[stickfigure]

While likelihood is something for debate, it is true that there are plenty of people who have no public code, or no public code worth looking at. Those people have made a grave career mistake.

This really isn't any different from hiring an artist. What would you say to someone who walked in your door and says: "I'm a great painter; look at all these people I have painted for" but can't/won't show you any examples of their work? Hiring this way is basically a random chance that you'll like the work product.

[ionised]

What I meant was, I have personal coding projects but I don't have access to the kind of high-performance hardware and expensive 3rd party software that we use and that I have most of my experience with at work.

So while I have experience writing some fun little Android apps and contributing in a small way to some projects here and there outside of my 9-5 working hours, that code is not going to ever be close to what I am actually capable of or am used to writing.

[MCRed]

The analogy to artists is exactly right-- there's a lot of coders who are jackson pollacks out there who are not getting hired because the people looking at their github are not capable of recognizing what they see.