[Bartweiss]

This is the issue I see.

Every CodingHorror post and list of hiring tips demands a GitHub profile, with the implication that it had better contain useful, quality code. (And with a bit of a threat that you'd better not put any hacked-together, one-off project in there, even though everyone has some.)

That's good, I see the value of it, and I also understand why interviewers don't want to read it. But new devs have every right to be annoyed when the industry-standard wisdom says that you have to have a thing which is never used.

(The real answer is probably "New devs, get ready for the interview gamut. Experienced devs, call a contact and have a GitHub profile." But somehow that never comes up.)