It is also the reason why we have about 695135 copy/paste blog posts on how to train a neural network on MNIST.

Whenever you see a lot of "Hello world!"-esque tech posts on how to do something, you can safely assume that it's 95% about building a online presence / reputation, and 5% about being helpful to the beginners.

I love good tutorials as much as the next person, but this constant CV-building nonsense is getting tiresome.

Playing devil's advocate: one trait that is highly desirable in a hire is the ability to explain a technical topic to others. Maintaining a blog with basic explanations serves a similar purpose to a portfolio, but for teaching rather than for project-building.

This is like telling unattractive people to shower and get a haircut if they want to find a partner. Sure, it only works at the margins, but it's actionable and beats doing nothing.

This is because Tech Recruiters are not Interviewers. You first need to pass the Recruiter filter. Tech recruiters are (and I quote) looking for "honey holes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvpByue1M4E such as GitHub and StackOverflow. There is even a cottage industry of Tools that will Index developers on their public profiles, nowadays.

(I ran into that video while I was searching for "tips on searching for specific source code fragments on GitHub" and this title matched, and it was not what I thought it is :D)

It is both truly helpful, and unfair nonsense at the same time.

It is an advantage for those who can afford to have side projects. Those who have other obligations, can't afford to spend time on unpaid work, or are good at the job, but not passionate about it, are at disadvantage.

Why not hire someone to build out your side projects?

While that's true for people who have a traditional education from a good university, an established network or live in a tech hub or have the ability to travel to one, having an online presence is very helpful as an alternative to real-life networking for people who lack those things.

For someone from a developing country, changing careers or looking for remote work, an online presence can provide them with opportunities they would not otherwise be able to get. Of course, that online presence should actually have something substantial and probably shouldn't take the form of yet another basic tutorial blog post.

Also, there's no reason why a programmer's online presence should be only about side-projects or programming. Running a website related to one of your other hobbies is a perfectly acceptable way to provide a conversation starter (which is all an online presence is doing most of the time, anyway).

It is probably nonsense if the whole point of "establishing an online presence" is to be marketable.

It is not nonsense if you are genuinely interested in participating in those online activities (or happen to enjoy contributing to some open-source projects).

And if you do participate, you will leave an online trail that will help your potential interviewer to get to know you better (what technologies you actually know and how deeply; what your coding style is; how good you are at writing code in general; that sort of thing).

Of course, much of that can be established during an interview. But every additional data point helps to better assess the candidate.

So the point is, it’s not that they should, but it helps if they do.

Because most of the code you write at a previous job is not going to publicly available. So I have no other reference point as to your current skills.

Apart from just the code itself, having side projects is a good sign of valuable, non-technical skills. Such as intellectual curiosity, ability to start/finish things, and if it's a collaborative open source project, can play well / collaborate with others.

Eh, I’ve never really found that candidates I’ve interviewed with an established open source presence are any better than those without. It does not impress me as an interviewer at all anymore.

Agree. All it tells me is that you either worked at someplace that already open sourced something, or you have lots of time and don’t have hobbies outside of programming.

People think that somehow interviewers or hiring managers are going to dig through some random repo and assess it, but frankly there’s no time nor motivation. The most I’ve ever done is click some links, and see if the repo is just 3 files, or if it’s more substantial. There’s just not any time for anything more, and it’s all going to become clear during the interview anyway.

Every bootcamp teaches it’s students to fake a Github. Unless a person’s repos are substantial original work now, it’s a strong negative signal. It tells me this candidate is trying to game the filters. Which they are.