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These numbers imply 4.5% of the entire UK population had an active GitHub account in Q3 2023. Seems very high. Unless there are people out there with huge numb

by Oarch 3y ago

These numbers imply 4.5% of the entire UK population had an active GitHub account in Q3 2023. Seems very high. Unless there are people out there with huge numbers of accounts? Can anyone explain this?

yorwba 3y ago
I have one GitHub account for each employer where I had to use it for work, but most of those accounts would be inactive in any given year. I suspect spammers using GitHub to host their spam, as well as inaccurate geolocation e.g. due to VPN usage.
timonoko 3y ago
Github is the bestest and cheapest way to have public but moderately used website. -- There must be some throttling for heavy use. Otherwise it would explode.
tyingq 3y ago
Fake profiles generated for spam or seo purposes is probably some notable percentage. Either accounts made to spam actual repos, or satellite properties like github pages. In the latter case, the accounts might open issues/comments/etc on github repos to create some link profile for seo purposes.
kgeist 3y ago
Doesn't look right for Russia either (3 mln accounts). According to government statistics, Russia has ~820k programmers as of 2023, and from my experience, not all of them have a Github account (I do job interviews).
- roenxi 3y ago
  People who aren't programmers have github accounts.
zebogen 3y ago
Yeah, it's 6% for the US. Definitely questionable. But it doesn't matter as much if you're looking at change over time.
knallfrosch 3y ago
I have one account I'm locked out of (lost the email address and didn't care), a personal one and 2-3 for the various employers in my work history.
simonjgreen 3y ago
A first Google click suggests this checks out https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/software%20engineer.do https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/software%20engineer.do Looks like it spiked as high as 10% of all advertised jobs in 2022. Even though 80%+ of the UK economy is services I still find that impressive!
manmal 3y ago
Even though I didn’t like it, I got an additional GitHub account when I started working for a big corporation.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
walthamstow 3y ago
I have two, one for work and one for personal
codingdave 3y ago
I end up with a new account at every gig I work. I don't even remember them all. Maybe this is bad practice on my part, and I should be shutting them down when a job ends, but I just like the separation of personal vs. work accounts.
- em-bee 3y ago
  i actually think it is good practice. if there is any issue with the gig, they eg try to force you to hand over access to the account, or someone is breaking into your github account then you don't expose all your other work. there may be an issue with github TOS not allowing more than one free account per person though. i don't know if that is still the case, but then i would get a paid account for each paid gig and just add it to the bill.
  - progval 3y ago
    > there may be an issue with github TOS not allowing more than one free account per person though. i don't know if that is still the case it is: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#b-account-terms https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...
  - mysteria 3y ago
    Regardless of whether they allow it or not I know a lot of people with two personal accounts. One "professional" real name account that they list on their resume and another "anonymous" account with a screen name where they work on projects they don't want to be directly attributed to.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      it is worth noting that in a conversation i had with a github employee regarding this issue that they were sympathetic to this situation. to be fair, a work account should really be paid for by the company. so i think github is going to tolerate this because they should really go after the company not individual users in that case.
- 3y ago
valval 3y ago
I'd be very skeptical even if it was inactive accounts as well. For active accounts it has to be a fraction of a percentage.
onetimeuse92304 3y ago
Sounds about right. Remember, for most starting developers (which is almost all developers), a GitHub account is an essential part of their job search, just like having a LinkedIn account. And then at a lot of companies you get a separate GitHub account because companies do not really want to deal with your personal account, they want to manage it to enforce 2fa, to be able to disable it when you leave (as if it mattered), and so on.
- p1esk 3y ago
  for most starting developers (which is almost all developers) ?
soneca 3y ago
I had the same suspicion from Brazil data. It says ~4,5 million accounts. Which is ~2% of Brazil’s population. But you have take into account that ~37% of households in Brazil have no internet access or computer. I would guess that less than 2% of Brazilian population even knows what GitHub is.
denton-scratch 3y ago
I've been a UK developer for 50 years. I've never had a Github account. I doubt I'm unique, nor even unusual. I don't participate in any Github-hosted projects (which usually means open-source). I happen to dislike git. It stands to reason that Github would want to promote the notion that you can't be a real developer unless you're on Github. You can't generalize from "number of Github accounts" to "number of developers".
- leonheld 3y ago
  You also cannot generalize this statement: > I doubt I'm unique, nor even unusual. Yet, you do.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    > Yet, you do. No, I don't. TBH, I don't really know what it would mean to generalize "I doubt I'm unique, nor even unusual". Would that be something like "I doubt anyone's unique, nor even unusual"? I certainly didn't say anything like that.
    - SiempreViernes 3y ago
      the claim that you are not unusual is blatantly you generalising from your own experience! You didn't even bother with the figleaf of "and I know many others like me"...
      - denton-scratch 3y ago
        > is blatantly you generalising from your own experience It's not. "Generalising" means taking an individual observation, and drawing conclusions about all cases (or a large class of cases). I think you're saying that "I'm not unusual" is a canonical example of generalization, i.e. claiming that my case applies to a large class. But I didn't make that claim. It's possible that my observation was wrong - that I am unusual. But that would mean that the majority of my recent colleagues were also unusual, because I don't think more than a tiny fraction of them had Github accounts. Given a specimen case, and absent evidence to the contrary, it's a mistake to suppose that specimen case is unique or unusual. It's much more likely to be common. And if you discover similar cases, then it's definitely not unique, and unlikely to be unusual. But I think this is litigious point-scoring; I say that having a Github account is not a good discriminator for "software developer". If you disagree, please explain why, instead of claiming that I contradicted myself by saying I wasn't generalising in a post that contained a "blatant generalisation". [Note: I'm a brit, trying to transition gracefully from "-ise" to "-ize"; I'm having trouble internali[zs]ing the rules.]

