Have you ever changed jobs, then felt disappointed that your GitHub contributions graph suddenly looked bare?

This is precisely the problem that Vikrant Bhat set out to solve in his recent blog post: Don’t lose your Github contributions when you leave an organization.

The only problem?

That chart actually means nothing.

This is actually pretty apparent when you read the advice in the post (which I won’t repeat here–its just a couple of hacks).

If it’s not obvious enough that these charts are fully arbitrary, check out gitfiti, a project that lets you paint silly pictures in your contributions graph.

Now, that’s not to say that your GitHub profile isn’t important. I strongly encourage every engineer to spend at least a little time improving their GitHub profile to improve your chances at your next job application. But don’t spend your time on a sort of GitHub astro-turfing. Instead, spend your time where it matters: On public content. Not on gaming meaningless statistics.