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coding since the ‘90’s - do not have a github account at all that I ever used for anything. of the top say 10 people I have ever worked with not a single one ha

coding since the ‘90’s - do not have a github account at all that I ever used for anything. of the top say 10 people I have ever worked with not a single one has a github account. there is an entire industry of devs who work on meaningful projects, independently or for an employer who solve amazing problems and do amazing sh*t none of which is public or will ever be public. I have signed more NDAs in my career than I have commits in public repos :)

jddj 2y ago
Dark matter developers https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-unseen-99 https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-un...
noch 2y ago
> I have signed more NDAs in my career than I have commits in public repos :) Someone like you is extremely experienced and skilled, and has a reputation in your industry. You started working before it was normal and trivial to build stuff in public. Such activities were even frowned upon if I recall correctly (a friend got fired merely for emailing a dll to a friend to debug a crash; another was reprimanded for working on his own projects after hours at the office, even though he never intended to ever sell them). That you have a reputation means posting work publicly would be of little to no value to your reputation. All the people who need to know you already do or know someone reputable who does.
rqmedes 2y ago
In the same boat, the problem is you get stuck in a few companies due to the small circles of people who know what you can really do. It really limits your career options. Doesn’t matter if you regularly do in a week what a few hundred engineers cannot do in a year if no one knows it. Your get stuck in a big corp as they will pay you just enough to keep, nothing close to your worth as with no brand your not going to find better anywhere else
- bdangubic 2y ago
  I wrote a relatable to your comment comment on this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42141453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42141453
jchw 2y ago
I suspect we're very different. I'm younger, but not new to programming (started in the early 2000s.) Mentality-wise, I like working on software because I like solving problems, but I only really do a day job to make a living, not to scratch an itch, so I continue to work on software outside of work hours. I basically don't care what happens once my software reaches the Internet. I publish some open source software, but not as a portfolio; just for the sake of anyone who might find it useful. I don't really advertise my projects, certainly don't go out of my way to do so. I basically have GitHub for roughly two reasons: - I use a wide variety of open source software. I like to fix my own problems and report issues. Some projects require GitHub for this. - May as well take advantage of the free storage and compute, since everyone else is. Honestly, my GitHub is probably a pretty bad portfolio. It is not a curation of my best works, and I disabled as much of the "social" features as possible. It's just code that I write, which people may take or leave. Earlier in my career maybe I cared more, but I honestly think it's because I thought you were supposed to care. I have worked with some stellar programmers from many different places, probably more than I really deserved to. I don't know for sure if any of them didn't have GitHub accounts, but some of them definitely did have GitHub accounts, barren as they may have been.

jddj 2y ago

Dark matter developers https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-unseen-99 https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-un...

noch 2y ago

> I have signed more NDAs in my career than I have commits in public repos :) Someone like you is extremely experienced and skilled, and has a reputation in your industry. You started working before it was normal and trivial to build stuff in public. Such activities were even frowned upon if I recall correctly (a friend got fired merely for emailing a dll to a friend to debug a crash; another was reprimanded for working on his own projects after hours at the office, even though he never intended to ever sell them). That you have a reputation means posting work publicly would be of little to no value to your reputation. All the people who need to know you already do or know someone reputable who does.

rqmedes 2y ago

In the same boat, the problem is you get stuck in a few companies due to the small circles of people who know what you can really do. It really limits your career options. Doesn’t matter if you regularly do in a week what a few hundred engineers cannot do in a year if no one knows it. Your get stuck in a big corp as they will pay you just enough to keep, nothing close to your worth as with no brand your not going to find better anywhere else

bdangubic 2y ago
I wrote a relatable to your comment comment on this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42141453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42141453

jchw 2y ago

I suspect we're very different. I'm younger, but not new to programming (started in the early 2000s.) Mentality-wise, I like working on software because I like solving problems, but I only really do a day job to make a living, not to scratch an itch, so I continue to work on software outside of work hours. I basically don't care what happens once my software reaches the Internet. I publish some open source software, but not as a portfolio; just for the sake of anyone who might find it useful. I don't really advertise my projects, certainly don't go out of my way to do so. I basically have GitHub for roughly two reasons: - I use a wide variety of open source software. I like to fix my own problems and report issues. Some projects require GitHub for this. - May as well take advantage of the free storage and compute, since everyone else is. Honestly, my GitHub is probably a pretty bad portfolio. It is not a curation of my best works, and I disabled as much of the "social" features as possible. It's just code that I write, which people may take or leave. Earlier in my career maybe I cared more, but I honestly think it's because I thought you were supposed to care. I have worked with some stellar programmers from many different places, probably more than I really deserved to. I don't know for sure if any of them didn't have GitHub accounts, but some of them definitely did have GitHub accounts, barren as they may have been.