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I have no side code projects to show you

codementor.io

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Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#461

Post by JorgeGT »

zoltaan wrote: post #459
JorgeGT wrote: post #453

I think no one has said it yet, but I believe the diversity you bring with your non-standard hobbies is a very valuable resource. Diversity being missed by people looking "culture fits" of workers who like the same exact things. For instance the fact that you write novels for fun suggests me you would be able to write good, long documentation or manuals if required. I've known good programmers absolutely incapable of…

Exactly! My best ideas come through exposure to broad topics of interests, synthesizing knowledge. Implementing approach from a different domain, seeing events in a movie that trigger an idea, reading about the ways living organisms optimise resources, etc. Not to mention social events on any subject when talking to professionals from other domains triggers solution to a long lasting problem. I also recall research o…

> Not to mention social events on any subject when talking to professionals from other domains triggers solution to a long lasting problem.

This is becoming more and more important as science/technology keeps getting compartmentalized. Not to go as far as the medical doctor who rediscovered numerical integration [1], but I have the certainty that in my research I'm doing many things in a horribly inefficient way, out of ignorance. Just the other day I learned about k-d trees and sped up a piece of software in my lab by an order of magnitude...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1964613

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#462

Post by marksellers »

JorgeGT wrote: post #453

I think no one has said it yet, but I believe the diversity you bring with your non-standard hobbies is a very valuable resource. Diversity being missed by people looking "culture fits" of workers who like the same exact things. For instance the fact that you write novels for fun suggests me you would be able to write good, long documentation or manuals if required. I've known good programmers absolutely incapable of…

I've always liked essay writing. I mean, not so much as an assignment, but they're satisfying to bring together; from perfecting the construction of individual sentences, to structuring the flow of paragraphs.

To that end, I quite like writing documentation, especially after finishing a large milestone. It's a good break from just coding, while also being very helpful for the team as a whole.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#463

Post by Double_a_92 »

notzorbo3 wrote: post #82
shortsightedsid wrote: post #25

It's funny that the tech industry is so insistent on side projects. I mean - would you hire a marketing person based on their 'side projects' or a corporate lawyer purely based on their pro-bono work? Likewise, who on earth asks a building contractor if they have any side projects? You would ask for references or find a contractor via someone you know. What about recruiters themselves? How does one judge if a person…

You know what's universally hard? Finding people who are good at their jobs. References don't matter, experience doesn't matter, education doesn't matter. Why not? Because it doesn't say anything about actual skill. What does? Side projects, where you can actually see if a person has skills. > a corporate lawyer purely based on their pro-bono work? You hire a corporate lawyer based on their public reputation. For a p…

> You hire a corporate lawyer based on their public reputation.

But that reputation comes from his actual daily work. I as a developper don't get paid to improve my github portfolio all day long...

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#464

Post by TrickyRick »

foobarian wrote: post #260
bad_user wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving a candidate a "take-home assignment" is actually the most disrespectful of the options listed. Unless you're an awesome company, with really cool projects and offering me a jaw dropping salary and benefits, then no, I'm not going to do free work for you. Even if you are an awesome company, people probably have to actually work for you to see that, so no, I'm not going to do free work for you. I'd rather spend…

I don't know what kind of homework assignments those companies give but I can't even imagine how something a candidate could code in a few hours could have internal use. It takes days for even new hires to start contributing useful projects, let alone a never-before seen candidate without knowledge or access to the codebase and internal systems. The homeworks are mainly a time saving device on one hand, where they re…

"Free work" in this case doesn't necessarily mean "free work which is useful to the company" it just means doing similar things to what I'm payed to do normally for free with no benefit to myself.

I've gotten complaints from companies where I've done homework assignments for interviews that it didn't seem like I put enough effort in and my reply has always been that I get payed good money to do this stuff at work, they're getting the left over hours in the evening when I'm of course not performing at my peak. If they want work-level quality they should pay me for the assignment.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#465

Post by marksellers »

pm90 wrote: post #325
kelnos wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're espousing a false dichotomy. The options in evaluating a candidate aren't merely "give them whiteboard coding problems" or "examine their side projects". Give them a take-home assignment. Give them an in-person assignment where they have several hours to complete a smallish design-and-build task. There are a lot more options, and I'm getting tired of people claiming they don't know how to evaluate technical ca…

I would say take-home assignments complimented with an assurance of an in-person interview is the trade-off that I'm willing to make. I recently interviewed with a company that gave me one and told me that my solution would be the basis for the final onsite interview, which made a lot of sense to me. After I submitted my solution though, the company came back to me and said that they had received a lot of submissions…

Yeah, it's not ethical to give those out without basically already having committed to interviewing the candidate.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#466

Post by sqldba »

I feel quite mixed on the article.

