zlacker

People working in DevRel often aggregate developer oriented content and gain popularity that way, an example would be "swyx" for example. I'm not taking a dump on his work, but you can see the Github influencer effect over there.

>>supriy+(OP)
Never heard of swyx.

Self proclaimed GitHub star. But still only 5000 followers and projects max out at 8000 stars.

I don’t know what I had expected but I think it was bigger numbers than that.

https://github.com/sw-yx

>>wodeno+z1
The "github star" claim links to the source (it's some github program where you can nominate people to be accepted into some promotion campaign). Saying self proclaimed makes him sound pretentious, it's actually awarded by github.

>>supriy+(OP)
I didn't even know Shawn had a popular GitHub, though he has written about the meta-creator ceiling before: https://www.swyx.io/meta-creator-ceiling

>>supriy+(OP)
There are very few people who work like this and are non-toxic.

>>delusi+f2
You can be factual and still sound pretentious and cringey. Like the medical doctors who insist on being called “doctor”, to the point of smuggly “correcting” strangers in a social setting.

I don’t know this user and won’t assume his intentions, but I can see how having “I’m a GitHub star [star emoji]” as the first sentence on the profile is doing him a disservice: it makes it seem like it’s the most impressive thing he’s achieved and diminishes everything else.

>>latexr+16
FWIW a smug doctor usually corrects people that they are a Physician.

>>newmac+I6
Maybe in English, but in my native tongue there’s no word for physician.

Also, I meant in the sense that you call someone “mister McSmug” and they reply almost angrily with “doctor McSmug”.

>>wodeno+z1
swyx is on hn and legit great writer. He's influenced my thinking in many areas.

I've never seen his github account before but I expect that people following him there are doing so because of the content he's putting out. His blog has been on the HN Frontpage many times and has a book about developer career building.

My github account isn't as pimped out as his, but marketing yourself isn't toxic, it's smart.

>>adamgo+jn
Agreed that marketing yourself is not toxic. I follow "swyx" on Twitter and find his insight valuable, and so do a lot of my peers. Btw, looks like his Github profile has not been updated for some time - he's no longer Head of DX at Airbyte and is now an independent consultant. https://www.swyx.io/about

>>latexr+16
fixed. i wrote that when i was still trying to be approachable and cutesy. now i dont need it lol.

>>adamgo+jn
love and appreciate your work as well adam (everyone check out Corecursive https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... )

i honestly dont even view my github readme as "marketing yourself". most pple dont even go to an individual's profile in the first place, but if you do its kinda like a cute little myspace thing where you can let people know you as a human being and be a little quirky. i certainly dont hold myself out as an authority on writing the best software in the world and hey if 40k stars on the react-typescript stuff doesnt count i'm alright with that

>>rozenm+P2
yeah i also am surprised that people use the follow feature for my work even tho i dont run a popular oss project.

well idk what "github influencer" even means but fwiw i am not "people living just from github". ive never taken a dime of github sponsor money. as far as github is concerned i just put my stuff up for free and the github stars program gets me an early look into new features so i can give them feedback. (eg i helped with Hey GitHub before the big launch at GH Universe).

obviously i'll happily ambassador github to anyone who will listen but who isnt already on github here

>>tbragi+LM
appreciate it but also whoa this literally just happened and its freaky how up to date you are. consulting is temporary (check out https://www.trychroma.com/ if you are exploring LangChain/OpenAI apps and need an embeddings database) and i'm working on an ai infra startup idea on the side with a couple cofoudners.

>>swyx+FP
I love the edit in GH. So much.

Thank you for the work you do and for how much you have contributed to people learning over the years. <3

>>swyx+4S
Congrats! I'll be watching :)

>>swyx+FP
To reiterate, I don’t know you and don’t assume your intentions—and thus do not judge them. I’m also not familiar with your work but I have no doubt it’s more relevant than whatever “star award”.

In other words: it makes zero difference to me what you write in your bio though I can see how its previous wording took away from what’s important. I was conveying to the parent comment my understanding of the comment they were replying to.

Apologies for making you feel judged, that was not the point. Quite the contrary: I wanted to underline that by not knowing your intentions it does not make sense to criticise how you choose to present yourself.

>>latexr+G32
yup no hard feelings. felt defensive heheh. i guess as my career has gone on i've accumulated other stuff but early on the github star thing really did feel like a big deal + if i wasnt gonna plug it on my github readme where else