I don't consider work experience relevant at all unless I can verify the work done or hold a particular recommendation in high esteem. Not getting fired for a length of time, while a skill, is not often what I care most about. Without knowing a company's policies, culture, and tech leads I cannot accurately judge whether someone spent 3 years playing ping pong with the CEO or was responsible for programming a successfully delivered system. In a perfect world, I might try to suss out each candidate's strength and then decide based on the totality of data, but I don't often have that kind of time. I look for public or provided code first, and if it's reasonable, will use that to begin a pointed conversation on our trade.

I was asked about that kind of "programmer universe" stuff during my interview process with my current employer. I said I didn't have a GitHub, never been to a programming conference, didn't participate in the local dev scene, and didn't really program on my free time. I said in my free-time I like being outside, hiking, camping, and fishing...It didn't hurt me because I got the job, of course, I'm working for a utility company and not some flashy SV/NY tech startup...