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I was the same way. I spent my college years poring over HN, /r/programming, various blogs and articles. An older software engineer I knew was always surprised

I was the same way. I spent my college years poring over HN, /r/programming, various blogs and articles. An older software engineer I knew was always surprised at how many things I knew and had opinions about, even though I was inexperienced. But I never actually wrote up a "complete" project in my own time, not a single one, I couldn't stick to anything. And I kept worrying that it would make me less employable. Yet I got my offer at [large, popular software company] before I graduated, only on my merits. I think the best that can be expected is that you do your work, do it well, and never stop growing. You don't have to dump time into coding outside of work, just don't get complacent. That's assuming you don't have crappy leadership, in which case you may want to consider a different team or company. As an example: I know a guy who's about to become a 3rd level developer at [large, popular software company] at the age of 28, which is a pretty big deal from a career development perspective. I don't think he's touched a line of code, or a single technical article, outside of work in the 5 years he's been here. He regularly works 25-30 hour weeks. He's just smart, puts out good projects, and is productive when he needs to be.

kagamine 10y ago
Someone asked on reddit a couple of weeks back why, when they sit with a coding problem for 4 hours at work the solution suddenly comes to them in 5 minutes the next day. I think your colleague's 30 hour week might be allowing time for him to think about his work without being at a desk doing his work. In other words, when he isn't being forced to make a show of presence he is working through solutions and processes in his mind. I work where we fill out time sheets every day detailing what we worked on hour by hour (in part and in fairness also for billing reasons). It is counterproductive as I constantly stress about every minute I use on a task and worry I am taking too long. The results I see are those of programmers trying to please project managers and billing accounts, not good products that are optimized. Nobody seems to have time make something good. The 30 hour guy probably isn't much smarter than the rest of us, he might just have the freedom to create with a relaxed mind. Stress apparently blocks creativity.
- gjvc 10y ago
  "freedom to create with a relaxed mind" -- as I read this I realised that's what I've been missing for so long, and is what I try (mostly without success) to make time for outside of work. "Stress apparently blocks creativity" -- most certainly does.
- ufukbay 10y ago
  I left a company with great work/life balance but rather average or even low salary after 2 1/2 years for a startup but after a month into the job they introduced those stupid stopwatch JIRA plugins to measure time spent on tickets plus time sheets. I know not everyone can maybe afford to do this but this is something I'm never going to put up with and I left after only 3 months purely out of frustration without even having a new gig. (Was quite suprised to be approached immediately by a subsidiary of a well known online auction house, where I'm still working for 2 years now.) If you don't have a family (wife + kids) be bold and don't put up with such inhuman conditions. Developers are high in demand and this is the time to use the opportunity.
  - blowski 10y ago
    Are you really saying that having to record timesheets counts as 'inhuman conditions'? That's the way I read your comment, sorry if it's not what you meant. But if it is what you meant, then I urge you to read about modern human slavery, domestic servitude, sex trafficking, etc, and reconsider.
    - Retric 10y ago
      Something is not ok just because other things are worse.
    - ufukbay 10y ago
      @Retric: Exactly my thoughts. Amazing how you could express it in one short, concise sentence! :)
      - blowski 10y ago
gedrap 10y ago
>>> But I never actually wrote up a "complete" project in my own time, not a single one, I couldn't stick to anything. And I kept worrying that it would make me less employable. Same here, and I know a bunch of other people like this as well. It's just a matter of perspective. When you read such forums and similar, you often read opinions and insights of people who are the top of the field. So it's easy to lose the perspective of where you stand compared with the rest of your class or some other cohort. >>> He's just smart, puts out good projects, and is productive when he needs to be. Smart is the key word here. More hours of work does not necessarily mean better work. It shouldn't be about working longer, it should be about working smarter. At the same time, writing good code is only small part of his success, I guess. Managing to ship top quality products without hand holding, making sure you are productive without anyone breathing down your neck, are all important and not something articles will teach you (usually).
- jcadam 10y ago
  I don't know about you, but I become less productive the more I'm micromanaged. The company I work for now has problems managing customer expectations and controlling scope creep, so naturally rather than address the real issues the PMs have decided it's easier to stick their noses in the CMMI manual and send the software development team straight to process improvement hell. I've reached the point where my motivation is so low it takes me a week to complete a task I know I could have done in a couple of hours if I could just reach down and muster up a little bit of give-a-shiat. I need to get out of this place, but I rather doubt any of the other major employers around here would be any better (I just interviewed at one that looked like it would be an even worse situation. They declined to make me an offer - the interviewer must have picked up on my shock/disgust when he described their development processes to me). Now, my side projects are seeing more love than ever before, probably because I need an outlet for my creativity (which my employer is most definitely not providing). One thing age and experience has given me is the ability to see my own projects through to some level of completion (as complete as software can be). My younger years were full of half-completed projects :) I'm working on something I hope to turn into a SaaS product, maybe that's the escape plan (If I'm really lucky).
  - 10y ago
dogma1138 10y ago
One of the best ways I found of actually getting to write "complete" code outside of the job is to combine it with another hobby or an activity. RC, home automation, every other silly thing you can make or teaching/volunteering at various places that do coding tutoring (schools, community centers, or even your own kids or family) might help you with that. That said it only works if you like it, if you already considering programming to be a hobby, it's ok not to. Not every profession needs to be also a hobby, and you don't need to spend your free time on your profession to be good at it. I know plenty of developers that don't like technology that much and pretty much dislike IT related stuff specifically, and I know plenty of developers that spend every weekend cloning some project from hack a day. Both of these groups consist of good, lesser, and poor developers and so far I haven't really seen any substantial statistical proof that hobby programming enables you to become a better developer. There could be extreme cases in which being a "super weekend hacker" gives you some advantage, especially if you are a single digit employee at startup and you need to hack everything together like crazy without worrying about the finer details, like documentation, maintainability, performance and all the other things that separate a hack job from a product, if your entire professional programming career is about flying solo and pushing out MVP/POC's then effectively one could say you are being paid for a hobby. But if you are a developer at a large company with an established development life cycle and methodology the small hacks you pick up from your hobby would not really be relevant, hacking micro services on the newest SBC over the weekend won't necessarily help you work better as part of a team, won't necessarily help you write better documentation, and won't necessarily help you adhere to strict coding practices.
pjc50 10y ago
The smartest person I've ever worked with worked a 30h four-day week so he could spend more time with his family. Not so much a 10x programmer as a six sigma mathematician. He built a video codec implementation by himself in 3 months.
- clifanatic 10y ago
  > He built a video codec implementation by himself in 3 months. At work? I can't even fathom a working environment where I could work on anything for 3 months (hell, even 3 days) without a panicking supervisor asking why it wasn't done yet and whether I could help out with this other thing that was a crisis and why can't we just buy something or better yet use an open source solution because we need results right now.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    Small consultancy shop, everyone knows everyone else, panic-resistant directors, speculative project. Great place to work. Plus of course a lot of trust that people who were known to do good work could be left alone to deliver it. (Part of being a premium consultancy was setting reasonable expectations to the client and refusing to even offer a crap job at high speed. Takes a lot of faith in your standards and customer funnel to do that, though.)

