The Impact Github is Having on Your Software Career
&gt; Previously privileged developers will suddenly find their network disrupted.<p>Good god.... I love GitHub and what it allows for but let&#x27;s not paint this as the &quot;commoners&quot; knocking down the walls that protect the &quot;elites&quot; in their ivory castles. Commiting to GitHub does not, on it&#x27;s own, make you a better developer or a better person. In the same way that not committing to GitHub does not, on it&#x27;s own, make you worse developer or a worse person.<p>I&#x27;ve met people who don&#x27;t have single commit to a public GitHub repo that are FAR better developers (and people in some cases) than ones I&#x27;ve know that are deeply ingrained in a public project. In some, not all, cases there are different skillsets required for OS work vs working at a &quot;closed source&quot; company. And while we are on that subject I&#x27;m quite sick of some of the attitudes I see on HN sometimes around &quot;closed source&quot; like it&#x27;s some evil thing. It&#x27;s not, people have to eat, have to pay rent, have to support their families and anyone that thinks you can do easily that while working for a for-profit company are living in a dream world. How many times have we seen posts here about how little money is actually given to OS? Sure I&#x27;d love to be able to only work on OS or work for a company that is open but there are very few success stories in that area. The cognitive dissidence the HN crowd expels when they fawn over the SasS companies or various other SV unicorns (all closed source) here and then derides closed source is astounding.<p>All of this to say the message of &quot;Your GitHub profile will mean everything for your career&quot; is simply bullshit. <i>CAN</i> it give you a leg up? Of course, but experience working for a company and in that kind of setting is much more valuable to the vast majority of companies. Take a look at Linus Torvalds, undoubtedly a genius and a person who has done immense good for the OS community, however his temper&#x2F;attitude are legendary with HN periodically posting links to his smack downs on mailing lists or the like. That said do you think many companies are looking for that kind of an employee? I think not (No disrespect meant to him at all, it works for him and I doubt he is looking for a job at those kind of places anyways).<p>Most of the companies I&#x27;ve worked for or interviewed with have either not cared at all about my GitHub profile or even if they say they do care they don&#x27;t give it more than a passing glance at best. Focus on being good at what you do and if that happens in public on GitHub&#x2F;GitLab&#x2F;etc then all the better but don&#x27;t bend over backwards to make your profile look good at the expense of actually knowing your shit.