> And "side projects" tend to show you what the candidate wants you to see: well crafted code that didn't have external requirements or hard deadlines.

That's an interesting observation. Sadly, I feel that my side projects are of lower code quality than my paid work, since they are constrained by whatever scraps of time I have left over after making a living. I sometimes wonder if I'm doing myself a disservice by sharing code on github before it has been polished.

The other side of this is that I, as a candidate, use open source as a litmus test for the employer. If the company contributes heavily to open-source, the culture is more likely to be compatible with me, AND it's legal for me to show my work to future employers. A lot of open-source work is done with corporate backing, so if one doesn't want to contribute outside of work, I'd suggest looking for an employer that will let them work on open-source projects, at least part-time.

Adding this a bit late for it to be an edit, but I'd add that I think it's unfair for employers to have open-source work as a de-facto requirement if they don't contribute to open-source themselves. Open source is also a chance for you to see how the company's existing employees comport themselves, how they work through problems, and what kind of day-to-day problems they're working to solve.

> As a former manager who has hired dozens of programmers, I think that's stupid, because it vastly limits your pool of candidates to people who have time to contribute to open source. I've found that there are lots of very gifted people who have never worked on anything they can share.

This is a fairly common point of view that I've come across when discussing this issue recently.

Personally, I think it's a bit of a fallacy, because you don't actually need a lot of time to contribute to open source. I find it hard to believe that anyone who is serious about their career can't afford as little as one or two evenings a year to establish some kind of online presence. Yet that is all you need to set yourself way above the overwhelming majority of the competition -- especially in .net -- who have absolutely nothing online whatsoever anywhere to substantiate the claims on their CVs or LinkedIn profiles.

The point about "side projects" showing what the candidate wants you to see is true, but you could make the same claim about artists, photographers or architects -- and you simply wouldn't hire one of them who didn't have some kind of portfolio, end of story.

The real reason why we don't expect programmers to have any kind of portfolio or other online footprint is a cultural one more than anything else. It's still so uncommon -- especially in the .net world -- that if you limited your recruitment pool to developers with online portfolios, then you'd have trouble hiring anyone. However, I expect that will no doubt change in the coming years.

(Edit: fixed sentence that didn't quite make sense)

> The real reason why we don't expect programmers to have any kind of portfolio or other online footprint is a cultural one more than anything else.

I'm not sure I agree with that. Two follow up points:

1. I think an online portfolio is a great idea: I've hired a number of designers, too, and their portfolio is the first thing I've looked for.

The difference is a designer portfolio can include their professional work, whereas a programmer is limited to their open source contributions. I wouldn't judge a designer on their personal projects: "Hey, designer, I want to see your work, but only the stuff you've done on weekends and in the evening." It doesn't do them justice, and I'm basing my hiring decision on a subset of the work. In the same way, requiring open source contributions to gain entrance to the interview process is limiting.

2. If the programming culture required an online portfolio, that is essentially requiring programmers to have a second, unpaid, part-time job. I do not think you can generate enough great code in a few days to get noticed.

I do agree that some sort of portfolio would be handy: I just don't think an open source only portfolio is the way to do it.

> I do not think you can generate enough great code in a few days to get noticed.

I'd agree that you can not generate enough great code in a few days to get noticed by the open source community in general. However, you can generate enough great code in a few days to get noticed by a hiring manager who is sifting through a couple of dozen CVs, all of which look pretty much the same as yours, deciding who to call in for an interview. A modest amount of code can also give a hiring manager a first-order indication as to its quality.

What I'm talking about here are developers who have nothing at all whatsoever. That should be a massive red flag. Unfortunately, because so many job candidates have nothing at all out there, it can't be.

Going a bit off-topic here but open source is partly a cultural test. There are great programmers who are 9-5 and there are terrible enthusiasts, but involvement does mean that people are going to be speaking the same language to a large extent - and the biggest overhead in delivery teams is usually communication.

In fairness, there are a lot of great programmers who work on projects they really believe in and spend all of their available free time dedicated to them. Even if they're for the company/enterprise/startup they work for.

Are they by some chance mostly male, under 35 and without families?

Yes, but so are most programmers that do open source work or side projects in their spare time.