kagamine 10y ago

Someone asked on reddit a couple of weeks back why, when they sit with a coding problem for 4 hours at work the solution suddenly comes to them in 5 minutes the next day. I think your colleague's 30 hour week might be allowing time for him to think about his work without being at a desk doing his work. In other words, when he isn't being forced to make a show of presence he is working through solutions and processes in his mind. I work where we fill out time sheets every day detailing what we worked on hour by hour (in part and in fairness also for billing reasons). It is counterproductive as I constantly stress about every minute I use on a task and worry I am taking too long. The results I see are those of programmers trying to please project managers and billing accounts, not good products that are optimized. Nobody seems to have time make something good. The 30 hour guy probably isn't much smarter than the rest of us, he might just have the freedom to create with a relaxed mind. Stress apparently blocks creativity.

gjvc 10y ago
"freedom to create with a relaxed mind" -- as I read this I realised that's what I've been missing for so long, and is what I try (mostly without success) to make time for outside of work. "Stress apparently blocks creativity" -- most certainly does.
ufukbay 10y ago
I left a company with great work/life balance but rather average or even low salary after 2 1/2 years for a startup but after a month into the job they introduced those stupid stopwatch JIRA plugins to measure time spent on tickets plus time sheets. I know not everyone can maybe afford to do this but this is something I'm never going to put up with and I left after only 3 months purely out of frustration without even having a new gig. (Was quite suprised to be approached immediately by a subsidiary of a well known online auction house, where I'm still working for 2 years now.) If you don't have a family (wife + kids) be bold and don't put up with such inhuman conditions. Developers are high in demand and this is the time to use the opportunity.
- blowski 10y ago
  Are you really saying that having to record timesheets counts as 'inhuman conditions'? That's the way I read your comment, sorry if it's not what you meant. But if it is what you meant, then I urge you to read about modern human slavery, domestic servitude, sex trafficking, etc, and reconsider.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Something is not ok just because other things are worse.
  - ufukbay 10y ago
    @Retric: Exactly my thoughts. Amazing how you could express it in one short, concise sentence! :)
    - blowski 10y ago

