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What everybody else said.
Don't try to "cover up" the fact that you've never used GitHub until now - the full history, with dates, is available, so they'll be able to tell you've hurriedly thrown something together for them to look at.
I'd have no problem telling any potential employer I don't have a GitHub account. Or that I used to have one at a previous employer...but that code is theirs.
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Oh, I use GitHub for work, just not for personal code. Otherwise, yeah, I agree.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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Simply point them to the articles you have written for CP.
Or tell them that you sell your code - how much are they willing to pay for it?
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Er, I come to CP to read the buggers, not write them. 
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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I did that, got the job!
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I have a "portfolio" that includes code I've written for my employer and from my outside projects. I don't have any qualms about sharing bits and pieces of code from my employer, as it is only intended to illustrate my programming style.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I too do not have a GIT (yuck) repository. However, I do share my CP profile if someone wants. Apart from this I have a library of things that I simply copy and paste to applications I work with. For instance, encryption utilities, hashing utilities, basic REST API scaffolding. If they are hell bent and you too are for the job, I might just dump it all somewhere and share.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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Tell them you would show them after they showed you some examples of people they hired in their hobby time.
If you have to prove how much you like your job outside of work hours, then HR should at least do the same for you.
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Awesome!
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While that would be satisfying, I don't think it would win me any points. Besides, I am being contacted by the head of the IT department I'd be working for, and arranging the interview with his assistant. Looks like HR isn't involved for this one.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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I recently was asked to sit a sit a proprietary test at hackerrank [^]. I didn’t get around to it yet but I found that the training section has some good, short challenges that might be a good way of demonstrating your coding style and approach without the tedium of running your own project.
Good luck!
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I've tried rewriting some of my code, but ended up telling the people that interviewed me that all of my work is done for a client and that I'm not able to share it with 3rd party. To my surprise, they were happy enough with my answer and told me that even they don't have it.
Keep in mind that for this to work, you will have to make good impression in the rest of the interview process.
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In this case I think I would
* try to find code from my current job unrelated to business logic, more like library utilities, print it, and say that you cannot leave it with them
* talk to the interviewer on the phone about my predicament.
Chances are, you are up against hordes of kids with github repos galore. It could happen that they are spoiled with easily comparable candidates...
I was 52 when I got my current job, I think without my github I wouldnt be here.
... such stuff as dreams are made on
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1) Create a repo on GitHub
2) Upload the following project
public class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Hello, world!");
}
}
3) Include it in your application
4) Profit
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Oh yeah, there's the ticket. I could wow them even more by writing that in all the languages I know -- JavaScript, VB.NET, T-SQL, PL/SQL, PHP ...
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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Do not, under any circumstances, give any code for a previous employer.
Doing that is asking for trouble and may even be a trick question to see if you are reliable security
person.
If they cannot assess your abilities from the interview ,this does not speak highly for the company you applied to. If the interview went without anyone fron the SW Dept. being present
is also a bad indicator.
all in all, probably a bad employer.
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I think I'm being interviewed by the head of the IT department.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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TNCaver wrote: Everything I've done in the last 15 years that the interviewer would be interested in is proprietary code I've written for my current employer, and I don't feel comfortable sharing that outside the company
Put it on a stick, show it during the interview. No copies, they don't need the entire code-base to judge your skills - a minute worth of browsing would do.
Then ask them if you should keep their code on a public github 
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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I'd be in an even more difficult situation - all the code I've written in the past 15+ years is US Government classified SECRET or higher. There's no way for me to even get it on the unclassified net and if I tried I'd be off to the pokey...
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Heh... I'm looking at this site and see the following at the bottom of the thread list.
Quote: Last Visit: 31-Dec-99 19:00 Last Update: 8-Feb-18 3:29
With that, the forum code also cutoff the "La" of "Last" when I block quoted and I had to correct it.
Perhaps if people spent a little more of their own time learning the trade that pays them, these types of silly mistakes wouldn't happen.
And that brings us back to the subject of the original post. While I do whole heartedly agree that your job shouldn't be your entire life (especially if you have kids or are married), you DO need to spend some time learning your trade and that's what employers want to see because they're tired of people that can't even get a bloody date right.
