9 ms·
The black market in GitHub stars
- johnea 3y agoI beg to differ on the concept that github became popular because it integrated social media features. I would assert that github became popular because it offered free online git repo hosting. The social media stuff was only long after the fact, and accelerated under M$ ownership. An old adage was: Every s/w evolves until it becomes an email client The modern version is: Every s/w evolves until it becomes facebook... Companies look at what's "popular" and try to make their products into that. This is a significant contributor to s/w failing to perform its "primary" function...
- nine_zeros 3y ago> The modern version is: Every s/w evolves until it becomes facebook... This is primarily due to the SV promotion-driven development culture - where Engineering managers don't do anything but performance reviews while offloading all tech work to tech leads. Then, they force every engineer to magically produce "impact" every 6 months or else... It sounds great because surely "impact" must be getting produced every 6 months right? Except, all that has happened is that engineers and product managers are spending months figuring out crap (such as github social, badges etc.) or sometimes boosting some BS metrics. The other side effect is that the work culture has become toxic because every developer is pitted against each other. The outcome? Enshittification of once beloved services. Because the stewards of said services are trapped in a cycle of perverse incentives.
- icedchai 3y agoThis reminds me a SV company I worked for a couple years ago. The EM was always going on about impact. I was a staff engineer, needed to have organizational-level impact with my project... on and on. Meanwhile, I'd get so many interruptions for code reviews, meetings, etc. it was almost impossible to get any actual work done.
- nine_zeros 3y ago> This reminds me a SV company I worked for a couple years ago. The EM was always going on about impact. I was a staff engineer, needed to have organizational-level impact with my project... on and on. Meanwhile, I'd get so many interruptions for code reviews, meetings, etc. it was almost impossible to get any actual work done. Been there. The obsession with levels and career ladder documents is too much sometimes. It is so hard to be an IC with constant org-wide impact as opposed to being a manager whose impact is automatically wider due to reporting structure.
- icedchai 3y agoI eventually left. I hated the culture. They would literally shame people for not hitting 90% of their sprint goals, meanwhile the interruptions were constant and never ending. Also, despite all the time spent on code reviews, the code base was incredibly difficult to work with. Technical debt did not begin to describe it. 5000 line single file "modules", decade old dependencies nobody dared upgrade, not to mention Python 2.7 (in 2022), multiple ORMs, on and on.
- wilg 3y agoI agree GitHub is not popular because of its minimal and pointless social features. It became popular because Git is good and they nailed the cloud part of source control. However, social was definitely there as part of the original pitch. The tagline was "social coding" for a long time. But also if you're buying GitHub stars or worrying about people's contribution squares, you're probably not doing great work.
- serial_dev 3y ago> I agree GitHub is not popular because of its minimal and pointless social features. I'm not sure I agree. I believe that having a profile for open source work, tracking issues, comments, tagging people in comments, assigning tasks, etc, are all core to GitHub's popularity. Now with issue and comment upvotes, following users, etc, it's even better. A couple of years ago I went through a phase where I was convinced that GitLab is "more open source" so I wanted to push my code to GitLab (and back then they had a significantlybetter CI/CD and Pages/static site hosting offering). In the end, I gave up, because (almost) nobody used GitLab for open source, neither as code maintainers, nor as contributors in the form of reporting issues, and people wanted a Github profile, not a GitLab profile at job applications.
- ipaddr 3y agoA GitLab profile might get you hired over a github profile. A gitlab profile shows you are part of a smaller select group. It could be the difference.
- ogoffart 3y agoThe only reason I have my projects on Github and not on our self-hosted server, is because of the network effect of users having accounts that makes it easier for them to report bugs and contribute.
- nemothekid 3y ago>The social media stuff was only long after the fact, and accelerated under M$ ownership. Github's original 2008 tagline was "social code hosting". I'd argue the social nature is what made github, as well as git, popular.
- gorkish 3y agoGithub became popular because it was SourceForge without all the bullshit.
- hotnfresh 3y agoYep. For those who don’t do much open source collab, it entered our lives as an open source project discovery, evaluation, and distribution system. Now, of course, it’s also where lots of us push our code that we write for pay, but that’s why we started visiting.
