I have no side code projects to show • Hacker News Board

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#81

Post by dasil003 » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:05 AM UTC

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #47

I have worked at a prestigious tech company, and I know what OP is talking about. A lot of very talented people don't have side projects, and they don't do any coding outside of work. They don't go to hackathons. They don't bother to learn the newest reactive javascript framework. They go to yoga classes after work. They talk about TV shows they watched last night during lunch. But they EXCEL at what they do at work.…

Having spend the last decade living the startup life, and now searching for something more stable, I have to say you're setting up a false dichotomy between passionate and balance-seeking. They are completely orthogonal, you can be passionate and work widely varying hours; you can also be indifferent and work widely varying hours.

On a tangent, I don't really like the word passion anyway. What makes me a good programmer is not my passion for it, it's my curiosity and motivation. My motivation is a primary factor in my performance, and that probably is 80% influenced by context, and 20% by the content of the task itself (at least for most things that fall within the standard purview of programming tasks).

Finally, you don't mention talent for the new graduate. That is a huge factor. If the new grad is not extremely talented, they will never produce anything of value. If they are highly talented they can likely power through a lot of things, but they also need to make good decisions about what to work on since time allocation is the single hardest thing about getting early traction for a startup. Yes, all else being equal, take the guy that wants to work 16 hours a day and has no other distractions, but if the veteran who wants to work 30 hours a week has better business sense and a smarter idea of what to build and when, then that dwarfs the code quality consideration.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#82

Post by fencepost » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:10 AM UTC

rpd23 wrote: post #22

Wtf is a boutique app firm?

A boutique app firm is a small company that builds apps for clients. Generally those clients are going to be smallish businesses (probably mostly less than 1000 employees).

Some examples from my area include a small grocery chain (5-6 stores) with their own app and a local credit union with their own online banking app with support for mobile deposits via photographs of checks.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#83

Post by brobinson » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:11 AM UTC

jknoepfler wrote: post #38

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People fail fizz buzz all the time.

I don't believe that. I'd really like a 21st century study showing that devs with > 3 years of experience fail fizz buzz, and that failure is predictive of being a bad developer (and not being a shitty interviewer)

In 2013, I interviewed someone who had allegedly been working for a few years as a support engineer writing Ruby (using the "watir" gem) who could not even write the loop part of Fizzbuzz. They went completely silent on the call when I pasted the Fizzbuzz requirements into a shared code editor we were both viewing. After a few moments and my gentle prodding, they admitted they didn't even know how to begin writing the loop, so I thanked them for their time, wished them luck, and ended the call.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#84

Post by timdev2 » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:12 AM UTC

droithomme wrote: post #71

driverdan wrote: post #27

I am generally suspicious of someone who has no sample code to show. You can't take a few hours a week for a month to put a small project together as a demo of your abilities? Skip the novel writing for a month and instead create a 10 hour project that shows potential employers you know what you're talking about. You can use it for years so it's well worth the time investment. For most jobs you don't have to have a t…

Most, but not all people who are employed have contracts which assign ownership of everything they do, including in their spare time at home on their own equipment, to their employer. And yes, a very small number of states consider such standard clauses to be unenforceable. Most candidates who show their previous code, either written for their employer, or from side projects that are still within the scope of their c…

Most employers who include such clauses and aren't open to negotiation are violating common decency. Any company so incredibly tone-deaf is likely an unpleasant employer that thinks nothing of treating their employees poorly. Such companies should not be serviced by professionals.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#85

Post by citruspi » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:16 AM UTC

nicolia wrote: post #52

nzubair wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because the author has his priorities figured out doesn't mean that "this field isn't for them."

For a field that doesn't cater to people with families and other life obligations too well, I think it does.

> For a field that doesn't cater to people with families and other life obligations too well

There's no reason that the field (of computer science/software engineering/etc) _can't_ cater to people with families and other life obligations.

Jobs that don't cater to people with families include being a surgeon, a pilot, a firefighter, etc.

I've worked at several software companies (including a company worth hundreds of billions[0]) and it totally comes down to (1) employer (2) team.

There's nothing about being a developer that is at odds with people with families. Some employers have awful work life balances (due to company culture) and others don't. Some employers have teams with awful work life balances and others with great ones.

