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Comment by chasing0entropy | Hacker News Reader

Negative. It is nearly impossible to build a broad skillet and critical thinking skills working exclusively on directed projects towards niche business goals.

Any skillset requires practice. Any invested programmer will code in their free time; -the newbie modifying css scripts, -the veteran coding utilities for repetitive tasks, -the pro writing a driver back end to bypass resolution or buffer limit - the webdev's customized dashboard and scriptlets

Programmers have at least ONE hobby project, open source contribution, or tasked project that is not scoped under an NDA. If they don't they certainly will not be productive and probably not creative.

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Or they do enough programming from 9-5 that they don’t feel like doing anymore when they get home to their family? Programmers don’t have to do anything more then their paid to do

This type of worker would not an asset to the typical startup requiring flexibility and dedication to distinguish above the competition.

Programmers often work long hours, and they often have families and children. Expecting this is stupid.

That entirely depends on why their projects are under NDA. Projects under NDA range from boring CRUD apps to the most sophisticated software running on other planets.

The best of the best engineers have plenty of work to keep themselves fully occupied, especially in the prime of their career.

Hobby projects are a positive indicator for people straight out of college, though.

Most coding I do in my spare time, I still do in the context of my jobs’ domain, just because there’s unlimited problems there to work on and I’m already up to speed.. plus not everything for an employer is “narrow business focus”.

Those projects would be presentable in an interview.

I think there is a kernel of truth in what you said but your language is a bit of an overreach. No athlete who trains only when told to train is making it to the Olympics.

Never known a competitive runner not to occasionally run during hobby time or participate in non-ranked fun runs.

Even if that was true, as other comments have pointed out, also consider that maybe the stuff I do in my spare time is private and just for me or a small group of friends? It's not enterprise ready, and might even contain personal details I don't want others knowing.

My work and personal life are separate, and deliberately so.

That's nonsense. A good programmer needs to have learned things on his own time, but he need not have done a side project to do so. I don't have any personal projects or open source contributions I could show to a prospective employer, but I assure you that I'm productive (and creative enough to get by).

Perhaps at the age of 23, this would be broadly true. As the age range broadens, many more of us have families as well as other hobbies.

That's just bullshit. Of the top 5 engineers I've worked with (and they were really good), 3 don't code in their free time. And most of the "good enough" engineers I know don't either.

We don't expect this from any other profession, do you expect civil engineers or architects to work on personal projects in their free time? If they don't would you challenge them that they don't have the skillset or the critical thinking? That's just ridiculous.

I wouldn't hire an architect who didn't have a portfolio of work to show. Definitely wouldn't hire an engineer with no finished work to share.

So you'd be okay then with your engineers taking home copies of company projects so they'll be able to show their work to future employers?

I keep many hobby projects going most of the time, but I try not to judge people who don’t. A lot of people have kids and want to focus their non-work time on their family, and I don’t want to tell people they’re wrong for doing that. There’s nothing wrong with a job being a job and not your life.

I don’t have kids (and can’t now thanks to a snip), so it’s relatively easy for me to find time to hack on something for fun, but it’s not wrong for a parent to want to, you know, be a parent.

Your view is quite myopic. And frankly, "if they don't they certainly will not be productive and probably not creative" is rude and insulting to many of your colleagues. I'm going to assume you are young and inexperienced.

For one, some engineers are grown adults with families and full lives outside of work, and they choose not to spend their free time coding. Some of the best engineers I've worked with fit in this category.

Secondly, I'm sorry, but it sounds like perhaps your work happens to not be very interesting or challenging. That is not the situation for everyone. I solve interesting, challenging, diverse problems all the time at work, on proprietary codebases that cannot be shared.

I launch startups. At least one every 5 years since I was 17. I am very passionate about whatever I do or don't do it. I'm approaching 50 years of breathing.

You may dislike my tone but remember the context of the post - If you have nothing outside work for someone else to offer for your accomplishments it is you who are young or have done very little with your life.

Ok, fair enough. My fault for assuming.

I'm not sure who you've met who fits the criteria of being by rule not creative or productive if they choose not to dedicate time outside of work to coding (not that they have done _literally nothing_, just that the things they have done are not closely correlated with their work, and would therefore be irrelevant in this technical interview context), but I would suggest that on the whole you are drawing too coarse a stereotype and are therefore missing out on a large pool of talent. But to each their own!

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