While I also agree that you shouldn't have to keep up a web-presence or list your code on the likes of Git-Hub, you should be prepared for an interview especially if you have 15 years experience like the OP does. It will also show them good common sense and respect on your part if you tell them that you respect the proprietary nature of a previous company's code but don't let that be a barrier to showing your stuff. After all, you're on an interview to determine if you have the skills to do your job.
And, no... the stuff you put on your resume isn't enough. That's just the proverbial "knock on the door". Too many people either exaggerate their knowledge or flat out lie on resumes. During one run of interviews of both experience web developers (with good knowledge of T-SQL) and DBAs (all claimed at least 10 years of experience on their resumes), 20 out of 22 couldn't answer the simple question of how to get the current date and time. I had originally started asking the question as a simple ice-breaker question to help the candidates relax. Little did I know it was going to me the litmus test for how the rest of the interview was going to go.
Out of that same batch of people, only 1 DBA knew anything about how to do native backups and restores (and no... I do NOT ask for the precise syntax). One of the people also claimed to be an expert T-SQL performance tuner (again, with more than 10 years experience). When I asked him about clustered indexes (and, no, I didn't make this up. It's just too silly to even think of such a thing) he told me that he never worked with them because he had never worked with clustered servers.
Employers are sick and tired of wasting time on people that don't actually have any reasonable skills or have 1 year of experience 10 or 15 times. They pay a lot of money for people and expect someone who can do the job in return. That's why they've started asking for code examples to demonstrate both your knowledge and your attitude (a lot can be told about the way you write the code, how you document it with comments, and even how you format it).
For all of those saying you don't want to spend any time training yourself to be more valuable, remember that you reap what you sow. For those that do spend some time learning the trade and improving yourself but can't post code that you've done at work, then make up some problems along with code to build a shedload of data to run the code against and submit that via email. If you're looking for a job, spend some good time at it and be ready to provide it at the drop of a hat... any hat.
As "Red Green" is famous for saying, "We're all in this together and I'm pullin' for ya". 
--Jeff Moden
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Jeff Moden wrote: While I do whole heartedly agree that your job shouldn't be your entire life (especially if you have kids or are married), you DO need to spend some time learning your trade and that's what employers want to see because they're tired of people that can't even get a bloody date right.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't wan't to show anyone the code I write when I'm learning something. Its typically code of the worst sort because it is one time use throw-away code. Maintainability and elegant design are not the focus, learning is.
I find that maintainability, elegant design and polish are my value add -- they're what I can bring to the table beyond simple mastery of the topic, but they don't really kick in until the third project I do, and by then, I'm typically doing it for an employer and don't retain any rights to that work.
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Yeah... strongly agreed. You mistook what I said. It's not the "learning" code that they want to see. They want to see that you're taking the time to learn. Once you've learned how to do something, then turn it into a formal but still personal bit of code and use it as an example of your work.
I totally agree on the ideas of maintainable code, elegant design, and polish will set folks well apart from those that don't practice those ideas. Again, the chance to shine in those areas is the demonstrable code you send them when they request it.
Of course, this should be YOUR code... not the code that an employer has proprietary rights to or anything else that would violate an NDA, Covenant not to compete, or ethics in general.
--Jeff Moden
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Jeff Moden wrote: Once you've learned how to do something, then turn it into a formal but still personal bit of code and use it as an example of your work
I don't generally have the time or inclination to massage throwaway, toy-project learner code to make it all pretty. That's something I'll do when I do my next project, and typically, that next project ends up being my first attempt at real work with the new knowledge.. which means it's already owned by someone else.
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No time and no inclination... that's fine but don't get mad if someone beats you out of a job that decided to make the time and had the inclination. I'm trying to explain how to win the job. You don't have to take that advice. It's your choice.
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Thanks for your response. I get what you're saying. But not having a cache of personal code that demonstrates my knowledge doesn't mean I'm not learning new things. A constant part of my job here requires learning new things. But it doesn't leave behind any code that would be useful to demonstrate my skills, just a bunch of 'hello world'-like snippets.
And it sounds like you were able to weed out candidates purely through the interview process without seeing any code or syntax. Hopefully my interviewers will be able to do the same.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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