Mostly I’m on the side of - sure and if we go for the same job and have the same skills I should win out because I have tonnes of code to show.

If you’re fine with that then meh.

My other thought was that you sound too busy to be on the on call roster which is another black mark.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#467

Post by TrickyRick »

calibration263 wrote: post #157
bad_user wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving a candidate a "take-home assignment" is actually the most disrespectful of the options listed. Unless you're an awesome company, with really cool projects and offering me a jaw dropping salary and benefits, then no, I'm not going to do free work for you. Even if you are an awesome company, people probably have to actually work for you to see that, so no, I'm not going to do free work for you. I'd rather spend…

> I'm not going to do free work for you Our industry could follow after the restaurant industry and implement stages/trialing. You come in and work a full day. If you get the job that days pay shows up on your first paycheck, if not they send you out the door with a check.

Doesn't really work for any larger scale product, it's unlikely that any candidate will be productive in their first day. Sure they could build something separate but then the value for the company probably diminishes. Unlike serving dishes the process of making software differs quite a lot between workplaces.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#468

Post by mertnesvat »

I'll take a look from both sides. But let me first explain the motivation and drives for some people to push them what they do, why they do etc.

We all have secret reward mechanism which triggers our dopamine receptors. Time to time randomly or intentionally we create those circuits in our brain. For example, for some people, it's really important to talk about baseball teams some likes football.

That's being said, we need to be in the flow also to self-transcendence (remember Maslow's pyramid last step ;)

Some people their motivations are not clear and they find themselves very in the middle of everything and it can be more then one specific skill like the guy's example in the blog post, he likes tracking, drawing, spending time with family etc.

After having a motivation towards one subject for long time you develop flow and being in the zone for this occupation that's why managers tend to see person with enthusiasm for coding and being in front of computers all the time.

It's exactly how it supposed to be! I recommend being stoic about it.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#469

Post by ThomPete »

My way of getting better was always to read about things around the subject I wanted to learn or understand. In my case Design.

I always look for how things are the same compared to the subject matter I am interested in.

What has given me the most ever is learning to play music and compose music. Once you understand how music work you understand how/why rhythm works, proportion, harmony, consistency etc.

But both music and design informed my cooking. When you boil things down (no pun intended) the underlying principles are all the same it's only the execution of those principles that's different. Philosophy is also something I have found ways to incorporate into something tangible in my life.

I also have side projects some of them do really well but i try to do as many different things in my life while still being involved with design and music. You need to have some strongholds.

There are no rules.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#470

Post by addicted »

There are a lot of things being conflated in this post. Side projects Geography Running a side business

1) I agree side projects do not define a good developer (frankly, I don’t have any outside toy ones). But given 2 equally good choices, I can’t blame an employer who chooses a Dev with side projects as opposed to one without (since they can see their code). That being said, a better interview process would involve real coding which would eliminate this situation altogether.

2) I’m not sure where the rant about geography fits in. If you are limiting yourself to Austin you’re limiting yourself to an even smaller pool of developers than the Bay Area, NYC is Seattle. And there are many families with dogs living in all these areas.

3) Is suspect the fact that the author is running a side business may be a bigger concern. The author’s specific business may not, but as an employer, I’d imagine there is no way my job could compete with your side business since you actually have money invested in. I wouldn’t be surprised if this would, more than the lack of side projects, affect someone’s employment opportunities.

Just the way the author has setup the discussion it seems they basically left the company with no code to see at all.

I can’t show you the coding I have done, because it’s at work. I can’t show you any other coding I have done because I have not done anything outside work. But I did start an art project once.

I think a far more useful tack (which I have used in the past) is to ask the company to provide you with a task, and give you a week to solve it. This allows them to actually see that I can code and solve a problem.

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