I’ve noticed a growing disconnect between how talented developers build their careers and credibility and how platforms like LinkedIn represent them but rewards visibility as they are primarily engagement driven for personal branding through networking.

LinkedIn has hiring capabilities within its platform, enabled through its product LinkedIn Recruiter and is central to tech hiring today. But the platform is fundamentally driven by engagement metrics - likes, comments, and posts-not by actual performance metrics like code contributions, notebooks, or technical publications. While I can link my GitHub, Kaggle, or research work, there’s no way to trade that technical output for visibility or discoverability. Unless I actively engage like a content creator, my work remains buried-despite being high-impact.

What’s missing is a system where builders can convert their proof of work into discoverability, without having to play the engagement game.”

“This makes the hiring process inefficient -recruiters struggle to identify actual contributors, and developers don’t get discovered for the real work they’re doing. - This is a problem.

ProofSpace - We need a solution that will let recruiters hire developers by impact than by engagements. Can this evolve LinkedIn? Or will this be a separate product that will be integrated to LinkedIn’s top layer.

Core Value Proposition:

"Trade your performance metrics for visibility."

• GitHub contributions and other developer communities

• Repos you've starred or contributed to

• Stack Overflow activity

• Code reviews, comments, and project involvement

• Published blog posts, open source packages, or notebooks

• Public leader board, badges, or metrics that matter (impact, review quality, contribution diversity)”

“The idea is to replace vanity metrics with
verifiable signals that recruiters and collaborators actually care about.”? Are we sure what are they? This is another problem.

why this idea makes sense now:

“With the rise of open-source and remote-first teams, a developer’s public work matters more than ever. And yet, that signal is still fragmented across platforms.”

“AI recruiting tools are already scraping GitHub and other platforms. But there's no dedicated space that brings it together, interprets it meaningfully, and helps devs own their narrative.

I know this is a big space with lots of moving parts, and I’d love your honest take -does this resonate? Is there a piece of this puzzle that’s worth solving more deeply?

Topmate

orbit

dev.io

peerlist

Topmate, and few do have developer profile concept and i understand dev.io aggregates developer metrics across platforms. While platforms like Topmate and Dev.io have begun experimenting with developer-centric profiles and cross-platform metric aggregation, there’s still a fundamental gap in how technical contributions are surfaced and valued.

Even if LinkedIn were to adopt performance-based metrics (like GitHub commits, StackOverflow activity, or Kaggle scores), doing so would conflict with its core engagement-driven model. Visibility on LinkedIn today is rewarded through likes, comments, and viral posts-not technical impact. Embedding proof-of-work metrics could dilute that model, unless positioned as a premium feature for recruiters.

If I were to build this as a standalone product, it would likely be a combination of Topmate (portfolio + mentorship) and Dev.io (aggregated dev signals) and finally integrating this as a top layer in platforms like Linked In would let recruiters view the combined metrics but i'm not sure if the recruiters can filter by developer impact as much as they are filtering by engagements today?

The easier short term solution could be to integrate this product as a top-layer plugin or API into LinkedIn or ATS platforms, allowing recruiters to access a developer’s aggregated proof of work. However, a critical unknown remains:

💬 Do recruiters have the tooling-or mindset-to filter by real developer impact yet, rather than social engagement or company pedigree?

Author: Uma Ramanathan