There are plenty of such examples but both of these imply that you're ready to devote a lot of your extra time, before or after the job, only that you can show you're relevant in the eyes of those who are the decision makers. This normally means that you're single, that you have no kids, family, no other hobbies but programming etc. This works when you're in your 20's and only up to the certain point unless you become a weirdo in your 30's and 40's etc. without any of these.
However, in the age where we are met with the uncertainty, it may become a new normal to devote extra effort in order to be able to remain not competitive but a mere candidate for the job. Some will find the incentive for this extra pain, some will not but I think it won't be easy. Perhaps in 5 years time we will only have "AI applied" engineers developing or specializing their own models for given domains. Writing code as we have it today I think it's already a thing of a past.
I think the reason is quite simple. Software is endlessly configurable. And thus a lot higher chance to get the configuration wrong.
This is what makes it attractive, and makes it hard to get right.
You cannot get good at it without making a ton of mistakes. When companies look for people with a lot of side projects, they are looking at people who already have made such mistakes and learned from them, preferably on their own time and not on paid, companies time.
I ll list some attributes of software development that makes it unique.
* No hard rules, textbooks to follow, industry as a whole still make costly mistakes and recovery cycles.
* No easy way to gauge the requirement-fit of the thing you made. Only time will tell.
* Cheap (financially) to practice, make mistakes and learn.
Actually that applies to doctors. A doctor who is not curious and is not willing to do learn/research on their own initiative is only a marketing hand of pharma.
But it is quite hard for doctors to do any real research independently. They can't really do experiments on real people...
Software is really special.
Don't get me wrong. I am that guy, who probably over-invested into the development of his skills but I don't think it's a normal thing to expect.
That does not apply here. Because more often than not, we don't prescribe products/services that our clients must go out and buy, without exception.
>it's a normal thing to expect.
It is not a normal thing to expect because in other fields there are few people who can afford to do that. So an employer cannot really pick someone from that pool.
But in software, it is possible if one choose to do it. So the pool is a lot bigger, so it becomes feasible for an employer to pick someone from there, instead of picking from I-am-only-as-good-as-I-am-paid-to-be pool..
You know that treating patients is not only about picking the right medicament and writing prescriptions? It's about diagnosing, testing the hypotheses, optimizing for the particular patient case, learning about all the specific factors of their environment including the genetics, then we have surgeons, etc.
And yet I don't quite see doctors being on a time spending spree to become exquisite in all of those things. Nor do I see hospitals or clinics doing such knowledge and ability harness tests over their potential employees. Stakes are much higher in medicine than they are in software so it makes no sense at all to make an argument that doctors cannot "afford" it. They can, they have books and practice the same way we do. I don't get to modify the production system every day but yet I am learning constantly of how not to make those same production system go down when I do.
> It is not a normal thing to expect because in other fields there are few people who can afford to do that.
It's not a normal thing in software too, you know? Let's please stop normalizing things which are not normal. If there is one thing that makes me happy in this new era of AI-assisted development is that all this bs is coming to its end.
I am just describing the logical behavior of an employer who wants to get the best person for the job.
About the other thing, I think I will let you have the last word since I feel that we are speaking past each other.
It never had time to develop into a truly professional field like medicine, law or engineering.