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I have worked at a prestigious tech company, and I know what OP is talking about. A lot of very talented people don't have side projects, and they don't do any

I have worked at a prestigious tech company, and I know what OP is talking about. A lot of very talented people don't have side projects, and they don't do any coding outside of work. They don't go to hackathons. They don't bother to learn the newest reactive javascript framework. They go to yoga classes after work. They talk about TV shows they watched last night during lunch. But they EXCEL at what they do at work. I can say that this is really a subjective thing. When you make a judgment about these people, it actually tells more about yourself than the person being judged. When I saw these people who are super talented, but "waste away their lives" just climbing up the ladder I just couldn't sympathize. Also personally I like them but I would never think about starting a company with them. That's why I understand where OP is coming from, and he's right in a lot of cases, but also I think he should understand that not everyone will agree with you on how you view your life. People like me can't stand not working on my own project, but there are also super talented people who are perfectly fine with living a balanced and stable life. Talent and intelligence has nothing to do with how you live your life. So, I think no one should judge anyone else. The company who didn't hire this guy may have lost a talented person, but in many cases talent is not what companies need the most. For large companies like Amazon (which OP seems to work at) this type of employee is the ideal choice since they get the talent AND stability. But for startups, the concept of stability doesn't really make sense anyway so it's a different story. If I was doing a startup and had to pick the first employee, and was given a choice between a passionate, right out of the college guy, and an experienced and talented engineer who wants to live a balanced life, I would definitely choose the former. (Although the best case would be to find the third guy who's passionate AND talented)

dasil003 10y ago
Having spend the last decade living the startup life, and now searching for something more stable, I have to say you're setting up a false dichotomy between passionate and balance-seeking. They are completely orthogonal, you can be passionate and work widely varying hours; you can also be indifferent and work widely varying hours. On a tangent, I don't really like the word passion anyway. What makes me a good programmer is not my passion for it, it's my curiosity and motivation. My motivation is a primary factor in my performance, and that probably is 80% influenced by context, and 20% by the content of the task itself (at least for most things that fall within the standard purview of programming tasks). Finally, you don't mention talent for the new graduate. That is a huge factor. If the new grad is not extremely talented, they will never produce anything of value. If they are highly talented they can likely power through a lot of things, but they also need to make good decisions about what to work on since time allocation is the single hardest thing about getting early traction for a startup. Yes, all else being equal, take the guy that wants to work 16 hours a day and has no other distractions, but if the veteran who wants to work 30 hours a week has better business sense and a smarter idea of what to build and when, then that dwarfs the code quality consideration.
- cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
  Sorry that it came off that way, I tried to make myself clear with "I can say that this is really a subjective thing. When you make a judgment about these people, it actually tells more about yourself than the person being judged." From my experience, all these brilliant, intelligent, and talented people (who don't do extracurricular activities related to coding) have completely different motivations than myself. My point is that it's fine that they do, and it's fine that I don't think that way either. I'm just saying that there are people who are fit for certain type of situations, and some people--no matter how talented they are--are not fit for certain jobs just because their life values are not compatible with the situation. That doesn't mean the employer who made that decision is an idiot. They're just not compatible, and that's fine.

dasil003 10y ago

Having spend the last decade living the startup life, and now searching for something more stable, I have to say you're setting up a false dichotomy between passionate and balance-seeking. They are completely orthogonal, you can be passionate and work widely varying hours; you can also be indifferent and work widely varying hours. On a tangent, I don't really like the word passion anyway. What makes me a good programmer is not my passion for it, it's my curiosity and motivation. My motivation is a primary factor in my performance, and that probably is 80% influenced by context, and 20% by the content of the task itself (at least for most things that fall within the standard purview of programming tasks). Finally, you don't mention talent for the new graduate. That is a huge factor. If the new grad is not extremely talented, they will never produce anything of value. If they are highly talented they can likely power through a lot of things, but they also need to make good decisions about what to work on since time allocation is the single hardest thing about getting early traction for a startup. Yes, all else being equal, take the guy that wants to work 16 hours a day and has no other distractions, but if the veteran who wants to work 30 hours a week has better business sense and a smarter idea of what to build and when, then that dwarfs the code quality consideration.

cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
Sorry that it came off that way, I tried to make myself clear with "I can say that this is really a subjective thing. When you make a judgment about these people, it actually tells more about yourself than the person being judged." From my experience, all these brilliant, intelligent, and talented people (who don't do extracurricular activities related to coding) have completely different motivations than myself. My point is that it's fine that they do, and it's fine that I don't think that way either. I'm just saying that there are people who are fit for certain type of situations, and some people--no matter how talented they are--are not fit for certain jobs just because their life values are not compatible with the situation. That doesn't mean the employer who made that decision is an idiot. They're just not compatible, and that's fine.