> we also ask the candidate to open a PR against the repo just to see if they know the basics of git

I've heard this multiple times now and it still boggles my mind that git is something you have to test for.

cbm-vic-20 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

At one job I had, we used git extensively, but not GitHub. We had internal systems for review and branch management. I could tell you all the gory details about various workflows and landmines in git. Is the test here really about git, or git+GitHub?

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fsnovask 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I rarely use anything beyond checkout, clone, pull, commit, cherry-pick, revert, and push in a job. If I have to, I'm probably asking the AI what to do by giving it my situation. And hopefully the AI can read about whatever git standards the company would like to be enforced so the engineer doesn't have to interrupt someone for that.

This is more about opportunity cost because instead of asking about git, you could ask about other valuable skills in your limited time with the interviewee, but I guess if git is really that important, then it's justified.

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baud147258 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well, I've been using git at work for 6 or 7 years, but I can't out of hand open a PR; at work we very rarely use different branches and the last time I touched Github I was a student.

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tempfile 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you mean specifically Github, or any code forge at all? When you say "we rarely use different branches", what do you mean - you're all pushing to master, or you have branches for each team or something? I would regard "code forge" and "separate branch per reviewable unit of work" as extremely normal, nearly universal.

	▲	baud147258 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, we're all pushing in the same branch (not called master, we have one branch per version (usually we have one branch that's the current version deployed in production and the development branch)). To group up commits for review, we add in the commit message the Jira issue number and Jira will keep a list of all commits through Bitbucket. Bitbucket supports PRs, but I don't think it's ever been used here. I can gather that the way we're using is not the most usual ;).

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fernandotakai 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

it's incredibly sad but it's real -- so many senior candidates have problems with commit messages, opening PRs.

not even joking: i've seen people with like 10y of experience trying to push to main :(

	▲	gspetr 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Dave Farley (of the 2010 "Continuous Delivery" book fame) explicitly recommends committing and pushing directly to main (or master), and he actively argues against using feature branches and blocking pull requests. https://www.davefarley.net/?p=247 What's incredible is how set some people are in their ways that they can't conceive of alternatives.

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kerenskiy 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

PRs are not only not a basic feature of git - it's not a git feature at all. Though button clicking on GitHub is anyway a crazy thing to test