> Some cultures expect people to be engaged with their work, or have their work as a hobby outside of work hours ("do you contribute to open source in your free time?").

Is this actually still a non-negligible factor in tech hiring? I've never had anyone ask me this (and never shared my github), though I believe it existed in the past. But I can't imagine it's accurate to say that this is "expected" in a labor market as absurdly tight as tech is.

I think what's perhaps the case is that you're mistaking opportunity for expectation; for those with little experience and no credential, open source work is an open-to-all foothold to showing your ability. This is one of the _good_ things about tech hiring, that makes us less blindly credentialist: try getting a job in (eg) finance without a college degree by showing off participation in a non-professional project.

That's the model I have of open source's role in tech hiring. Am I missing something?