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I have no side code projects to show you

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Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#351

Post by watwut »

kenhwang wrote: post #203
watwut wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that, side projects are nothing like day to day coding in a company. Beyond basic coding skills, they are very different animals.

I use side projects to figure out what aspects of software engineering the candidate seems to enjoy. Do they fiddle with the CSS nonstop to get the margins just right? Are they constantly trying to decrease the memory impact of a function? Does the README read like an appliance manual or a haiku of puns? Side projects are a strong signal the candidate enjoys this line of work, and ideally I'd want them working on thi…

I would prefer if you would ask me about my preferences then guessing them like that. You would got them wrong.

I would also prefer if I did not had to worry about readme or css projecting this or that image.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#352

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Too wrote: post #341
kemitche wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect my surgeon to do surgery in his spare time. Nor my plumber, dentist, gardener, or any other professional. I look at their past work history and reviews from customers and/or coworkers. I will never understand the belief that side projects are in any way necessary. I'd much rather have a well rounded individual who isn't moonlighting on other things but rather can bring his clear focused mind to the off…

One difference is that many "programmers" actually don't do any programming at work. Their hands on experience is a 5 week java course in uni 10 years ago and after thay they have been stuck in meetings or writing brain numbing CRUD in a proprietary domain specific scripting language at $bigco ever since. The only way for many to get actual hands on is to do side projects. Hair dressers don't have this problem, they…

There are a lot of more senior doctors in admin or specialty positions who aren't making rounds or doing surgery anymore, however.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#353

Post by defined »

literallycancer wrote: post #230
apple4ever wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, I'm happy to hire someone who is dedicated, passionate, and loves coding enough to to a quick assignment. Its not free work, its a demonstration of skill. In fact, we just hired someone who did that, and her assignment came back better than expected. At first we were so-so on her due to potential lack of experience, but the assignment (and her projects on her personal site) showed us were wrong.

>Its not free work, its a demonstration of skill. Was it paid? If not, then it's free work. Call it whatever you want, in my experience the people talking about passion the most are those that are just looking to pay the least they possibly can.

Why not call it an audition?

Until we have established a name (track record) for ourselves, and/or have a number of respected people vouch for us, we are called on to demonstrate our skills, just as musicians and actors are.

In principle, I think this is reasonable, especially since there are reportedly many fakers and exaggerators applying for jobs.

In practice, it appears that there are so many shoddy auditions that we must endure when looking for a job, that it becomes almost a full-time waste of time. This is unreasonable, methinks.

The problem will become serious when nearly every company that is hiring runs a low-quality dog and pony show in which we must perform, or not be hired. We can already see an analogous issue in the ubiquitous presence of objectionable binding mandatory arbitration clauses in seemingly every contract we sign nowadays.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#354

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jimbokun wrote: post #330
kemitche wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect my surgeon to do surgery in his spare time. Nor my plumber, dentist, gardener, or any other professional. I look at their past work history and reviews from customers and/or coworkers. I will never understand the belief that side projects are in any way necessary. I'd much rather have a well rounded individual who isn't moonlighting on other things but rather can bring his clear focused mind to the off…

If you were a surgeon looking to hire another surgeon for your surgery team, I bet you would want to observe her performing a surgery. If you were looking for a drummer for a band, you would want to hear him play.

The former one, maybe not. I'm sure lots of practices hire surgeons by looking at their record and not observing them actually doing a surgery. After all, it's the results that matter in the end.

The latter one, sure. Makes me wonder if we should call interviews as auditions.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#355

Post by WWKong »

warcher wrote: post #31

I’m not mad at you, but as the dude on the other side of the desk, I have to decide whether you can cut it and I’m fine saying no. I could make you do some whiteboard problems, but I think whiteboard problems are pretty far removed from your day to day development and I am uncomfortable relying on them as a proxy for your ability to ship code. I don’t really disagree with your philosophy of working while you’re worki…

Sure. But you seem to be approaching interviews as a one way street like, "I hold this thing here which I will give it to you if I deem you worthy". That is not how things work these days in tech, especially in hot markets. If you are not willing to carve out time there are plenty others who will. Sorry dude, just the reality of the rare market situation where the power is balanced between companies and talent.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#356

Post by 59nadir »

ifhd wrote: post #223
warcher wrote: post #31

I’m not mad at you, but as the dude on the other side of the desk, I have to decide whether you can cut it and I’m fine saying no. I could make you do some whiteboard problems, but I think whiteboard problems are pretty far removed from your day to day development and I am uncomfortable relying on them as a proxy for your ability to ship code. I don’t really disagree with your philosophy of working while you’re worki…

I work on internal tools for a major company. You can't see them, some I probably shouldn't even tell you about. When I get home I play video games and watch tv and play with my dog. sometimes I'll screw around with a new language or something else. I don't post stuff on github and keep a blog or anything else like that. I think your view is pretty myopic. Ask me to talk for 30 minutes about one of my projects and fo…

> When I get home I play video games and watch tv and play with my dog. sometimes I'll screw around with a new language or something else. I don't post stuff on github and keep a blog or anything else like that.

