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Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

>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 unfair.

So yes, of course it's fine to want to do non-coding activities outside of work... but that's not what the real frustration is about.

Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do to prevent some employers for preferring coders who code outside of work. It's been that way for decades. On the other hand, some employers don't care about personal coding projects so that culture may be a better fit.

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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 that professional growth may work on things outside of work. But they definitely ensure that whatever they do at work, in those 8 hours a day when they're on the job, is in large part contributing to that.

IMO, that's 99% of it. Engineering off the job or on a side project? It indicates a certain degree of intrinsic fascination. But if that's targeted in the wrong direction, it can result in someone being distracted and building the wrong thing really well. It varies.

> 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 mostly found that working on software outside of work has minimal correlation with productivity.

Same. That doesn't mean everyone is hiring based on that.

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

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.

> 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.

While it would be nice of these companies to out themselves so we can avoid them, it’s usually pretty easy to read between the lines and spot them. Their job descriptions tend to have more red flags than a Chinese parade. I can spot a “you must have no life outside of work” job opening a mile away and avoid it.

"We want passionate developers to join our family. We work hard and we play hard. Together. You'll be part of an exceptional team that won't slow down until we've changed the world."

How did I do?

You forgot to mention code ninjas but otherwise A+

I find some employers try to restrict your outside of work coding with agreements not to work for anyone else during the employment period. Some demand ip for any projects.

I feel like I have to sneak around when coding after work.

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.

As someone who is (more or less) in marketing, I'm not sure what studying/practicing marketing outside of work even looks like. I suppose I could read more business books--I read some--but mostly they don't have a whole lot of value. Am I supposed to have a side gig where I do some consulting? I'd think you might have a problem if I were to do that for closely related companies where I had the most experience. (Not that they'd hire me if they were ethical for conflict of interest reasons.)

What's the sales rep supposed to do in their spare time to study and practice? Or the finance person?

Also there is a difference between studying and reflecting on something outside of work, and actually practicing outside of work.

Do I want my surgeon to be studying the latest techniques outside of his work? YES

Do I need a surgeon who dissects animals and removes tumors at home as a hobby on weekends? NO

The latter sounds like a fun premise for a TV series, though.

Is there such a distinction in programming? Plenty of people use side projects as a way to test out new languages, tools, etc. It's widely held that learning programming in general is easiest if you have something you're trying to build. Are there people just reading a "React for dummies" book and coming away comfortable with it?

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)?

>Isn't this true for any skill

I'm not sure why it would hold that, if you do something for 40 hours a week, you'll necessarily improve if you do it for an even greater amount of time. And, besides, effectiveness as a developer is not just about coding anyway. A lot more goes into creating products and services than lines of code.

The underlying assumption is that when you code outside of work, you're working on things that are different from what you do at work.

That might be true for some physical/mechanical skills, such as sports. However, some quick googling shows that even professional athletes rarely average more than 40 hours a week practising over the course of a year, so even that's questionable.

And as for things like programming or any mental/intellectual skill like that? I highly doubt it.

As a general rule, you're going to see heavy diminishing returns on time invested. By the time you've spent 40 hours doing it, a few more hours on the weekend is unlikely to have any real benefit, and to the extent it causes burn out or takes the place of something that helps you stay healthy, it's likely to be a net negative.

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.

I feel like a lot of people that push back on this premise do so believing that "coding outside of work" means doing more of your day job. When you look at it from that perspective, yeah, doing 60 hours of the same thing per week instead of 40 is not going to do much for you.

In reality, most people that code outside of work do so to learn new things; new stacks or languages, or take on projects that are orthogonal to their day job.

I think the argument should probably be framed around "learning outside of work" rather than "coding outside of work".

I believe hiring decisions are employers perogative.

What I do appreciate is them being honest and upfront about it so that I don't waste time pursuing a job that might not fit me.

That works until their cumulative prerogatives shut you out of your chosen career because they're discriminating against you. Discrimination is simply avoiding the thing you don't prefer because you have a preference for something else. If you discriminate against enough people, it becomes a problem for people who don't fit into your prerogative.

Given that the market is so unbalanced in favor of programmers, and will keep being that way for the next 10 years, that's hardly an issue.

The entire hiring process is an act of discrimination. What's the alternative? Hire everybody that applies?

> Some employers prefer programmers that like programming outside of work

Many employers prefer programmers that keep current with new technologies, and programmers will generally have better opportunities for job switching the broader their skills are. Many employers also don't provide much opportunity for breadth development in working hours, leaving programmers in a narrow lane if they restrict themselves to programming at work.

It's not that employers specifically prefer you programming outside of work, programming outside of work is a way of avoiding getting sick in a rut defined by you your present role with your present employer.

There are, also, employers that use “your life is coding” as a filter, probably because they are looking for people whose preferred lifestyle wouldn't change if they were in nearly 24/7 crunch mode. Unless you are one of those people, even if your actually do like to code outside of work, you should probably avoid those firms like the plague.

Well... I do code outside of work, and learn things outside of work, but those are rarely (if ever) the things that my current employer can immediately turn a profit on. These days, for example, I’m trying to broaden my understanding of the Linux kernel, which isn’t something I’m going to apply to my regular Java development job. So, preferring programmers who also code outside of work is one thing, giving them coding assignments to complete outside of work (which is what they’re really doing) is something else entirely.

And you see that attitude on this thread with some who would presumably pass on anyone lacking personal Github repos for reasons of culture fit, insufficient passion, or some other such filter.

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