Gergely Orosz Profile picture
Nov 24, 2023 29 tweets 10 min read Read on X
Imagine a tech conference having no CFP, as they reach out to speakers directly. They successfully attract some of the most heavy hitter men speakers in tech, and 3 women speakers.

Now imagine my surprise that 2 of those women are FAKE profiles.

They do not exist.

Nada.
I contacted speakers I know about this.

They had no idea.

One of the fake women profiles is supposedly a core Ethereum contributor, and a staff engineer at Coinbase.

No such contributor, no one heard of her at Coinbase now or before.

Why do this?
Sad to say but going forward if you are invited to speak at a lesser-know conference: do your diligence… if other listed speakers actually exist?!

This is a paid online conference, large number of (paid) attendees, workshops sold out.

What a mess.
Just to be very clear this is about the organisers creating fake profiles.
To spell it out why this conference generated fake women speakers. Because the organizer wants big names and it probably seemed like an easy way to address their diversity concerns.

Incredibly lazy.
Which conference?

Well, where Anna Boyko, Staff engineer at Coinbase and Ethereum core contributor is a speaker.

Her. She doesn’t exist. Except as a listed speaker at a prominent online conference! Image
Or another Java conference by the exact same organizer where Microsoft MVP and WhatsApp senior engineer Alina Prokhoda is a featured speaker.

Would you know there is no such Microsoft MVP and Meta employee.

Speakers listed on these conference had no idea I talked with… Image
This conference doesn’t have a call for papers because they follow the “Hollywood principle” (that sounds made up btw)

But then do AI generated images, fake names and titles for some fake women speakers profiles… and I cannot fathom WHY.

Absolute laziness and dubious ethics. Image
If you bought tickets to DevTernity (“DevTernity”) on 7-8 Dec you’ve been duped with fake speaker Anna Boyle who is still on the website. A made up profile, AI image, no such staff eng at Coinbase.

And some other listed women speakers don’t actually talk

devternity.com
And if you are planning to buy tickets to JDKon 2024 (#1 international conference designed specifically for professional Java developers.) on 22-24 May 2024: save your money because Alina Prokhoda doesn’t exist either.

This conf:

Same organizer.dev.events/conferences/ta…
Anything organized by “Dev events” is by the same organizer who creates these fake women speakers (and has some in the past as well) for some mysterious reason.

All their conferences:



I would avoid like the plague with such dubious ethics.

Why?? dev.events
Image
What do you know - after being called out, the organizer is removing some fake women profiles.

Here’s the archived website. Fake Anna Boyle (staff eng at a Coinbase, core Ethereum contributor) was there for only 10 months, while most tickets were sold.

web.archive.org/web/2023110914…
DevTernity has had fake women speakers listed for years.

Here is fake Anna Boyle’s “colleague” fake Natalie Stadler claimed to be at Coinbase (no such person ever worked there ofc - I checked).

She “spoke” in 2022 there as well.

Just incredible.

web.archive.org/web/2021112802…
Image
And there’s no more conference website.

For now, that is. Image
The website had a public GitHub repo where you could see the full edit history that someone found and pointed to me.

You could see eg how fake Anna was added 10 months ago. Or how after being called out for what it is, the organizer removed fake women speaker profiles.
Image
Image
The organizer responded, claiming he tried so hard to get women speakers but it’s… too hard. For a paid (!) conference w a price of €789 / $870 per person.

Meanwhile others just… invite a variety of people, including so many women. They exist. If you actually care that is.
The conference website is up and fake Anna removed.

But fake Julia is still there. Listed every year as a speaker, never delivered a talk any year (and “dropped out” this year as well) @lizthegrey did some digging.

A fake catfishing profile, it seems.

linkedin.com/posts/efong_ge…
Image
@lizthegrey This is Julia’s Xing profile (basically LinkedIn for Germany). She is/was an architect at Uber Estonia?!

Uber never had no eng office in Estonia. No such person ever worked at Uber.

On LinkedIn, her profile used to have Microsoft in the past as well.

xing.com/profile/Julia_…
Image
@lizthegrey The organizer claims they 1x accidentally added a fake speaker to their conferences. But actually:

2021 & 2022: fake Natalie & Julia
2023: fake Anna, Alina & Julia

All listed as speakers. Never delivered a talk. Not removed from the site till this thread.

Once a mistake, sure.
@lizthegrey Several speakers cancelled, already let the organizer know they won’t present.

I don’t blame them for not wanting to endorse a conference with a history of catfishing with fake women speakers for years.

As fast as the organizer was to remove fake Anna, they are still listed.
@lizthegrey Conference page lists speakers who have cancelled. Several others have asked to be removed.

No one with a sense of integrity will want to be associated with such a conference. One where organisers created fake speakers for 3 years in a row and still deny there was a problem.
@lizthegrey Jetbrains no longer wanting to be associated with DevTernity or JDKonf. Pulled sponsorship and had their logo removed.

Again, show me another conference that has had advertised fake, non-existent speaker profiles for years.

Why would any brand want association with one.
@lizthegrey It’s not just DHH who’s never seen anything like this. None of us have.

A conference organizer inventing and promoting fake, non-existing speakers for years has no business in tech going forward.
@lizthegrey Speakers have been cancelling en masse and asking the organizer to disassociate them from DevTernity and JDKon. They are still on the site so are making it clear in public they have no further association.

Imagine duping such high profile folks. What was this organizer thinking.
@lizthegrey For years, this conference series (DevTernity, JDKon) has been duping speakers who care about diversity and nominate underrepresented speakers for non-diverse lineups.