by Oarch 3y ago

yorwba 3y ago

I have one GitHub account for each employer where I had to use it for work, but most of those accounts would be inactive in any given year. I suspect spammers using GitHub to host their spam, as well as inaccurate geolocation e.g. due to VPN usage.

timonoko 3y ago

Github is the bestest and cheapest way to have public but moderately used website. -- There must be some throttling for heavy use. Otherwise it would explode.

tyingq 3y ago

Fake profiles generated for spam or seo purposes is probably some notable percentage. Either accounts made to spam actual repos, or satellite properties like github pages. In the latter case, the accounts might open issues/comments/etc on github repos to create some link profile for seo purposes.

kgeist 3y ago

Doesn't look right for Russia either (3 mln accounts). According to government statistics, Russia has ~820k programmers as of 2023, and from my experience, not all of them have a Github account (I do job interviews).

roenxi 3y ago
People who aren't programmers have github accounts.

zebogen 3y ago

Yeah, it's 6% for the US. Definitely questionable. But it doesn't matter as much if you're looking at change over time.

knallfrosch 3y ago

I have one account I'm locked out of (lost the email address and didn't care), a personal one and 2-3 for the various employers in my work history.

simonjgreen 3y ago

A first Google click suggests this checks out https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/software%20engineer.do https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/software%20engineer.do Looks like it spiked as high as 10% of all advertised jobs in 2022. Even though 80%+ of the UK economy is services I still find that impressive!

manmal 3y ago

Even though I didn’t like it, I got an additional GitHub account when I started working for a big corporation.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

walthamstow 3y ago

I have two, one for work and one for personal

codingdave 3y ago

I end up with a new account at every gig I work. I don't even remember them all. Maybe this is bad practice on my part, and I should be shutting them down when a job ends, but I just like the separation of personal vs. work accounts.

em-bee 3y ago
i actually think it is good practice. if there is any issue with the gig, they eg try to force you to hand over access to the account, or someone is breaking into your github account then you don't expose all your other work. there may be an issue with github TOS not allowing more than one free account per person though. i don't know if that is still the case, but then i would get a paid account for each paid gig and just add it to the bill.
- progval 3y ago
  > there may be an issue with github TOS not allowing more than one free account per person though. i don't know if that is still the case it is: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#b-account-terms https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...
- mysteria 3y ago
  Regardless of whether they allow it or not I know a lot of people with two personal accounts. One "professional" real name account that they list on their resume and another "anonymous" account with a screen name where they work on projects they don't want to be directly attributed to.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    it is worth noting that in a conversation i had with a github employee regarding this issue that they were sympathetic to this situation. to be fair, a work account should really be paid for by the company. so i think github is going to tolerate this because they should really go after the company not individual users in that case.
3y ago

valval 3y ago

I'd be very skeptical even if it was inactive accounts as well. For active accounts it has to be a fraction of a percentage.

onetimeuse92304 3y ago

Sounds about right. Remember, for most starting developers (which is almost all developers), a GitHub account is an essential part of their job search, just like having a LinkedIn account. And then at a lot of companies you get a separate GitHub account because companies do not really want to deal with your personal account, they want to manage it to enforce 2fa, to be able to disable it when you leave (as if it mattered), and so on.

p1esk 3y ago
for most starting developers (which is almost all developers) ?

soneca 3y ago

I had the same suspicion from Brazil data. It says ~4,5 million accounts. Which is ~2% of Brazil’s population. But you have take into account that ~37% of households in Brazil have no internet access or computer. I would guess that less than 2% of Brazilian population even knows what GitHub is.

denton-scratch 3y ago

I've been a UK developer for 50 years. I've never had a Github account. I doubt I'm unique, nor even unusual. I don't participate in any Github-hosted projects (which usually means open-source). I happen to dislike git. It stands to reason that Github would want to promote the notion that you can't be a real developer unless you're on Github. You can't generalize from "number of Github accounts" to "number of developers".

leonheld 3y ago
You also cannot generalize this statement: > I doubt I'm unique, nor even unusual. Yet, you do.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > Yet, you do. No, I don't. TBH, I don't really know what it would mean to generalize "I doubt I'm unique, nor even unusual". Would that be something like "I doubt anyone's unique, nor even unusual"? I certainly didn't say anything like that.
  - SiempreViernes 3y ago
    the claim that you are not unusual is blatantly you generalising from your own experience! You didn't even bother with the figleaf of "and I know many others like me"...
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      > is blatantly you generalising from your own experience It's not. "Generalising" means taking an individual observation, and drawing conclusions about all cases (or a large class of cases). I think you're saying that "I'm not unusual" is a canonical example of generalization, i.e. claiming that my case applies to a large class. But I didn't make that claim. It's possible that my observation was wrong - that I am unusual. But that would mean that the majority of my recent colleagues were also unusual, because I don't think more than a tiny fraction of them had Github accounts. Given a specimen case, and absent evidence to the contrary, it's a mistake to suppose that specimen case is unique or unusual. It's much more likely to be common. And if you discover similar cases, then it's definitely not unique, and unlikely to be unusual. But I think this is litigious point-scoring; I say that having a Github account is not a good discriminator for "software developer". If you disagree, please explain why, instead of claiming that I contradicted myself by saying I wasn't generalising in a post that contained a "blatant generalisation". [Note: I'm a brit, trying to transition gracefully from "-ise" to "-ize"; I'm having trouble internali[zs]ing the rules.]