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The black market in GitHub stars

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Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#51

Post by bloopernova »

yumraj wrote: post #20
mlsu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You forgot issues . Open vs Closed, and meat in the issues. Will tell if people are actually using something.

And whether the project owner/originator/maintainers are open to suggestions, how they interact with people, and whether those issues are linked to commits.

There's one project that, if I'd known how unhelpful the lead dev would be, I'd have never used that project. (Not going to name names)

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#52

Post by Guvante »

rcurry wrote: post #46

I’m starting to understand just how broken the hiring process in tech has become.

Is this a sign of a broken process?

I think it is hireing trying to acknowledge success and cheating that success occurring.

After all hiring managers have forever fought against lying on Resume/CV/Interview.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#53

Post by constantly »

tedivm wrote: post #22
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…

Yeah, when your GitHub profile looks like _that_! I would take that into account as well as a hiring manager. I do regularly click through candidates’ GH profiles and they’re usually not noteworthy so don’t count them for or against them. If they looked like yours though I would definitely read more deeply.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#54

Post by herpdyderp »

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.

What bugs me is when an applicant prominently includes a link to their GitHub profile in their resume and then that profile has zero activity. All I can gather from that is that they aren't paying attention to what they're doing: they created a profile solely because some seminar said to put it on a resume. If you don't have anything to show, simply don't include the link!

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#55

Post by surge »

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've seen it more in the context of security, if you want developers to use a malicious library or extension, you can buy stars to give it a fake reputation boost making people more likely to use it.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#56

Post by withinboredom »

Grimburger wrote: post #31
bonestamp2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can share private repos? Granting access for a week isn't hard.

If you were to share your current job's private repos with me, I wouldn't hire you since that's a signal that you would do the exact same when you leave my company.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#57

Post by Lucretia9 »

tedivm wrote: post #22
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…

An Ada image with zero use of Ada.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#58

Post by simonw »

Most of the comments here seem to assume buying stars is about making personal profiles more attractive to hiring.

I doubt that's the motivation here. I think this is about projects themselves wanting a high star count in order to attract users, customers and investors.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#59

Post by nomilk »

Other platforms have ways of making this difficult. For example kaggle doesn't count upvotes from users with too little prior involvement, and stack overflow's new user votes also don't count until that user has enough reputation.

Re: The black market in GitHub stars

#60

Post by paulryanrogers »

ygjb wrote: post #41
geraldwhen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nonstandard interview process like this is illegal in some jurisdictions. It may run afoul of US law too, depending on the outcomes. It is safer and easier to use a one size fits all interview.

Genuinely curious, which jurisdictions is it actually illegal?

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