from Hacker News

Ask HN: What do you think about the self-promotion titles on GitHub?

by bor100003 on 6/11/20, 3:49 PM with 10 comments

On Github, on every profile people can introduce themselves. Do fancy programmer titles attract any recruiters or people just look stupid? What is the benefit of introducing yourself as "ABC, DEF, XYZ committer" or "Senior Software and Cloud Architect"? I ask specifically for github.

  • by cpach on 6/11/20, 4:39 PM

    Some recruiters look at Github when they either search for candidates or want to assess a candidate. Not all recruiters are crappy. Some of them can give you interesting and lucrative offers. It takes maybe five minutes to write a presentation that clarifies your skills. So I don’t think it’s weird that some Github usera take that opportunity.

  • by zorked on 6/11/20, 4:58 PM

    In general it is fine to put whatever your job title is. If you are a Grand-Master Senior Foobar Engineer, that's fine.

    It's silly to use things like "Thinker, dreamer and entrepreneur".

    Most really great people I know only use something like "System Engineer" or "Software Developer" though. I know this super-experienced guy who has "Programmer". There may be wisdom in removing adjectives.

  • by benatkin on 6/11/20, 5:02 PM

    This felt negative so I flagged it. I think this from HN guidelines is related:

    "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work."

    I get that you probably mean well, and aren't personally attacking anyone, but this post doesn't seem in line with the goals of HN.

  • by nailer on 6/11/20, 4:29 PM

    I don't think they look stupid if you're being honest. State specific accomplishments and skills.

    If you committed to well known project X, I wouldn't particularly list it unless you have a lot of commits on that project.

  • by nicoburns on 6/11/20, 5:09 PM

    Went to check what mine was. I don't even have a job title listed (there didn't seem to be a specific field, just a bio - am I missing something?).

    I imagine most people are looking at your projects, not your intro. There's LinkedIn for that kind of information.