We're hoping to be less "hoops" and more "a fun experience which competes with someone's Starcraft/Instagram/Game of Thrones/etc time" that also happens to be really useful the next time you're in the market for a job.

Take a look at the leaderboard for Microcorruption some time. It's public. (SF's are not, as a considered design decision for the moment.) If you do and cannot understand the claim I am making, that's cool, but I feel no particular need to elaborate.

More important in the long term than the names you will recognize are the names you will not.

In my experience, skilled people have no qualms about showing their work. I don't care if it's through a game, research, conference talks, whatever.

I'd just want more proof than "Bob says he does a bang-up job" -- there's so much incest in enterprise, recommendations and upvotes mean nothing.