
Ask HN: Do you use your name or a handle online for development? - tbirrell
Ignoring the situations where you intentionally want to remain anonymous, do you use your name (or some derivative) or a handle for online interaction in the dev communities? I&#x27;m talking about things such as Github, where you want the work to be attributed to you and might show an employer or share among other developers.<p>And regardless of which option you pick, do you think it is unprofessional to use anything other than your name? Or do we get a pass because we have stereotyped the development community differently than the business community?<p>Finally, do you have any thoughts or opinions on the &quot;branding&quot; (I hate that term, ftr) of developers and our community as a whole? I&#x27;d be interested to see what those non-devs who read HN think of all this.
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0942v8653
Both. I'm pseudonymous on this account and have a real account for real name
stuff. Generally if it's hacker news stuff or Pythonista community or another
community where I signed up with this name, I'll contribute with this name. If
it's more productive open source work, I'll use my real name. I try not to
have direct links from this account to the other, but there are small hints
left over, scattered around the web if anyone is curious (please email me if
you find them!).

This name is kind of ridiculous and cumbersome, and is in fact designed to be
a name you recognize but don't remember.

Unprofessional? Maybe. But the point of what I do on this account is to
participate in these communities. Not to make real contributions or serious
projects. Not to make things I would show off in a portfolio or something, and
not to collaborate with my real life friends.

I'm wary of using the same name for every community. I have different names
for different communities, and this helps me keep my "automated-collection
digital footprint" pretty low for each name.

Stereotyping a dev community to use pseudonyms is not a bad thing at all.
Sure, it's not strictly in our career interests, but it's good for peace of
mind. I have some embarrassing comments on here from a year or two ago. That's
ok. I was in high school then. I don't have to worry about it being associated
with my real name by an employer -- if the employer puts in the effort to find
data that connects my two names, then they've put in far too much effort and
it seems they're likely to hire me anyway.

There's something to be said for altruistic contributions that don't
necessarily keep your own career interests in mind.

I too am interested in seeing what the non-dev audience has to say. I think
they may have the same privacy concerns.

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krapp
I use my real name on just about all of my online accounts. I sometimes wish I
hadn't, but that ship has sailed. I keep most of my social media accounts as
locked down as possible, and I've deleted a lot of them.

Github is interesting because, in the case of really popular projects (which I
don't have, so this doesn't apply to me,) you probably want the project name
to be the namespace, rather than the developer name. I personally find it a
bit annoying that this isn't more common, but I understand why. Who wants to
manage a separate account for each respository?

>do you think it is unprofessional to use anything other than your name?

If you intend for people to pay you, it's professional to use your real name,
and not present yourself as a persona. Otherwise, I don't think it matters,
but you shouldn't expect people to take you too seriously if you publish code
under an immature or ridiculous pseudonym.

> do you have any thoughts or opinions on the "branding" (I hate that term,
> ftr) of developers and our community as a whole

We need to be better at selling ourselves, rather than letting ourselves be
sold. Much of the modern branding behind dev culture was created by marketers
as a way of exploiting naive, young talent, in a similar way that the
"American Dream" was created to exploit immigrant and lower-middle class
labor.

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wayn3
I use my real name. My real name is distinct enough that when you search for
it, you find results almost exclusively about the real me.

When you search for my real name, you find almost exclusively accounts on
sites like github, and a couple others, where I get to control entirely what
is being shown. That's pretty good internet real estate and branding. At that
point, it doesn't matter that my name is somewhat rare. If my name was Brad
Pitt, by some sad coincidence, I could never own the internet for that name.
But for mine, I can easily. Makes me appear like a way bigger deal than I am.
And I don't want the first search result for my name to be my facebook. I
don't want to be my facebook. I'd rather be my github. Not exclusively for
professional reasons.

When it comes to professionalism:

We internet people don't get weird looks when we show someone something we've
done under a "nickname", but we also don't get attribution for it. If your
github name is "randominternetguy69", you might show it to your interviewer,
but you won't get it attributed to you. Not because they don't believe its you
- simply because you don't feel confident enough about it to own it. If you
don't have confidence in your own work, why should they.

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bythckr
Couple of weeks back, I was discussing this with some friends.

The one with my real name and known to my employer and all with a link to my
twitter account. Here I am cautious of what I saw and remember I can be help
accountable for this. I learned this from personal experience, where my
manager started questioning me about my interactions online. Also, my employer
did not want to talk tech in online forums as they worry that competition will
be helped. I was even barred from sharing the modifications I made to an open-
source project. Plus a stranger can easily track me.

Then I have an id that only people close to me are aware of.

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Jaruzel
I am me; I've had my online name for 3/4s of my life, so I rarely draw any
distinction, however as I've got older having my real name attached to things
of note, seems more important than it did. I guess it's got something to do
with leaving some sort of legacy.

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I_am_neo
I don't seek employment, so... anonymous