gedrap 10y ago

>>> But I never actually wrote up a "complete" project in my own time, not a single one, I couldn't stick to anything. And I kept worrying that it would make me less employable. Same here, and I know a bunch of other people like this as well. It's just a matter of perspective. When you read such forums and similar, you often read opinions and insights of people who are the top of the field. So it's easy to lose the perspective of where you stand compared with the rest of your class or some other cohort. >>> He's just smart, puts out good projects, and is productive when he needs to be. Smart is the key word here. More hours of work does not necessarily mean better work. It shouldn't be about working longer, it should be about working smarter. At the same time, writing good code is only small part of his success, I guess. Managing to ship top quality products without hand holding, making sure you are productive without anyone breathing down your neck, are all important and not something articles will teach you (usually).

jcadam 10y ago
I don't know about you, but I become less productive the more I'm micromanaged. The company I work for now has problems managing customer expectations and controlling scope creep, so naturally rather than address the real issues the PMs have decided it's easier to stick their noses in the CMMI manual and send the software development team straight to process improvement hell. I've reached the point where my motivation is so low it takes me a week to complete a task I know I could have done in a couple of hours if I could just reach down and muster up a little bit of give-a-shiat. I need to get out of this place, but I rather doubt any of the other major employers around here would be any better (I just interviewed at one that looked like it would be an even worse situation. They declined to make me an offer - the interviewer must have picked up on my shock/disgust when he described their development processes to me). Now, my side projects are seeing more love than ever before, probably because I need an outlet for my creativity (which my employer is most definitely not providing). One thing age and experience has given me is the ability to see my own projects through to some level of completion (as complete as software can be). My younger years were full of half-completed projects :) I'm working on something I hope to turn into a SaaS product, maybe that's the escape plan (If I'm really lucky).
- 10y ago

dogma1138 10y ago

One of the best ways I found of actually getting to write "complete" code outside of the job is to combine it with another hobby or an activity. RC, home automation, every other silly thing you can make or teaching/volunteering at various places that do coding tutoring (schools, community centers, or even your own kids or family) might help you with that. That said it only works if you like it, if you already considering programming to be a hobby, it's ok not to. Not every profession needs to be also a hobby, and you don't need to spend your free time on your profession to be good at it. I know plenty of developers that don't like technology that much and pretty much dislike IT related stuff specifically, and I know plenty of developers that spend every weekend cloning some project from hack a day. Both of these groups consist of good, lesser, and poor developers and so far I haven't really seen any substantial statistical proof that hobby programming enables you to become a better developer. There could be extreme cases in which being a "super weekend hacker" gives you some advantage, especially if you are a single digit employee at startup and you need to hack everything together like crazy without worrying about the finer details, like documentation, maintainability, performance and all the other things that separate a hack job from a product, if your entire professional programming career is about flying solo and pushing out MVP/POC's then effectively one could say you are being paid for a hobby. But if you are a developer at a large company with an established development life cycle and methodology the small hacks you pick up from your hobby would not really be relevant, hacking micro services on the newest SBC over the weekend won't necessarily help you work better as part of a team, won't necessarily help you write better documentation, and won't necessarily help you adhere to strict coding practices.

pjc50 10y ago

The smartest person I've ever worked with worked a 30h four-day week so he could spend more time with his family. Not so much a 10x programmer as a six sigma mathematician. He built a video codec implementation by himself in 3 months.

clifanatic 10y ago
> He built a video codec implementation by himself in 3 months. At work? I can't even fathom a working environment where I could work on anything for 3 months (hell, even 3 days) without a panicking supervisor asking why it wasn't done yet and whether I could help out with this other thing that was a crisis and why can't we just buy something or better yet use an open source solution because we need results right now.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Small consultancy shop, everyone knows everyone else, panic-resistant directors, speculative project. Great place to work. Plus of course a lot of trust that people who were known to do good work could be left alone to deliver it. (Part of being a premium consultancy was setting reasonable expectations to the client and refusing to even offer a crap job at high speed. Takes a lot of faith in your standards and customer funnel to do that, though.)