If a company has an awful work life balance, the solution isn't to remove people with families and other life obligations, it's to fix the company culture.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13198920

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#86

Post by srssays » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:19 AM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #15

vigrante wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty elaborate story to rationalize the fact you didn't know the difference between range and xrange....

It doesn't need to be rationalized. I don't know it without googling it, but I can still get by writing some useful automation for Ops work. Granted, I haven't interviewed for a full-time Python gig, but even the one or two REALLY sharp programmers I know need to reference the web for a lot of stdlib stuff they don't use often.

xrange vs range is basic competence for any Python 2 programmer. They are two of the most commonly used functions and have very distinct uses. I think that was the point of the original post, however, that the question is so basic it is actually insulting - like interviewing a doctor and asking the difference between red and white blood cells.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#87

Post by otakucode » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:24 AM UTC

dvcrn wrote: post #13

Here's a little example what happened to me: I interviewed with a company. Naturally they asked for my side projects which I showed them. We talked about technical challenges, scaling, interesting bits of codes - all these kind of things. They were really excited. I passed the interviews and got the job. Fast forward a couple month, still working on my side projects, some of which started generating a couple hundred…

It depends on your point of view. The boss wants the most sophisticated talent he can get, and he doesn't want to pay anything for it. Every penny he pays, and every second of your life he doesn't get for it, is a failure in his eyes.

Since the 1980s, employment has become a game. Employers don't like it if you realize this and play them right back, of course, but there's not really any other option. Their viewpoint is dominant and essentially universal. In response to monumental productivity multiplication due to technology, they froze wages, destroyed pensions, cut benefits, and extended the work week. They believe if an employee becomes irreplaceable, they have become expendable. Keeping employees dispensable is weighed as far more important than keeping skilled talent. Read books written by managers for managers. Their actions aren't random or stupid, most people just don't understand their reasoning.

And if you only get one tattoo in your life, I highly recommend this centuries-old quote from The Rubiyat of Omar Khayaam: "Make game of that which makes as much of thee."

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#88

Post by dandv » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:24 AM UTC

derekp7 wrote: post #37

dvcrn wrote: post #13

Here's a little example what happened to me: I interviewed with a company. Naturally they asked for my side projects which I showed them. We talked about technical challenges, scaling, interesting bits of codes - all these kind of things. They were really excited. I passed the interviews and got the job. Fast forward a couple month, still working on my side projects, some of which started generating a couple hundred…

So if you have any other interests, such as rebuilding old cars, would that boss still have a problem with it? That is the thing I don't get, is how some companies see a big difference between regular hobbies and programing related hobbies.

[Google owns any IP you develop, even on your own time](http://startups.stackexchange.com/questions/7822/working-leg...), and you can't easily work on those interview-worthy side projects after you get hired.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#89

Post by dandv » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:26 AM UTC

rabidrat wrote: post #26

eps wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The range/xrange question was likely to check if you were a fraud. Having interviewed close to a hundred people in a year for a senior C dev position I can assure you that people lie like you wouldn't believe. They cheat with take-home tasks, they show others' code as their own. And that's in the system programming circles, where the level of professionalism is typically much higher than in app/web development areas.…

Just, wow. I'm sorry you have to deal with that. For my next job, I've thought about offering to work for free for a week or so as a kind of mutual trial period. I want to know what the entire office is like, what the codebase is like, what the tools are like, and what actually needs to be done. If they want to rip me off and get a week of free work, great! That's exactly the kind of thing I would want to know about…

Seeing what the codebase is like for just a week may not be something many larger companies would be too happy with (think IP theft).

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#90

Post by citruspi » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:30 AM UTC

nicolia wrote: post #8

I actually don't mind being a human machine. Not that I've had the chance yet. I'm still in college to get my CS degree and would fall into one of those people where "coding is a Craft". I genuinely love programming. I don't have a family, or really desire one. My weekend plans always consist of building another project of my own. A place that will let me code all day, give me a nap room, a shower, some salary, and f…

> I actually don't mind being a human machine.

> My weekend plans always consist of building another project of my own. A place that will let me code all day, give me a nap room, a shower, some salary, and food sounds like a dream.

So what, you don't have any other hobbies?