Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hide your real name in Open Source

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 59 posts

Re: Hide your real name in Open Source

#41

Post by grawprog »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #7
gant wrote: post #5

I feel like being active on GitHub definitely helped me getting my current job. Regarding "wrongthink", it's generally a good idea to keep politics out of your professional GitHub account if you want to work at a place that may not align with your opinions. Or your opinions are spicy in general. The sort of people that post on HN can usually pick their jobs, which is why I'm surprised someone here would want a job wh…

Honestly if a job wont hire me for what I do or say in my free time (as long as it's perfectly legal / not too crazy in the moral scope of things) then good riddance. If they wont hire me cause "I wont devote enough time to them" (translation might be, your hard work is intimidating to everyone working here so let's make up BS to not hire you) then good riddance. The interview process is a two way street, not a one w…

> If you cannot communicate without having a childish rage fit you should not be a part of a team, you're useless to a team.

This is very true. We had to let someone go recently because of this. He'd been there about 5 months. He was getting pretty good at the job, but every time he'd make a mistake he'd go into a rage. Or he'd just show up in the morning in a bad mood and be pissy with everyone all day. On the last week he was there he flipped out on a delivery driver, twice, freaked out at my coworker and got into a big argument with him when he asked him if he could work a Saturday to help with some maintenance that needed to be done, flipped out in the middle of operating a machine after he made a mistake, walked away in the middle of it, started smashing a bunch of things and just freaking out at himself. That was when he was let go, the owner came close to calling the cops on him.

It was too bad everybody tried talking to him for months to try and get him to relax. On good days, he'd helpful, eager to learn, did well and generally seemed like a fairly decent person. But on bad days...you never knew what was going to set him off and it just got to be too much for everyone to handle.

Re: Hide your real name in Open Source

#42

Post by timgrossmann »

Weird view on OSS... I'm still in university but my GitHub profile would've already gotten me 13 offers if I would've been into starting to work for a company.

It got me my first talk on a conference, got me in contact with a lot of different, very interesting opportunities and people from around the world.

Haven't seen a single disadvantage in it, yet. Not even one.

Re: Hide your real name in Open Source

#43

Post by acct1771 »

kiallmacinnes wrote: post #3

> You will have been sold a story about how contributing to Open Source projects will give you exposure, and that companies will be fighting to hire you. Sorry, it’s all lies: it was true 20 years ago but no longer. I disagree, there are many companies that actively look for Open Source contributors to hire. Sure, it's not all companies, and very few people will be having companies fight to hire you - but that's real…

> Okay, so investment banking as an industry are shying away from Open Source contributors.

Good, let them keep getting hacked because they prefer to hire the guy who has a piece of paper or three, and knows a guy. Fucking bankers.

Re: Hide your real name in Open Source

#44

Post by watwut »

m000 wrote: post #38

Hiding your real name in Open Source and using a multitude of pseudonyms instead is plainly bad advice for most people. Yes, you will be covered for that one employer that will not like your OSS profile. But you are giving a hard time to the majority of the employers who will have to jump through the hoops you've set to get a picture of your OSS contributions. Also, what would be the reaction of a recruiter reading a…

> Yes, you will be covered for that one employer that will not like your OSS profile. But you are giving a hard time to the majority of the employers who will have to jump through the hoops you've set to get a picture of your OSS contributions.

They will have to jump hoops only if you dont want them see it. Otherwise you just include link in your CV and they dont have to jump anything.

> Also, what would be the reaction of a recruiter reading a resume that lists e.g. 5 different github profiles? I doubt the recruiter would think "very smart of him". More likely, they would be left wondering if the applicant is self-important, a tinfoil hat wearer, or an outright liar. At any rate, probably someone they wouldn't be inclined to hire.

I can see why recruiter would think "weird", I dont see why he would think "self-important, a tinfoil hat wearer, or an outright liar".

