haha, I'm the opposite. I will only hire someone who has NO time to implement their awesome personal projects. I ask them about their personal projects, and this stuff is awesome. Too bad that they're spending all their passion on their current employer.... that's okay, I don't mind, if you would just scootch over here into our office instead :)
If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
11–20 of 105 posts
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#12That is preposterous. I can see no reason why a candidate should be denied an interview based on the fact that he does not have "pet projects". you know, some people have lives outside their jobs, things like families and kids that need to be taken care of. It may just so happen that they do not have enough time outside of their working hours to spend on side projects.
I've worked with a bunch of brilliant engineers, who actually knew what they were doing, they shipped products of high quality on time and their technical skills were excellent. None of them had had any side projects except maybe a couple of things they did back at high school or university. Yet they were one of the most valued employees at the company.
P.S.: actually, when an employer asks for "passion" it somehow makes me think that they are actually asking you to work 105 hours a week.
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#13I always suspect these people are actually looking for developers who will work long hours with little pay, because they are so driven. They aren't looking for the best and brightest, just the most driven. I think it's actually quite easy to 'care' without having a driving passion that forces you to give your life over to programming. In fact, I did it for a number of years. I did all my programming at work, and all…
"Put simply, we are looking for a .NET developer and one of the most important things that we look for is passion" How much passion is there in the .NET scene anyway? It's very business oriented, I'd expect developers to be more sort of corporate and better at time reporting. It's not like you have to be a hipster to churn out spreadsheet automation scripts.
It's sad that you associate "passion" with "hipster". I can't think of a more inaccurate characterization of a highly motivated developer. I also didn't get the impression that he was looking for a "hipster".
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#14Meh, he probably needs to de-generalize this thought and take it case-by-case. I didn't work on side projects for two years because I was obsessed with the project at the startup I worked at. He would've heard an earful from me if he said I wasn't "passionate"
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#15I always suspect these people are actually looking for developers who will work long hours with little pay, because they are so driven. They aren't looking for the best and brightest, just the most driven. I think it's actually quite easy to 'care' without having a driving passion that forces you to give your life over to programming. In fact, I did it for a number of years. I did all my programming at work, and all…
"Put simply, we are looking for a .NET developer and one of the most important things that we look for is passion" How much passion is there in the .NET scene anyway? It's very business oriented, I'd expect developers to be more sort of corporate and better at time reporting. It's not like you have to be a hipster to churn out spreadsheet automation scripts.
Stackoverflow is written in .NET. It certainly has a more "corporate" focus than node or something - but that's not to say there aren't people building cool applications with it.
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#16I used to have pet projects, until one of them became my full time job.
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Put simply, we are looking for a .NET developer and one of the most important things that we look for is passion" How much passion is there in the .NET scene anyway? It's very business oriented, I'd expect developers to be more sort of corporate and better at time reporting. It's not like you have to be a hipster to churn out spreadsheet automation scripts.
It's not like you have to be a hipster to churn out spreadsheet automation scripts. You also don't have to be a hipster to contribute to open source or be passionate about your craft. What makes you think he's looking for a hipster?
I was just making a point. The quote sounds like something from Office Space.
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#18I used to think this too, but now my position is more nuanced. Certainly you need to have shown you have a passion for technology that goes beyond the norm, but there are other reasons you might not have lots of recent code outside of work. Maybe you have a family. Or maybe you have such a fulfilling current job that you don't feel the need to supplement it with extracurricular activities. Maybe you are interested in…
I agree completely - also, in some jobs (yes, even in software) it's as important that you're well-spoken, out-going and social as you are a passionate developer.
In my hiring I'd have more alarm bells ringing for someone who spends the majority of their awake time coding vs someone who loves it but also loves doing other things.
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#19I think you need to be sued for anti-family discrimination.
If you have young children, your chance of being able to do this sort of after hours programming can be near zero if you're doing all the parenting you should if you and your spouse both work.
Especially if you get in trouble for it at work (I know I've been places where you had to do 4-10 hours of paperwork to do it even).
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#20I actually reject people without pet projects for an entirely different reason. I can find out much more about how you behave as a developer and whether or not you'd fit in with our company by reading your code than I can from any kind of interview or whiteboard challenge. Ideally you'd actually hire the prospective developer for a short contract project before hiring, but that has significant challenges and costs as well.
Think of a carpenter that claimed to be amazing at producing furniture, but had none to show you. Would you trust them on how well he could BS you in an interview? It's not about passion or dedication. If you, producer of code, can show me code you've produce, I'm taking a much lower risk on hiring you. And fortunately, there are enough people around with code to show that rejecting others is a pretty easy filtering decision to make.