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Top developers can have a life outside coding
61–70 of 241 posts
Re: Top developers can have a life outside coding
#62> Who can afford to keep coding after an 8-hour work day of coding? Who doesn't get harassed in the open-source community? 20-year-old white guys with no responsibilities Yeah, stopped reading at this point. Your "intersectional social justice theory" is just casual sexism and racism to me.
Maybe racist by the dictionary definition (judging by skin color) but it holds no force against actually preventing a white male from doing anything. I as a white male can underachieve my way into anything while other genders and people of color must work much harder for the same.
Re: Top developers can have a life outside coding
#63I am a recruiter and always ask this question - "Is programming just a job for you to get the bills paid, or do you have a broader interest?"
The thing to understand, and what the author of this post has wrong, is that I am not looking to hear about how much TIME a developer spends on programming. I am wanting to hear the STORY of their personal interest. Because the truth is that if software development is a personal interest to you, then you will find a way to pursue that interest, within the time that you have. You'll find a nook or a cranny in which to dig about learning things and finding out new stuff - maybe for 30 minutes before you go to sleep, or on the train, or somewhere.
The point is that employers want people who are INTERESTED - they are not necessarily looking for people who spend all available personal time pursuing an interest in software development.
And I can tell you with certainty that if you claim to have a person interest in software development but you cannot find any time outside work to pursue that interest, then you are lying. Perhaps to both yourself and the recruiter, but certainly you are lying. If you have a personal interest then you are DRIVEN to pursue that interest. If you claim a personal interest but also say "I'm just too busy these days to do anything.", then you have failed to admit that in fact you do not have a personl interest, you just go to work to do your job and go home.
So no, recruiters - at least this recruiter - are not looking for people who spend all non work time pursuing an interest in software, but are looking for people who can effectively articulate their passion and can explain how they DO fit it into their life.
Talk to me, engage me in a conversation, explain in some depth the things that you do find interesting. This has nothing to do with spending hour up endless hour writing code, it has to do with connecting directly to your personal interest, to the thinking that you have done.
Re: Top developers can have a life outside coding
#64A lot of comments are bringing up top athletes as a counterexample, which leads me to believe they don't understand what a high-level training regimen is actually like. I have a relatively unique persepective on this[1], so I thought I'd clarify a few things.
Any sport is both mentally and physically exhausting, and it only gets more strenuous as you reach the higher levels. Nobody can keep this up all day, every day, for their entire working life; people who try flame out early and don't make it much of anywhere.
Instead, the goal of the top players is to train as much as possible today without sacrificing their ability to continue training tomorrow. Usually, this is less time than an office job requires (but more strenuous). The rest of their time is spent in "recovery," which basically means whatever they want to do as long as it's not too taxing.
The defining feature isn't spending their entire life on the sport, it's giving it priority: the rest of their life is scheduled around their training needs instead of scheduling training around their life.
[1] I've been on sabbatical for two months at a tennis academy; some of the kids here will undoubtedly make it all the way to the pro circuit.
Re: Top developers can have a life outside coding
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
All hours? Sometimes I code with a baby on my lap. They are in next room when I take break. And little baby sleeps like 16 hours a day. It has some trade-offs, we dont have a car or macbooks, but it works just fine.
It worked great for me with one kid, but with a baby and 2.5 year-old it's impossible. Sometimes caring for both together as one person is impossible (i.e. if both are ill). My son was amazing, he slept 16 hours, giving me 5-6 hours during the day and 2-3 in the evenings to work. Working at the same time was great. My daughter however sleeps very erratically alone, however she sleeps OK on a person. So you have a bab…
It's doable so long as everyone involved is bought in. We have a two and a bit year old and I work from home full time, with the odd visit to the office for planning sessions. The reason it works is that my wife treats me being in my study in much the same way she would me being in an office elsewhere, but with the perks of me being able to see her and our son when I come out to make some tea or have lunch, and without any commute time. If you don't have a space in the home which you can close the door on and call work being remote isn't going to last long.
Re: Top developers can have a life outside coding
#66There's a certain sense of irony that we're all here disagreeing on a Saturday.
