r/cscareerquestions • u/Remarkable-Slide-750 • 6h ago
What do you think attracts employers more? Contributing on GitHub or creating your own projects?
hey everyone, I just graduated with my AAS in computer programming and pursuing a bachelors in CS currently but I am still getting used to GitHub, so far I have experience creating a project on Git with an Agile functioning group (group projects) that consists of sprint repositories. So I want to aim for creating my own projects - I have a few ideas in mind that are relevant to real life company problems that I’ve experienced personally including people who are close to me. But I am not sure if I should put in some time to contributions also because I haven’t learned how to do that yet (I am thinking about going through a GitHub course to understand it more). I apologize if this post sounds not to relevant as I am still learning so take it easy on me, haha
Please tell me your experiences and tips that you worked for you or others you know, would love a hiring managers point of view.
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u/lhorie 6h ago
The medium doesn't matter, it's the quality of output that does. Specifically for resume screening, relevance to keywords, and for hiring manager loops, depth.
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u/Remarkable-Slide-750 4h ago
I thought so! I just wanted to see where I needed to put more of my focus thanks
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u/illicity_ 1h ago
Honestly, whatever sounds more interesting to you. If you're more interested in building a product, try to make one that makes $ or gets thousands of users. That will really stand out especially at startups
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u/Dense_Gate_5193 32m ago
i’ve started a few projects that were big enough where someone even recognized me in public. if you have a pain point with no solution without spending money, try your hand and making an open source project/app/library. it could blow up and be extremely useful to a lot of people and that right there opens doors. ui-grid for angularjs landed me one of my best jobs ever at GM. was “the data grid to use” during its heyday. anyone with a good idea (or even is fed up with some problem people have just “accepted” as the status quo) and access to the internet can disrupt entire industries.
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u/RedRaven47 6h ago
In my experience, open source contributions usually weigh more due to your code being validated by the maintainers and making it into a codebase that people are using. That being said, strong projects that demonstrate skills relevant to the job that you are applying for can still be very helpful and I have found that my projects contributed a good amount during my past job searches.