[kasey_junk]

Sorry just seeing this question. Without getting into a giant rant about software hiring, there are things I think should be and things I think are.

In a should be case you'd have a hiring pipeline that had a good objective work sample proxy for the work you were trying to do and you'd judge blind other than that.

In the real world, I've found what actually happens is network based hiring. I hire the people I already know are good. After that, its mostly a crap shoot but I'd take popular open source contributors over other candidates all things being equal (though by the time you've contributed to a popular open source project you are dramatically past the bar for hiring outside of the "network" tract).