As with most things in life, the problem is one of lazy thinking. It goes something like this: "We want to hire good coders. How do we do that?" "Well, we can

As with most things in life, the problem is one of lazy thinking. It goes something like this: "We want to hire good coders. How do we do that?" "Well, we can ask them to write code during the interview." "Yes, but can't we filter people before they get to the in-person or over-the-phone interview stage?" "Well, we could ask people to submit code portfolios." "Yes, but that means that someone on the team will have to review the code. Isn't there some way we can evaluate their coding ability without spending any time or effort?" "Well, some people have open source contributions that are shared with and evaluated by the community..." "That's it! We'll only interview people with pre-existing open source contributions. Genius!" "...that's not what I...oh, you're not listening anymore..."