things men want*. Just because there aren’t that many women doesn’t mean there’s something wrong.
I was enjoying reading this blog until I got to this post. Next time you might actually try researching and talking to women in open source instead of just talking out of your ass and assuming you speak for all of us.
@Randi I appreciate that you’re sharing your good experiences in open source, although I’m sure you know, a few counter-examples don’t disprove the trend. As for research, I linked to 3 articles/presentations written by women who are in open source who indicate that this is a widespread problem. Mary also links to more relevant articles in her blog post (earlier in the comments).
Reading over the comments and the posts, I realize that one point wasn’t entirely clear. While I do think that the open source community is sometimes hostile to women, that wasn’t the only, or even primary, reason why requiring open source is a sexist thing to do.
Out of all of the women I’ve ever heard of in open source, which is only a handful as it is, I’ve never heard of any with children. I’m SURE there are some, so no need to counter-argue with Susy in Open X with triplets or something.
The issue is that by requiring a job candidate to not only have demonstrated good work at work, but they must also have used their “spare” time in additional FREE work. So, if they spent their time on paid work, doesn’t count. If they spent their time climbing mountains, doesn’t count. Most importantly, if they spend time taking care of their children, DOESN’T COUNT.
I’m sure fathers can talk about how little free time they have after having kids, although the key here is that they have SOME. For mothers, there is none. Whatever “spare” moment I have where I am not working or actively taking care of my kid (this adds up to about 30 minutes a day, on a good day), I have to cook dinner, pack lunch, do the laundry, sweep the floors, etc. Since I have a generous husband, I also get to work out a couple times a week and get a haircut/nails done once a month or so. So maybe a mother could be a fantastic developer for 37signals, but on a whole, the entire mom population doesn’t have a shot.
Incidentally, I didn’t expect my comment to get past moderation.
Being a mom is a completely different matter entirely. I think it was Jezebel that had some interesting articles recently about being a mom and having a career. It’s unfortunate but true that once you have a kid, you probably aren’t moving up the food chain any further at your job, regardless of open source. You’ve got a new top priority in your life, and they don’t make any exceptions for mothers, not really.
I have an 8 year old son, but because of my schedule, it is mostly his dad taking care of him. Sometimes I feel horribly guilty about it, because it’s still hard to overcome the social notion that the females have to be the primary caretakers of children. I only knew a few other women in open source that have had children, but those kids have long since grown up and moved out.
Regardless, I don’t really think that asking for open source experience is something that is sexist. I’m not some freetard that is all “open source awesome, closed source bad!” – but I do see the advantages in hiring someone that’s worked in open source.
Recently I took a few college courses on programming. I’d never done the whole CS education thing, and I figured there was probably something that I was missing. When I was taking a data structures class, my instructor said two things that stuck with me: one, that one of the things she’d heard from employers over and over and over again was that job candidates often weren’t all that great at working with other people’s code. Two, that getting involved in open source was a great way to obtain those skills and to work in an environment where one isn’t penalized (except perhaps socially) for not knowing something. Working in that kind of environment promotes growth of knowledge and growth of self, because you aren’t having to deal with 18 different levels of management. Many projects don’t have a centralized management structure, and much of it is collaborative. When someone’s active in open source, it’s easy for a potential employer to do a bit of research and see just how well that person plays with others. Hiring an employee is often a crapshoot, and this makes it a little more of a sure thing.
It may not seem terribly fair for mothers. But when I was a sysadmin, they didn’t let me beg off pager duty just because I had a baby that was keeping me up all night already. Words like ’sexist’ are painful. They are thrown around so easily, and not necessarily because women are going for equal rights – but because they want exceptions to be made.
That said, I don’t think a company that says it wants someone that has worked in open source would have that as a hard requirement. You do have a valid point that a mother could still be a fantastic developer. However, at the end of the day when a project hasn’t quite gone as well as planned and they need someone to pull an all-nighter to get something out on time, how easily are you going to be able to do that? People in open source are crazy.
Many of us do give all of our spare time to working on code, so we don’t have the kinds of responsibilities that family types have.