I'm sick of this fake humble passionate developer persona.
There are some of us who actually have families and better things to do with our free time than faking passion via putting hours on somebody else's product or those useless Github projects that we all know are nothing but publicity stunts to appeal to recruiters.
You are all damaging the industry.
Signed: 9to5 developer.
So no faking passion, putting hours on someone else's products or github projects because I couldn't care less about recruiters.
I'm not sure what the 'serves you right' is about, but fwiw it took me 10 years to wake up to this give or take a couple, and I'm terribly sorry if that caused others to not be able to charge their market value but it's not as if I was doing that on purpose, it's just that nobody took the hour or so that it took me to write this blog post and pass the message.
Thinking a bit further on that angle, I wonder if there's a market for a Github-with-payments ("here's a working snapshot of my code -- it's open-source but in order to open an issue that I will look into, you need to pay me $X"). After all, it is the same way doctors or lawyers work – they aren't expected to spend their weekends doing law cases or practicing for free.
[This is part of why I also oppose the widespread "Everyone should learn to code" movements. In principle, I would like to teach people how to code, but I don't necessarily want to do this work for free. Without this nuance being addressed, the "learn to code" movements strongly devalue our industry in my opinion. Have you ever heard lawyers say "Everyone should learn basic civil law" and then offer free classes for the same? It probably happens a bit, but nowhere near the scale that happens for code.]
Simply put, knowing how to write (in, say, English) won't make you a published author in the same way that knowing how to code (in, say, Javascript) won't make you a software engineer.
Or, another way of looking at it, by knowing the basics of a programming language you unlock the same kinds of jobs that were historically available to people proficient with Excel. Sure, you're no programmer, but at least you can hack an analysis together with a few basic tools and pass your findings around via email. These skills are not the focus of your job, but they do help you get your job done.
> I liken "Everyone should learn to code" with "Everyone should learn to write."
And later on:
> Or, another way of looking at it, by knowing the basics of a programming language you unlock the same kinds of jobs that were historically available to people proficient with Excel.
I posit that these are two very different statements, and the latter comes much closer to the reality than the former. There is no reason, say, chefs or plumbers or doctors need to learn how to code. Proficiency at using computer tools need not equate to building those tools, and people who build those tools should definitely not be expected to pass on that knowledge for free. Given your second example, aren't the "Learn to Code" movements today equivalent to (nonexistent) "Everyone should learn the basics of Excel macros" movements in the 90s?
That said, I'd argue that chefs, plumbers and doctors do benefit from the ability to solve their own problems with whatever tools available to them, and I'd still include the basics of programming in that list.
It's a narrow view of the world to assume that the only problems you can solve with code are the problems you'd hire a software engineer to solve. Much like the ability to communicate with words, or the ability to manipulate spreadsheets, coding is just another skill in a long list of skills that help individuals approach problems in new ways.
Do you need to know calculus in order to be a chef? Probably not. Does that mean we should stop teaching calculus in schools?
Oh, absolutely. And I'd love to learn anatomy and basic medical diagnosis in order to evaluate my posture, bloodwork and vitals every quarter, but you won't find many doctors willing to participate in movements that are going to teach me that. My point is that we should be more like them if we want to obtain ideal compensation and respect from society.
> Do you need to know calculus in order to be a chef? Probably not. Does that mean we should stop teaching calculus in schools?
Not at all. And I'd even encourage the teaching of code in schools, if qualified teachers willing to teach code at the salaries commonly offered in schools can be found. My opposition is to volunteer-based "Teach Everyone to Code" movements that often expect programmers to shoulder the vast amount of unpaid labor that goes into these events in order to pass on their in-demand skillset. In my opinion, the more we participate in these events, the more normalized that participation will become, until programmers are ultimately being paid the same as teachers are today (which is not very much, in the US anyway).
Really, the foundation skill in the law is to read and write. Lawyers are the most technical users of language, but we teach everyone to read and write on the taxpayer dime. And we teach everyone mathematics through at least algebra, even though it is mostly used by technical professionals. So we need to teach everyone to code.
Not everyone will end up being a professional coder, just like most people don't become lawyers. But if everyone has experience reading and writing code, they will be more informed and productive in a society that is increasingly computerized.
Its obvious really. Some people like dominoes and word games and tetris. Others would rather die than play those games. People are very very different.
Yow. The "9to5 developer" movement shows its true emotional colors: jealousy and envy, apparently. You also misread his post. It had nothing to do with offhours work, but everything to do with his day job employers taking advantage of him.
Me, I will generally prefer the candidate with great open source records over the one with only a resume. The one, I already have a deep signal on how they work with others and the quality of their work- the other is a black box.
My open source contributions are for fun, not for recruiters. I don't think they've ever had any impact on getting me a job.
Go back to your 9 to 5. Why are you wasting time on HN if you don't care about programming?
I will spend endless hours, day morning and night, coding on personal projects outside work.
Job? You get 10 to 6. I'm a professional and professionals don't work on paid projects for free.
Employers are welcome to pay double for overtime of course and I will reasses my other priorities that week.
I was responding to the ridiculous assertion that all of open source is done purely for the benefit of getting recruited.
Not having time for that anymore doesn't mean I don't care about it.
If you don't have time to code outside work, that's fine. Just don't accuse the rest of us of faking it.
As someone who really likes his job, derives significant satisfaction from it, and is constantly looking to get into more interesting work, yet doesn't feel like doing more than ~50 hours of this a week and has other interests (including creating run-on sentences apparently :P) that I wish to pursue, this false dichotomy between "Only cares about a paycheck" and "Passionate programmer who can't resist writing and publishing code" is damaging and demoralizing.
TurboHaskal explicitly said that those of us who work on open source projects in our free time must be "faking passion...to appeal to recruiters." That implies a worldview where nobody does programming for fun and that open source contributors are just pursuing additional strategies for making money. It's a depressing thought and absolutely is antithetical to the notion of liking programming.
It's fine if you have other interests and only want to program for 50 hours a week. But don't accuse me of "faking passion" because I program for 80 hours a week.
> those useless Github projects that we all know are nothing but publicity stunts to appeal to recruiters.
It's impossible to interpret this as anything but an attempt to indict open source projects as mere publicity stunts.
Even if you didn't, you certainly continued it.
I would say our position is more akin to professional car mechanic setting up shop on weekends and offering something like "I'll fix your car for free and teach you how to do it, but no guarantees!" Would professional mechanics accuse him of devaluing their industry? Probably. Could he say "I like to fix cars in my spare time, and I'm doing what I love. Buzz off!" Sure.
Here's the thing though -- auto mechanics, they have unions and certification, and therefore are probably more aware about downward pressure on wages and such. Which is why you won't find many qualified hobbyist auto mechanics on the weekend like I described. (On the flip side, their flexibility is far more limited than programmers'. So I'' still take the programmer job.)
Tons of car mechanics do in fact spend their weekends tinkering on cars for fun. Some of them restore old cars, others work on custom modifications. It's a whole part of car culture. Hobbyist auto mechanics absolutely are a thing.
Of course, nobody thinks they're devaluing the work of other mechanics by scratching their own itch on weekends. Likewise, when I work on my own personal projects it doesn't "destroy the industry." I'm not doing bespoke work on other people's projects for free, I'm building stuff I personally find fulfilling.