On the flip side? As somebody who has plenty of open source projects--the set of employers who actually looks at them is within epsilon of zero. I have not once, not once gotten a meaningful question from anything I have posted on Github in any interview or client meeting even after suggesting up-front that it's worth taking a look. And I used to interview on a monthly basis just to keep in practice! No--instead you get dance-like-a-monkey "coding tests" (unpaid, of course) that are nonportable from employer to employer.
Employers don't care. Employers say they care, but it's signaling. If I didn't write code on my own because I like it, it would be a serious negative to do so on the off chance that you run into the black-swan employer who takes the question seriously.
Employers don't care. Employers say they care, but it's signaling. If I didn't write code on my own because I like it, it would be a serious negative to do so on the off chance that you run into the black-swan employer who takes the question seriously.