[HN Gopher] GitHub Resume: Service that creates a resume based o...
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       GitHub Resume: Service that creates a resume based on your GitHub
       repos/activity
        
       Author : rg111
       Score  : 136 points
       Date   : 2022-05-06 10:33 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | yakkomajuri wrote:
       | Super cool. Yeah sure the stars help boost popularity but I
       | actually like the approach. Just like https://utteranc.es/ uses
       | GH issues as a way to store data, I was thinking about how stars
       | can be used as opt-in for things just the other day.
       | 
       | Also do note that the "Contributions" section is misleading.
       | Without looking into it I'm quite sure it's only pulling
       | contributions for the current calendar year - I also know that's
       | the info GH gives you on that endpoint if you don't want to keep
       | iterating over commit lists until you get to the end.
       | 
       | That then paints a wrong picture of someone's contributions to
       | projects over time :D A quick note about this would "solve" this
       | by making the tradeoff explicit.
        
       | samrocksc wrote:
       | gross
        
       | trhway wrote:
       | Many years ago similar script was used in our team to
       | automatically write weekly reports.
        
       | kemayo wrote:
       | It's a nice idea, but it doesn't actually work very well. The
       | "contributions" section in particular is just wildly inaccurate
       | -- it shows a lot of repos for me as "1 commit(s)" when I really
       | have hundreds.
       | 
       | Any hypothetical "tech-savy bosses who want to have a quick view
       | of person's git/github activity" aren't getting that here.
        
       | NoraCodes wrote:
       | I massively appreciate the opt-in mechanics here. One click,
       | using a native feature of the site that you must, by necessity,
       | have an account on. Very nice! And, in my testing, un-starring
       | that repo also opts out.
        
       | karol wrote:
       | Using this means devaluing your software related skills. Do not
       | do that!
        
         | chrisseaton wrote:
         | Why do you think that?
        
       | encryptluks2 wrote:
       | Many people don't realize what they are really giving up by
       | sharing personal information on their GitHub account(s).
       | 
       | Once you share that account with a company and sign an an
       | agreement don't be surprised if they at some point they sue you
       | just because your code may look similar to something you did
       | while working for them.
       | 
       | On disability but feel well enough to maintain some personal
       | projects? Good luck.
       | 
       | Working on a personal project that is taking off? Suddenly the
       | company can build a competing solution and then later say you
       | violated a non-compete agreement.
       | 
       | The list goes on and on. I'd suggest people stop sharing their
       | personal GitHub accounts and not use personally identifiable
       | information on your profiles.
        
         | simonw wrote:
         | Any examples of this actually happening?
         | 
         | Sounds to me more like the plot of Silicon Valley than
         | something that's a common risk.
         | 
         | I would expect any company that actually did this to get some
         | serious negative PR from it, such that they have trouble hiring
         | talented engineers in the future.
        
           | encryptluks2 wrote:
           | > I would expect any company that actually did this to get
           | some serious negative PR from it, such that they have trouble
           | hiring talented engineers in the future.
           | 
           | Except employment agreements provide significant leeway into
           | getting injunctions and for fines, so while an employee could
           | go on the offensive and say that this is an issue, there
           | could also be an injunction or agreements that prevent them
           | from even talking about it without the risk of significantly
           | more financial harm or contempt charges.
        
       | 0x20cowboy wrote:
       | This is likely just a me problem, but it would be neat to throw
       | some kind of machine learning behind this. If it could recommend
       | what one should peruse - what one seems to be most interested in
       | + seems to have the most aptitude for.
       | 
       | I have a lot of varied interests and an AI suggestion on what I'd
       | likely have the must fun / success perusing would be neat.
        
       | ykevinator2 wrote:
        
       | andybak wrote:
       | Cute idea but it doesn't work for me very well. There's a project
       | that takes up 90% of my time and I'm a major contributor but it
       | only gets a single line under "Contributions" while useless old
       | projects that nobody uses any more are highlighted under "Popular
       | Repositories" with several lines of information.
       | 
       | I think the heuristics need tweaking a little. "Creator & Owner"
       | shouldn't carry as much weight and recency should carry more.
        
