Work for Pie – What’s Your Score?

Work for Pie is an online community where software developers can congregate, collaborate, and show others their work. The application itself rewards people for making contributions to the open-source development community by allocating special scores based on their contributions. Not only do high scorers get bragging rights, but they also get credibility among colleagues and potential employers.

Get started with Work for Pie by logging in with your Github account or another OAuth provider, then start linking Work for Pie to the professional sites you use on a regular basis. Work for Pie will automatically pull all the public contributions you’ve made on sites like Github, Bitbucket, Stack Overflow, and Hacker News into your profile. This data will then be used it to ultimately come up with your Work for Pie score. The more work you’ve done on the most popular developer-centric sites, the higher your Work for Pie score will be. Scores range from 0 to 99, with the most talented and ubiquitous developers coming in with the highest marks. You can also use your Work for Pie profile page to show off your code projects, framework skills, work experience, and a bit of personal information.

The developers behind Work for Pie say the fastest way to improve your score is by working on open source development projects on sites like Github and Bitbucket, since 60% to 70% of each user’s score is based on how much code he’s contributed. High scorers get the pleasure of having their profiles show up on the Work for Pie homepage. These scores also act as a kind of validation for developers who might be low on professional experience but high on talent and expertise.

Practical Uses:

• Show off your web development skills
• Prove yourself to potential employers
• Connect with peers in the open-source development community
• See how your skills stack up against your friends’

Insider Tips:

• Users can improve their scores by upping their participation on specific developer sites
• 60% to 70% of each user’s score is based on how much code he’s contributed
• Work for Pie says its scoring algorithm changes over time
• Users are given a percentile ranking for each category on the site

What we liked:

• Competitive developers will enjoy being able to see how their skills stack up
• People can point employers to their Work for Pie scores when looking for new jobs
• Work for Pie pulls information automatically from popular developer sites
• Scores are constantly updated based on the amount of work a user has contributed

What we didn’t like:

• The site is geared toward open-source developers, which leaves out people in the closed-source community

Alternatives:

• Nothing

Company Info:

• Launched: 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Memphis, Tennessee
• Founded by: Cliff McKinney and Brad Montgomery
• Web site: http://workforpie.com

Costs:

• Free