Comment by Uberphallus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Uberphallus | Hacker News Reader

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Thank you!

When I was single I had a lot of free time to tinker and go through coding tests, etc, etc, and cater to whatever hiring shenanigans were in place.

First marriage, then a kid, and I find myself grabbing my laptop after work maybe once a fortnight. I'm always "open for new challenges" and I regularly apply to positions in interesting (to me) projects, but more often than not, at some point in their process they gimme some "take home assignments" that are a literal week of unpaid work. I've heard of companies that pay for those assignments, but I've never stumbled upon one.

I always drop out of that, thinking, "good luck with that particular choice of candidate sampling". I might not have been the best candidate, but most seniors I talk to are turned off by these things as well.

Timed coding tests are fine, up to 2-3h, I can squeeze one of those in most weeks. But, and I'm not making it up, "implement this subset of the MQTT spec in your language of choice" as just a step in the hiring process? Hell nah.

I wrote open source initially because I wanted to skip those assignments but still be fair to the hirers and because it took less time and was WAY more fun than take home tests.

What I discovered was that they'd be willing to make me work 5+ hours on their assignment but wouldn't spend 5 minutes reading my code.

Though it wasn't my intention it inadvertently gave me a quick and easy way to filter companies which actively disrespect candidates' time.

It takes more than five minutes to review code, especially when it's of a volume you describe. You're also really trying to replace the metrics against which a company measures candidates and insert your own metric and then complaining that they don't use your metric. I wouldn't expect you to use my metric when interviewing me for your company, so don't think it's fair to try to insert your own metric for others (though you're welcome to vote with your feet).

It takes more than 5 minutes to thoroughly review code but you can learn a lot from only spending 5 minutes.

Ignoring it completely also sends a signal to the candidate. IME this red flag is usually paired with 5 or 6 other red flags.

So I am married with kids and I have two separate careers in unrelated industries to balance, only one of which is full time though. Still I find time to spend with the wife and kids and I still contribute daily to open source. It is all about budgeting and balance. What are you willing to sacrifice. I don't have social time outside the family and I don't watch much television unless I am traveling away from the family. I balance open source against things like gardening and house maintenance but gardening and house maintenance only take so much time.

The biggest killers to my open source contributions are general life soul sucking killers. For me the worst is long driving commutes to an office. I can feel my soul bleeding away.

That's wonderful! You sound like a very driven person to be able to do all of that. Of course, your experience and ability shouldn't be considered the norm with everyone or expected of anyone, especially because with finite time in the day and differing situations, we must strive to judge everyone on the same plane.

> Of course, your experience and ability shouldn't be considered the norm

It is the norm in my line of work. I mean in my other line of work that isn't a software development.

Oh sure, sorry I should have clarified, I was talking about software development. I thought that was implied, but happy to be explicit.

I also find it strange how some people are so incredibly emotional about this subject like being punched in the face or having their car stolen at gun point.

I like programming as hobby so I choose to program outside of work. By no means is that sentiment meant to suggest any form of hostility. There isn’t even any competition implied.

I doubt I would be able to juggle 2 jobs with my current pandemic induced schedule. Basically, my time is spoken for during the week from 630am until 8pm. And that gets me 6 hours of work. I need to find 10 hours outside that time to get myself up to a 40 hour workweek.

I'm pretty lucky in that my wife is a stay at home mom. My sister in law has a dual income family. They basically never see eachother, because one has to work during the day during the week, and the other works nights and all weekend. They're lucky one of their jobs is so flexible.

During the pandemic many developers are working from home, so scratch off transportation. Most developers in the corporate world work 40-45 hours per including lunch, breaks, and distractions. So normally that could be something like 9am to 5:30pm. If you have flexible office hours you can push that to 7am-3:30pm.

If you are into open source you can spend 2 hours per night. Where you put that two hours is up to you, but you need to break for a scheduled meal. A scheduled meal ensures better nutrition and mental health plus some dedicated family time. This mean you program open source from 4-6pm or 8-10pm. Which ever you choose the other is dedicated time with the kids or chores around the house. Then you can spend about an hour before bed watching a show with your spouse.

You still need time to exercise and I find it’s better to do that in the morning with less mental fatigue so I will wake at about 5am.

When you need to participate in a side job that is structured time dedicated in a scheduled way, one or two weekends a month and occasional emails and a rare phone conference during the week in the evening.

Does your wife do all the cooking, housework and childrearing?

My wife works a part time job and chooses to do most of the cooking. She does most of the laundry but other house hold chores are spread out amongst everyone including the children.

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