- dotnet00 3y agoYep, this was exactly how I got into it at first. Didn't even really notice the social features for years and even now I'm only aware of the social features and don't actually engage with them.
- mnky9800n 3y agoI'm just glad there's no LinkedIn connection
- nologic01 3y agoQuite a few people seem to be using github as a place to put a cv. Social media behaviors are creeping in, slowly but surely. The path from here to "Are you currently hiring?" and "You had so many people looking at your profile, unlock your opportunities with a premium subscription" etc. is not that long. But I dont want to pretent I really know how to enshittify a platform.
- sowbug 3y agoI liked having a web frontend to git, which was often much less cumbersome than figuring out the right diff/log/branch incantations. Also, as a cvs refugee, I felt weird committing to just my local repo and not having another place where "the truth" lived. None of this functionality had anything to do with social features; it simply helped act as my bridge between centralized and distributed source control.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoI just use it, because it works well, and saves me a lot of elbow grease. I've managed local servers with Git and Perforce on them, and it's a pain. I like the PR concept. It takes a service like GH to implement it well. I like GH Issues. JIRA is a nightmare (source: Former JIRA admin). If I were doing high-security stuff, I'd probably run my own server (and charge beaucoup bucks), but I don't, so GH is fine. When we run our own servers, backup is a really big deal, and that can be worse than actually running the server. GH handles all that for me. It also basically acts as an offsite backup. As far as stars, I could give a rat's ass. I'm 61, and a tired old warhorse. Status games are for young turks. I did once come across a profile that had a solid bright green activity log. I suspect the chap had a private repo, with a script that checked the same file in, multiple times per hour. I have also heard of people gaming the activity log to display pictures. Mine's fairly solid, but that's just because I stay busy.
- WalterBright 3y agoWe decided to use github because: 1. lots of other people used it 2. it provided auditable provenance for all contributions to dlang 3. I got tired of people copying my code and then claiming I stole it from them. Github ended all that 4. it provides a great distributed backup 5. nobody complained about it :-/ 6. Dlang is in the D business, not the repository business. Best to not invent our own. 7. it provides everything we need 8. I didn't think git or github was going to go dark on us
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kelsey9876543 3y agoit won't help, when given a github profile most people will go read your actual commits we do not give a darn about stars
- nocommandline 3y agoA significant number of folks (especially non-professional developers) make a choice on which library/project to use based on the number of GitHub stars. For these people, the more number of stars, the more it means the 'package is good/useful'. You can argue it isn't the best/most effective way but it's quite common.
- flutas 3y agoI find myself (as a professional software dev) trying to break that mindset frequently, especially on GitHub, when looking at libraries to use for a task if there's more than 1. What I try to focus on now is more so the commit and release cadence / frequency since in my mind frequent activity means it's more likely to have bugs fixed and security issues handled. Would love to hear other's input on this.
- mlsu 3y agoThe 5-second test: - look at "latest commit." 4 years ago is not good. 2 days ago is good. The 30-second test: - total number of commits. number of active branches. number of PRs. The 5 minute test: - are there PRs? How many open PRs vs how many closed? Is there lively discussion in PRs? - how many different contributors are there? 1 contributor is OK (and often means that the library will be very coherent) but multiple "main" contributors is better. - are there good code examples available? Are there commits that indicate that examples are kept up to date? I have never ever used stars to evaluate anything.
- yumraj 3y agoYou forgot issues. Open vs Closed, and meat in the issues. Will tell if people are actually using something.
- skilled 3y agohttps://archive.ph/esKsO https://archive.ph/esKsO
- siva7 3y agoIs this really a thing or just some local phenomena? I can't remember that the github profile played a role in any hiring committee i've been part of (western europe) as people understood that most of the experienced software developers aren't active open source contributors.
- wizerdrobe 3y agoHere in a flyover type state in the US: It never served a a cheat-code, or a skip-the-line or any such goodness. What it did was serve as a conversation starter, “I see project Y in strange language X. What is the story there?” That’s your cue to sell yourself, your skills, your experience, etc. I could never know, but perhaps having it also got me on the short-list for an interview to begin with? I would say GitHub has featured in at about half of my interviews.
- eschneider 3y agoWhen I get a resume for someone I've been asked to interview, I'll certainly look at any github profiles, and if there's something relevant there, I'll often use their project as a basis for whatever coding exercise we do, such as extend this class to add X functionality. Or use it as a basis for design questions.
