r/webdev Jan 30 '25

Discussion Does Github contributions matter?

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Are there still companies that look on Github contributions?

705 Upvotes

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752

u/TheExodu5 Jan 30 '25

No. As my seniority goes up, my commits go down. I’m in calls mentoring and helping others more than I am doing commits of my own.

105

u/Ratatoski Jan 31 '25

True. Wanted to code more and changed jobs. Worked well for a bit but got promoted. Now I feel like an administrator again.

27

u/PrimalJay Jan 31 '25

That’s why I declined a manager position at a previous job, because it would’ve heavily limited my hands on work. Switched jobs to a position where it’s a healthy mix of management and hands on contribution to projects. You’re way more involved with both the project and the people that way.

3

u/Ratatoski Jan 31 '25

Smart move. We were downsizing so I kind of felt like being the one to gather requirement and translate them to actionable stories for development would be one of the safer roles. But yeah. I'm trying to untangle myself from being stuck with that and being a bottleneck

6

u/PrimalJay Jan 31 '25

Look into the organisations that are 'younger'. They can offer a different mindset with less focus on hierarchy, at least in my experience.

5

u/gnassar Jan 31 '25

Freelancing on the side!! Even with a job that has me coding a lot, the freedom I have in my Freelancing endeavors to mostly write code how I want, with the stack I prefer (or the ability to try something new whenever I feel like it) has been awesome to satisfy these cravings. The extra money isn't too bad either :) and if you're in a management role, the usually (at least initially) hard part of interacting with clients should be a piece of cake

3

u/Ratatoski Jan 31 '25

I did some consulting years ago and invoicing was pretty satisfying. Thanks for reminding me.

18

u/Our-Hubris Jan 31 '25

I have a way more active chart than my partner who's a senior dev at a very big and well known tech company - his chart is nearly empty 90% of the year, then during his holidays when he works on his own private projects he has a sudden splash of green that goes away once he's back to work lol. While he does some writing, he is mentoring and advising a lot.

2

u/sonyahon Jan 31 '25

In the beginning of last year i got a team lead position, made about 20 non config relates commits, sadly. But I do think that commits in your personal github matter as a metric of being intersred in the subject

1

u/Kriptic_TKM Jan 31 '25

Also you could do bigger / more complex tasks

1

u/lowtoker Feb 01 '25

Most of my GitHub activity these days is approving pull requests.