No. The reason is because when I and others investigate some code we like to make small refactorings as we go along. Change a variable name here, redefine a type here, and see what breaks. If you think those changes could ever be pushed upstream you save them in a github repo. That it looks "random" to hiring managers is something I've never thought of.

We are talking about different repos then. The ones I am talking about have no commits or refactoring going on, usually they are even with upstream or some commits behind. I was puzzled why they were forking these repos while a git clone will perfectly do.

Maybe a location thing. I am from India.

Quite often people will fork so they can tinker locally. It's not odd to see forked repos without any changes, it's just someone being curious or wanting to make a contribution but not having time to go through with it.

I'm sure it's not the only reason. Maybe some people fork repos they depend on just in case the original owner decides to take theirs offline, etc.

But if someone lists their Github on a resume, and then the whole account is just full of do-nothing forks and no original work, I'm going to be a little suspicious.