[jvickers]

> because you open yourself up for discrimination lawsuits

Is that because when looking to make a possibly subjective judgement on the performance in a test and especially what a side project shows, it then becomes more difficult to prove that the judgement was not instead made because of some protected characteristic of the candidate?

[dmoy]

That, and a big chunk of it is kids. In the same way you can't decline to hire someone because they're pregnant or may soon become pregnant (or are the father side of that equation) - requiring side projects is a very thin/loose proxy for "doesn't have kids". It's not a big enough problem to really stop people, but a big company's lawyers will stop it internally.