In my opinion, they are an indicator similar to personal projects. Now if you can do a really good job of vetting their work and it's extensive, the personal pr

In my opinion, they are an indicator similar to personal projects. Now if you can do a really good job of vetting their work and it's extensive, the personal project could be much better. They still had to grind out the work. Actually, some of the BS in academics is not that different from the BS in the corporate world. They're going to have some BS metric, and depending where you work, they just thumb their scales for developers they want to keep (or lose). In my experience, there are many "developers developers", and outside of software, engineering geniuses with poor grades. That said, these developers often seemed to have other issues, and frankly might be wrong for like 80% of gigs. If someone is genuinely talented, but thinks there's zero value in demonstrating that with more abstract, academic pursuits that tells you something about them. Perhaps more of a problem for stuffy corporate jobs.