6 ms·

Sometimes it feels like software development has devolved into a sea of posturing and marketing oneself. It's faintly depressing to see reminders of that trend

Sometimes it feels like software development has devolved into a sea of posturing and marketing oneself. It's faintly depressing to see reminders of that trend which are as stark as this. It's a fitting allegory, though. This contest has used free T-shirts to solicit open-source contributions in the same way that the industry has used high salaries to solicit creative and impactful contributions. Now imagine that you're trying to fill a position, and these pull requests are analogous to candidate interviews. You might start to have some sympathy for people who believe that we need some sort of professional certification for the trade. It's unfortunate considering the democratizing promise of low-cost computing, but how else can you effectively deal with this "market for lemons" caused by large swaths of people acting in blatant bad faith? When seeming is taken for being, being becomes seeming. \ When nothing is taken for something, something becomes nothing.

addicted 6y ago
I’d argue getting a shirt for some PRs is better than the status quo, where you get nothing for a PR. Which just goes to show how bad the status quo is.
- robocat 6y ago
  “But we obtain the puzzling result that, when rewarded, volunteers work less. These findings are in line with a large literature in social psychology emphasizing that external rewards can undermine the intrinsic motivation for an activity.” Be very careful assuming that a payment motivates open source developers. If you offered to help me do something for an hour for whatever internal motivation you might have, and afterwards I offer you $5 for your time, you would likely be demotivated.
  - dec0dedab0de 6y ago
    If you offered to help me do something for an hour for whatever internal motivation you might have, and afterwards I offer you $5 for your time, you would likely be demotivated. On the other hand if you offered to buy them a beer or a coffee it would probably be very motivating. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe cash just feels lazy and impersonal, so the amount being offered has to be big enough to counter that feeling.
    - NhanH 6y ago
      It's the implicit conversation with the beer-buyer that matters. You are offering your time (which is atleast valuable to you) along with the beer. If you just buy a beer and left instantly, it's gonna be worse than $5
      - dec0dedab0de 6y ago
        It's the implicit conversation with the beer-buyer that matters. That is certainly a plus, but I don't think that's all of it. If I was working on something for a friend, that they had no idea how to help with. Then at some point they dropped off a snack or drink as a thank you, I would be happy about that. If they offered me a $100 bill I would be offended because they're not my boss, and my time is worth more than that. I want to say that a small token of appreciation feels better than having my value quantified to an insulting amount. However, it may be even more basic than that. Food is a powerful reward, there is a reason it is used to train animals. It also could be that introducing money makes something feel like an obligation.
    - pythonaut_16 6y ago
      Offering $5 dollars feels like it's ascribing a low value to the time/effort to help. Offering a coffee or beer feels like a better gesture/token of appreciation. It's not about the value then but about the gesture. For anyone who is working, people are "giving" them $5 all the time. But they probably don't have people buying them coffee/beer/lunch all the time.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    I actually would be very motivated. From the perspective of a contributor the worst thing that can happen is that their patch gets rejected or ignored. If you get paid for something it means someone actually wants your contribution. It's less likely to be ignored or rejected outright.
  - _visgean 6y ago
    http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.511.2983 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.511.... here is the work that you cited if i am not wrong.
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    That quote might be misleading: "Volunteer work is an increasingly large, yet ill-understood sector of the economy. We show that monetary rewards undermine the intrinsic motivation of volunteers." -- https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/007.html https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/007.html The earlier sentence make it clear they are talking about monetary rewards specifically, not any kind of reward. A t-shirt might notionally have a $ value, but it is not a monetary reward. Plus, the nature of a branded t-shirt has an obvious team-participation / prestige value. If rewards demotivate people, we should also avoid positive recognition, or praise, which is a form of reward; of course this is unintuitive, so I assume monetary rewards are a special case.
