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 office.
I really like it when my specialist has a prominent public profile.
A recent case: tenure at a major university, had written or was quoted in many good journals and papers, and had a number of impressive accreditations (for example he was also head of his specialty's medical association for the country). This showed dedication and interest as well as some measure of intelligence.
I was accordingly confident he was on top of the latest developments in his field and would be able to deal with complications better than your run of the mill specialist. The care was great throughout.
Similarly, our lawyer has been quoted twice by the Supreme Court in Singapore, has written many articles in the Straits Times, and does great (and visible) pro bono work, all of which I could find off a quick Google for his name. Whilst I hired him based on a recommendation, it was comforting to see this public confirmation of his ability and interest in the field.
My reasoning is that if someone is very good in his line of work, some of that work starts to spill out to the public, either by research, teaching, articles, blog posts, etc.. If a person is not a pure introvert, working all by himself, and is quite good, invariably someone will notice it..
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 programming... But there are other things I like too.
So, why do I need to work long hours and program outside of my job? I have good enough communication skills to convey my experience. If I'm not hired for not having an active github account, or a side project, there are five other companies that would.
Just because we do side projects does not mean that we do not have a life outside of coding.
But certain people believe that in order to be a good coder, one of your hobbies MUST be coding.
Hair dressers don't have this problem, they are actually cutting hair 8 hours a day.
Carpenters have a more hands on education compared to compsci which is more maths than version control.
Doctors require 2 years of practice supervised by other doctors before they are certified.
I don't understand how you equate doing side code projects to not bringing clear focused mind to the office.
Would you also much rather bring a well rounded individual who does not take art classes after work? Do you think taking arts classes after work would affect one's ability to focus in the office?
Then why do you make similar assumptions about doing side code projects? For many of us, doing side code project is like taking art classes. It is art for us and it helps us learn new things about the art of software development that is not always easy to learn in the constraints of real world software business. Most importantly, it is a relaxing and enjoyable experience. It refreshes our soul and combined with a good night's sleep, it helps us to better focus next day at work, not the other way around.
Are you saying that you would much rather not hire people like us who care about the art of software development because from your high horse, we don't look like "well rounded" individuals? If you hold this kind of irrational conservative beliefs, I'd much rather not work for you.
I don't think it's wrong to work on side project. Some people like or want to. Who am I to judge what they do on their free time? It might happen to overlap with their job, or it might not.
But I agree, I don't require my surgeon to do surgery in his spare time. I've worked with plenty of great engineers who wanted to leave work at work, and after 40 hours of engineering, enough was enough and spent their free time doing something that wasn't engineering. I've also worked with people who did side projects, and were equally amazing.
I don't expect a brain surgeon to mess with somebody's head because he's bored at weekend, though :p
This is a huge problem in the industry and is the source of massive waste.
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 have learnt.
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.
I do not get this obsession with putting everything out there. I have a huge local directory with my old test programs, PoCs, started but abandoned ideas, etc. I regularly try new stuff, new libraries, programming languages, what have you. But my github account is empty.
The internet needs less stuff on it, not more.
It's not obsession. It's just a matter of convenience. git add; git commit; git push; and all my experimental code is safe on someone else's server that is managed much better than I can manage my set of USB drives and hard disks.
> The internet needs less stuff on it, not more.
I disagree!
What I do after the office hours is really none of your business. I should be able to do whatever I please (write code, play guitar, etc.) after office hours without you raising concerns about it.
If you believe I do not bring my clear focused mind to the office, then that is a separate issue to be discussed separately without bringing in what I do after office hours into the discussion. It is my prerogative, not yours, to decide if I need to give up what I am doing after office hours in order to focus better at office.
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.
I bet that even people who have spend 20 years on side projects haven't reached those 10K hours of practice yet.
Roughly 220 work days a year, 5 hours a day at work if you are full time, 6 if you dabble a bit outside of office hours, that’s around 5 years out of school, which isn’t too far off from my experiences prior to Malcolm Gladwell.
When I'm building some CRUD interface for my job, there's nothing I'm practicing with that. When I spend my entire day doing that, I've gained 0 relevant hours for Malcom's 10K.
Some jobs are easier to do on the side than others. I'll bet the gardener has some side projects too.
If you were looking for a drummer for a band, you would want to hear him play.
The latter one, sure. Makes me wonder if we should call interviews as auditions.