The Interview That Changed My Perspective
Picture this: I'm sitting in a technical interview, feeling pretty confident about my answers ...
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This is a fascinating article. It's a brilliant engineering solution to a problem that is, at its core, 100% cultural.
Your question on ethics is key, but I would reframe it: "Isn't it unethical for a leader or recruiter to use Git timestamps as a proxy for productivity in the first place?"
This is a symptom of a low-trust culture, very similar to the "status report dailies" I discussed in my own article on 'Scrum Zombies'. We're seeing a focus on activity (when you commit) rather than impact (the value you deliver).
As senior engineers and leaders, our real job is two-fold:
The tool is fantastic (and a clever use of Go), but the problem it exposes runs much deeper. Thanks for starting this very necessary conversation.
Came here to say the interviewer was a dickhead but somebody had made it already, thanks 👍
Good point. This often happens when a manager lacks the ability to improve the team and instead tries to use his power to remind people of his/her presence.
Totally agree. It's the manager who, lacking real ways to add value, defaults to "management by presence."
It's the 2024 version of demanding a 100% return-to-office, only to watch us sit at our desks... while on a Teams call with the colleague three meters away.
The goal isn't collaboration; it's "attendance validation" to justify the cost of the office space. 😂
nice read, but seems over kill when you can do this instead
or
or perl if your old skool
POSIX scripts are much easier to make interop between projects..
thanks for your comment, but git push maybe does not alter the commit times
That's a really good point.:)
This reminds me of a small Go project that I did a couple of years ago, that I called
go-push-scheduler. It does exactly what you mentioned: finish the work now, but commit+push later.It made me sleep better (literally).
P.S.: I just noticed your whole article is a shill/ad for your own repository :)
hah, thanks for your comment. Yeah, I don’t deny that I’m shilling/promoting my repository - but mainly I just wanted to share some niche ideas and projects that people don't often see in this field
"It made me sleep better (literally)." me too :)
We go against the perspectives of others, but we find peace in our sleep. Does that mean we’re right or wrong?
definitely nothing wrong with it :D
Interesting, I'm wondering whether it will eat my commits 😜.
It seems like the core concept of this project is commit scheduling, but in the end, you mentioned it is an AI-powered commit message generator. Code editor like VS Code supports auto-generate commit message, so I think it is not a key feature for me😝.
kk thanks. if someone does not use VS Code, maybe this tool will help :D
The interviewer's question seems reasonable to me. They wanted to know why you were working on your personal project during official work time, which is a concern for any company. You are demonstrating unethical moonlighting practices to the developer community by creating a tool to bypass commits time.
I know this is controversial. But what about during work hours? Some companies give employees a 30m break at any time, if I push a commit to a personal project at that time, is that unethical? What if I push a commit during work hours but I'm off that day? Some people even self-assess an individual through their github profile without clarifying or confirming with the individual. It's just a small tool, unethical depending on how you use it.
This is really neat. I'll definitely check it out when I get a chance.
This is such a thoughtful and innovative idea.
I can totally see why some devs would want more control over what their GitHub graph broadcasts about their personal schedule — privacy is no small thing these days.
I’ll admit I feel a bit self-conscious about the fact that I prefer working deep into the small hours and then sleeping until midday — luckily I’m self-employed and nobody’s policing my green squares.
That said, I do have a few practical hesitations from the teamwork-and-tooling perspective.
🧭 The Engineering Workflow Angle
In many collaborative environments, accurate commit timestamps carry semantic weight:
When commit timestamps become intentionally “creative,” we’re essentially introducing synthetic data into a system that downstream tools assume is literal truth.
And the data engineer in me winces just a little at that.
🔧 My Personal Workflow
My own rhythm revolves around committing at the moment a specific task or chunk of work is complete and stable — which almost never aligns neatly with the start or end of a work session.
If commit times get decoupled from the actual moment of completion, I’d have to start tracking:
And honestly, I’m not sure I want to maintain a list of temporal fibs just to avoid a green square at 2 AM.
❓ Genuine Curiosity
All that said, I’m truly curious — for those who use delayed commits regularly:
How do you handle pull requests without the timeline becoming confusing?
How do you keep a multi-commit feature readable for teammates?
Does timestamp flexibility ever cause friction in collaborative repos?
Or does it work smoothly in practice, and I’m simply overthinking it (very possible!)?
What a weird way of promoting your project.
You have a problem with people asking why you only push during work hours, and your solution is to let your project create commits during working hours?
I just shared my tool (just for fun), some time during my working time at the company, during my break time, ... I usually push code, commit something (like the utils components, some ideas, code fix bug of my project, code to test some tools) on my GitHub. That is my routine.
When I was in an interview, some people looked at my GitHub profile and told me I hadn't focus on tasks in my company.
Strange, how they check the commit hour by the green squares?
Just click into any green squares, then the Github will show a list of commits at this time, hover,, and view details
Ooh, now I understand why I didn't see anything. 😅
Private repositories, maybe you should find commits on a public repo
Isn't the answer something like, "I work during work hours and part of that process is pushing code"? Or was it a personal github account?
This is a very weird post, so a potential employer noticed that you work on your own projects while you are supposed to be working for your actual employer and this how cope with it..?
It’s actually just a small side feature of GoCommit with AI, not something I really use often 😅
The post was more about how commit history doesn’t truly reflect how dedicated someone is — time zones, async work, or personal learning can make it look different on GitHub.
great thinking to a problem
Dumb question here: Can I use GoCommit with my company's React/Angular project? Or is it restricted to Go only?
U can install it via your os, don't worry about the language programming
Really cool way to promote your project! Best of luck and good vibes.
Smart tools but if i am interviewer I won't hire who use this tool but maybe i will hiring who can answer with direct answer with honest.