It doesn’t take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

Even for companies like Red Hat, Canonical, SUSE, Mongo, ..., my experience is that a good blog or a good Github doesn't account to anything more than a few pleasant sentences at the beginning of the interview.

Of course, it might happen that they'd hire contributors, as you say. I'd say this is incredibly rare (but does happen). Usually, from my experience, this happens when the company wants to essentially "acquire" the code (and sometimes, the contributor is hired as a contractor for a couple months).

GitHub can be faked by taking work of others. When screening there’s no time to investigate each artifact. It’s nice if someone has a github repo, but it’s by no means the deciding factor.

I've mostly always believed this to be true and had some early confirmation in my past, greatest spike being around 2007.

But for the past 5 years I've been consistently publishing original work and getting absolutely zero feedback and little engagement. My former personal network doesn't respond to my emails anymore, etc.. Might have to do with some defamation that happened in 2016 by an employer, but that shouldn't be surfacing until the reference check after I get an offer--unless I'm on black lists that are decently circulated. Another possibility is my reach is just limited when I post content with depth, as opposed to things that will get more engagement. People used to read my blog directly, which has been shut down for years.

I'm open to the possibility that my presentation is just terrible, that my SEO needs work, stuff like that. Keeping all my web properties up and producing content up to modern standards has been pretty out of reach given my life circumstances... not complaining, just saying.

My temp bosses are always happy with how good I wash dishes, anyway. I'll never stop publishing my tech work online, but I know it takes more than just publishing what I'm doing to stand out as a job candidate. I'd love to get an objective view about what else I'm lacking or penalized on almost as much as I'd like some good old fashioned Agape love, to help me want to check my email and notifications that I'm programmed to dread checking by now (usually due to non-responses to everything I send, if not trolls).

Sorry that this may come off as negative. I've really had some success standing out and just publishing for most of my career, it's been really hard to figure out how to get out of the crater that it has become. I don't even talk like this that much, to anyone who wants to say my negativity pushes everyone away... I get that, too. Hard conversations are different than negativity; negativity is more like being a parasite, whereas I'm genuinely trying to find the issues which actually exist and fix them.

Things I know I can fix:

* Maintain properties and populate search engine/open graph fields for SEO * Produce thumbnails and editorialize headers * Increase my engagement in ways that are selected for

Sorry for not looking at your credentials, do you have enough experience to potential land staff+ roles? Would still be a cog but maybe a bit more breathing room depending on the type of role you apply for.

https://staffeng.com/book has a list of different types of staff+ roles that could maybe fit.

What does that actually mean? The fact you're using language like, "cog in the machine" is already telling me a lot about why companies don't want to hire you. If you told us exactly where the process breaks down for you and why with illustrative examples, we might be able to help you identify where it's going wrong for you. But tip 1, companies hire people who are positive about how they can contribute and work within an org.

EDIT: Took a quick look at your blog to see if there were any obvious red flags and found this, in the context of the Rust Foundation's prohibition of firearms at Rust events

> I have a concealed carry permit. I have firearms and other weapons. I know how to use them, and I will use them in defense of my wife and myself.

> And you can bet I carry them into places I consider dangerous if it is legal to.

If I was hiring, this would be a huge red flag to me. Why do you need to even consider bringing a firearm into a conference?