[zkitty]

I've been thinking about how we assess software engineering skills, and I'm curious about others' thoughts on using open source contributions as a primary metric.

My hypothesis is that real-world collaboration and communication skills, as demonstrated through open source work, are more indicative of a developer's capabilities than typical coding quizzes. (I tried OtherBranch's sample coding problem mentioned at their post, https://www.otherbranch.com/practice-coding-problem, and got this opinion.) With the rise of AI tools, I believe the ability to effectively use these to enhance one's contributions is becoming increasingly valuable.

For those who hire or work with other developers:

1. How much weight do you give to a candidate's open source contributions?

2. Do you find that strong open source contributors tend to be better collaborators?

3. How do you balance assessing technical skills vs. communication/collaboration abilities?

I'm working on a platform to facilitate this new assessment with personalized LLM support. So I'd love to hear your experiences and thoughts!