I was a bit surprised that the article first talks about how bad it is to pass on good candidates that don't interview well on whiteboards and then suggests to pass on candidates that don't have side projects. Are all candidates without side projects not good?

But I think you advocate doing a project with the candidate, which is also very time consuming. Doesn't that also filter out some good candidates who simply don't have the time? I assume you pay them, but still.

After a couple of job interviews in recent times my personal inclination to invest a lot of time has gone down by a huge amount. For my first application I even took the time to contribute to one of their open source projects (as they asked on their job application page). Didn't get a job - how many times am I supposed to invest that much time for a job application?

Is determining technical skill even the biggest problem? I think my GitHub account shows I can code, even if it mostly contains small projects - but vastly more complex than FizzBuzz. I'm not even afraid of whiteboard interviews (if I had a dollar for every time I was asked to implement Quicksort or compute Fibonacci numbers recursively, I'd probably have ten dollars by now).

Yet I don't get hired. So my conclusion is that there really isn't that much of a talent shortage. Not enough to let companies look beyond my age or my lack of passion, anyway (my answer to the trunk vs branch first development question would be "I don't care much", although I could probably blab about presumed pro and contra arguments).

Edit: just looked up Starfighter again. In a way I am excited, as I have recently decided that only online games that have an API really interest me. However, it sounds like it would require a huge time commitment, too. Wouldn't the time be better invested in side projects for GitHub?