> In my opinion, stuff that someone has made should probably be considered the most important thing by miles. It doesn't have to be open-source code, but that certainly helps.

Problem is, a lot of good engineers (especially at big companies) may have spent a lot of time working on something that wasn't very important or good. They may have been a sparkling diamond in a sea of mediocrity.

One of my first jobs I spent the best part of a year working on something pretty dumb that was mired in bureaucracy and most people considered a bad idea from the start.

Yet that is what I worked on for around a year because that was where I was assigned, and it was considered important by edict of a person who earned approx 1000x my salary.

They eventually scrapped the project altogether.