Hacker News Reader

I can't recall seeing anyone looking for a hire with a "large community following."

companies are most usually looking for ... team working skills

I believe there is an operating assumption here that active membership and following in a given community is a solid indicator that the individual in question has very good team interaction skills, as well as working knowledge of the community's domain focus.

View on HN

Maybe, although I think that assumption would be erroneous (not that you suggested it wasn't :-)).

I can only speak for the Ruby and Rails community but I think there are many developers who have a strong "following" on blogs, Twitter, at events, and even on GitHub but who aren't necessarily good "team players" (To be fair, I include myself in this bracket ;-)).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com