Github names & avatars

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 13 May 2016 at 22:18:18 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 5/13/2016 1:54 PM, Xinok wrote:
>> I've known a couple people who had to apply for over 200-300 
>> positions before
>> they finally got a job in their field. Life isn't so 
>> convenient that we can pick
>> and choose which job we want. Sometimes, you've gotta take 
>> what you can get.
>
> Ironically, hiding contributions under a pseudonym may make one 
> a less desirable candidate because nobody will know that you're 
> any good.

Not really, you can always put your github profile on your 
resume, ie selectively unveil your pseudonym for certain 
potential employers.

>> But suppose one of these people was a member of the D 
>> community and they get turned
>> down for every job they apply for because the employer 
>> discovered something dumb
>> they posted in this thread:
>>
>> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/gpcyapiqlkpfahrzfubb@forum.dlang.org
>>
>> The internet never forgets so a little anonymity is a good 
>> thing.
>
> Note that this is a professional forum, not a chat room. I have 
> suggested many times that people maintain a professional 
> decorum here, i.e. don't post things that are unacceptable to 
> say at work.
>
> 1. Using a pseudonym here is not license to be a jerk
>
> 2. It's not that hard to adhere to a professional standard of 
> conduct
>
> 3. If you want to vent about politics and religion, reddit is 
> just a click away

For a "professional forum," perhaps this is all true, though the 
term "professional" really is a euphemism for "don't offend 
anyone you're working with," which becomes ridiculous with the 
levels the professional offense-grievers and PC police have taken 
it to now.  It just means, "Stick to the technical topics," 
particularly in this forum, which is mostly feasible, but people 
have other interests too and discussions wander to the connected 
world.

> 4. Consider your name as your professional brand. By posting 
> and githubbing under your name, there's a significant 
> opportunity to enhance your brand, which translates into being 
> able to get better jobs at higher pay. Anonymity is a fine way 
> to have to send out hundreds of resumes to get a job. Being a 
> well-known contributor to a prestigious project is a shortcut 
> to better things.

Not everyone wants to have their name as their professional 
brand, or wants any kind of "brand." I know this is the 
conventional wisdom, but it's not like "well-known contributor to 
a prestigious project" gets you on billboards anyway, :) so there 
is very little upside to such "branding" and a lot of downside.

Using your real name online is an artifact of the real world that 
doesn't work too well: I read a good analogy once that compared 
it to shouting out your real name every time you enter a real 
room, which nobody does.  We're moving to a more anonymous 
virtual world where most everyone will be using nicknames, we're 
just not there yet, largely because the culture at large is just 
not used to it yet.

On Friday, 13 May 2016 at 17:19:01 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Friday, 13 May 2016 at 17:02:20 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> In today's surveillance state, the government already knows 
>> your name and what you look like, so being anonymous on github 
>> is a bit pointless, as if anyone cares that you are interested 
>> in D. I can understand if you're a celebrity or want nobody to 
>> know you're a dog, but that doesn't apply to most of us.
>
> Actually, given the blatant misogyny frequently on display on 
> this forum, about 51% of the world's population - literally 
> most of us - have a perfectly understandable reason to maintain 
> some level of anonymity in this community.

You must be reading some other forum than I am or have some 
strange standards for such an epithet.  If you're referring to 
the recent thread started by the language researcher, all I saw 
was a bunch of people sharing their anecdotal experiences, 
speculating on reasons for the documented gender gap, and 
mentioning statistical evidence for what the underlying reasons 
might be, none of which is "blatant" or any other kind of 
"misogyny."  If you're referring to some other threads, hard to 
believe it's so "frequent" that I've never seen it, though I 
certainly don't skim every thread, as you say you do.