         | BipolarCapybara wrote:
         | Exactly! This puts too much weight on ownership rather than
         | contribution. Also, it doesn't list the forks where I have made
         | local changes just for myself!
        
           | mjs7231 wrote:
           | It's a cool concept, but I agree. I have several projects
           | that I started then other people took over or ownership
           | transferred. No mention on the resume.
        
       | JonChesterfield wrote:
       | I have a bug report. I've committed to llvm and to rocm's llvm
       | fork but it's only showing commits to the fork. GitHub account
       | JonChesterfield.
       | 
       | Interesting idea, thanks for sharing it.
        
       | shp0ngle wrote:
       | (2016)
        
       | vmception wrote:
       | Examples?
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | Some previous discussion from way back:
       | 
       |  _8 years ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6752800
       | 
       |  _10 years ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4466883
       | 
       |  _11 years ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2185666
        
       | raffraffraff wrote:
       | Doesn't work at all for me! Most of my good work is on internal
       | repositories for the companies I have worked for, or private
       | projects on gitlab cloud. My personal GitHub (and bitbucket and
       | gitlab) account has very little activity, and most of that is
       | "clone some project and submit a 2 line fix" 5 years ago.
        
         | chrsig wrote:
         | this is mostly where I'm at.
         | 
         | One of the problems is that I'm not going to work on a project
         | just for the sake of working on it. If I'm going to work on a
         | project in my personal time, it needs to have personal
         | significance to me. As it turns out, I don't actually have that
         | many needs that aren't serviced by existing software.
         | 
         | As a result, the personal time I spend on skill development
         | tends to be in the form of broadening my horizons or deepening
         | my understanding of a topic rather than producing useful
         | software.
         | 
         | So most of my github activity is filing a bug report, possibly
         | with a small patch.
        
       | treyhuffine wrote:
       | Great work! I had built something similar but in the form of a
       | web app. It uses GitHub to generate a resume for you and also
       | creates an API to power your portfolio website.
       | 
       | -> https://gitconnected.com
        
       | janjones wrote:
       | A clever "popularity" trick - you must star the project in order
       | to try it.
        
         | bee_rider wrote:
         | I've only barely used GitHub, what's the star supposed to
         | indicate?
        
           | hpb42 wrote:
           | It can also be used like a bookmarks system. You add a star
           | to a project and then you see all repos that you added a
           | star: https://github.com/<username>?tab=stars
        
           | input_sh wrote:
           | Basically equivalent to a like, just one measurement on how
           | popular a project might be within the community.
           | 
           | Definitely not an indicator of quality of any kind.
        
           | SnooSux wrote:
           | I like to Star Repos that I wanna take a look at later that I
           | may not have an immediate use for. You can view any repos
           | you've starred right on Github.
        
         | pc86 wrote:
         | It may be a "growth hack" but it does seem like a decent way to
         | prevent people from surreptitiously looking at others'
         | information (even though it's all already public anyway).
        
           | tadzik_ wrote:
           | It advertises itself as "Great for all the tech-savy bosses
           | who want to have a quick view of person's git/github
           | activity, before the interview".
           | 
           | I guess the tech-savy bosses are savy enough to run this
           | locally with the "opt-in" check patched out.
        
             | fullstackchris wrote:
             | I mean anything coming from GitHub is anyway public.
             | (Except for private repos of course)
        
               | JonChesterfield wrote:
               | Probably best to assume the private ones are public too
        
             | saghm wrote:
             | Honestly, that sounds like another growth-hacking strategy;
             | when someone uses it, they get a pat on the back for being
             | "tech savvy"
        
           | prepend wrote:
           | What's the benefit from "surreptitiously" viewing people's
           | public information?
        
             | pc86 wrote:
             | I'm not imaginative enough to envision a nefarious
             | scenario, but that doesn't mean none exist. Maybe just
             | curiosity? The format does seem a bit nicer than the public
             | profile at least.
        
