

Ask HN: Should I hide subculture-specific side-projects from future employers? - sarciszewski

General question: If you started a side project in your spare time as part of your participation in a sub-culture, and it&#x27;s starting to become a good product, should you keep it on the down-low or show it off with pride?
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suprjami
I agree you should keep your fursona to yourself, but I don't understand why
this project is associated with any subculture.

Replace branding with generic placeholders and host it on a GitHub named
something appropriate like "greatforum" instead of something inappropriate
like "yiffchat".

Operate your personal hosted version as a branded deployment of the main open
source project. This has the advantage of teaching you to make software which
and be easily deployed and customized by others. Ideally you should be able to
pull the upstream down without blowing away your personalizations.

It sounds like you've put a lot of work into this, and there's nothing like
actual code to prove you know your stuff, it seems like a waste to stash it
away. If an employer asks what you use it for, just say chatting amongst your
personal friends. You don't need to tell your life story or interests to
anyone else.

~~~
sarciszewski
It's actually a backronym.
[https://github.com/soatok/furbb](https://github.com/soatok/furbb)

This is a good idea, though. :)

~~~
webmaven
Presumably FurBB is deployed somewhere. Definitely keep that URL to yourself.
Feel free to link from that instance to the project, though.

Meanwhile, change the branding on the project. Even the backronym may be too
risky.

Next, use the software to deploy a 2nd site that is more 'vanilla' which
employers won't object to. Perhaps pick a hobby that some of the PHBs at your
company indulge in (golf, fishing, etc.)? Or perhaps (depending on the market
you're going to try and get work in), fixie bikes, pour-over coffee makers,
hot yoga, etc.

Heck, start a side project that does forum-hosting using your software...
You'll learn even more that way, and the instance that was the primary
instigator can just hide among the multitudes...

~~~
sarciszewski
Heh. Okay, I'll consider rebranding it.

~~~
webmaven
This may still be too close to provide plausible deniability, but perhaps
'FurbyBoard' (literally a board about and for Furby enthusiasts, rather than
Furries)

~~~
sarciszewski
Heh well, I'm not concerned with maintaining NSA-paranoid opsec levels around
this project.

------
sarciszewski
The specifics of my project are as follows, in case the specifics help. It's a
forum/discussion platform.

The "Good":

\- Free and open source (AGPL)

\- Will have complete unit test coverage of its base install

\- Verifies GPG signatures of third-party dependencies (e.g. PHPUnit) before
running them

\- Designed to encourage and promote plugin development

\- The entire framework uses parameterized queries to prevent SQLi

\- Uses HTMLPurifier for preventing XSS

\- Has a simple interface for inserting/validating CSRF prevention tokens on
POST requests

\- Uses Markdown instead of BBCode

\- Passwords are derived with bcrypt by default and scrypt if it's available.

\- Will ship with Mod_Security rules and NAXSI whitelists (as well as scripts
to update them when plugins are added)

The "Bad":

\- Branded with/marketed towards the Furry Fandom

~~~
akerl_
I think this question should have been "Ask HN: Should I hide my participation
in furry fandom from future employers". You list a lot of technical points and
features about your project, but it doesn't seem like those have much to do
with the question: you could have written it closed source and in Haskell, and
the question would be the same.

To answer that question, "do you want to work somewhere where you are required
to hide part of your identity?"

~~~
sarciszewski
No, but the next question is, "Does a place that does not impose some degree
of secrecy about one's identity even exist?"

------
RollAHardSix
Keep it on the down-low. It's awesome you can build something like that but
you need to be mindful of office politics and people will judge you my friend.
Sad but true.

I mean we all want the ego validation of check out what I built, but focus on
getting that feedback from customers/free users etc, not from those in your
close personal life. Just my two cents anyway.

~~~
sarciszewski
That's what I figured. Thanks for your input.

