I&#x27;m not sure why whether I do work for free and in my spare time is a good gauge of programmer ability or that they&#x27;re a desirable hire.<p>You wouldn&#x27;t judge a mechanical engineer by whether they&#x27;ve built a car in their spare time, or an accountant by whether they spend their spare time doing accounting.<p>Some of us have lives outside of work, and like to spend our spare time away from a computer. I spend 9 hours a day in front of a computer at work, plus probably an hour outside of work doing chores. That&#x27;s plenty for me. In my weekends, I like to actually get outside and do something away from a computer.<p>Also, depending on what you do, there&#x27;s often not a lot that you could do open source. If you&#x27;re an embedded systems developer for instance (like OP&#x27;s wife, who is an EE), there&#x27;s not a whole lot you can put up on Github.