> can just ask for relevant projects or commits on GitHub of a major open source project and that eliminates the 90% of candidates in the pool
Not everyone spends their free time contributing (to major nonetheless) to open source projects. There are a lot of great engineers that have enough work on their desks with their day job and there are also plenty of idiots in open source.
Asking for relevant projects or asking for GitHub profiles to gauge relevant projects yourself is what people were already doing years ago and it wasn't a great hiring strategy. Turns out judging a software engineers skills is extremely hard.
Not everyone spends their free time contributing (to major nonetheless) to open source projects. There are a lot of great engineers that have enough work on their desks with their day job and there are also plenty of idiots in open source.
Asking for relevant projects or asking for GitHub profiles to gauge relevant projects yourself is what people were already doing years ago and it wasn't a great hiring strategy. Turns out judging a software engineers skills is extremely hard.