If your GitHub contribution graph disappeared tomorrow, would that make you a worse developer?
For years, we’ve been trained — consciously or not ...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
This resonates deeply. I've been coding professionally for more than 10 years, and my public GitHub graph tells exactly 0% of the story. The most complex, challenging work I've done - distributed systems, performance optimizations, architectural decisions - all lives in private repos.
The irony? Junior devs often have the greenest graphs because they're building portfolio projects. Senior devs are shipping production code that no one will ever see on GitHub. We've somehow gamified the wrong metric.
This is absolutely true - thank you for this comment. You’re right, and honestly I didn’t even think to call this out explicitly in the post.
I feel exactly the same. Some of the most challenging and meaningful work I’ve done lived entirely in private company repos, especially in startups. And startups are a special case on their own - when you’re already working that much, there’s often just no energy left to write code after hours.
The green squares really miss all of that. Thanks for adding this perspective.
If a recruiter stops their evaluation at your GitHub graph… poor thing, they’ve completely missed the point. Your contributions go far beyond what you push to GitHub — and that’s without even considering the intrinsic value of each commit.
Your articles are interesting and genuinely inspiring. Having read every one of them, it’s clear you bring so much to your audience by sharing your experience, asking the right questions, and even making people laugh — I’m thinking especially of your piece on commit quality via LLMs.
And just take a moment — literally two seconds — to consider this: if someone fixates on a vanity metric like that, it probably says more about their own life than about your work. Maybe they don’t have much else going on — no partner, no kids, not even a dog or cat… not even a goldfish to keep them company!
Thank you so much for the kind words, Pascal — I really appreciate them 😊
And yes, I agree: focusing on a vanity metric like that often says more about the person doing the judging than about the person being judged.
The only worrying part is when it actually does matter in hiring. I was personally asked about my GitHub activity only once, but who knows how common this is in other companies or countries.
What you wrote about “not having much else going on” really struck a chord with me. I remember a situation where a friend was almost angry at another developer for knowing everything about C++, practically having the documentation memorized. It later turned out that this was his entire world — he didn’t really have much of a life outside of it, and programming was his main source of meaning.
So yes, sometimes that’s the story behind what we call “success”. And it’s worth remembering that there’s usually a lot more going on beneath the surface than a graph full of green squares.
You're right — there are companies out there that still judge candidates by how many green boxes light up their GitHub graph. These are usually the places that hunt for mid-level engineers but pay them like interns, expect a level of devotion normally reserved for cult leaders, and offer absolutely nothing in return except… well, burnout with a complimentary hoodie.
If someone doesn’t know their worth, or feels like this is their last shot at staying employed, or desperately needs those green squares to feel alive… they might want to stock up on vitamins, antidepressants, and a therapist who charges by the hour. They’re going to need the full survival kit.
You, on the other hand, don’t need any of that — your work speaks for itself, loud enough that even the green-box worshippers can probably hear it.
Exactly — I couldn’t agree more. And honestly, I don’t think I’d want to work for a company like that anyway. The way a recruitment process looks usually says a lot about the company itself.
I care a lot about having a healthy work environment, especially considering that we spend around eight hours a day there. If green squares are treated as a serious signal, that’s already a pretty telling red flag for me.
Ohh definitely! I know many great senior devs who commits less to nothing at all and yet they still stay up to date, still flying through codes and problems effortlessly.
and speaking of commit graphs, I can assure you despite having heard of them - but I have come nowhere close to trying out one of those auto commits tools 😭
mine are mostly from reviewing code lmao.
Hahaha, I could’ve used your graph as the cover photo then 😄
At work we use Bitbucket, so my GitHub is basically just demos and side experiments.
Maybe it’s time to set up a daily job there after all… purely for aesthetic reasons, of course 😅
Love this take! A lot of us don’t even push most of our code to GitHub anymore, especially if we work on GitLab (or private company repos). That means your “contribution graph” can look dead while you’re actually shipping real production work every day.
