Of course it all depends on the context, but nothing is so simple in this situation, I guess.
The problem is, you do not know who will do a better job. The parent post is implying that the past is a signal for the future.
Did they hire you?
I'm not sure. I don't actively mail around my résumé, since I'm employed at the moment and not looking for work. Sometimes recruiters email me, but they have never mentioned the sabbatical. Probably people just ignore it. I haven't updated the details on my résumé since 2004, shame on me ;-)
Yes, exactly. The software industry is great in that, even if you can't find a job right now, you can do actual real-world work. Contributions to significant open source projects is a huge plus for getting hired where I work, and I don't think it's just here.
In fact, you can sometimes build your skills faster doing open source stuff than when employed - since you can more easily pick what to learn and what to do.
But in other industries, it is really very sad - if you can't get a job, you often can't do anything at all.
I have a hard time believing that a 'project' would look anything like employment, and I think your ruse would fall apart under interview scrutiny.
Mind you, the best thing you can do when you're cut is to start a business. B.S. is better than a blank stare, but not by much.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't get involved in projects, just that they shouldn't attempt to make a project look like employment if it isn't.
What is the difference? I am having a little trouble drawing the distinction.
- If a self-funded project is not employment, does it become employment when someone else funds it?
- If you self fund a project and you are able to sell the result of your project, does that make the work leading up to the sale employment? What if you are never able to make a sale?
- Do you have to be just another cog in the wheel of a big business to be considered employed?
- Why is searching for a job not the same as searching for new customers (i.e. sales, a real profession)?
As far as I can tell, they are all exactly the same. Where does the line get drawn?
Employment means you are employed. If you start a company, you are an employee of said company ("self-employed" is a misnomer if you have a corporation). "A project," implies that there is not a company, otherwise you would say that you started a company. "A project," does not constitute employment.
You can talk about edge cases of pet projects making sales, but it doesn't change the fact that claiming a project as employment experience is unlikely to get you very far.
Again, I am not saying that people should not work on projects. Just don't confuse projects with employment.
It's not a semantic game, contractors are hired this way all the time. Programming skills like most crafts can be applied equally to paid and unpaid work. When you get hired for a programming job, presumably the main concern is whether you can program, which has nothing to do with whether or not you were previously employed to do it (that has more to do with your cashflow situation).
Then they are employed. Working on a project without an employer is not employment. Working on contract for an employer is generally referred to as "self-employment" although, technically, if you're operating under your own business, you're an employee of your own business. I really don't understand why HN is so upset by this distinction. Everyone here is perfectly happy to distinguish between "project" and "start-up" but not, apparently, "project" and "employment".
A project is exactly how I describe what I am working on, whether I am being paid by someone else or if I am paying myself – someone is always paying for your time, even if that someone is you. I'm sure even you would agree that my day job projects are employment.
I believe my question still remains. If not all projects are employment, when does working on a project become employment? What criteria need to be met?
I believe I answered that very clearly in my last response. One likely works on projects as part of employment. One may work on projects outside of employment. 'Project' does not imply 'employment' though typically 'employment' does imply 'project'.
If you start a business, you legally become employed by that business. If you work on a project without a business, you have not constituted employment. As for interviewing, even if you start a business and work on a project, with no completed product or sales to speak of, I think you'll still have a difficult time claiming legitimacy.
I guess my confusion in your original response comes from the notion in my belief that all work is employment. Although I do believe I have a little bit of a better understanding of where you are coming from now.
With that said, even when I'm hacking away for fun on purely personal projects, I still consider that an act under the umbrella of my business – which does happens to be a corporation in my case, but it need not be. If the project turns into something that is marketable, it will be sold under my business. That also adds to the confusion of where to draw the line.
Ultimately, I strongly believe the employer is going to be interested in what you have been doing no matter what the circumstances. If it is interesting and applicable to the job, it is not going to matter who commissioned the work or how much you were paid to do it and it is certainly going to look a lot better than a job at McDonalds.
Started off as just a random project by 8 people, turned into some consulting, open source software releases, published papers, citations, several talks at conferences, press coverage (NYT, MSNBC, Forbes, etc). Now we've reverted it back to a side project. Yet most of us keep it on our resumes and it seems (and I think is) fairly legit.