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Moreover, imagine for just one second that github became the defacto way to interview candidates.

Now every candidate starts hacking their github full of all kinds of code, or even paying people to, or copying work to create a perfectly manicured "facebooked" version of what their work looks like (probably with fake timestamps too).

Suddenly that signal becomes entirely worthless too. I think tech has one the best interviewing processes of all industries.

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> Now every candidate starts hacking their github full of all kinds of code, or even paying people to, or copying work to create a perfectly manicured "facebooked" version of what their work looks like (probably with fake timestamps too).

I'm of the opinion that going over someone's GitHub code (asking about design decisions, language alternatives, testing, algorithm choices) during an interview is probably orders of magnitutde more valuable than having them implement a linked list. But to each their own.

I think you're comparing an idealized version of a GitHub-based interview to a, at best, mediocre version of a whiteboard coding interview.

Not everyone likes to work on code in their free time, though, and code from work is often not public. How do you suggest people like that get jobs then?

Shit 40 hours is already 35% of my waking hours in a week, including weekends. Factor in that a lot of places extend hours by 30-60min to account for lunch ("9-5" my ass) and then commute time for most folks, and tons of people are already giving half their waking hours to their job.

How much more time am I supposed to spend clickety-clacking code into a computer while ruining my health? Zero. Zero should be the answer. Because 40 hours is already a hell of a lot.