Why does every programming job application ask for your GitHub profile? The industry used open source contributions as a proxy for candidate quality, and this is Goodhart's law in action.

They're offering bounties: https://github.com/UnsafeLabs/Bounty-Hunters/issues

They see it as an investment, they're basically shooting in the dark hoping they'll hit their target and get a bounty payout.

My mind absolutely doesn't bend that way but I'd suppose clout and popularity?

Maybe once the account has enough stars and reputation, the human behind it will use it to try to get an actual paying job.

Almost every time someone on HN asks how to increase their chances of employment, the response is to contribute to other people's Git* projects.

There's an AI bot blacklist? How do I get all my projects onto that?

I think you greatly overestimate the collaborative capacity of vibe coders