Comment by borplk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by borplk | Hacker News Reader

#17 is absolutely spot on.

I think developers are putting themselves at a severe disadvantage and are being taken advantage of because of this whole 'hacker culture' or 'startup life' ideas.

We are making it the norm, and raising everyone's expectations of us which end up hurting us in the long run.

Stop for a second, and consider other professions and industries. Do you see lawyers or financial analysts play with side-projects in the weekend, and running all-nighters and hackathons? Or working on open-source-like-equivalents of their professions?

Sure they are different industries, but there are similar things they could do if they really wanted to, but they don't.

When we talk about 'hacking for fun' etc... we are sending a message to other people which changes their attitude to "hey i only pay you this much because you'd be doing similar stuff in your spare time anyways..."

People value your time based on things like this. Lawyers play this game very well, they pretend like they don't have a single extra second to spare, and hey they don't talk about law being fun either, and hence they can charge $200/hour fees and others will happily pay for it.

I think we need to be smarter and adjust our attitude to account for the economic goals and political games of the rest of the society.

No I think it is the reverse.

As a senior engineer having done tons of side projects that I really enjoyed doing, when I approach a customer for a contract it is not rare that the customer tells me : "We could saw your code online / your involvement in that or that" so it is a good showroom for your skills.

Consider it as an investment, 1. because it is an opportunity to learn new stuff compared to your daily professional routine 2. because it is a way to demonstrate your skills.

Remember that you sell your expertise, not just your time.

BTW : yes, lawyers do pro bonos ! For exactly the same reason, for the fun of the case and their image.

I actually think #17 is the odd one out here, in that it directly conflicts with #1. "Programming is just a job", yet "Code in your spare time"? I think you're right that #17 conflicts with silicone valley mentality, but while this mentality isn't for everyone, I think it's absurd to claim it's wrong.

Ask yourself the following questions, keeping in mind that different people will answer differently and that's okay: Do you have a passionate desire to do what you do (whether your motivation be to build a better future, change the world, or create cool technology, etc.)? Or is programming really just a way to make money (i.e. "just a job") to afford the things you really enjoy? (Or some balance in between the two, usually.)

IMO for those who are truly passionate about their work, their work is NEVER "just a job". Thus while #17 is true for a great many people, it's not true for the few who tend to accomplish the most - at least judging empirically from historical results.

For these people, it's much more than "just a job". For every highly successful person who made a huge impact on the world, it's never "just a job." Just ask Elon Musk, or countless others, if they consider their career "just a job."

Lawyers and financial analysts don't play with side-projects, but many of them do pro-bono work for friends and charities, and I think that's their equivalent of this idea. Engineers and craftsmen often do side-projects for fun... engineers create fighting robots, and craftsmen create furniture and art for their own use. That's pretty much exactly the same as programmers doing side projects and participating in hackathons.

Except that a lawyer or financial analyst won't be interviewed based on the pro-bono work they've done for a friend.

Interviewer: "So, do you do pro-bono work?"

Interviewee: "Yeah, I've done some for some friends."

Interviewer: "Excellent, give us copies of all of it so we can determine how good of a lawyer you are."

That doesn't happen.

Lawyers and financial analyst are not similar to programmers at all. I don't disagree with you - I too think that how we're perceived could be damaging. But your examples are not well chosen.

In short: find me a journalist or a writer or a musician or a sportsman who does NOT do some kind of side-project for fun or without being paid. They probably exist, but I bet there's not many of them - and I can suspect that they're viewed just as 9-17 programmers by the rest of their fields.

Most professional athletes are contractually prohibited or discouraged from engaging in very much physical activity outside of training and official games due to fear of injury.

For musicians and writers (journalists are a type of writer), there's no actual distinction between what they do for work and what they do on the side, because anything useful they produce, they're going to publish anyway, in a way that doesn't substantially differ from the rest of their professional output. I'm sure they noodle around for fun, but a programmer "noodling around for fun" isn't going to have very much to show off on Github either.

> Most professional athletes are contractually prohibited

I didn't know this. It makes sense, I suppose. But then again, why do you think those clauses are included in athletes contracts? Is it because they are unlikely to do any physical activity outside of their regular training or on the contrary, they would be active anyway and this is to prevent them from overworking themselves?

