The Incident: 25 days ago, my GitHub account (active for years, clean record, paying Copilot subscriber) was suspended without a single email or explanation. My work, including tools supporting research in Antarctica, was instantly turned into 404 pages.
The Reality Check: Despite 25 years of engineering experience and a paid subscription, I’ve been met with total silence. My professional email addresses are now "trapped" in their system, and I cannot move my identity elsewhere.
The Lesson:
- Copilot is a productivity trap: The seconds it saves you are nothing compared to the weeks lost in "support limbo."
- 99% of GitHub is noise: Most solutions are mediocre; don't waste your time building a reputation on a platform that treats you like a row in a database.
- The ROI isn't there: I have spent more time fighting their bots than I ever gained from their services.
The Future: I am moving my work to independent channels. My code is safe in my local archives. GitHub is no longer part of my workflow. If you value your time and autonomy, have a "Plan B".
A note for employers and juniors: GitHub is not a CV
In recent years, I’ve noticed a worrying trend: GitHub profiles being treated as résumés. Commit graphs, public repositories, and stars are increasingly used as hiring filters.
This is a mistake. GitHub activity measures visibility, not competence. It favors those with time for public demos and self-promotion, while penalizing engineers who work on private, long-lived, or regulated systems — often the most critical ones.
For junior developers, this creates a harmful illusion: that constant public output matters more than understanding fundamentals, problem-solving skills, or the ability to reason about systems.
A professional engineer is not defined by a platform. When a single service becomes someone’s professional identity, any suspension — justified or not — turns into career damage without due process.
GitHub can be a useful supplement. It should never be the foundation of someone’s career.
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