         | Beltalowda wrote:
         | This is a GitHub project, I think? Based on the (non-working)
         | resume.github.com URL anyway. It seems more like a "hack" to
         | me, and not really a "growth hack"; "what can we use to opt-in
         | people for this experiment without adding a setting to GitHub
         | proper?"
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | janjones wrote:
           | > This is a GitHub project, I think? Based on the (non-
           | working) resume.github.com URL anyway.
           | 
           | I believe it's just a typo, the correct URL is
           | https://resume.github.io
        
             | 130e13a wrote:
             | i could be wrong here, but I seem to remember that many
             | years ago GitHub pages were originally hosted on
             | <username>.github.com
        
               | jwilk wrote:
               | Yup:
               | 
               | https://github.blog/2013-04-05-new-github-pages-domain-
               | githu...
               | 
               | https://github.blog/changelog/2021-01-29-github-pages-
               | will-s...
        
         | AndrewKemendo wrote:
         | I really loved seeing that, this is probably one of the cooler
         | parts of this project IMO.
        
         | lmc wrote:
         | I tried it just for that reason :D
        
         | frabert wrote:
         | I was able to work around that by putting a breakpoint at the
         | moment of check and changing the flag via console :)
        
       | jmacd wrote:
       | Identity is the single biggest miss I can think of for Github.
       | Clearly there is some thinking going on about it with SSO,
       | profile README, this, etc.
       | 
       | I think they are missing the point however. Linkedin for
       | Developer is probably interesting on some level, but Github has
       | much more interesting and useful information they could be using.
       | What languages you prefer, where you like to run your workloads,
       | if your code quality is decent, frameworks you are using, etc.
        
         | tgvaughan wrote:
         | I hope they continue to miss this "identity" thing. Seriously,
         | these suggestions would cause me to ditch github very quickly.
         | I just want somewhere public to host my git repos, not to be
         | profiled and quantified every which way.
        
       | tonnydourado wrote:
       | 99.99% of my relevant work experience happened (and is happening)
       | behind closed doors, and I suspect this will be true for a large
       | majority of developers. So, not very useful.
        
         | latchkey wrote:
         | Super common response. Same here, despite decades of open
         | source contributions, most of the code I write these days is
         | behind closed doors. But, 100% of the code is on Github, so I
         | have it so that it shows my private commit numbers in public.
         | 
         | I also tend to depend on a lot of open source projects... which
         | means that I also find/report/fix bugs and contribute to
         | documentation... all of which shows up in my public history.
         | 
         | It isn't just about relevant work experience...
        
           | tonnydourado wrote:
           | You're lucky (I guess?), I have yet to work on an
           | organization that uses GitHub internally. I've seen gitlab,
           | bitbucket, and, oh, the horror, Gerrit and subversion.
           | 
           | I try to give back to stuff I use when I can, too, but I'd
           | love to do much more. Time is limited, unfortunately =(
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | notRobot wrote:
       | (2016), surprisingly
        
         | forgotpwd16 wrote:
         | The repo goes back to 2011 and someone has posted links from
         | submissions back then.
        
       | AnnikaL wrote:
       | This seems to focus mostly on recent contributions - I have 400+
       | commits in some projects and it only shows 62 (presumably from
       | the past year/6 months?).
        
       | MonaroVXR wrote:
       | My own profile is my resume. You can see what I'm listening.
        
       | fedeb95 wrote:
       | maybe solve a few issues? idk
        
       | gabereiser wrote:
       | This is all well and good but not everyone is coding on GitHub.
       | My only contributions on GitHub are for my side projects and
       | those are never finished. Most of my coding is done on Bitbucket,
       | Azure DevOps, GitLab, etc. so while the idea is novel, the
       | reality is GitHub contributions are a terrible metric for
       | employment and any company who uses those isn't a company I want
       | to work for. Also, while my profile says there are less than a
       | dozen repositories I own. I actually have over 100 private repos
       | on GitHub.
        
       | sysadm1n wrote:
       | I've seen a lot of Github user profiles where there is no
       | ulterior motive when committing code (like trying to impress
       | potential employers with a resume). In a sense this is the old
       | African philosophy of _ubuntu_ [0] (Not the Linux distro). A
       | large cohort just commit code because they enjoy it and keep it
       | strictly as a hobby & just want to contribute to a greater good.
       | 
       | > Ubuntu (Zulu pronunciation: [ubunt'u])[1] is a Nguni Bantu term
       | meaning "humanity". It is sometimes translated as "I am because
       | we are" (also "I am because you are"),[2] or "humanity towards
       | others"
       | 
       | On the other hand it's easy to spot those who use Github as a
       | form of virtue signalling to potential employers. 'Look at my
       | activity graph & see how talented & productive I am!'
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_philosophy
        
         | VWWHFSfQ wrote:
         | Why does it matter though
        
           | tjpnz wrote:
           | Because I want to hire people who can deliver value and work
           | well as part of a team. I consider a Github profile littered
           | with numerous inconsequential contributions a possible red
           | flag in that regard.
        
