Depends on the context. I have lots of pure crap in my bitbucket and github accounts, because I tinker and explore outside of my day job. I even have one project that is almost complete (that is, it functions without bugs and doesn't make me want to scratch my eyes out when I look at the UI), but because I work on it for an hour here, an hour there, in the capacity of said exploration, the quality of the code is...less than stellar. Yet somehow I manage to be employed without a single gap in my resume.
That I don't have a high-code-quality complete project in these locations says one thing and one thing only about me, with respect to being a signal to employers: I'm not willing to devote myself 100%, heart-and-soul, to programming at my peak for 10+ hours a day.
You're deluding yourself if you think your comment about being a bad career decision applies outside of a small sphere (usually web-dev or mobile-dev for startups seeking a very particular kind of employee (young, naive, willing to work long and hard for relatively lesser pay). I have yet to see a job I'd be otherwise qualified for or interested in list "have a github profile with projects for us to look at" as a requirement, or even a nice-to-have. Certainly that won't necessarily last forever, but right now it's not a bad career decision for a great many (vast majority) to eschew public display of their personal code projects.
Frankly, I view the insistence on public display of personal code in the same category as I view trivia-quiz-interviewing: they're both bandwagon nonsense things that people convince themselves are highly effective ways to measure people.