Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Be careful.. any measure becomes a target, and in doing so voids its usefulness. Except, this tests for a wide range of tasks related to a typical SWE role: programming proficiency, reasoning through rigorous code-review, clean code, open-source and testing. Given that Leetcode and Hackerrank tests can be cheated / beaten with LLMs, it not only has been gamed to death, but it tests for nothing that is related to th…
> Then this saves time and the proof is on the interviewee to show high quality functional open source changes to high profile projects like the Linux kernel for example and the bar is set high on purpose. At the cost of the maintainer's time being your first round interview. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643894
You would not be looking for "contributions" that have "edited README" or "fixed typo" in them, which these are examples of non-functional changes.
It is SWEs that have evidence of significant functional changes throughout a high profile open-source project (like Linux, Chromium) with extensive code-reviews and / or have core-contributor roles which is the bar that should be set.