But, if I'm a scout for a football team, I don't want to see you in the gym, I want to see you play football. Maybe, ideally, I'd like to see both, but seeing you play football is by far the more important thing.
So tons of open source contribution in relevant areas with quick high-quality, low-bug-count, beautiful code check-in and demonstrated knowledge in breaking down problems into sub-problems and come up with elegant algorithsm? (something you can see in the field?)
Some analogies make sense, some probably don't map well.
Google prefers to hire Devs with strong CS foundations because they assume these Devs can contribute in many areas.
If they were only to hire someone based off something that they've done before and excel only in that area, they'd be like other companies who only hire selectively based on specific skill-set (e.g.: Java Dev, or 3D/game devs).
No competent team makes decisions based solely on the Combine. It's a data point that gets combined with college game tape, private workouts, and some other special events like the Senior Bowl. Also, a significant number of players who end up getting drafted or signed as Undrafted Free Agents don't go to the Combine.
I didn't make that assertion. I was simply pointing out that the NFL has a set of skills tests that aren't football. Further, the effectiveness of the combine is as widely debated as the effectiveness of algorithm questions.
