Why? A lot of people (if not most) treat their non-work GitHub as a place to host random experiments and projects. Unless one plans to publish projects for others to use, no one should be forced to have perfect code for a one off idea if they don't want to.
There are a lot of great engineers with empty or "bad" Github profiles.
When I look at a developer's Github profile I know that:
1. They care enough to have a Github profile
2. I can see their actual interests.
3. I know they're interested in random experiments
4. I can see if and how they treat their projects. Are they dedicated maintainers, or do they just fire off one-shot projects without ever deciding to maintain them?
And a whole lot more. A person who maintains a single shell script project with diligence is worth more to me than a thousand developers with bullshit lisp and haskell repositories.
Yes, there's a bunch of great engineers with empty or bad github profiles out there. But those engineers aren't showing me that they're great engineers. The ones with a single or few well-maintained projects do.
I highly doubt there's any reliable signal in any of these points. Someone is only going to maintain a shell script if it has users or it continues to be useful to them. But that fact is not significant regarding ability to deliver quality code. Not maintaining a project on github simply signals that the code isn't useful enough to anyone to maintain it.
Many people have their favored hiring "hacks", and they almost never actually signal for the things they purport to. It's way too easy to fall into confirmation bias or overstate one's ability to judge others.
>I just know a lot of people find side projects fun because they can let loose a bit and try out random stuff that may not be their "best" code.
This is still a huge asset. It's important for a person to want to grow and learn new stuff. When it comes to hiring a person, there's a whole lot of stuff that's important. Maintaining a long lasting project is one of them. Having an interested in fun side projects, also. It doesn't have to be good code. In fact, I have my fair share of "this project is not maintained and should not be used in production code" repositories. That's just shorthand for "this code sucks".
It's funny to see all these comments about people's side projects being "loose" and "experimental". I have a few side projects, and they tend to be very clean, well-organized, polished, because code that you write professionally for a company tends to end up being the opposite: rushed, hacked together because deadlines, full of compromises, and littered with legacy crap that the business can't get rid of.
There are a lot of great engineers with empty or "bad" Github profiles.