[jsmith45]

This is not necessarally terrible in some scenarios: namely, when the repository caches enties for the duration of the unit of work, and the user in question is used elsewhere in the request (or at least is used elsewhere in the common case).

In that scenario, this can be strictly more efficient than doing a specialized query here, and a more general fetch of the user later, because it becomes just one sql command instead of two.

Obviously though there are ORMs that don't offer such caching, or cases where the value will not be used again elsewhere in the request, and in those cases this is clearly undesirable. It is generally quicker and easier to do this than adding a new custom method to the repository to get exactly the desired data which is why it remains common even in those scenarios.