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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

I think the actual truth is somewhere halfway. Hard to not have any GitHub presence if you use enough open source projects, since you can't even report bugs to many of them without an account.

But if you mostly mean in the sense that they don't have a fancy GitHub profile with a ton of followers... I agree, that does seem to be the case.

LinkedIn on the other hand... I sincerely can't imagine networking on LinkedIn being a fraction as useful as networking... Well, at work. For anyone that has a decent enough resume LinkedIn is basically only useful if you want a gutter trash news feed and to be spammed by dubious job offers 24/7. Could be wrong, but I'm starting to think you should really only stoop to LinkedIn in moments of desperation...

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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 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 :)

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.

> 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.

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

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

Dark matter developers

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

> since you can't even report bugs to many of them without an account.

I joined my current employer a bit over a month ago at this point and legal still hasn't authorized me to open a GitHub account or authorized me to use my personal account to report issues.

> legal still hasn't authorized me to open a GitHub account

Damn. You signed a contract that prevents you from ever publishing your own code? I guess everyone in the comments who are against have something to show in public all have security clearance or something. : ^ )

I signed a contract prohibiting doing anything that I'm compensated to do for work outside of work or using information gleaned from my job without permission of the firm. This is a standard contract clause.

<< I sincerely can't imagine networking on LinkedIn being a fraction as useful as networking.

I have removed my profile some time ago. While I agree with you in general, I have to say that initially LinkedIn was actually not bad and I did get some value out of it. It is a little harder now to not have it, because initial interviews scoff at its absence ( it apparently sends a negative signal to HR people ), but an established network of colleagues can overcome that.

I guess it is a little easier for people already established in their career. I still am kinda debating some sort of replacement for it, but I am honestly starting to wonder if github is just enough to stop HR from complaining.

LinkedIn remains a reasonable substitute for emailing around PDFs of resumes/CVs.

Any usage beyond that, for "networking" or "social sharing" is terrible.

in my experience linkedin is basically useless, outside of allowing HR to validate you exist and have enough connections at companies you used to work at to prove you were there. but even those can be gamed.

Eh, I've found LinkedIn moderately useful as a way to apply for jobs and share my CV. A few application forms have a field for it too.

Still have no idea how anyone can even hope to use the news feed there though. It's just a seemingly random torrent of garbage 24/7, with the odds of you getting any traction being virtually non existent.

As a hiring manager LinkedIn profiles are a huge window into someone's professional side, just like github may be a huge window into their technical side.

As a candidate I think LinkedIn is absolute trash - and toxic with all the ghost jobs and dark patterns. Feels like everyone else has the same opinion, or at the very least it is a common one. But when I have 50 candidates to review for 5 open positions, LinkedIn is going to give me great insight that I cannot really get anywhere else. I keep my profile current in the hopes that I'm not doing it for LinkedIn, but for the person researching me to see if I am a valid candidate for their role.

"Linkedin is trash but I use it as a signal source" is kinda telling on yourself there bud.

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