I don't have a GitHub (bitbucket, etc.) account, can't remember the last time I contributed to any open source project, and have very few hobby programs I work on outside of my job.
Yet somehow I'm consistently rated very highly by my peers, to the point where I have significant influence on the technical direction of projects I work on.
The reason I don't have hobby projects or dev social media accounts is this: by the time I get home, I have a spouse and two children who I have a life with outside of programming. I frankly don't have time to work on hobby programming outside of work to the level of sophistication that rises to the sort I'd feel comfortable showing in an interview. And picking some random toy project that does would quickly reveal how little I care about it.
Edit for clarity: that said, I think this level of transparency is fantastic. I have nothing negative to say about it.
Yet somehow I'm consistently rated very highly by my peers, to the point where I have significant influence on the technical direction of projects I work on.
The reason I don't have hobby projects or dev social media accounts is this: by the time I get home, I have a spouse and two children who I have a life with outside of programming. I frankly don't have time to work on hobby programming outside of work to the level of sophistication that rises to the sort I'd feel comfortable showing in an interview. And picking some random toy project that does would quickly reveal how little I care about it.
Edit for clarity: that said, I think this level of transparency is fantastic. I have nothing negative to say about it.