             | a4isms wrote:
             | This is like saying that if someone you are considering for
             | a technical documentation position has also written
             | numerous books of poetry, you would consider that a red
             | flag.
             | 
             | Likewise, if someone has written a blog full of
             | recreational programming ideas while working full time in
             | the industry, you'd consider the blog a red flag for
             | inconsequentiality.
             | 
             | Why not also consider all hobbies red flags? I'm not sure
             | that my rock climbing is consequential in any way. Isn't
             | that a red flag that I don't completely buy into hustle
             | culture? That I don't spend every waking moment thinking
             | about how to impress you?
             | 
             | I'm not personally offended or worried that my entire life
             | is one giant red flag for your hiring process, but I do
             | suggest you are going to generate a lot of false negatives
             | with the outlook your comment implies.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | a4isms wrote:
               | You do you, but here's why I don't follow this practice.
               | I start my explanation with an old joke:
               | 
               |  _One evening, I spotted a man staring intently at the
               | ground under a lamp post. "Looking for something?" I
               | asked. "My watch," he said, and continued staring at the
               | pavement._
               | 
               |  _" You lost it right here?" I asked, just to confirm.
               | "No, I think I lost it in the alleyway back there" he
               | replied. "Then why," I asked, "Are you looking for it
               | over here?"_
               | 
               |  _" The light's better."_
               | 
               | This is the general problem of GitHub as a source of data
               | for whether someone is a productive team player. If they
               | did a lot of productive team playing in public on GitHub,
               | great. But many people do their productive team playing
               | off GitHub, or in private repos. They're like the fellow
               | who lost his watch in the alleyway.
               | 
               | But we can only see what's under the light, and
               | evaluating them as a complete developer based on what we
               | find or don't find under the light is like looking for
               | our watch under the light. We're doing it because the
               | signal is easy to see. But that doesn't mean it's all of
               | the signal, or the most relevant signal.
               | 
               | If you have a statistically significant data set showing
               | that people with inconsequential GitHub contributions in
               | public are inconsequential contributors in a professional
               | software development environment in private, I'd like to
               | see it.
               | 
               | But lacking a rigorous study establishing a statistically
               | significant correlation, people's public GitHub profiles
               | are not a reliable source of signal for hiring
               | professional developers.
        
             | RussianCow wrote:
             | Why? What does that have to do with being able to "deliver
             | value and work well as part of a team"?
        
               | minroot wrote:
               | Think that yourself
        
           | twiceaday wrote:
           | "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good
           | measure."
        
             | a4isms wrote:
             | Or my favourite flavour of Goodhart's Law:
             | 
             | "You show me a metric, and I'll show you a game."
        
       | ransom1538 wrote:
       | "If you would like to opt-in, simply go to our GitHub Project
       | page and star the project."
       | 
       | Be warned! This language will get creepy lawyer emails from
       | github. Security github "engineers" will start emailing you
       | threats - tricking you into corresponding with them. I have used
       | similar language before on a fun weekend project and was
       | banned/canceled/erased - all my project lost on github. The good
       | news: now I know they allow some projects that do this.
       | 
       | Feel free to checkout my deleted profile:
       | https://github.com/ransom1538
        
         | netizen-936824 wrote:
         | Was your profile canceled? Gives me a 404
         | 
         | Also, care to share more of your story? I'm curious
        
           | ransom1538 wrote:
           | "Was your profile canceled?"
           | 
           | My github profile is ransom1538. Yes. It was totally blocked
           | - the account is frozen - it 404s now. I was doing a project
           | to let users view and see random github projects. It was just
           | a funny weekend project. It got legs and I was banned.
        
         | zoover2020 wrote:
         | Someone hasn't had their morning coffee yet.
        
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