Obviously on top of duping customers paying ~$800 per ticket for speakers who do not exist.
This thread started as fake speaker accounts at DevTernity and JDKon.

It ends with what is very likely a catfishing Instagram account operated for 5 years: Coding Unicorn. Growing it to 115K Insta followers to promote the conference.

Shameful.

@TimothyMaksim Oh wait you’re an AI generated image. Ok anon.
@AlexeyEccc @simekadam @lizthegrey And sure: some reviews might not be fake. But the only objectively verifiable review is from a fake account!

This goes back to: what can you possibly trust after that?

Perhaps all reviews are real, save for the one with the full name? Maybe. But then, why??
Published a summary, summarizing what I uncovered about the non-existent speakers.

Fun fact: the first fake speaker was added *the same day* as someone complained about the lack of women speakers, here, on Twitter, on 3 Aug 2021!

Coincidence?

blog.pragmaticengineer.com/devternity-fak…
Image

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More from @GergelyOrosz

May 28
Something I hear very little talk about:

How AI coding tools are so much LESS useful when used on existing, large codebases at work (with custom frameworks, conventions, coding style etc)

... compared to doing greenfield work or side projects

So common for me to hear: "yeah I love it on my side projects, but at work it's 'meh'"
I'm getting details talking with devs at the likes of eg Google, Meta, Microsoft: the companies building some of the best AI coding tools out there!

And yet, for their existing codebases, the usefulness is marginal. Mostly for autocomplete (that has a higher miss rate than for greenfield)
And yes, surely there are workarounds. I just don't hear much of these used or successfully used!

Point is almost all success stories I hear are greenfield ones or small projects, or ones started with these tools

Using on larger one a bigger challenge

Read 5 tweets
May 25
This blog is SO good at pointing out what should have been obvious about AI for coding (Copilot and others)

These tools are good for re-creating whatever they’ve been trained on.

They are not what will create the next, better generation of frameworks, libraries, technologies. Image
Full blog - you should *absolutely* read it

I also find these AI tools helpful when it’s doing the routine task I’ve done many times and can do it with eyes closed

But… it’s not helpful when I want to build something GREAT that is elegant, and better than beforedeplet.ing/the-copilot-de…
Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t built software from scratch that is best-in-class

And likely things software is all solved by now

But it’s NOT

Those who invent the next chapter I cannot see doing it relying mostly on AI. Quite the opposite
Read 9 tweets
May 16
I am hearing SO many stories about people realizing coding with AI tools (aka “vibe coding”) is a game changer after “reviving” an old side project or idea on the side and making so much progress

But… while I often hear the excitement on starting: not hearing “finished” often!
Almost like these tools were amazing at making rapid progress at first… but it still takes a ton of effort to finish things and feels like most people go back to leaving side projects unfinished (even if in a more advanced state?)
FWIW guilty as charged

I got a bunch of side projects “revived” and was amazed at how fast it was

Then I just… kind of let them on the side? Turns out the reason I don’t touch them is because… they are just not a focus. Even tho it’s less effort now: still effort!!
Read 4 tweets
May 13
Question from an ex-Uber engineer:

"I got this reachout from recruiting Uber. I responded that I'm happy to discuss why I left (so Uber can learn from it) but not planning to return.

I got ghosted. Why? They asked, after all!"

Here is exactly why (continued): Image
It's b/c you mis-read the email (which is so easy to do!)

It sounds like a "we'd love feedback and improve", right?

WRONG

This is a recruitment email, using Uber alumni as a high conversion channel.

It's from a sourcer: who only has one goal: get ppl in the hiring pipeline! Image
(Btw I got the same email - likely sent out to ex-Uber folks who have left for more than eg a year, in certain regions)

The "Sourcer" role if laser-focused on bringing in candidates to roles currently hiring.

If Uber wanted feedback, it would come from HR

A sourcer will not do a call with someone they know has a 0% chance of entering the hiring pipeline!

Check the signatures of the emails next time and you'll know what the goal of the person sending almost certainly is
Read 5 tweets
May 6
Can we just mention what practically everyone using Cursor and Windsurf uses/pays for as version control again

And who owns that service
In case you missed it: it was Microsoft who voluntarily cannibalized their very very profitable Visual Studio business and released VS Code for free. And made it trivial to fork. VS Code + forks probably account for 80%+ of the global dev market in usage

Why did they do it?
This was clearly on purpose from Microsoft - give up one revenue generating area to keep winning in a much bigger one

Not squeezing all lemons is an underrated and very smart strategy, as @jakozaur puts it

Also why NVIDIA is “losing” in AI models to eg OpenAI, Anthropic etc
Read 4 tweets
May 3
I’m tired of hearing the “AI is killing tech jobs” narrative. Here is data on “top” tech companies and startups hiring.

The last 2 years (since GenAI went mainstream and AI coding tools evolved greatly) we’re seeing more hiring from them. Below the pandemic peak ofc Image
Data source: @Pragmatic_Eng

newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-reality-…

And before you show me the tech jobs going down graph that goes viral every week: know that most sectors see the “decline in jobs” from the pandemic peak: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engin…
And this is not about denying the impact of GenAI for tech jobs. We will see smaller teams do more (already are). More demand for “top” software engineers, and most likely less for entry-level and “average” talent.

We don’t know (yet) if we will see an explosion of smaller teams/companies and if we’ll see a demand surge to take over/maintain “vibe coded” businesses as they start to scale
Read 4 tweets

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