[dotancohen]

  > Not everything in life is about getting a golden star in your grade book.

No, but being a kernel contributor could affect his job prospects in the future.

One of the prides that I can discuss in job interviews are my contributions to upstream software stacks (mostly PHP frameworks such as Laravel and Magento). I have had a patch rewritten by a maintainer that arguably made the patch worse - that left a very sore feeling for me and I think that it was the very last patch that I sent to that particular project (Wordpress, which I am glad to be rid of).

[yencabulator]

I sure hope nobody's getting a job based on a single patch.

[dotancohen]

A Wordpress patch, no. But an accepted Linux Kernel patch is a prestigious hurdle, albeit minor, and could easily put the OP over other applicants without.