I get that people are reacting to companies that are saying they only consider people with side-project portfolios. Yes, that's terrible. But the pendulum-swing

I get that people are reacting to companies that are saying they only consider people with side-project portfolios. Yes, that's terrible. But the pendulum-swing reaction to say "side project shouldn't matter" is just as bad, maybe even worse. People who talk about "side projects shouldn't be a consideration" don't know what they are asking for. They have either forgotten or never experienced the history of why side projects are considered in the interviewing process today. To ask for side projects to not be a part of the hiring decision process is to ask to set back hiring by at least 15 years. Do you think the tech industry was more equitable 15 years ago? Considering side projects came about when people like me got our turn at being hiring managers. When we were first entering the industry, we got told explicitly that our side projects didn't matter, that the only experience that mattered was professional experience. We could prove we could do the job and we still were being told we would not be considered for the job. We started considering side projects specifically to be more equitable in hiring. I grew up in a rural town. I went to a local, state college. I graduated in the top of my class in Computer Science and I still couldn't get a job in programming out of college. I didn't have a dad at Microsoft to get me a prestigious internship. I didn't have a prestigious school behind my name and our school "only" did Java and the local companies "only" did .NET. I had been programming in .NET for 2 years by that point, but it wasn't going to be considered because it wasn't professional experience. The only job I could get was entry-level QA. You didn't even need a degree to get the job. I had to beg to get commit access to the repo to prove I could fix the bugs that I identified. That was the only way I was able to get into programming back then. I spent 10 years doing web and database development at consulting companies. I hated it. Consulting might be fine for some, but I can't stand it. I tried for years to get out of it, only to be told that my experience in consulting didn't matter, I had never worked in product development and it was supposedly "soooo different" that nobody could take a chance on me. The only way I was able to get out of it was... to start a side project. I built a VR project that got me a small amount of internet fame. Now, 5 years later, with 15 years of professional programming experience, and 20 years of side-project experience, I'm the head of VR at a company. When you say that side projects shouldn't be a consideration, you're not asking for more people to get interviews. You're asking for fewer. The only people who are going to get interviews in that scenario are folks who went to prestigious schools. All the people drawing up barista-cum-coding-bootcamp-grads-who-don't-have-the-time-to-feed-themselves-and-work-side-projects-at-the-same-time archetypes: those people aren't going to get interviews. The only chance they have is to dig deep, build a portfolio, and hope they run into a company that is progressive enough to look past the lack of credentials.