Lots of good points here. Number 2 is the only one I take issue with. I think there are solid developers (hopefully myself included) that do not have any sort of public portfolio. I think for every dev contributing to open source projects, working on websites, and spending there time on stack overflow, there are five that work 50 hour weeks for large companies in government, automotive, health care, finance, etc. who don't work on on products that are public and can't show code they've written. It's also tough when you work on a team of 50-100 in parallel and only pieces (maybe not even entire features) are solely written by you. As for working on projects outside of work, maybe I just don't possess the proper dose of passion but in my free time I want to spend time with friends, family, and other hobbies - that's why it's free time. But that doesn't mean I don't bring my best during business hours inside the halls of my office. I think this division in mentality is a core difference between Silicon Valley startups and large corporations. Regardless though, I think you're other metrics help to solidify a candiate and are excellent suggestions; I wish we exercised more them.