I'm not going to judge someone for having other obligations/jobs/hobbies or whatever else, but if I find a candidate with lots of great blog posts and GitHub projects/contributions in the area I'm hiring them for, I'm definitely going to factor that into my hiring decision vs someone who has none of those.
Well then you're likely missing out on good candidates - and those good candidates you're missing out on are likely to be under-represented. Parents, carers etc. - possibly very competent developers, who just have other commitments. I smell affinity bias.
Yes, but that is happening regardless. Everyone is missing out on good candidates.
Some people can't afford to go to a fancy school and don't have big companies come recruit on campus. Some people can't get certification or evening degrees because they have sick parents/kids to take care of. Some people can't do unpaid internships or make open source contributions that look good on their resume because they rely on the income from a job in retail. Some people can't do well in interviews because they have anxiety or other similar conditions.
I'm sure a lot of them are competent developers, but the reality is that there is no good selection process that tells you that with a good degree of confidence, so you have to look for other signals.
I largely agree with you aside from the final point about resigning ourselves to using these really poor signals. Recruitment is tough to get right, but we should keep improving.
Indeed. We should not make it something mandatory or a reason to deduct points from the dev if they don't have those but it would definitely be a good help if they do have it.