    - robocat 6y ago
      It is tricky. We all hear the stories of the person who saves a company a million dollars, and then gets giving a coffee cup (or an attaboy) for recognition. It gets even trickier when the giver and the receiver have wildly different incomes. Generally I find money to be a terrible proxy for what I actually value, but other options are worse proxies!
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  That's missing the point a bit. Good PRs are valuable, but require lots of work. Spam is not valuable, but it also does not require basically any work. Hacktoberfest equally rewards both good PRs and spam equally. With those incentives, what are people logically going to produce?
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    On the other hand, what kind of people are going to logically participate in an event where the reward is a Hacktober branded T-shirt? What are their likely motivations?
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      > what kind of people are going to logically participate in an event where the reward is a Hacktober branded T-shirt? Well, the answer is clearly "a lot of people," unless you can think of an alternate explanation for the increase is spam during Hacktober. Why they want a damn T-Shirt so much is a totally valid question, though. I don't understand that either.
- pmontra 6y ago
  I submitted very few PRs to open source projects. I usually submit bug reports. In both cases I get that what I care about gets into the project. It's enough for me.
- account42 6y ago
  > where you get nothing for a PR You already got payment up front: software that the author(s) have made available to you for free. You get payment by the author spending time to review your changes. You also get payment afterward: free maintenance for your pet feature. (Not guaranteed of course but generally the case.)
cxr 6y ago
> Sometimes it feels like software development has devolved into a sea of posturing and marketing oneself. I've been saying it for a long time, but the reason that this and other problems (like high developer burnout) seem like especially bad problems that the world of "software development" is facing is primarily because they're especially bad in the GitHub culture (and as a consequence of that culture), and the developers who are experiencing the worst of it are part of that community. Ditch the 'Hub, its userbase, and what is considered "best practice" there, and then many of these problems get dialed back a lot. Much like follower counts on other social media sites, GitHub's contribution graph and profile timeline should have never been public. They should have been neat features of your personal dashboard that you alone are able to see when you're signed in—providing some form of encouragement à la the Seinfeld hack and to help you manage your work—but not for others' eyes. The gamification of "social" leads to degenerative behavioral patterns.
- nsonha 6y ago
  The effect of those things on github are minuscule comparing to that of medium and twitter. I never even looked at anyone else's github profile. Most of the time it's medium and twitter that take me to their projects and I only evaluate the project with the context of who they are on twitter or what they've written on medium.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    I've seen quite a few people market themselves by saying how many stars they have on github, and some even started putting something like "If you find this useful, please star it" in their documentation. It's not quite "like, share & subscribe" yet, but it's on the way. Any public metric will be optimized for, I guess.
    - jmercouris 6y ago
      Starring a project increases visibility because anyone who follows the person who started it will see it too. It is a question of marketing.
ShorsHammer 6y ago
> devolved into a sea of posturing and marketing oneself Don't think it's devolved at all this has been the norm from the 80's onwards (perhaps earlier). Look at how fractured open source is today and the sort of egos that come with it everywhere you look. While the points made in this article are valid, it's great that someone is incentivising people to interact with various projects rather than do their own thing rather than climb blindly up the same treacherous mountains others have done long ago. Hey, also why not rewrite it in rust :) Being a contrarian is easy, fixing these well acknowledged problems is hard.
hitekker 6y ago
> When seeming is taken for being, being becomes seeming This quote can be applied to organizations on the wane.
qu4ku 6y ago
My pet theory is that 'marketing oneself' trend is a sign of oversaturation (and forthcoming commoditisation). This happen a few years back in UI design when designers started to put more work into presentation of projects than projects themselves.

