Thread

I worked hard all year and most of those squares are genuine, honest contributions. But I definitely scummed a few when I was travelling. I was honestly disappointed when I realized how trivial it is. There's no challenge at all! I made a commit on Dec 25th at like 12:01am so I could stay offline on Christmas day. A few months later I was driving through a different timezone and my green square disappeared. Wat do? No problem at all, just backdate your next commit. Got an all-day flight coming up? Just forward date a commit. You can even see the green squares on the site in the future. It's absurd that people make grant and hiring decisions just from looking at green squares. I have seen anecdotal evidence that this is the case. I knew it would be a factor when I began seeking grant funding which is why I targeted that metric. If you make these kinds of decisions and don't dig any deeper than the surface you are doing a disservice to the candidates and orgs involved in the process. It also pushes developers into behaviors that maximize visibility rather than impact. Don't work on a fork! You get no visibility. Don't bother reviewing a PR twice, only the first one gets you a square. Don't bother closing issues, you only get credit for opening them. Total shitcoinery. Github green squares deserve to be utterly rekt.