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Ask HN: Should I hide subculture-specific side-projects from future employers?

• sarciszewski 12y ago
  The specifics of my project are as follows, in case the specifics help. It's a forum/discussion platform. The "Good": - Free and open source (AGPL) - Will have complete unit test coverage of its base install - Verifies GPG signatures of third-party dependencies (e.g. PHPUnit) before running them - Designed to encourage and promote plugin development - The entire framework uses parameterized queries to prevent SQLi - Uses HTMLPurifier for preventing XSS - Has a simple interface for inserting/validating CSRF prevention tokens on POST requests - Uses Markdown instead of BBCode - Passwords are derived with bcrypt by default and scrypt if it's available. - Will ship with Mod_Security rules and NAXSI whitelists (as well as scripts to update them when plugins are added) The "Bad": - Branded with/marketed towards the Furry Fandom
  • akerl_ 12y ago
    I think this question should have been "Ask HN: Should I hide my participation in furry fandom from future employers". You list a lot of technical points and features about your project, but it doesn't seem like those have much to do with the question: you could have written it closed source and in Haskell, and the question would be the same. To answer that question, "do you want to work somewhere where you are required to hide part of your identity?"
    • sarciszewski 12y ago
      No, but the next question is, "Does a place that does not impose some degree of secrecy about one's identity even exist?"
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
• RollAHardSix 12y ago
  Keep it on the down-low. It's awesome you can build something like that but you need to be mindful of office politics and people will judge you my friend. Sad but true. I mean we all want the ego validation of check out what I built, but focus on getting that feedback from customers/free users etc, not from those in your close personal life. Just my two cents anyway.
  • sarciszewski 12y ago
    That's what I figured. Thanks for your input.
• suprjami 12y ago
  I agree you should keep your fursona to yourself, but I don't understand why this project is associated with any subculture. Replace branding with generic placeholders and host it on a GitHub named something appropriate like "greatforum" instead of something inappropriate like "yiffchat". Operate your personal hosted version as a branded deployment of the main open source project. This has the advantage of teaching you to make software which and be easily deployed and customized by others. Ideally you should be able to pull the upstream down without blowing away your personalizations. It sounds like you've put a lot of work into this, and there's nothing like actual code to prove you know your stuff, it seems like a waste to stash it away. If an employer asks what you use it for, just say chatting amongst your personal friends. You don't need to tell your life story or interests to anyone else.
  • sarciszewski 12y ago
    It's actually a backronym. https://github.com/soatok/furbb https://github.com/soatok/furbb This is a good idea, though. :)
    • webmaven 12y ago
      Presumably FurBB is deployed somewhere. Definitely keep that URL to yourself. Feel free to link from that instance to the project, though. Meanwhile, change the branding on the project. Even the backronym may be too risky. Next, use the software to deploy a 2nd site that is more 'vanilla' which employers won't object to. Perhaps pick a hobby that some of the PHBs at your company indulge in (golf, fishing, etc.)? Or perhaps (depending on the market you're going to try and get work in), fixie bikes, pour-over coffee makers, hot yoga, etc. Heck, start a side project that does forum-hosting using your software... You'll learn even more that way, and the instance that was the primary instigator can just hide among the multitudes...
      • sarciszewski 12y ago
        Heh. Okay, I'll consider rebranding it.