301–310 of 545 posts
This looks very much like deflecting the disappointment experienced at the boutique app firm to all people like us who do love to code in spare time. I believe it is unfair to paint all of us with the same brush. I know plenty of people (myself included) who love to code in their spare time and still have weekend plans that have nothing to do with computers.
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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…
Surgeons, plumbers, dentists, and gardeners are licensed, bonded, and insured, entrusting the certification process to a third party. Surgeons and dentists also have professional development baked into their work schedules, which software engineers should have -- say, hire someone for 35 hours per week so they can spend 5 hours per week on professional development.
This is a huge problem in the industry and is the source of massive waste.
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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…
You must be applying to the wrong companies then. I just got done doing interviews, and I looked at what the second round candidates had available on GitHub and their personal site, and the one who got the job had about 5 projects that were impressive. Good employers care. I care. Its not signaling. Its important.
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…
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…
Eh, the Duds can fork github projects too, add some minor feature and release the "project" to rot. You do not get to see people who get stuff done- you get to see people who optimized their "work"-life for the impression of getting stuff done. Not beeing ready to pour unreasonable hours in- actually is a good sign. Such a person values his/her time- and thus will think on there own, for example when handed ridiculou…
As someone who has been doing personal as well as public side projects for possibly 20 years now, I think I can share some insights about why I (and perhaps people like me) work on side projects.
I grew up in a time when we had computers with 3 MB of memory and 300 MB of hard disk were considered powerful machines in my school. The students would get only 30 minutes of computer time per week. These were times when you boot your computer, type GWBASIC, press , and start coding. This was one of the very few ways to use a computer meaningfully. Writing code in GW-BASIC became like a mindsport for some of us. I would write tiny games, draw diagrams or solve math equations with code. It became a hobby.
I guess everyone has hobbies. I have some too. Coding is one of them. It's not the only one.
About 10 years later, I learnt that this hobby could become a career and I chose programming and developing software as my career. Is it fair to now be considered a "human machine" who "work 80 hour weeks" and have "absolutely no evening or weekend plans" just because my career also happens to be one of my hobbies?!
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> Employers don't care. The wrong empoyers don't care. The right ones do. My github portfolio is a means for me to determine if a potential employer is suitable for me, not the other way around. It's not a test for me to pass, it's a test for a potential employer to pass. If a recruiter brings up things listed on my LinkedIn page, I know they're not suitable for me. If they bring up things on my github, I'm reasonabl…
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…
Some of the things you can learn outside of this field are what overtraining is (actually not that different from the AI concept), perspective on the learning and teaching process, the importance of preparation and good tools, patience with new ideas, and the dangers of trying to rush through the learning process.
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…
Me either. It's become cool to work 60 hours a week because you like your job, and then go home and do more programming because you like programming. Why it's cool... I don't know. I agree it helped me in the early days of my career, but at this point, as a senior developer I can pick up new technology much faster than my early days. I can come up with a working solutions much faster. I like my job, and I like progra…
Just because we do side projects does not mean that we do not have a life outside of coding.