It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too • Hacker News Board

Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too

#51

Post by slfnflctd » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

There are people who used to write code at home for their own personal projects and really enjoyed it, but have become too busy, tired, disillusioned or whatever else to keep it going these days. There are also people who never could think of anything they wanted to build, but nonetheless liked coding for school better than doing a lot of other things, and got good at it.

If I was interviewing a person who told me they have never created anything that wasn't for school or a paycheck, it would definitely bother me-- but I would still do my best to look objectively at the quality of their work. After all, there are many skilled electricians and plumbers who don't use their skills in their own homes unless they have an annoying problem they can fix easily.

Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too

#52

Post by lquist » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #29

>It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too That short life-affirming quote structured like a pithy aphorism is hiding the true debate that motivates it. The real discussion before that quote is this: Some employers prefer programmers that like programming outside of work. For the other programmers that would rather constrain coding work to 40 hours a week, they feel that employer preference is…

As an employer (100+ people), I prefer folks that code outside of work in the same way that I prefer marketing people that study/practice marketing outside of work. For the simple reason that it correlates highly with performance.

Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too

#53

Post by ghaff » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #46

yowlingcat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I agree with your premises or conclusions. I think employers prefer engineers who are effective and have a past track record of success. For some companies, some of these are going to have a "can't rip my keyboard out of my hands" characteristic, but I've mostly found that working on software outside of work has minimal correlation with productivity. Engineers that are steadily growing and continuing…

> I think employers prefer engineers who are effective and have a past track record of success. I have talked to startup founders who were very explicit that they only hired developers who coded obsessively outside of work. One was very clear: If you didn't have a public Github profile showing a track record of frequent commits on personal project outside of work hours, you would not be hired at his firm. > I've most…

I hope they explicitly state that requirement in the job listing so as not to waste their time or potential job hunters' time.

Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too

#54

Post by yowlingcat » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #46

yowlingcat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I agree with your premises or conclusions. I think employers prefer engineers who are effective and have a past track record of success. For some companies, some of these are going to have a "can't rip my keyboard out of my hands" characteristic, but I've mostly found that working on software outside of work has minimal correlation with productivity. Engineers that are steadily growing and continuing…

> I think employers prefer engineers who are effective and have a past track record of success. I have talked to startup founders who were very explicit that they only hired developers who coded obsessively outside of work. One was very clear: If you didn't have a public Github profile showing a track record of frequent commits on personal project outside of work hours, you would not be hired at his firm. > I've most…

I understand that these kinds of firms and founders exist, but I think it's best to avoid them. If a founder prefers obsession over effectiveness, isn't that just the textbook way to start a firm that's at best dysfunctional and at worst a self-forced failure? I find these kinds of firms really unacceptable and an embarrassment to the industry.

Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too

#55

Post by kwhitefoot » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #46

yowlingcat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I agree with your premises or conclusions. I think employers prefer engineers who are effective and have a past track record of success. For some companies, some of these are going to have a "can't rip my keyboard out of my hands" characteristic, but I've mostly found that working on software outside of work has minimal correlation with productivity. Engineers that are steadily growing and continuing…

> I think employers prefer engineers who are effective and have a past track record of success. I have talked to startup founders who were very explicit that they only hired developers who coded obsessively outside of work. One was very clear: If you didn't have a public Github profile showing a track record of frequent commits on personal project outside of work hours, you would not be hired at his firm. > I've most…

> you would not be hired at his firm.

If they make that public it would be good, it would save me the bother of applying for a job with them.

Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too

#56

Post by woranl » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

Rerarom wrote: post #16

megablast wrote: post #6

I don't get this. It is like being an accomplished painter, but never painting anything for yourself. Or a carpenter, and not making your own table or chairs. As a coder, you have the ability to create almost anything. How can that knowledge not tempt you to create something yourself?

Programming is not by itself an art, so it doesn't fulfill people's self-expression needs (although it may contain bits of art like e.g. video games). You cannot create "almost anything" with coding, it's not like I can bake fries by typing some code. I do not write this in jest, I just find that people tend to overestimate coding.

To me, coding is more of an art. There are beauty and expression in it, not just a bunch of syntax put together.

Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too

#57

Post by Lazare » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

yesenadam wrote: post #50

ghaff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're serious, the way I look at it is that people like you are one of the problems with tech culture. Way too many people in tech have this attitude that there's something exceptional and unique about it that requires participants to be all-in 24 hours a day. It's not. And this sort of attitude discourages a large swath of the population from bringing their talents to the field.

