Yeah it's absurd. When I talk about this with my friends in other professions they hardly believe it. None of the lawyers or editors consider writing open sourc

Yeah it's absurd. When I talk about this with my friends in other professions they hardly believe it. None of the lawyers or editors consider writing open source contracts or publishing free magazines in their free time. And even if they do something like this - there was never a company that EXPECTED that at an interview. The last interviews I had there were more questions about mini pet projects than about my 10 years professional experience or my PhD thesis. Of course, when I was 15 I loved to program all my free time after school. Now I have wife, daughter, dog and being in front of a screen all day makes me very uncomfortable, no matter how much I like the subject. I am now much more comfortable with "researchy" positions - in all those interviews, no one ever asked me about my github profile or if I like to "learn" the flavour of the day web framework in my free time (no, I don't...).