Gild引领程序员招聘革命

    今年夏天，来自旧金山的招聘软件公司Gild想要招聘一个程序员，但是与硅谷的高科技公司竞争，追逐那些具有耀眼背景的本地精英并不是这家小公司的长项。于是公司老总谢罗伊•德赛和他的团队做出决定，尝试寻找那些名声不大、工资要求不高的程序员。这时，这家公司需要用到自己一直在大力推销的软件就有这样的功能，它能对程序员按照其编写的免费开源代码的质量进行排序。

    Gild想要找一名熟悉Ruby on Rails编程软件的程序员。按照Gild的排名系统，杰德•多明格斯是洛杉矶地区最好的候选人之一。多明格斯没有接受过正式的大学教育，全靠网上的免费工具自学成才。现在他已经是Gild的在线应用开发者。

    多明格斯正好揭示了德赛试图解决的问题：缺乏傲人学位的优秀程序员埋没于成堆的简历中，无法脱颖而出。“目前的招聘系统太多偏见，”德赛说。“歧视无处不在。我们试图让人尽其才的精英体制重新回归。”他说，Gild已经找到精确定位人才的方法，不再依赖传统的资历考核。

    德赛本人拥有麻省理工（MIT）的电子工程学位，这对他的早期职业生涯颇有助益，所以很难想象会是这样一个人来领导这场招聘革命。但他说，自己亲眼目睹过不少优秀程序员由于种种莫名其妙的原因没能得到工作，他希望能够改变这种状况。

    德赛的最终目的是要颠覆招聘者和求职者网络对接方式。“商务社交网站LinkedIn在收集简历方面成就卓著，但最重要的问题并没有得到解决，那就是：哪些人合适？他们到底有多优秀？”

    至少对招聘程序员来说，Gild在这个问题上取得了一些进展。公司在周一正式发布了一个软件，能够自动检测程序员在免费的开源程序平台上提交的代码，这类平台包括谷歌代码（Google Code）和SourceForge。然后根据代码质量对程序员进行排名，最终向招聘程序员的公司推销这个排名系统。当然，如何确定某些代码优于其它代码是个难题。德赛认为，程序的简洁是关键。用少量而优雅的代码就能解决问题可以证明了程序员的功力。Gild也会考察代码是否得到认可：有多少其它用户，是否被Linux这类著名的开源项目所接纳。

    按照德赛的说法，Gild“刚刚完成测试阶段”，意味着公司已经开始拥有付费用户，其中不乏知名企业如Box、SalesforceCRM和红帽 (Red Hat)等。

    但在掀起高科技行业招聘革命之前，Gild还得对其系统做出改进。首先，公司的软件只对在开源平台发布代码的程序员排名，而很多人才并没有参与这类平台。其次，该软件能给出某人编程质量的信息，但却无法告诉你此人是否合群，是否可靠，这类信息只能来自于传统的面试。

    德赛不得不承认，目前，很多使用Gild服务的公司同时还在依赖他所试图打破的招聘系统：人力资源部门首先在LinkedIn上搜寻程序员，然后再在Gild的排名系统里查询其编程能力。

    此外还有一个潜在的障碍，那就是隐私，这也是数码世界里人所共知的一个问题。获得Gild排名的程序员事先并不知道他们是数据库的组成部分，直到有意招聘的公司联系他们。德赛承认，Gild的系统需要选择退出，而不是选择加入。但问题是，在加入排名的100多万名程序员中，很多人并不知道这一点。

    Gild所推动的精英体制对高科技公司会有所帮助，特别是这个软件可能在意想不到的地方发掘出急需的人才。但由于该软件并不追踪用户公司和程序员之间的后续发展，德赛不能确定通过Gild的帮助到底有多少人最终得到聘用。展望未来，这家公司将在网上继续搜寻整洁代码背后的天才，同时，它还需要调整商业模式。

    When a San Francisco-based job recruitment software firm called Gild was looking for a programmer this summer, it had to compete with tech companies in Silicon Valley also chasing local developers with stellar pedigrees. So Gild CEO Sheeroy Desai and his team decided they were going to try to hire someone less known and more affordable. They used the software they're trying to market, which ranks developers based on the quality of their free, open-source code.

    Gild executives searched for a developer versed in a coding language called Ruby on Rails. Based on Gild's ranking system, Jade Dominguez was one of the best in the Los Angeles area. Dominguez has no formal post-secondary education and taught himself to code using free tools available online. Now he is a web application developer for Gild.

    Dominguez exemplifies a problem that Desai wants to solve -- great coders without killer degrees get buried in the resume pile. "The system today is totally biased," says Desai. "Discrimination is rampant in this industry. We are trying to bring meritocracy back into recruiting." Gild, he says, has found a way to pinpoint talent without getting hung up on traditional credentials.

    Desai, at first, seems like an unlikely leader for this crusade, given that he has a degree in electrical engineering from MIT, which he admits gave him a big boost early in his career. But he's seen talented coders passed over for jobs for questionable reasons, he says, and he wants to change that.

    Ultimately, Desai wants to upend the way recruiters and jobseekers connect online. "LinkedIn is doing great work collecting resumes, but what hasn't been solved is the problem of who is good and how good they are."

    Gild is taking some steps to address this problem, at least for developers. The company officially launched a software product on Monday that scans code that developers submit to free, open-source platforms such as Google Code or SourceForge. Then, it ranks developers based on the quality of the code they produce. The idea is to sell the ranking system to companies looking for developers.

    Granted, it can be difficult to tell what makes some code better than others. One key indicator is simplicity, Desai says. People who solve a problem using relatively few, elegant lines of code are generally considered good. Gild also looks at how well-documented the code is -- how many other people use it, and whether it's been accepted to a high-profile open-source project, such as Linux.

    Gild is "just getting out of the Beta phase," according to Desai, which means it's got paying customers, some of them well-known, including Box, Salesforce (CRM), and Red Hat (RHT).

    But before it revolutionizes hiring in tech, Gild must handle a few kinks in its system. For one, its software only ranks coders who submit to open source platforms, and plenty of talented people still don't do that. And while Gild's software can tell you something about the quality of code people produce, it can't tell you if an employee is likable or dependable -- that's information that still comes through in an old-fashioned interview.

    For now, Desai says, many companies use Gild alongside the systems he's trying to disrupt: human resources personnel looking for developers will search LinkedIn (LNKD), then check people's coding abilities against Gild's ranking system.

    There's another potential hurdle, all too familiar within the digital world, and that's privacy. Coders that Gild ranks might not know they're part of the database until an interested company calls them. Gild's system is opt-out, not opt-in, Desai says, although many of Gild's more than a million ranked coders may not know there's a system to opt out of.

    A Gild-driven hiring meritocracy would be useful for tech companies, especially if the software could really unearth coveted talent in unlikely places. But Desai isn't sure how many people have been hired through Gild, because the software doesn't track how companies follow up with developers. Going forward, the company will have to iron out glitches in its business model as it keeps trolling the Internet for the masterminds behind clean code.