Agree. Interviews taken into account side projects are biased towards:

- people who have free time to work on side projects (usually young people have more free time than people with families)

- people who don't mind sharing their code with others

- people who work on interesting side projects. If your side project is boring, that will probably bore your interviewers -> no offer

- people who work on side projects on regular basis. If I get to work on one side project every year, well, chances are I may have forgotten the hell I did on that project (depending when the interview takes place). If I work on side projects constantly, I have no trouble picking up a fresh one to talk about