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Comment by codefreakxff | Hacker News Reader

Why are we reading this post?

"I've only had one job interview in the last decade or so, but as far as I could tell none of the people interviewing me checked out my GitHub profile before the interview"

So that makes this guy an expert?

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The amount of anecdote-fueled blog posts by nonexperts (or worse, beginner experts) in tech is staggering. I don't know what causes it but it seems to work as this is in the front page.

I'd wager this is the kind of HN post where people read the title and post in the comments without reading the post at all.

That's really not a charitable representation of the article. When the HN guidelines say: "please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize", it applies to authors as well as commenters.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well, it is an honest question. And I don't think it is uncharitable at all. The premise of the article is that github does not help with interviews but it doesn't really provide facts to back that up.

It provides plenty of facts and data, but few anecdotes. That seems like a desirable situation.

I don't want to get into a comment war here. Let's just say I respectfully disagree that there is plenty of facts and data, and that what facts and data are there area really more of an opinion with thin data that seems to violate the new guidelines that are being brought up to say that my comment is out of place. In my opinion the author has gone out of his way to cherry pick data to support his claim and has not put effort into finding data that would prove him wrong.

You are welcome to your opinion about the quality of data provided by the author. But your original comment was attacking the lack of personal experience/anecdotes. That wouldn't improve things much, one way or another.

He didn't claim to be an expert, and certainly not because of one interview. You cherry-picked a passing detail and used it to make him out to be an idiot ("So that makes this guy an expert?"). That's the kind of cheap shot the guidelines are written to preclude.

Should have been clearer here: I've only been interviewed once, but I've given hundreds of interviews over the same time frame.

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