5 ms·

What I don’t get is... why do this for a t-shirt? Am I missing something?

gruez 6y ago
T-shirts are worth significantly more (relatively) in poorer parts of the world. It might be worth 0.5hr of average wage in the us but be worth 5hr of average wage in India.
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  I thought of that, but if you’re wealthy enough to watch YouTube and submit PRs on GitHub, is that really that much of a reward?
  - samatman 6y ago
    I think you have this backward. If you had to work for three months to afford your phone, would you be more likely to spend fifteen minutes to get a free shirt, or less?
  - austhrow743 6y ago
    You can be pretty damn poor and do both of those things.
    - hombre_fatal 6y ago
      My entire youth could be described as having all the time in the world but not a dime to my name.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        This was much of my youth too and I grew up in an upper-middle class family in the Bay Area :/ I think this would apply to most children.
  - higerordermap 6y ago
    * coolness, to claim that you got a T-shirt from big company. * An entry on resume.
  - rtsil 6y ago
    You don't need to be wealthy to get an internet access. You can get it at a school, a public library, a friend's home...
- tylermenezes 6y ago
  Yeah I learned this lesson too. I run a coding education nonprofit and for years we have offered free shirts or stickers to people who bring someone totally new to coding (usually artists or musicians who want to work on a game) to one of our events in certain areas. We tried it with an online event in August and it was immediately flooded with fake signups from people in poorer parts of the world. (Honestly made me sad more than frustrated. But we're not equipped to give out that many shirts.)
- sbmthakur 6y ago
  How's the quality of the t-shirt that one gets after completing the challenge?
duxup 6y ago
Couple minutes, free t-shirt, I'm sure folks say "why not?" At the local sandwich shop folks will stand in line for an hour to get a free crappy sub $5 sandwich... Otherwise some folks in other theads indicated that in some places, specifically india, participating in hacktoberfest and getting PRs was good for resumes and educational recognition.
barrkel 6y ago
Why not? If it takes 3 minutes of effort and you get to say you've been there (a developer) and you got the t-shirt.
MattGaiser 6y ago
A lot of newer developers do it for resume reasons. I know people who have gone around doing spelling fixes to claim they contributed to stuff.
- karlshea 6y ago
  There was a bunch of this on Drupal.org awhile back, you'd get patches in the issue queue where someone just ran phpcs on the whole module.
random_visitor 6y ago
It's not just the t-shirt, the guys goes on to explain how developer "swag" is something you must have, you'll feel more confident and respected if you have a tech related t-shirt. It's really sad that a guy who teaches coding asks people to spam FOSS projects to get that so called "swag".
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

T-shirts are worth significantly more (relatively) in poorer parts of the world. It might be worth 0.5hr of average wage in the us but be worth 5hr of average wage in India.

jdminhbg 6y ago
I thought of that, but if you’re wealthy enough to watch YouTube and submit PRs on GitHub, is that really that much of a reward?
- samatman 6y ago
  I think you have this backward. If you had to work for three months to afford your phone, would you be more likely to spend fifteen minutes to get a free shirt, or less?
- austhrow743 6y ago
  You can be pretty damn poor and do both of those things.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    My entire youth could be described as having all the time in the world but not a dime to my name.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      This was much of my youth too and I grew up in an upper-middle class family in the Bay Area :/ I think this would apply to most children.
- higerordermap 6y ago
  * coolness, to claim that you got a T-shirt from big company. * An entry on resume.
- rtsil 6y ago
  You don't need to be wealthy to get an internet access. You can get it at a school, a public library, a friend's home...
tylermenezes 6y ago
Yeah I learned this lesson too. I run a coding education nonprofit and for years we have offered free shirts or stickers to people who bring someone totally new to coding (usually artists or musicians who want to work on a game) to one of our events in certain areas. We tried it with an online event in August and it was immediately flooded with fake signups from people in poorer parts of the world. (Honestly made me sad more than frustrated. But we're not equipped to give out that many shirts.)
sbmthakur 6y ago
How's the quality of the t-shirt that one gets after completing the challenge?

duxup 6y ago

Couple minutes, free t-shirt, I'm sure folks say "why not?" At the local sandwich shop folks will stand in line for an hour to get a free crappy sub $5 sandwich... Otherwise some folks in other theads indicated that in some places, specifically india, participating in hacktoberfest and getting PRs was good for resumes and educational recognition.

barrkel 6y ago

Why not? If it takes 3 minutes of effort and you get to say you've been there (a developer) and you got the t-shirt.

MattGaiser 6y ago

A lot of newer developers do it for resume reasons. I know people who have gone around doing spelling fixes to claim they contributed to stuff.

karlshea 6y ago
There was a bunch of this on Drupal.org awhile back, you'd get patches in the issue queue where someone just ran phpcs on the whole module.

random_visitor 6y ago

It's not just the t-shirt, the guys goes on to explain how developer "swag" is something you must have, you'll feel more confident and respected if you have a tech related t-shirt. It's really sad that a guy who teaches coding asks people to spam FOSS projects to get that so called "swag".

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]