addicted 6y ago

I’d argue getting a shirt for some PRs is better than the status quo, where you get nothing for a PR. Which just goes to show how bad the status quo is.

robocat 6y ago
“But we obtain the puzzling result that, when rewarded, volunteers work less. These findings are in line with a large literature in social psychology emphasizing that external rewards can undermine the intrinsic motivation for an activity.” Be very careful assuming that a payment motivates open source developers. If you offered to help me do something for an hour for whatever internal motivation you might have, and afterwards I offer you $5 for your time, you would likely be demotivated.
- dec0dedab0de 6y ago
  If you offered to help me do something for an hour for whatever internal motivation you might have, and afterwards I offer you $5 for your time, you would likely be demotivated. On the other hand if you offered to buy them a beer or a coffee it would probably be very motivating. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe cash just feels lazy and impersonal, so the amount being offered has to be big enough to counter that feeling.
  - NhanH 6y ago
    It's the implicit conversation with the beer-buyer that matters. You are offering your time (which is atleast valuable to you) along with the beer. If you just buy a beer and left instantly, it's gonna be worse than $5
    - dec0dedab0de 6y ago
      It's the implicit conversation with the beer-buyer that matters. That is certainly a plus, but I don't think that's all of it. If I was working on something for a friend, that they had no idea how to help with. Then at some point they dropped off a snack or drink as a thank you, I would be happy about that. If they offered me a $100 bill I would be offended because they're not my boss, and my time is worth more than that. I want to say that a small token of appreciation feels better than having my value quantified to an insulting amount. However, it may be even more basic than that. Food is a powerful reward, there is a reason it is used to train animals. It also could be that introducing money makes something feel like an obligation.
  - pythonaut_16 6y ago
    Offering $5 dollars feels like it's ascribing a low value to the time/effort to help. Offering a coffee or beer feels like a better gesture/token of appreciation. It's not about the value then but about the gesture. For anyone who is working, people are "giving" them $5 all the time. But they probably don't have people buying them coffee/beer/lunch all the time.
- imtringued 6y ago
  I actually would be very motivated. From the perspective of a contributor the worst thing that can happen is that their patch gets rejected or ignored. If you get paid for something it means someone actually wants your contribution. It's less likely to be ignored or rejected outright.
- _visgean 6y ago
  http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.511.2983 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.511.... here is the work that you cited if i am not wrong.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  That quote might be misleading: "Volunteer work is an increasingly large, yet ill-understood sector of the economy. We show that monetary rewards undermine the intrinsic motivation of volunteers." -- https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/007.html https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/007.html The earlier sentence make it clear they are talking about monetary rewards specifically, not any kind of reward. A t-shirt might notionally have a $ value, but it is not a monetary reward. Plus, the nature of a branded t-shirt has an obvious team-participation / prestige value. If rewards demotivate people, we should also avoid positive recognition, or praise, which is a form of reward; of course this is unintuitive, so I assume monetary rewards are a special case.
  - robocat 6y ago
    It is tricky. We all hear the stories of the person who saves a company a million dollars, and then gets giving a coffee cup (or an attaboy) for recognition. It gets even trickier when the giver and the receiver have wildly different incomes. Generally I find money to be a terrible proxy for what I actually value, but other options are worse proxies!
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
That's missing the point a bit. Good PRs are valuable, but require lots of work. Spam is not valuable, but it also does not require basically any work. Hacktoberfest equally rewards both good PRs and spam equally. With those incentives, what are people logically going to produce?
- Chris2048 6y ago
  On the other hand, what kind of people are going to logically participate in an event where the reward is a Hacktober branded T-shirt? What are their likely motivations?
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    > what kind of people are going to logically participate in an event where the reward is a Hacktober branded T-shirt? Well, the answer is clearly "a lot of people," unless you can think of an alternate explanation for the increase is spam during Hacktober. Why they want a damn T-Shirt so much is a totally valid question, though. I don't understand that either.
pmontra 6y ago
I submitted very few PRs to open source projects. I usually submit bug reports. In both cases I get that what I care about gets into the project. It's enough for me.
account42 6y ago
> where you get nothing for a PR You already got payment up front: software that the author(s) have made available to you for free. You get payment by the author spending time to review your changes. You also get payment afterward: free maintenance for your pet feature. (Not guaranteed of course but generally the case.)

cxr 6y ago

> Sometimes it feels like software development has devolved into a sea of posturing and marketing oneself. I've been saying it for a long time, but the reason that this and other problems (like high developer burnout) seem like especially bad problems that the world of "software development" is facing is primarily because they're especially bad in the GitHub culture (and as a consequence of that culture), and the developers who are experiencing the worst of it are part of that community. Ditch the 'Hub, its userbase, and what is considered "best practice" there, and then many of these problems get dialed back a lot. Much like follower counts on other social media sites, GitHub's contribution graph and profile timeline should have never been public. They should have been neat features of your personal dashboard that you alone are able to see when you're signed in—providing some form of encouragement à la the Seinfeld hack and to help you manage your work—but not for others' eyes. The gamification of "social" leads to degenerative behavioral patterns.

nsonha 6y ago
The effect of those things on github are minuscule comparing to that of medium and twitter. I never even looked at anyone else's github profile. Most of the time it's medium and twitter that take me to their projects and I only evaluate the project with the context of who they are on twitter or what they've written on medium.
- luckylion 6y ago
  I've seen quite a few people market themselves by saying how many stars they have on github, and some even started putting something like "If you find this useful, please star it" in their documentation. It's not quite "like, share & subscribe" yet, but it's on the way. Any public metric will be optimized for, I guess.
  - jmercouris 6y ago
    Starring a project increases visibility because anyone who follows the person who started it will see it too. It is a question of marketing.

ShorsHammer 6y ago

> devolved into a sea of posturing and marketing oneself Don't think it's devolved at all this has been the norm from the 80's onwards (perhaps earlier). Look at how fractured open source is today and the sort of egos that come with it everywhere you look. While the points made in this article are valid, it's great that someone is incentivising people to interact with various projects rather than do their own thing rather than climb blindly up the same treacherous mountains others have done long ago. Hey, also why not rewrite it in rust :) Being a contrarian is easy, fixing these well acknowledged problems is hard.

hitekker 6y ago

> When seeming is taken for being, being becomes seeming This quote can be applied to organizations on the wane.

qu4ku 6y ago

My pet theory is that 'marketing oneself' trend is a sign of oversaturation (and forthcoming commoditisation). This happen a few years back in UI design when designers started to put more work into presentation of projects than projects themselves.