To my mind there are orthogonal issues here. The much bigger one, not the lack of personal projects, is the chip on their shoulder. I've observed a certain amou

To my mind there are orthogonal issues here. The much bigger one, not the lack of personal projects, is the chip on their shoulder. I've observed a certain amount of hubris in the culture of CS departments, at least in the university/college level programs I've been exposed to, that is very off putting. An ideal candidate would approach an area they are unfamiliar with, with curiosity, zeal and humility. If I can find people like that, who cares what they've built or not? I'm confident they will come up to speed and become a top level contributor. It's likely that people who approach tech with the desirable attitude above will have built something personal they can show. But having built a personal project is neither necessary nor sufficient to demonstrate curiosity and zeal for craft. EDIT: To be clear, I think people willing to get the degree and do the work should be paid according to market value. You come across a little bitter that the top performers went off chasing jobs at FANGs... maybe if you paid market rate more of them would stick around.