There are plenty of 30+ developers with families in our organization, and all of them have projects, hacks, or ideas of their own. I would argue that this is pa

There are plenty of 30+ developers with families in our organization, and all of them have projects, hacks, or ideas of their own. I would argue that this is part of the culture we have. If someone comes to an interview and can't show any past code at all, that's a worrying sign. On the other hand, we've also hired people that have not much happening with their public github profile. We still ask to see code they might have worked on (job-related). If they can't show that, we try to have them pair with us on something simple. We have hired people in this situation, but I'm sure we've missed others that may have worked out. If a young Carmack came through our interview process, I'm pretty sure our team would recognize his talents when asking him to go through someone else's code.