Folks who love coding will have code to show without question. IME folks who don’t have code to show are usually the people who build the software you hate at companies.
Hire creative engineers, who build things that people want and show a genuine interest in their craft.
I don't think that, but it's just as reasonable a position with about as much grounding in reality.
I mean you could ask them about this and get a clear understanding. I also don't see people writing code in their free time as a junior trait. Most of the very senior devs I know still do.
professional photographers have great examples of personal things that they've worked on to show off their portfolio, artists use things like behance and artstation, musicins have band camp and SoundCloud, writers have watt pad / substack, and software engineers... have github.
I mean the whole reason I got into software engineering was literally to be able to conjure up my creations out of seemingly thin air. No other branch of engineering is as frictionless towards making that a reality.
Software engineers:
- "Leetcode is unfair"
- "Whiteboarding is too stressful"
- "Personal projects are biased in favor of people with too much free time..."
Bunch of self entitled prima donnas.
It’s not usually the same people saying all those things. People have different preferences.
No matter what hiring method you use you’ll find some group of people criticizing it.
Problems I personally have almost never pass the point on the cost/benefit curve for which it's worth firing up a text editor, and when they do the "solution" is usually a few lines of shell or something similarly trivial. I used to get excited about personal projects, years and years ago, but that was mostly because I didn't realize what solutions already existed so was reinventing the wheel a lot. Plus I just had a whole lot more free time.
I also don't do a lot of plumbing or wiring or wall-framing or drywalling for their own sake. Though I do find a lot more good reasons to do those things in my personal life, than I find good reasons for writing code.
Why, exactly, do we expect tech workers to have side projects?
Doctors are also a service job with references but they also have a surgical record for various surgeries and a board they answer to which can revoke their ability to practice medicine.
Many mechanical engineers will have something they can show from a previous employer because for ME the field is about improving processes/machines, not the machines that are produced. Others also have CAD that they do on their free time. With 3d printers becoming more accessible I have seen some ME students/grads do some cool stuff on the side.
Chemists, that is the only one I don't know anyone in the field and a field which is not very regulated.
So, what's the deal? Why have we ingrained serious doubts when it comes to software engineering skills? Why a 10+ year experienced SE must go through a process of "proving" the skills through 5-6 interviewing rounds while a 10+ year experienced doctor doesn't?
I don't think this correlates to job regulations as some seem to be suggesting here but I also don't have a better answer myself. It's intriguing to me overall.