Ask HN: Is fake GitHub profile data a thing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Is fake GitHub profile data a thing?

#11

Post by vvoruganti » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 11:38 AM UTC

kregasaurusrex wrote: post #5

I'd say you could accomplish the same goal by making an auto-commit script to make your contribution history green (which can be done retroactively as well!) and get recruiters that are none the wiser to see what a stellar shipper you are. Heck, I can even name someone who was eventually hired at Github who did this and said it led to more conversations during interviews about how exactly it was done.

The contribution graph is definitely something I wouldn't put too much faith in considering there are lot's of projects out there specifically made for drawing pictures in them.

https://github.com/blaise-io/contribution as an example

Re: Ask HN: Is fake GitHub profile data a thing?

#12

Post by soueuls » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 1:08 PM UTC

Maybe there are just students. My school did not teach us Git, our programs were graded by algorithms and teachers.

I had built simple but not trivial programs like a Raytracing engine in C, a basic shell with AST, globbing etc.

When I started looking for my job, I just took the time to migrate some of these projects to Github. The project was already finished and unversioned, so I just

git init git remote add git add . git commit git push

Not the best, but it was the best I could do at that time.

Re: Ask HN: Is fake GitHub profile data a thing?

#13

Post by altdataseller » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:33 PM UTC

EnKopVand wrote: post #2

Of course “fake” GitHub accounts are a thing. Just like people pump up their resumes in general. What you’re describing may simply be people who heard that having a GitHub profile with some stuff on it was a good idea. So they uploaded a bunch of projects and got their friends to “like” them. At least I’d personally like to think that people who are actively out to “cheat” on their GitHub repos genuinely put a little…

There is always a market for fake . No matter how strange or niche it sounds. Fake personal websites, FB pages, twitter profiles, Yelp listings, dating profiles. When in doubt, always be skeptical.