>people like you are one of the problems with tech culture And that's any kind of way to talk to someone?! I don't think so. I was very surprised that the only downvoted comments on this page currently are by people who apparently don't understand how if you love programming, you never do it outside work. On Hacker News! Repeatedly on this page I've seen the total straw man response like yours of "requires participan…

> And that's any kind of way to talk to someone?! I don't think so.

I think the attitude being expressed is one of the problems with tech culture. If the person honestly holds that attitude, does that not make him part of the problem? There's not a lot of nice ways to describe people who hold problematic views.

> I've seen the total straw man response like yours of "requires participants to be all-in 24 hours a day". No-one's suggesting that.

It's a metaphor. Nobody may be suggesting literal 24 hour days, but plenty of people are suggesting that you should code outside of the standard work week.

> > And this sort of attitude discourages a large swath of the population from bringing their talents to the field.

> I don't know what you mean there.

Not the guy you asked, but I think I know what he was getting at. Some people have commitments (family, children, etc.) or health issues that makes this sort of commitment infeasible, or come from different backgrounds. Expecting a github profile with a lot of personal projects does filter out a lot of people who might be very capable of showing up, doing the job, and going home.

Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too

#58

Post by jschwartzi » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:32 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #41

jasode wrote: post #29

>It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too That short life-affirming quote structured like a pithy aphorism is hiding the true debate that motivates it. The real discussion before that quote is this: Some employers prefer programmers that like programming outside of work. For the other programmers that would rather constrain coding work to 40 hours a week, they feel that employer preference is…

Gonna bet that for whatever reasons they do it, people who code on their own time are on average better coders and will on average have an easier time gettinv employment. Isn't this true for any skill (except maybe neurosurgery)?

Not really. You can't, for example, lift weights 8 or 12 hours a day unless you're taking steroids because your muscles need to heal and they can only do that between bouts. You can through-hike long backpacking trails but it takes a toll on your body and eventually you will have to rest. And you can't hike all day and into the night, you need to rest between bouts, again because your body needs to heal.

I think the dangerous thing about people thinking you have to code all the time is that they're just assuming that it makes you a better coder without any real reasoning. And that's the kind of assumption that is very prone to confirmation bias.

Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too

#59

Post by yowlingcat » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:32 PM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #43

yowlingcat wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not good enough to do your job competently (or not trying to actively get there) after experience doing this only at work, then I wouldn't hire you is how I look at it.

What if they good enough to do the job competently while doing it only at work and also code outside work that is unrelated with work?

Good for them. In many cases, getting good enough to do the job competently while doing it only at work is exactly how you get to the point of coding impressive stuff that is unrelated to work!

In fact, I've seen friends that decide to do something in a weekend side project that's super impressive, but it doesn't mean they're doing it every or most weekends. They're usually relaxing or living a balanced life, which in turn makes it possible for them to do their best work during the week.

Think about it this way. If a bodybuilder didn't take off enough days to rest in between really intense workouts and then prematurely plateaued at a certain point because they haven't respected the ideal rest/load balance, is that an obsession that enables or gets in the way of their fitness goals?

We shouldn't think that mental fitness is an exception.

Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too

#60

Post by ghaff » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #57

yesenadam wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>people like you are one of the problems with tech culture And that's any kind of way to talk to someone?! I don't think so. I was very surprised that the only downvoted comments on this page currently are by people who apparently don't understand how if you love programming, you never do it outside work. On Hacker News! Repeatedly on this page I've seen the total straw man response like yours of "requires participan…

> And that's any kind of way to talk to someone?! I don't think so. I think the attitude being expressed is one of the problems with tech culture. If the person honestly holds that attitude, does that not make him part of the problem? There's not a lot of nice ways to describe people who hold problematic views. > I've seen the total straw man response like yours of "requires participants to be all-in 24 hours a day".…

Yes. That is exactly what I meant.

I'd just add that, on the subject of strawmen, I'm pretty sure not a single person on this thread has suggested that people shouldn't do software-related things on their own time if that's what they want to do--with the only caveats being care about burnout and possible employee agreements around IP rights. They just shouldn't be de facto required to do so.

And, yes, I do think the view as expressed is extremely toxic. The underlying attitude is bad enough but to basically say if you don't have time/interest to be working on Github repos on nights and weekends you should GTFO of tech is... well, problematic is a nice way of putting it.