News

Going Social to Rank Coder Skills

• By David Ramel
• March 28, 2013

What's your Gild Score?

Gild Inc. is hoping that will become a vital metric for programmers looking to get a better job and for companies seeking the best coding talent. Gild will use that score to rank software developers and guide customers to find the best of the best.

The hook? In addition to traditional factors such as the programming languages you know, that score will be based on how active and helpful you are in software development social sites and how much open source code you publish--and how good that code is.

The start-up has been securing funding--as recently as last month--in an effort to become a vital resource for HR departments and recruiters to find the best developers for their needs.

"The Gild Score is meant to be substantive--a real reflection of a developer’s skills," the company said on its FAQ page. "The best way to improve a Gild Score is to consistently publish high-quality code on open source projects and prove your technical expertise on sites like Stack Overflow and Quora."

Gild says it won't reveal it's "secret sauce" Gild Source technology used to aggregate all the talent-ranking factors it measures--such as the quality of code published to sites such as GitHub, BitBucket and Google Code--but claims the system will provide a true "meritocracy" for developers to stand out in the talent pool. And it might be better if programmers aren't too specialized. "The top scorers are very likely to be developers that have proven to be masters in a few languages, but have also written in a number of other languages," the company said. "That’s because great developers think of a specific language as a mechanism for building, so they can go to their toolbox of languages and pick out the most appropriate medium."

While it's only ranking software developers right now, the San Francisco-based company hopes to expand into other professions soon. It already claims some well-known customers such as Facebook and Red Hat. "Because many top companies rely on Gild Source to find talent, a developer’s Gild Score can be a huge asset for advancing a career path," Gild said.

Gild Source pricing ranges from $450 to $900 per month, with four program plans.

The company was co-founded by CEO Sheeroy Desai and CTO Luca Bonmassar. While their Gild Scores weren't provided, Desai has been somewhat active (registration required) on Quora, answering five questions. Perhaps the most important question he answered: "Will Gild.com be successful and why?".