- geraldwhen 3y agoA nonstandard interview process like this is illegal in some jurisdictions. It may run afoul of US law too, depending on the outcomes. It is safer and easier to use a one size fits all interview.
- ygjb 3y agoGenuinely curious, which jurisdictions is it actually illegal?
- paulryanrogers 3y ago[flagged]
- __jonas 3y agoHere is a related discussion from half a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35207020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35207020 The linked article there has some interesting data analysis
- teeray 3y agoGoodhart’s Law strikes again
- rcurry 3y agoI’m starting to understand just how broken the hiring process in tech has become.
- Guvante 3y agoIs this a sign of a broken process? I think it is hireing trying to acknowledge success and cheating that success occurring. After all hiring managers have forever fought against lying on Resume/CV/Interview.
- jokethrowaway 3y agoThat's quite delusional, unless you are the creator of brew or something popular and useful, chances are I won't open your github and I'll stop at your resume
- simonw 3y agoMost of the comments here seem to assume buying stars is about making personal profiles more attractive to hiring. I doubt that's the motivation here. I think this is about projects themselves wanting a high star count in order to attract users, customers and investors.
- kleene_op 3y agoIt probably is both, to be honest.
- silenced_trope 3y agoUpvoted. Nobody even clicked through to read the first paragraphs :D My initial read of just the headline was similar. It reminded me of those devs whose YouTube videos or repo READMEs ask (beg?) for you to star their repo. But this is clearly about investors who invest in open source projects and use Github stars as a proxy for community engagement and velocity (whether right or wrong).
- tzhenghao 3y agoThis. I've seen a couple open core startups that are less than a year old with thousands of stars on their repositories, so I decided to have a look at some of these profiles who starred the project. Most of them have weird usernames that resemble spam accounts, almost all of them cannot be pointed to some other profile on a different platform (Twitter, LinkedIn, HN etc.). Another giveaway is the ratio of stars to watchers / forks. I remember one project with thousands of stars but only 10 users "watching" it. They went on to raise a sizable seed round too.
- smacke 3y ago> Another giveaway is the ratio of stars to watchers / forks. I remember one project with thousands of stars but only 10 users "watching" it. They went on to raise a sizable seed round too. Not necessarily indicative of foul play. I have two projects like this (https://github.com/smacke/ffsubsync https://github.com/smacke/ffsubsync and https://github.com/ipyflow/ipyflow https://github.com/ipyflow/ipyflow) and I attribute it to not having great developer documentation.
- nomilk 3y agoOther platforms have ways of making this difficult. For example kaggle doesn't count upvotes from users with too little prior involvement, and stack overflow's new user votes also don't count until that user has enough reputation.
- dang 3y agoRelated. Others? I went down the rabbit hole of buying GitHub Stars, so you won't have to - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36151140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36151140 - June 2023 (178 comments) Tracking the Fake GitHub Star Black Market - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35207020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35207020 - March 2023 (284 comments) Ask HN: Has GitHub stars become a gamed metric? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33225477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33225477 - Oct 2022 (19 comments)
- WalterBright 3y agoI didn't even know Github had stars. I just went and starred the dmd repository!
- matheusmoreira 3y agoIs it really just for hiring? GitHub has Patreon-style sponsorships now, perhaps repository star counts impact that.
- rldjbpin 3y agothis is just another flavour of gaming the system in social media. maybe just a few steps away from github+ or github blue.
- _8j50 3y agoI made a comment here yesterday how you can't use github accounts alone to measure someone's ability for similar reasons(I was arguing how IT/security certs have their place because they're proctored).
- armandojimmie78 3y ago[dead]
- Elena120 3y agoThanks Remotespyhacker for your good works. i have seen lots of recommendations about you on different platforms that's why i gave you a try to help me know if my husband was cheating on me and successfully you got the job done without any trace . Right now my partner is apologizing to me . you helped me get access to his snapchat, whatsapp. hidden photos and even deleted messages. You are the best i have ever met. keep up with the good works. Anyone in such need of your services can reach out to you ( remotespyhacker @gm ail c om ).
- BarbaraStencel 3y ago[dead]