Presumably you also don't think people should stop thinking side projects and public code is important in hiring. You've made a choice to not have these things and asking the world to change one of the few sane things in hiring because you just don't fit the mold is a whole other story than just accepting that this is something you lack that could potentially sway an employer.

As another comment said: You can't win 'em all.

By chance, I happened to have a pretty productive few years on GitHub and having no degree I still managed to land the first job I went to interview for, in part because of my GitHub profile. Am I "for" the current situation because it benefited me at the time? No, because I think it's a clearer indicator that a colleague won't be a nightmare to work with than a degree or if he can implement the correct data structure on a whiteboard.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#357

Post by freedomben »

anta40 wrote: post #342
deathanatos wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd much rather have a well rounded individual who isn't moonlighting on other things but rather can bring his clear focused mind to the office. I don't think it's wrong to work on side project. Some people like or want to. Who am I to judge what they do on their free time? It might happen to overlap with their job, or it might not. But I agree, I don't require my surgeon to do surgery in his spare time. I've worke…

A lot of coders consider coding not only as a job, but also as hobby. Usually they experiment with new stuffs this way, and thus their open source projects at Sourceforge/Github, etc etc. I don't expect a brain surgeon to mess with somebody's head because he's bored at weekend, though :p

For the first many years, I was this way (considering coding as a job and a hobby). I guess it still is in many ways, but as I've gotten older I've started to feel the burnout more. If I spend my weekend doing anything on my computer, I feel it on Monday and just want to do something different.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#358

Post by freedomben »

justboxing wrote: post #322
eropple wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side? As somebody who has plenty of open source projects--the set of employers who actually looks at them is within epsilon of zero. I have not once, not once gotten a meaningful question from anything I have posted on Github in any interview or client meeting even after suggesting up-front that it's worth taking a look. And I used to interview on a monthly basis just to keep in practice! No--instead you…

> instead you get dance-like-a-monkey "coding tests" (unpaid, of course) that are nonportable from employer to employer. This - the non-portable aspect - is what irks me the most. Especially for enterprise developers. Since most of the software we develop is under NDA, we cannot put any of it online to showcase our skills. I've had to do 3 different take-home "coding exercises" over the last 10 days. 1 was for a Hedg…

This is becoming a real problem IMHO. Asking me to do 3 to 4 hours of work on a "test" just to get to a real interview is a big ask. I do it because I have to; but as my time has gotten more valuable I've started just politely refusing and thanking the recruiter for reaching out. I have a ton of stuff on github that I'd much rather talk about.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#359

Post by maxhallinan »

freshhawk wrote: post #134
warcher wrote: post #31

I’m not mad at you, but as the dude on the other side of the desk, I have to decide whether you can cut it and I’m fine saying no. I could make you do some whiteboard problems, but I think whiteboard problems are pretty far removed from your day to day development and I am uncomfortable relying on them as a proxy for your ability to ship code. I don’t really disagree with your philosophy of working while you’re worki…

I feel the same whenever I have this discussion. The "Look man, I have a life and I don't want to do extra unpaid work just to get a job" attitude is misunderstanding the motivations (to be fair, there are some situations where they are not). I look at what people do outside of work that isn't writing code. Having something means you are probably healthier, less likely to be burned out and more likely to have experie…

> Having something means you are probably healthier, less likely to be burned out and more likely to have experiences that let you better understand what solves real customer/client/user problems.

I didn't learn to write code until my late twenties. I have a fine arts degree. My early and mid twenties were focused on activities unrelated to technology. I have a reasonably large amount of life experience unrelated to programming. I haven't found that this experience gives me an edge in solving problems in my job as a programmer. Can you provide concrete examples that demonstrate this idea that people who code less outside of work are more effective problem solvers? I've seen this truism floating around quite a bit lately but have yet to see it demonstrated.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#360

Post by freedomben »

chrisco255 wrote: post #346
justboxing wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> instead you get dance-like-a-monkey "coding tests" (unpaid, of course) that are nonportable from employer to employer. This - the non-portable aspect - is what irks me the most. Especially for enterprise developers. Since most of the software we develop is under NDA, we cannot put any of it online to showcase our skills. I've had to do 3 different take-home "coding exercises" over the last 10 days. 1 was for a Hedg…

That's because they want to gauge you against other candidates and the only way to do that fairly is with a standardized test.

I see the point, but some of these tests can take several hours or longer to complete. I think they shoot themselvess in the foot a bit because many of the really good devs won't waste their time with that. My evidence is all purely anecdotal, however.
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