I also can't imagine someone whose in this field that doesn't "love the web". Github is good, but it's not the only way to do it.
But, in general, I think you should consider the other side of the argument. The "problem" is that people without public profiles are competing with people with. And if you're looking at candidates and someone has code online that looks promising after a brief examination, I think it's reasonable to take that into account.
It's not that the other person is lazy or "doesn't love the web".
The real problem here is that there is now yet another terrible signal being used as a measure of acceptability in the vetting and interview process.
"Have some GitHub/GitLab/etc profiles" is in the same category as "give the most personable person in the office promotions and raises".
Sorry, it's not at all in the same category, because it's actual output of work. Being able to look at actual code written by the person you're considering hiring is a really great measure of acceptability.
I think we are all agreeing that it's not reasonable to reject someone due to lack of published code. Latch is trying to point out the reality of the situation:
> The "problem" is that people without public profiles are competing with people with.
If you are considering two candidates, who seem more or less equal on every level, but one has an extensive amount of published good quality code and the other does not, it's less risk to hire the one with code.
It's very hard to judge someone's work quality based on personality. I've hired people who seemed good when talking to them but turned out to be not very great developers. I've also hired people who seemed questionable when talking to them, but had decent code samples and/or published code and also turned out to be good or great developers.
I guess to be fair I've never hired anyone who seemed like they'd make a poor developer, had no code samples to prove otherwise, and did badly on coding tests, so maybe I'm missing some great developers who aren't very personable or good under pressure. Frankly I'm okay with that, because I am absolutely positive most of the people in that category are in fact poor developers.
edit: hell, it's also already a norm that you have to perform a pro-bono coding assignment as part of the interview process. It's ridiculous to expect an extensive spare-time open source effort plus 2-10 hours of free work for an interview.
It's a bit of a misnomer to think that businesses expect (or require, as some put it). In reality, they can only weigh their options. Of course, the more options they have, the more particular they can be. It is not unreasonable to think that they had many suitable candidates, and the one who had the most visible evidence of past work became the preferred choice of the group.
Mentioning to the OP what helped cinched the deal for what candidate did get the job may have just been meant as a point of information. Of course, it's difficult to say what really happened without being an observer to the events that took place.
But to reject a candidate, after he's interviewed by the CEO (so this would presumably be the last interview stage), because he doesn't have "enough" public projects and therefore doesn't "love the web" enough? I think that's stupid.
Edit: misread the parent, we are actually saying the same thing.
Quite recently, I had a conflict on social media, where some other programmer went halfway to doxxing me. Apparently, the worst thing he could imagine saying to someone was that "Your github sucks!" And in his mind that is sufficient for determining someone isn't a worthwhile person.
I remember when SourceForge held the same sway. Now look where it is now. (That said, I do plan on putting some more stuff up there. Though it would be hard to tell, I do have some code that is used commercially, even now.)
