I do some hobby programming for fun, but I don't expect everyone I work with to do that. I do it for fun and wouldn't otherwise. When I interview developers, I

I do some hobby programming for fun, but I don't expect everyone I work with to do that. I do it for fun and wouldn't otherwise. When I interview developers, I ask them about their hobbies in general. Sure, I throw in some technical questions depending on the position (usually language/platform agnostic), but those aren't the focus or the best way to hire to me. I want to know if they have an interest/curiosity into how things work (problem solving/debugging skills), can communicate effectively (can work as a team) and are passionate about something in their life (tells me they can focus on something when needed). I follow up with questions about how they solved some difficult problem in their life (could be programming or could be just learning how to change their oil). I ask them how they came up with a solution and what they learned about it. I want to see if they learned enough from it to be able to explain it to me or anyone else in the interview. Doing that gives me an idea of how their communication skills are. I want to gauge their problem solving and debugging skills during the interview, because I think almost anyone can be taught to be a better programmer, but it's much harder to learn to be an exceptional troubleshooter/problem solver and that tends to be a majority of what software developers do.