Re: Hide your real name in Open Source

#45

Post by anothergoogler »

alkonaut wrote: post #34

An active OSS profile is certainly more often an advantage than a disadvantage if I'm interviewing someone. Obviously, some of the people crying over CoC's may also be annoyed to learn that I look at least as much on a persons intra-personal skills when I read through their github history, as I do on their code. Github is a social network. The people there are humans. If you have shown you can communicate well with p…

The post's audience has zero difficulty landing a good job.

Re: Hide your real name in Open Source

#46

Post by baud147258 »

toast0 wrote: post #39
gant wrote: post #5

I feel like being active on GitHub definitely helped me getting my current job. Regarding "wrongthink", it's generally a good idea to keep politics out of your professional GitHub account if you want to work at a place that may not align with your opinions. Or your opinions are spicy in general. The sort of people that post on HN can usually pick their jobs, which is why I'm surprised someone here would want a job wh…

> I'm surprised someone here would want a job where they have to self-censor constantly I would rather work a job where I'm self-censoring toward 'professionalism' if the rest of my team is too, than a job where everyone is their 'authentic self' with their real world politics on display, even if the majority agree with my real world politics.

In my current team, most people are self-censoring toward 'professionalism', we're very rarely talking about politics and even more rarely about one's opionions. So far it has worked well enough.

Still we're not censoring the puns, to the despair of one of the team members.

Re: Hide your real name in Open Source

#47

Post by fergie »

Its certainly true that open source projects eat into your work time. The real question is: can your employer find a way to turn this to their advantage? If you dig a little to find out how open sourcerers put bread on the table, it soon becomes apparent that employers pay them to mess around on GitHub. Seek these organisations out.

Re: Hide your real name in Open Source

#48

Post by themoat »

milpool wrote: post #8
gant wrote: post #5

I feel like being active on GitHub definitely helped me getting my current job. Regarding "wrongthink", it's generally a good idea to keep politics out of your professional GitHub account if you want to work at a place that may not align with your opinions. Or your opinions are spicy in general. The sort of people that post on HN can usually pick their jobs, which is why I'm surprised someone here would want a job wh…

You can keep politics out of your own github account. But maybe people who will bring their politics to you, regardless. Maybe you didn't even realize that you did something "wrong". Maybe you said something that wasn't "wrong" at that point, but a few years later, it is. > Or your opinions are spicy in general. So if not anybody likes your opinion, it's your fault for having the wrong opinions...?

I'm hedging as much as I can here. That is certainly not the case, but I would consider that question right there to be critical to good introspection and growth as a person.

"If everyone hates my opinion, is that the wrong opinion to hold so dearly?"

It's certainly worth honestly considering if most people think your opinion is terrible.

Re: Hide your real name in Open Source

#49

Post by dblock »

People do this quite a lot it seems. I have spent a lot of time over the past year trying to dig up someone’s email and real name from GitHub (shameless plug for https://github.com/dblock/fue that helps with this).

Privacy is dead. I think that being public allows you to control what’s being public and that’s the best we can do.

Re: Hide your real name in Open Source

#50

Post by seneca »

themoat wrote: post #48
milpool wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can keep politics out of your own github account. But maybe people who will bring their politics to you, regardless. Maybe you didn't even realize that you did something "wrong". Maybe you said something that wasn't "wrong" at that point, but a few years later, it is. > Or your opinions are spicy in general. So if not anybody likes your opinion, it's your fault for having the wrong opinions...?

I'm hedging as much as I can here. That is certainly not the case, but I would consider that question right there to be critical to good introspection and growth as a person. "If everyone hates my opinion, is that the wrong opinion to hold so dearly?" It's certainly worth honestly considering if most people think your opinion is terrible.

Yes, I'm sure folks hiding jews in their attic in Nazi Germany would have been better off had they just decided to go with the flow.

It is worth being introspective, but you should keep in mind the fact that an opinion being popular has very little to do with whether it's right.

Reality is also that the vast majority of people don't care about the politics that get people ousted from OSS projects. It's more along the lines of "if a very loud minority thinks your opinion is terrible".

Post reply on HN