I have 23 years of experience and I am almost invisible on GitHub, and for all those years I've …

I have 23 years of experience and I am almost invisible on GitHub, and for all those years I've been fired from 4 contracts due to various disconnects (one culture mis-fit and two under-performances due to illness I wasn't aware of at the time, and one because the company literally restructured over the weekend and fired 80% of all engineers), and I have been contracting a lot in the last 10 years (we're talking 17-19 gigs). If you look solely at my GitHub you'd likely reject me right away. I wish I had the time and energy for passion projects in programming. I so wish it was so. But commercial work has all but destroyed my passion for programming, though I know it can be rekindled if I can ever afford to take a properly long sabbatical (at least 2 years). I'll more agree with your parent / sibling comments: take a look at the resume and look for bad signs like too vanilla / AI language, too grandiose claims (though when you are experienced you might come across as such so 50/50), or almost no details, general tone etc. …