In some 20ish years of being in the software engineering field across healthcare, legal, finance, real estate or otherwise and startups all the way up to fortune 250s and across 30+ jobs, contracts, etc - not once has anybody given a shit about github links or contributions to a repo. Heck, at some places we've rejected candidates for focusing too much on that because it comes off as tryhard and high-maintenance.
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2026
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Are you US based? If so, can I ask how large the companies were? I wonder how much of the effect was HR vs actual programmers looking at a CV. I have never cared about outside work because it's really none of my business, but I've heard and experienced some issues related to it. A lot of people swear that company X won't even look at an applicant that doesn't have at least Y projects on their GitHub.
The amount of posts in r/blender titled "I made an add-on that..." Then you look inside and it's slop. Works on one specific version of blender and the creator has no intention of figuring out how to update it to keep it working, making it completely unviable to add to my workflow even if they weren't trying to charge money.
Also most of them are like the one I saw literally yesterday "quickly turn an image into a 3D mesh!". They downvote me when I reply "you can already do this with imported images. right click → convert to mesh" and reply to me with crap like "but now you can do it with one click, and the result is better!" when it genuinely isn't.
Slop is fucking everywhere these days.
AI slopcoders: no
Best thing to do is take your project off of GitHub.
There should be a button to ban anyone that submits any changes using AI from your projects.
Slopcoders would never be able to strip the included AI tool identifiers so it would likely be one of the most accurate automated ban tools ever made.
There should be a button to ban anyone that submits any changes using AI from your projects.
I do not at all disagree.
From a technical reason standpoint:
AI/LLMs/ML/Expert System Output, they all require proficiency and understanding by the operating user to actually live up to any potential, debatable or objective.
From a data rights/licensing/sovereignty/FuckTheCorporations Standpoint:
Fuck 'em. Anything that Claude Code/Codex or any other corporate backed proprietary model/inference pipeline produce is sin tainted, and feeds the beast. Ban on principle.
From a social perspective:
The linked article says it all better than I could.
This is all said, as someone who does use open source and privately developed both versions of LLM, ML, and Expert System backed/using/supporting systems.
I've scraped zero places I had no right to, and asked permission in several I had licensing rights to, but morality compelled me to not be a shit head human who doesn't understand the idea of consent regardless.
I've provided zero AI driven PRs to anyone, and even though my ass was fired not even a month ago and thrown into the blender of the current US labor environment, my repos are still private, I haven't tried to sell anyone any bullshit SaaS ideas, and I haven't tried to have a soulless automaton go roam the Internet for me and insert itself anywhere for the clout that may help get me hired.
It is not that hard to not be a shithead with the technologies, even if that's what the techbros are marketing it under, and anyone who can't not be one with them, doesn't deserve to be welcomed into projects they would need to put some heart into understanding before the idea of automating any portion of them should even be considered.
Slopcoders would never be able to strip the included AI tool identifiers so it would likely be one of the most accurate automated ban tools ever made.
This is only true of the sort of caliber of mind who thinks clicking 'pay subscription' on a tool that parrots the stolen knowledge they wish they had with a fraction of its functional spirit because the mind attempting it cannot direct nor supervise what it cannot understand, equates to having said knowledge at all.
This is admittedly the grand majority of those causing the problems described in the article, but is by no means everyone.
That is not a humble brag of any kind, I really wish more people understood the danger of bad actors being the only ones proficient in the use of "AI tools".
They are gleefully camouflaged right now, right under the idiots and the hate.
Many of those PRs aren't clout seeking, they're sabotage, and some of them are sneaking right by without said AI identifiers in a multitude of critical FOSS projects, because of how easy it is to tell bad AI from human authorship and how hard actual enhanced human authorship is to detect.
Cory's reverse centaurs don't all ride for the same side, and this battlefield will need more focus than just stopping Chad from using his credit card to make his LinkedIn and GitHub look good.
Myself, I'd be more-inclined rather than less to take fixes from an LLM for spelling and grammar precisely because I'm reasonably confident that it's easy to, at a glance, evaluate whether-or-not those fixes have, say, subtle security or correctness implications. Like, what I'm concerned about is more "has someone with an understanding of the code and the constraints on it considered how those constraints apply to it; an LLM won't have a lot of relevant real-world knowledge on what needs to be done in this particular project".
Even prior to LLM use, there have been projects that have automatic spellcheck or similar things run as part of the linting process on gettext strings. That's an automated check from a much simpler system.
But setting that aside, it sounds like the fundamental issue is that recruiters are taking into consideration open-source contributions, and it's easy to generate trivial open-source contributions like a spelling fix to get job-seeking credit.
I've personally submitted patches for spelling or grammar fixes over the years, just because when I'm using a piece of software, it stands out, and it's an trivial fix to do; I don't need to come up to speed on the coding conventions of the project or whatever. It does seem undesirable for projects not to take those.
considers
Maybe the answer is that there should be different lists of contributors. Like, one for non-code, one for major contributions, or something like that.
Or...maybe the problem will be resolved via technological mechanisms, if someone produces a system to analyze someone's patches automatically for recruiters or other hiring people, so that there's a less-crude mechanism than "did someone write a patch that got committed to a project at some point".
I'm looking for a job and some has this open source/personal project link you should fill out, like what we do in pur free time is your business. Sometimes it must be a github link too lol.