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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

#41

Post by watwut »

"And when I said I have no side projects to show, what they heard - what interviewers hear - is: I am not the best. I am not a passionate developer. I don't spend the necessary time to keep on top of my education and skills. That development is "just a job." "

Are you sure you are not just projecting your own insecurities and opinions into interviewers? Majority of developers don't have side projects. According to FOSS survey, owerwhelming majority of linux (especially) and open source contributions is paid work. Sometimes it is that they work so much in day job, most of the time they work normally (which is enough) and do other things in out of work time (exercise, care about children, read books, socialize - social skill matters, craft). If you are coding 6 hours a day (generous 2 hours for meetings and chatting and organizing), then you should code plenty.

You could have loose that interview due to many other reasons, you could have run into that one company that does not hire without outside code.

But if you really worry about this one, maybe create an account with sample project and be open about that project purpose (e.g. dont be afraid to say that you created this project to show how I code, because previous interviewers asked for that). If it is really about code sample, then something you create withing two days should suffice.

And if they demand real contributions to real open source projects, ask them whether their company gives employees time to do such a thing on the clock. After all, they expect your previous employers to be so generous with time, so they should put money where their mouths are. If you dont hire me without having full public profile, it is only fair to demand that being employed by you makes continuing that work possible.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#42

Post by eropple »

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…

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 get dance-like-a-monkey "coding tests" (unpaid, of course) that are nonportable from employer to employer.

Employers don't care. Employers say they care, but it's signaling. If I didn't write code on my own because I like it, it would be a serious negative to do so on the off chance that you run into the black-swan employer who takes the question seriously.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#43

Post by 2trill2spill »

kelnos wrote: post #32
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…

The next time I'm interviewing in front of a hiring manager who asks me about my side coding projects, I'm going to ask them about their side managing projects.

Then you will not get the job, which I thought was one of the points of job interviews.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#44

Post by zachwill »

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 agree 100% with this viewpoint. I would much rather sit down with a potential hire and go over some scripts and projects they've written than go to the whiteboard. I don't care how big the project is, I think it's just much more pragmatic to share ideas and stories over code than algorithmic gotcha questions.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#46

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#47

Post by Falell »

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 questions about them, even "why should I use this, what problem does it solve". Source: Years of interviewing people with a laundry list of technologies on their resumes.

Should people be expected to remember everything about all tools they've ever used? No! Is trivial experience with something useful? Probably not.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#48

Post by colomon »

What strikes me as weird about this is the assumption that it's an either/or proposition.

I am passionate about playing traditional dance music. And I have supported this by writing a program to generate high quality sheet music from ABC scores; scripts to download collections of scores or MP3s off the web; scripts to handle tagging/naming my MP3 files; etc.

I am passionate about RPGs. Back in the day I supported this with a script to convert a simple text markup to LaTeX to generate print quality copies of my RPG stories. (This was about a decade before Markdown.)

Etc. The idea that a programmer could have an entire second business and not write any interesting code in the process strikes me as really odd. There are NO tasks for the company that could be usefully automated?

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#49

Post by kelnos »

jorblumesea wrote: post #36

Am I the only one who likes side projects? I'm addicted to the idea of starting new projects in new languages. How many of them ever get completed or push into an environment is a different story... It's fresh, clean and filled with possibility. An existing code base is usually filled with hacks etc.

I'm certainly not opposed to them, and lately I've been itching to find the time for one. But putting side projects as a gate to employment seems like lazy interviewing work to me, and also doesn't really select for the best candidates.

Unless you believe "has no interests[1] outside of work aside from writing more code" gives you the best candidates, which I don't agree with.

[1] Yes, I'm being hyperbolic; no need to be a pedant.

Re: I have no side code projects to show you

#50

Post by jonas21 »

nathan_long wrote: post #40

Honest question: do you use open source at work? Do you contribute to open source while at work ? If not, why not? A couple days ago I spent several hours puzzling through how to use an open source library. When I figured it out, I made a PR for documentation. Our closed-source app will benefit from having its dependencies better documented. I do very little coding outside of work anymore, but I still have public con…

Many employers take the stance that they own all the code you write while at work, and therefore you don't have the right to release it under an open-source license.
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