People in the (American, and I dare say elsewhere too) tech world do give a shit about the college you went to, and the elite colleges do give a shit about extracurriculars, especially if you’re Asian or something, unfortunate as it is.
I'm really curious what the "or something" in your race statement means though.
As for “or something”, it is well known that the bar is very high for Asians and extracurriculars are needed to distinguish oneself (too many perfect SATs and GPAs), but maybe there are other demographics similarly affected that I don’t hear about much.
Not really. Nobody gives a damn what college you went to for the vast majority of jobs. They care about whether you went to college or not, regardless of the school. And even then, it's becoming more and more rare to find employers who are sticklers that applicants must have a degree.
At most jobs? Yeah, they are actually.
Posers aside, the rest of the world does not function this way and advice like yours really fucked my professional development up.
If you're just a regular type of dude in most of the US, none of this applies. Your Petco job does matter, your employer won't even look at your Github page, and talking about PRs will only invite clarification of whether you mean public relations or Puerto Ricans.
The SV-optimized path is not the only path to success in America. This country is itself entirely optimized for entrepreneurs. Tradesmen crush it and don't have to live in fear of AI obsolescence. The most successful people I know are all undereducated immigrants and ex-military types running boring businesses selling medical equipment, carpet and tile. Always boring shit people generally need, not drop-shipped dollar-store crap from Temu.
To be the guy positioned to sell N95 masks in 2019 never required a Github profile or elite education.
US Civil Service merit & fitness requirements were undermined by courts finding that because most examinations correlated to general intelligence as defined by IQ, they were discriminatory to various stakeholders who are either under-assessed by IQ due to cultural or disability related bias.
The easy path for employers is to utilize the experience + education provided by the candidate, and clean up any mess later. (or not)
I've never had any potential employer look at my GitHub. It was all about the resume, experience, and being able to explain that experience, as well as a technical coding assessment.
If anything, "grinding leetcode" would be the closest analogy to Keju (although not exactly identical of course).