And honestly, most of what ends up on GitHub is side projects, experiments, or unpaid/exploratory work (sometimes open source too), which doesn’t represent the work that actually matters.
I used to obsess over GitHub stats early in my career, but once you start doing real work, you realize how much time goes into planning, reviews, debugging, testing, meetings… not just pushing commits daily.
Thanks for this comment - yes, exactly! I have the same impression: at work, the people who commit the most are usually juniors or mids, because they’re the ones primarily responsible for shipping code. Seniors often spend much more time coordinating, reviewing, planning, and unblocking others. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I’ve never really been obsessed with the contribution graph myself, but I’ll admit that when someone had a very green one, it did look impressive to me at first. After hearing a few stories like the ones I mentioned in the article, though, I’ve completely stopped caring about it 😄
This is such a grounded take, and honestly a necessary one.
The green-square obsession always felt like a leaky proxy pretending to be a signal. Anyone who’s worked on real systems knows that the hardest parts of the job rarely correlate with daily commits — they correlate with thinking, unblocking, designing, and carrying context that never makes it into a public repo. Distributed systems don’t get safer because someone committed every day; they get safer because someone slowed things down and made the right call.
I also appreciated how you called out private repos and lifecycle churn. Whole years of meaningful work can vanish from a graph overnight, even though the experience compounds. I’ve seen the same thing in system-level work: the most valuable contributions are often architectural constraints, invariants, and decisions that prevent bugs from existing at all — which, conveniently, produce fewer commits.
Metrics are tempting because they’re visible. But visibility isn’t value. A contribution graph is at best a trace, never the system. Judging engineers by it feels like evaluating a database by row count instead of correctness.
Really solid piece. It challenges the metric without dismissing contribution itself — that balance is hard to strike, and you nailed it.
Exactly - I completely agree. I often have the impression that the more senior or impactful the role, the less actual coding there is. Seniors frequently spend more time reviewing code than writing it, or doing things like configuration and system-level work.
In my case, I’ll often intentionally delegate tasks to juniors or mids (with proper supervision) if I know they can handle them. And a tech lead? They can easily spend a huge part of their time in calls, coordination, and decision-making - their contribution is the team’s output, not their own commits. A CTO can go weeks without touching code at all 😉
Thank you so much for the comment and the kind words - I really appreciate it.
This was such a refreshing and much-needed read - thank you for putting it into words so clearly.
I appreciate how you challenge the unconscious bias around GitHub contribution graphs and back it up with real, relatable examples. The stories about auto-commits and private repositories highlight how misleading those green squares can be.
I’ll definitely be taking these lessons with me when I migrate to Codeberg, focusing less on metrics and more on meaningful work and intent behind it.
Thank you so much - I’m really glad it resonated with you 😊
That was exactly my intention: to question the bias around those graphs and remind ourselves how little they actually say about meaningful work.
Focusing on intent and real value instead of surface-level metrics sounds like a very healthy approach. I’m happy the article could be useful as you make that shift.
Great, now I want to create a cron-job that displays messages on the graph.
I bet society would be better, if more doctors, lawyers and others would use their professional expertise in their free time, to do something for society. I guess lawyers call it "pro bono"?
The cron-job comment made me laugh - that’s actually a perfect summary of the problem 😄
And I agree that sharing expertise can be incredibly valuable. My point isn’t that people shouldn’t contribute, but that it shouldn’t be an expectation or a metric of someone’s professional worth. Pro bono is great when it’s voluntary - not when it becomes implicit pressure.
Engagement is great, but it’s only part of the story.
Everyone is important to the team, and I especially admire those working behind the scenes whose contributions don't always show up on a graph.
Exactly - that’s so true. And even a regular tech lead can be a good example of this. They often contribute less code simply because they’re coordinating work, sitting in meetings, answering questions, and unblocking others. They still bring a lot of value to the team - it just doesn’t show up on a graph.
You made some good point as usual Sylwia! It is to bad that i can't work for you at that startup for Anti-Money Laundering Technology. It is sound really cool and fun :). You don't know if the person is really busy with work or personal matter throughout the year. Life happens :)