My own experience backs this up: on the hiring side, I always use someone's personal projects as a fun discussion point in interviews (if they don't have any it

My own experience backs this up: on the hiring side, I always use someone's personal projects as a fun discussion point in interviews (if they don't have any it doesn't count against them ... but like simonw says, it may help get an interview). On the being-hired side, I have a fair bit of tech writing and a few personal projects on my own website. I do these because I enjoy coding and learning, not because I want to get hired, but one of them (GoAWK) piqued the interest of Canonical's CTO and got me an interview and then a job.