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The black market in GitHub stars

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Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#21

Post by ahoka »

arghwhat wrote: post #19
siva7 wrote: post #10

Is this really a thing or just some local phenomena? I can't remember that the github profile played a role in any hiring committee i've been part of (western europe) as people understood that most of the experienced software developers aren't active open source contributors.

I can anecdotally attest to contact and employment happening solely based on Github profile - without it containing anything impressive - in Scandinavia, as well as a few cases where the profile was used as input in a regular interview process. Do what you want with that info.

It’s just another site to scrape for dev profiles.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#22

Post by tedivm »

siva7 wrote: post #10

Is this really a thing or just some local phenomena? I can't remember that the github profile played a role in any hiring committee i've been part of (western europe) as people understood that most of the experienced software developers aren't active open source contributors.

In my experience it's a positive sign to have an active Github profile or open source contributions, but it is not a negative sign if a candidate doesn't have one.

At higher levels (Principal, Distinguished) you often have to show external contributions to the industry, and some companies count open source towards this.

I can honestly say that my profile has been a huge benefit to my career, but that's more due to 20 years of open source contributions and a very customized (and automated) profile page.

https://github.com/tedivm/

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#23

Post by mnky9800n »

johnea wrote: post #2

I beg to differ on the concept that github became popular because it integrated social media features. I would assert that github became popular because it offered free online git repo hosting. The social media stuff was only long after the fact, and accelerated under M$ ownership. An old adage was: Every s/w evolves until it becomes an email client The modern version is: Every s/w evolves until it becomes facebook..…

I'm just glad there's no LinkedIn connection

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#24

Post by bonestamp2 »

siva7 wrote: post #10

Is this really a thing or just some local phenomena? I can't remember that the github profile played a role in any hiring committee i've been part of (western europe) as people understood that most of the experienced software developers aren't active open source contributors.

I had a friend working with a well known startup founder. The founder was interested in me from what my friend told him, all he wanted to see was my github profile. All of my github projects are private. That was the end of that, even after he already knew that my experience was perfect for their company. So ya, some people definitely put too much emphasis on the github profile.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#25

Post by sowbug »

johnea wrote: post #2

I beg to differ on the concept that github became popular because it integrated social media features. I would assert that github became popular because it offered free online git repo hosting. The social media stuff was only long after the fact, and accelerated under M$ ownership. An old adage was: Every s/w evolves until it becomes an email client The modern version is: Every s/w evolves until it becomes facebook..…

I liked having a web frontend to git, which was often much less cumbersome than figuring out the right diff/log/branch incantations. Also, as a cvs refugee, I felt weird committing to just my local repo and not having another place where "the truth" lived.

None of this functionality had anything to do with social features; it simply helped act as my bridge between centralized and distributed source control.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#26

Post by nextaccountic »

mlsu wrote: post #14
flutas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find myself (as a professional software dev) trying to break that mindset frequently, especially on GitHub, when looking at libraries to use for a task if there's more than 1. What I try to focus on now is more so the commit and release cadence / frequency since in my mind frequent activity means it's more likely to have bugs fixed and security issues handled. Would love to hear other's input on this.

The 5-second test: - look at "latest commit." 4 years ago is not good. 2 days ago is good. The 30-second test: - total number of commits. number of active branches. number of PRs. The 5 minute test: - are there PRs? How many open PRs vs how many closed? Is there lively discussion in PRs? - how many different contributors are there? 1 contributor is OK (and often means that the library will be very coherent) but multi…

in old languages that don't encourage tons of dependencies like C, it's okay to call a library finished and stop developing it, so last commit 4 years ago is ok

in a language like rust or typescript, depending on what the library does, and specially if it has a lot of dependencies, should probably be maintained continually. so in Rust last commit 4 years ago looks very bad

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#27

Post by serial_dev »

wilg wrote: post #4
johnea wrote: post #2

I beg to differ on the concept that github became popular because it integrated social media features. I would assert that github became popular because it offered free online git repo hosting. The social media stuff was only long after the fact, and accelerated under M$ ownership. An old adage was: Every s/w evolves until it becomes an email client The modern version is: Every s/w evolves until it becomes facebook..…

I agree GitHub is not popular because of its minimal and pointless social features. It became popular because Git is good and they nailed the cloud part of source control. However, social was definitely there as part of the original pitch. The tagline was "social coding" for a long time. But also if you're buying GitHub stars or worrying about people's contribution squares, you're probably not doing great work.

> I agree GitHub is not popular because of its minimal and pointless social features.

I'm not sure I agree.

I believe that having a profile for open source work, tracking issues, comments, tagging people in comments, assigning tasks, etc, are all core to GitHub's popularity. Now with issue and comment upvotes, following users, etc, it's even better.

A couple of years ago I went through a phase where I was convinced that GitLab is "more open source" so I wanted to push my code to GitLab (and back then they had a significantlybetter CI/CD and Pages/static site hosting offering). In the end, I gave up, because (almost) nobody used GitLab for open source, neither as code maintainers, nor as contributors in the form of reporting issues, and people wanted a Github profile, not a GitLab profile at job applications.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#28

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

johnea wrote: post #2

I beg to differ on the concept that github became popular because it integrated social media features. I would assert that github became popular because it offered free online git repo hosting. The social media stuff was only long after the fact, and accelerated under M$ ownership. An old adage was: Every s/w evolves until it becomes an email client The modern version is: Every s/w evolves until it becomes facebook..…

I just use it, because it works well, and saves me a lot of elbow grease. I've managed local servers with Git and Perforce on them, and it's a pain.

I like the PR concept. It takes a service like GH to implement it well.

I like GH Issues. JIRA is a nightmare (source: Former JIRA admin).

If I were doing high-security stuff, I'd probably run my own server (and charge beaucoup bucks), but I don't, so GH is fine. When we run our own servers, backup is a really big deal, and that can be worse than actually running the server. GH handles all that for me. It also basically acts as an offsite backup.

As far as stars, I could give a rat's ass. I'm 61, and a tired old warhorse. Status games are for young turks.

I did once come across a profile that had a solid bright green activity log. I suspect the chap had a private repo, with a script that checked the same file in, multiple times per hour. I have also heard of people gaming the activity log to display pictures.

Mine's fairly solid, but that's just because I stay busy.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#29

Post by ziml77 »

mlsu wrote: post #14
flutas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find myself (as a professional software dev) trying to break that mindset frequently, especially on GitHub, when looking at libraries to use for a task if there's more than 1. What I try to focus on now is more so the commit and release cadence / frequency since in my mind frequent activity means it's more likely to have bugs fixed and security issues handled. Would love to hear other's input on this.

The 5-second test: - look at "latest commit." 4 years ago is not good. 2 days ago is good. The 30-second test: - total number of commits. number of active branches. number of PRs. The 5 minute test: - are there PRs? How many open PRs vs how many closed? Is there lively discussion in PRs? - how many different contributors are there? 1 contributor is OK (and often means that the library will be very coherent) but multi…

I was about to say there needs to be a tool that accounts for all these metrics and generates a summary with a score, but then I realized that if a rating algorithm is out in the open, people will game it.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#30

Post by zuzu89 »

siva7 wrote: post #10

Is this really a thing or just some local phenomena? I can't remember that the github profile played a role in any hiring committee i've been part of (western europe) as people understood that most of the experienced software developers aren't active open source contributors.

> (western europe) as people understood that most of the experienced software developers aren't active open source contributors.

that's probably true for western europe. compared to the US there is significant less open source projects,businesses and developers.

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