Are you kidding? There&#x27;s tons of things you can do and put on github if you have an embedded systems background. It&#x27;s just as rich a playground as web or mobile apps. (Ed: not to mention you can at least have a web page dedicated to showing off your most interesting school projects even if you can&#x27;t release code.) I do agree though that open work isn&#x27;t necessarily a good filter -- nevertheless fun side project work is a large subculture and it doesn&#x27;t surprise me if companies want to get people from that group.