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GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

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Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#91

Post by hinkley »

Khao wrote: post #2

Is this an April Fools joke? I've never seen anyone who gave a fuck about their contribution graph and record streak, except for devs who developped clever git repos that make your contribution graph show pixel art (which is pretty awesome). I want to say if you feel pressure when looking at your contribution graph, it's all in your head and you should take a break because you're clearly not thinking straight.

There are people out there who judge you on your contribution consistency. Some of those people are involved in the hiring process.

In the interview process, we tend to worry about what we telegraph, and we should really spend more time worrying about what the other guy is telegraphing. For some of us it's hard to remember that anybody who thinks committing 7 days a week means you're a better person... isn't someone you want to hang around with anyway.

Rejection stings, even though being rejected by someone you objectively can't respect shouldn't hurt that much. We are human. If you prick us we bleed.

Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#92

Post by cirosantilli »

hobo_mark wrote: post #82
cirosantilli wrote: post #76

Look, ma, no graph! https://github.com/cirosantilli | https://web.archive.org/web/20151021135921/https://github.co...

Ok I'll bite, how?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20099235/who-is-the-user-...

Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#93

Post by Smudge »

grantcox wrote: post #61
MBCook wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you don't see a problem you assign mental illness in the poster? That seems very harsh.

"Mental illness" and "psychological problems" both have such unfair negative connotations. But yes, if someone is finding the pressure of an activity graph and "breaking a streak" is negatively impacting their work-life balance, I think they likely have a problem. These problems are quite common, hence the great success of free-to-play, extremely-gamified mobile apps. In many of those cases exploiting the most vulner…

Zach Holman has an interesting writeup on focusing on maintaining that streak, and how it (among other factors) eventually led to burnout:

https://zachholman.com/posts/streaks/

Personally, I find the contribution chart both motivating and frustrating. The contribution chart is enough of a signal that I try to make sure it looks healthy each week. But, at the same time, it's far from a perfect tool for assessing how productive I am, because commits come in all shapes and sizes. And like any gamified metric, it can lead to unhealthy obsessions.

Arguably anyone who falls for gamification has "a problem," to one degree or another. But if we know that certain personalities are more likely to have unhealthy obsessions with something, that's maybe a good reason to take it down, or at least lessen the focus on the "streak" and represent activity more positively without highlighting the gaps.

Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#94

Post by jswny »

bjourne wrote: post #66

Everybody should know that working on free software in general is not healthy. :) There is no way that the fame, name recognition in the community, gratefulness received, CV padding or whatever makes up for your hours of free work. The time investment wont pay off. BUT if it is the act of writing code you like, then that doesn't matter. The "work" itself is the reward.

I disagree. My experience with free software, albeit small, is a positive one. I gain immense satisfaction from knowing people use and rely on pieces of software that I've written. When my users ask me for updates and make feature requests, I get excited and it really drives me to work. In addition, any time I see my software in use in the wild, I feel like a proud father watching his child grow up.

Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#97

Post by sotojuan »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #74
cyphar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it uncommon to do some free software work in your spare time? I usually have a bunch of things I want to fix and spend an hour or two during the weekend when I would normally be just watching YouTube.

> Is it uncommon to do some free software work in your spare time? No. But life for many people consists of more things than just software development.

Yeah but... how does GitHub streak encourage people who don't want to do open source/for fun projects to do it?

Seems like it only encourages people who want to do programming outside of work.

We've already concluded that no one cares about your streak except yourself.

Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#98

Post by phkahler »

phasmantistes wrote: post #90
phkahler wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing regarding the downvote ;-) But seriously, it's open source. Everyone has their reasons for contributing, but if you're trying to manipulate your stats in order to satisfy some psychological issue, well then you've got an issue. Why not address it instead of trying to feed it?

You're presenting a false dichotomy. Yes, it may be true that people whose lives are made worse by their internal need to make their chart all green have deeper problems to deal with. But that doesn't mean that GitHub and the rest of the community have to continue to rub it in their face and aggravate those issues with a constant reminder that they "should be contributing more". Recognizing that people may have probl…

>> But that doesn't mean that GitHub and the rest of the community have to continue to rub it in their face and aggravate those issues with a constant reminder that they "should be contributing more".

That's the problem, the stats are just that. Anyone interpreting them as an indicator of "should be contributing more" should chill. But I do see your point.

>> Recognizing that people may have problems, recognizing that the activity graph and streak metric may aggravate those problems, and then saying that the charts shouldn't be removed and the people should just deal with it themselves is not particularly empathetic.

To be honest, I didn't read the entire piece, I just got far enough to cringe at this whole notion of people trying to play games with the stats and wanted to comment.

I have been looking inward myself lately, and while I have found it very challenging or even painful at times, it is one of the best things I've ever done. Highly recommended. We've all got our issues...

Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#100

Post by Symbiote »

cyphar wrote: post #71
emodendroket wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "weekend" people mean here is a period of time when you do not do work at all

Is it uncommon to do some free software work in your spare time? I usually have a bunch of things I want to fix and spend an hour or two during the weekend when I would normally be just watching YouTube.

If it's "work work" (tasks you're being employed to do) then it's illegal in most of the EU to work every day — see the Working Time Directive¹, which requires at least 24 hours of non-work time every week, for most occupations.

I'm paid to work on free software. In the last year, my Github profile shows a single commit on a weekend, when I made a pull request on a browser extension I use. I'd rather spend my weekend time away from computers :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive

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