Reading the comments in this thread is painful. I agree that a successful developer shouldn't need to program as a hobby. It is notable that the developer culture tries to attach itself like a headcrab to the developer industry. I prefer doing other things, I've been programming since the age of 12, coding is somewhat boring to me these days - I'd rather do mathematics. It is unfortunate that the youth think going to conferences and doing latenight hackathons is what makes them a programmer. Programming has always been about getting things built, a means to an end. I think the cultural pressure seems to be borne out of appearing smart. But programming isn't even a great way to make money, for an intelligent programmer. Trading securities _using_ programming is. Or using programming to do SEO affiliate programs, etc, etc. I think when you combine dumb people with programming, you get a cultural affinity so they can validate themselves. Experienced programmers seem to more bitter and less apt to program eclectic shit for giggles. It's more a tool to get important stuff done.
Re: Top developers can have a life outside coding
#67I feel that there is a huge gap between this writing and my daily experience as a developer. I've been thanked for my work and I'm understood to be a valuable asset for my employer in my role as a software engineer - and never I've been required to have extracurricular development to facilitate my career progress. Maybe the fact that my work has fairly deep domain knowledge requirements and I know my stuff pretty wel…
Not everyone has the same experience, basically. You're lucky to have such a job. Similarly, I'm lucky to have a job where I get to work on open source directly. I'll probably still do random fun coding stuff in part of my free time. Not everyone is that lucky; and I've heard plenty of stories from folks in that category.
But yeah, what she's talking about is not everyone's experience, fortunately :)
Re: Top developers can have a life outside coding
#68It's great that the author is able to finish his pet projects in 20 hours if he sets a deadline. I'm not able to finish in that time frame for anything that I'm interested in doing as a pet project.
(the author is a she, I think)
Re: Top developers can have a life outside coding
#69I think this article is detached from reality. Most people who contribute to OS are on low income, unemployed or students. Top developers in banks and startups dont have time for that, or are forbidden by their company. Being "top developer" is one of the most family friendly jobs that ever existed. You can work remotely at your own time. I quit cubicle and started working on opensource because I had family. > you mi…
I'm from Romania, Europe. Don't know what a "top developer" is, but I'm not unemployed, I'm not a student, I have a wife and a son and I'm not low income, in fact being paid at least 4x the national average for software developers, my salary being on equal footing with the US, not the Bay Area mind you, but given the high cost of life there, my income is higher relative to where I live.
And I also contribute open source, a lot by my standards.
Yes my company allows open source because it is in our interest. We are contractors you see, open source bringing us visibility. I would say that open source is the reason for why I can have earnings higher than average, for one because my projects shine brighter than any resume (and I have a decent resume as well), because being able to show working code counts more than stories, but also because my work has transformed me from a full stack developer to one that is also specialized on more niche problems. Like I don't shine if you make me query MySQL, but I'm worth it if you make me handle problems of distributed systems.
But I'm not going to lie to you. It's freaking hard and it does end up eating into your family life, even though most open source I do is for helping at work and done during work hours when it's justifiable. I'm not able to sustain a constant pace. I can't do it without risking burnout. Hence I'm not one of those folks that commit every day. I can have entire months without contributions. But then when I do have contributions, shit gets serious, or in other words I finish was I start.
Re: Top developers can have a life outside coding
#70I am a recruiter and always ask this question - "Is programming just a job for you to get the bills paid, or do you have a broader interest?" The thing to understand, and what the author of this post has wrong, is that I am not looking to hear about how much TIME a developer spends on programming. I am wanting to hear the STORY of their personal interest. Because the truth is that if software development is a persona…
At the same time, programming isn't some noble rigorous science. Computer science is. Most jobs require slapjack programming. Physics, mathematics, chemistry, those jobs could benefit from the employee having an academic interest. But your 10 year+ experienced programmer is not going to benefit from having a "blazing passion." The best they'll do is learn how to use a new framework to make the code less arduous - they already know design patterns. Think about what you are saying.. Most programming jobs require very little actual rigor, it's more experience than anything.