> [for musicians and writers] there's no actual distinction between what they do for work and what they do on the side

I disagree. Either one is paid to do something or is not. It's a job if they are compensated. It's not if they are not paid. This is how I understand this. Do you think that everything a writer ever writes is going to be paid for? Or that everything a writer writes he does in hopes of getting paid? I think that it is not the case.

I think this is exactly the same for programmers. We're writing code just as writers write prose. Sometimes we're compensated for what we wrote, sometimes we're not. Sometimes what was started as a quick letter to a friend becomes full fledged essay, and sometimes what was started as a 'hello world' in that new and fashionable language becomes useful product. More often this does not happen, of course, and that is how it should be.

But that's not the point. I wanted to say that being a programmer is more similar to being a writer or a musician than being a lawyer (maybe not - pro bono cases, as others suggest) or accountant.

> Either one is paid to do something or is not.

This doesn't reflect how writers and musicians are actually paid, though. You might be in a band but have a side project or a solo album, but you still receive royalties or concert revenue for it, same as for your role in the ordinary band. Most writers make nearly all their money taking the risk that someone will publish their work and pay them for it. In either case, there's no real distinction and the financial returns are uncertain either way.

There are authors who have regular columns or something, but even in their case it's a little disingenuous to say that writing books is a side project. If you wanted to describe Thomas Friedman's profession, it would be something like "New York Times columnist and author". You wouldn't say he was a NYT columnist who happened to write best-selling books in his free time as some sort of hobby.

> Most writers make nearly all their money taking the risk that someone will publish their work and pay them for it.

You are right, of course, but this is not what I was asking about. Let's leave 'nearly' (for clarity) out and let's say that 'all the money writers make comes from publishing their works', which is true. I'm asking if it's also true that 'all the writing writers do is supposed to/has to/they hope it will make them some money'?

Assuming that "some writers write letters to their mothers" and "no one writes a letter to their mother expecting it will make them some money"[1], then it's not literally true, but we're splitting hairs. We're talking about hiring programmers based upon a portfolio of professional-quality work they've done in their spare time. How many writers would get a book contract based on a portfolio of their unpublished work?

[1] This requires more qualification. For instance, if one was a struggling writer who didn't make enough money from their writing but had a wealthy mother sending them money for their living expenses....

> How many writers would get a book contract based on a portfolio of their unpublished work?

Certainly not many, because how anyone could know they actually wrote something? But I was speaking about published but not paid for works. There is more than one way to publish your writings and many of them do not involve financial compensation. I know, because quite a few years ago I was publishing short novels and articles in a (real-world, made-of-paper!) magazine about pen&paper RPGs. I didn't earn a penny (and the magazine went out of business quickly), but I was published.

I wasn't the only one who submitted texts to the editors of said magazine. Mine were of poor quality, but there were a few authors that I was not surprised to find in the bookstores some time later. They got a book contract (I don't know, I'm guessing) from real publisher probably with less hassle than other debutants, probably because of what they published for free earlier. You can argue that they became writers only after they were paid to write a book, but I don't see this that way. Also, many of them continue to contribute they writings (mainly reviews, essays) to on-line magazines (about RPGs; sadly, there is no one such a magazine still being published on paper in my country) for free.

How is this different from publishing side-project on github and getting hired based on that? I really can't see the difference.

Either way, thanks for interesting discussion, I enjoyed it, especially footnote about writing a letter to one's mom :)

As an example, tech journalist Andy Ihnatko is also an avid writer of fiction in his spare time, most of which he has yet to publish. This doesn't resemble his professional output at all, which are articles that get published in a newspaper.

I think the point is that when you're doing something you love, you want to keep doing it outside the constraints that exist when someone else is dictating the type of creative work you can do.

Well, that's up to him. I don't really think any editor would think Andy Ihnatko was a worse tech journalist if he spent his free time playing with his kids or riding jetskis.

When you're doing something you love to the best of your ability, sometimes it's mentally exhausting and you need to do something totally different to recharge your batteries. Monomania isn't always the best way to go. I mean, it definitely works for a lot of people but it's not a reasonable expectation.

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