I've been given the "not looking for a portfolio" one before, but it was explained in more detail to me as - to put work up online opens yourself up to criticism, and given the sexism in our industry, this criticism can more easily become abuse when targeted at women, and therefore there are a not-insignificant group of women who do not publish code on GitHub because of abuse - this issue affects men less, therefore, a 'portfolio' is a biased metric.

I think it's still a useful metric, but would now not take a lack of portfolio as an outright negative, without other factors considered.

I agree that makes more sense than the childcare argument. I'd still wonder though - what are this person's interests in tech? What do they do in pursuing those interests?

I think these are legitimate questions, since one of the best metrics for success in software is the level of interest you hold in it.

>I think these are legitimate questions

They are, and the fact that you even have to defend asking them is a non-trivial indicator of how bat-shit crazy the thinking has gotten on this topic.

I think a better way to put this would be, don't penalize women for not participating in open source. There are a number of societal/cultural factors that preclude or push women out of open source, so have some understanding of that when interviewing women.

It doesn't have to be open source, private repos, private gitlab etc all fine.

One of the societal/cultural factors I'm talking about is the caregiver's burden. Children, the elderly, and the infirmed are typically(at least in the US) cared for by women. This is a significant time suck. I'm just saying you shouldn't penalize a woman for not doing side projects, she may have more important shit to do in her nonworking hours.

And for that matter, you shouldn't penalize anyone for not writing a ton of code in their free time, there are other things in life, and more demands on your time the older you get. And anecdotally, some of the better developers I know write 0 lines of code in their off hours, they are consummate professionals but leave it at work.

So there's no correlation in skill between the people that put hours of their own time into honing their craft, and those that don't?

Maybe, maybe not. I suppose that depends on what and how they choose to practice. And there's nothing wrong with giving positive weight to personal projects. I'm just saying you shouldn't penalize people for spending their personal time on things other than coding.

If two people are equally smart, the one who spends more time practicing will be better. Is it not in the primary interest of the company to hire the more qualified candidate?

Do basketball teams sit around worrying that they ought to not penalize players who don't practice free throws on their personal time?

You're perhaps misreading me. I stated that the lack of side projects shouldn't be held against people. I think it's fine give positive weight to good, relevant side projects.

I would also argue that a person who is more deliberate about their use of fewer hours will do better than someone who is equally smart but practices less deliberately for more hours[1].

I think that imagining two fully equal candidates only differentiated by their volume of personal projects isn't a particularly useful exercise.

[1]http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...

"I think that imagining two fully equal candidates only differentiated by their volume of personal projects isn't a particularly useful exercise."

But that's precisely the point - two candidates will not be equal if one spends 20 hours a week on personal coding projects and the other does other things (however interesting or beneficial for society at large they may be).

At the end of the day the world is not fair. The question is what outcome you (as a business owner) are looking to advance. If your primary goal is to make the best product - you will have to hire the best people. If your goal is to advance women's careers - you will have to optimize for a different set of objectives.