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> I have no way of distinguishing a genuinely talented developer from a bullshitter.

Nonsense. Put him in front of a computer and ask him to write something. Then evaluate him based on that.

I have written hundreds of thousands of lines of code, but only have a few thousand up on Github and quite frankly, most of that is not my best work. Most of the code I write is proprietary.

> Why should I spend half a day or more interviewing a candidate who can present no real evidence that they can actually code, when I can have my pick of people whose Github profiles are overflowing with quality commits?

Pretty simple. Those with overflowing commits on Github either have a very skewed work/life balance or quite simply, have no actual work experience. Open source only pays the bills in very rare circumstances.

> Those with overflowing commits on Github either have a very skewed work/life balance or quite simply, have no actual work experience.

This. I would LOVE to contribute to open source. But I also want a life. I want the life more than I want to contribute. So until I can contribute while I'm on the job, my github account will languish. And that's fine by me.

My last interview asked me about my github account, and I told him just that, that I'd love to contribute, but just don't have the time. I still got the job.

It's not a problem until you make it a problem.

If that CV says they shipped software in the avionics of the F-16, to the USMC, or Renaissance technologies? Do you still assume they're incompetent?

Are you still going with that 21 year old rails dude?

Thing is, CV's exist to let you know if it's worth looking into someone in more detail. If you're looking at generic rails developers, github is the minimum expected.

If you're looking for more senior people, github might not be a reasonable expectation.

Because you are cutting off part of your potential candidate pool and increasing the chance of choosing someone who has no practical experience other than working on OSS projects.

If you can't distinguish the difference between a talented dev and someone who has managed to BS their way into a job I submit that the problem might not be with the developers you are looking at.

"I can assess quality of their code myself"

I'm curious, how many interviewers actually do this? My experience is most interviewers can't even be bothered to read my resume, let alone anything on github. I've been on the other side of the desk and am equally guilty of this. The best result I've had is when I bring printed code to the in person interview. Then they at least scan it while I'm sitting there, though I have no idea if they are actually reading it or if this is their idea of being polite.