[s3nnyy]

My own experience as tech recruiter, who looks at dozens of resumes a day, is that I only take some minutes to review your publicly available code.

If I see commented code, rough violation of coding standards etc., that is bad and I will ask about it.

So if you share side projects, remember that it gives the interviewer "attack surface" to disqualify you. However, good interviewers won't look 20% for your weaknesses and 80% for your strengths.

If you are a regular open source contributor, I might use this information to argue that you are be better than other engineers who don't regularly code in their free time.

[gagabity]

Commented code is a negative now? Damned if you do, damned if you don't in this industry.

[zcoyle]

I think they meant commented-out code.

[s3nnyy]

Yes. And good commit messages are better than (stale) code comments.

[zcoyle]

Of course. But I think we're talking about two different things.

[pacaro]

Be careful, the coding in free time is an interesting signal to be sure, but considering one engineer to be better than another purely on the basis that they code in their free time is anti-diverse

[s3nnyy]

But if I only care about coding capability I might want to hire the one who programs 16 hours a day and not just 8 hours a day. We live in a free market and I can optimize for such parameters, if I want.

Obviously, if I really take this as a main parameter, I will be hiring probably 22 yr old kids with no relationships. I only see an indirect relationship to diversity. Still, good hint to keep that in mind.