[nostrademons]

You'll probably never get anyone who used to work at Google/Facebook/Apple/Twitter then.

The problem is that IP agreements in the state of California say that the employer is not entitled to work done "on the employee's own time, without using the resources of their employer, and unrelated to the lines of business of their employer". Google claims to be in basically every tech-related business there is. Do something as simple as a mobile app or casual game and you can potentially get in trouble for it because it may compete with a division you've never heard of.

There's a procedure to get around this, but it's fairly slow and bureaucratic, and so many Googlers find it more efficient to do their "for fun" coding as 20% projects. Facebook has a similar system with their hackathons. Apple just works its devs so hard they don't have time for independent coding products.

I think that GitHub profiles are a good way to identify good devs who don't work for the leading tech companies, but once you're in one of them you a.) don't have time for personal programming projects anymore and b.) find that the stuff that your coworkers are doing is more interesting than pretty much anything you could work on as a solo dev.