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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

#371

Post by Retra »

Falell wrote: post #47
zamalek wrote: post #3

> I ran 50+ miles a week. I pushed myself to excel. To excel within the boundaries of the time and life-balance I had set for myself. Part of excelling at your job is learning new stuff - something that I am absolutely certain you do all the time, even if you only do it during work hours. Maybe this week you are starting a new project and need to learn Vue. Publish those 100 lines of code to GitHub. Just like that yo…

100 lines of code is not a meaningful amount of experience with anything, and surely cannot provide any meaningful advantage over the lifetime of a serious project compared to another developer who starts fresh. Having "dozens of technologies" at this level of experience is often a bad sign. Very frequently candidates who mention lots of technologies like this on their resume or github can't answer the simplest quest…

100 lines of code is far, far better than zero, and this thus quite meaningful. Mathematicians can write proofs shorter than that and demonstrate mastery of their craft, and programmers can demonstrate basic competencies the same way.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#372

Post by derefr »

freedomben wrote: post #357
anta40 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Personally, I've lately been considering the opposite: getting out of coding as a job, so that I can continue to love it as a hobby.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#374

Post by ketzu »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #80
hughes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we consider software candidates like tradespeople? How do electricians and welders demonstrate their ability in an interview?

For electricians and welders, there are licenses / certification. Obtaining the license / certification demonstrates the baseline competency

Isn't this like a college degree?

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#375

Post by gxs »

maxhallinan wrote: post #359
freshhawk wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The reason you have a hard time with it is because often the skills acquired through disciplines in the arts are less tangible then something technical.

If nothing else, you might be more interesting to work with, have a clearer communication style, better taste in evaluating what "looks good", etc. etc.

These aren't a substitute for skill, but past a certain skill threshold other things start play more significant roles.

Edit: I really don't understand this pattern of down voting comments without offering a rebuttal of any kind. What exactly about this comment was against HN guidelines? Last time I checked, disagreeing with a comment wasn't grounds for down voting.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#376

Post by jeffwilcox »

333c wrote: post #370
ultrasaurus wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring manager here who reads Github profiles -- it just occurred to me that I've almost never actually mentioned it to the interviewee. It's flavoured the conversation for sure (except for the bootcamp grads who all have identical Githubs) but I tend to talk more about your process than the actual code.

> except for the bootcamp grads who all have identical Githubs Out of curiosity, what do you mean by this? What sorts of things do they all have in common?

Basic Angular project. No contributions. Poor code. CS 101-style projects.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#377

Post by sgift »

foo101 wrote: post #332
AznHisoka wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect my doctor to read papers, news, etc to keep abreast of the latest medical advances though.

This! And similarly, software developers should keep abreast of latest technical advances. What makes software engineering different from surgery is that when a surgeon learns something new, he does not have a live patient at his home to practice the new thing he has learnt, but as software engineers, most of the times we can immediately fire up an editor and write a PoC or a toy project to practice the new thing we…

> Its strange that such natural and obvious curiosity and desire to try something out outside of work deserves the kind of criticism that it is receiving in the original article and some of the comments here.

The critic points out that it is no longer curiosity which drives you when people expect you to do it.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#378

Post by nanodano »

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.

If you were hiring a musician, and you asked them to perform an audition. Would you accept the response, "Sorry, I don't work for free."

"Well do you have any recordings you can show me instead?" "No, I do other things with my free time. I don't work outside of work."

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#379

Post by nanodano »

ryandrake wrote: post #319
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.

When you hire someone to fix your roof, do you make them build you a doghouse first to prove they know carpentry?

If I owned a carpentry company, and I was trying to hire a carpenter, yes, I would ask them to build me something. Maybe not a dog house, but a bird house. You don't think that would be reasonable? "If you want us to hire you as a carpenter, prove to us you can build a bird house first." That seems totally reasonable to me.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#380

Post by kilotaras »

nanodano wrote: post #369
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…

If you asked a musicians to perform an audition before you hired them, would you accept the response, "Sorry, I don't work for free." Would you expect a musician to practice their instrument in their free time or only play their instrument during paid gigs?

That is a bad analogy. Supply/demand ratio of musicians is way higher then for developers.
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