Hiring Devs In 2026 - Part 3

GitHub used to be my go-to. Most of my top hires have 100 or so repos. Now, just creating a repo isn’t enough; it is what is in the repos that tells you a lot about the candidate.

In the modern era of “AI”, a substitute for GitHub might be contributions made to HuggingFace or a similar website, which comes with nuances, but a lot of this translates.

Are their recent repos just forks of Hello World tutorials? If so, then you can bet they are pretty entry-level in those technologies.

Have they forked a prominent framework, then pull-requested fixes back into the main repo? If so, they are likely proficient with that tech.

Do they have a lot of random passion projects? Great, the more passionate the better. Look deeper.

Do they have good commit messages and a well-written README file? If so, they are likely a good communicator.

What do they tend to focus on for these projects? Over-engineering every detail, or are they 100% cowboying up spaghetti code to ship features?

I am not saying either is better, but it's best to know before you hire them.

Do they tend to use existing tools and frameworks, or do they like to keep it close to the metal, writing their own proprietary tools whenever possible?

Lastly and possibly most importantly, do they collaborate with others? Do they teach or are they happy to create knowledge silos that give them Job Security but end up costing your team a lot of time and money?

Basically, even an intern-level candidate should have some type of portfolio. A senior-level candidate should have an extensive portfolio that you can look at and learn a lot about them.

If they don't, that is a red flag in my opinion.