Commenting to say I share all of the sentiment of the post!

I personally was nudged by someone I met at a conference to publish in JOSS which has a pleasant review process. Sure it’s not high academic prestige but I am very proud of the work and GitHub’s own metrics (as silly as stars ⭐️ sound!) not only provide me with satisfaction but I’m certain that outside of academia (when interviewing for internships or meeting new people) people who code are typically really impressed with a well packaged software that clearly has users - it’s almost always a topic of conversation and I am always delighted to talk about it.

I have my fingers crossed that this is a skill that is valued outside of academia 🤞