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I don't expect my surgeon to do surgery in his spare time. Nor my plumber, dentist, gardener, or any other professional. I look at their past work history and r

I don't expect my surgeon to do surgery in his spare time. Nor my plumber, dentist, gardener, or any other professional. I look at their past work history and reviews from customers and/or coworkers. I will never understand the belief that side projects are in any way necessary. I'd much rather have a well rounded individual who isn't moonlighting on other things but rather can bring his clear focused mind to the office.

deathanatos 9y ago
> I'd much rather have a well rounded individual who isn't moonlighting on other things but rather can bring his clear focused mind to the office. I don't think it's wrong to work on side project. Some people like or want to. Who am I to judge what they do on their free time? It might happen to overlap with their job, or it might not. But I agree, I don't require my surgeon to do surgery in his spare time. I've worked with plenty of great engineers who wanted to leave work at work, and after 40 hours of engineering, enough was enough and spent their free time doing something that wasn't engineering. I've also worked with people who did side projects, and were equally amazing.
- anta40 9y ago
  A lot of coders consider coding not only as a job, but also as hobby. Usually they experiment with new stuffs this way, and thus their open source projects at Sourceforge/Github, etc etc. I don't expect a brain surgeon to mess with somebody's head because he's bored at weekend, though :p
  - freedomben 9y ago
    For the first many years, I was this way (considering coding as a job and a hobby). I guess it still is in many ways, but as I've gotten older I've started to feel the burnout more. If I spend my weekend doing anything on my computer, I feel it on Monday and just want to do something different.
    - derefr 9y ago
      Personally, I've lately been considering the opposite: getting out of coding as a job, so that I can continue to love it as a hobby.
      - lostfocus 9y ago
        Yeah, I tried that. Turns out I missed coding at work a lot and will now go back to it.
- kemitche 9y ago
  You're right, I was probably swinging too hard on the other direction with my comments. The core of my argument stands: I refuse to require side projects as a condition for hiring someone.
fma 9y ago
Me either. It's become cool to work 60 hours a week because you like your job, and then go home and do more programming because you like programming. Why it's cool... I don't know. I agree it helped me in the early days of my career, but at this point, as a senior developer I can pick up new technology much faster than my early days. I can come up with a working solutions much faster. I like my job, and I like programming... But there are other things I like too. So, why do I need to work long hours and program outside of my job? I have good enough communication skills to convey my experience. If I'm not hired for not having an active github account, or a side project, there are five other companies that would.
- foo101 9y ago
  I like my job, and I like programming... But there are other things I like too. Such as playing the guitar and saxophone, writing side coding projects, mountain climbing and traveling. Do you realize that writing side coding projects is just one of the many things we like to do? Just because we do side projects does not mean that we do not have a life outside of coding.
  - fma 9y ago
    I agree with you. Everyone has their own hobbies. But certain people believe that in order to be a good coder, one of your hobbies MUST be coding.
qq66 9y ago
Surgeons, plumbers, dentists, and gardeners are licensed, bonded, and insured, entrusting the certification process to a third party. Surgeons and dentists also have professional development baked into their work schedules, which software engineers should have -- say, hire someone for 35 hours per week so they can spend 5 hours per week on professional development.
- 0x445442 9y ago
  The other difference is Surgeons, Plummers, Dentists and even Gardeners get payed for services rendered not time. This is a huge problem in the industry and is the source of massive waste.
  - aminorex 9y ago
    You have a rather rosy view of medicine and gardening. Your view of plumbing and dentistry aligns with my own, however.
hinkley 9y ago
People who have only recently completed their 10,000 hours don’t understand that there are diminishing returns, and that learning something else entirely may help you more than doubling down on your narrow skill set. Some of the things you can learn outside of this field are what overtraining is (actually not that different from the AI concept), perspective on the learning and teaching process, the importance of preparation and good tools, patience with new ideas, and the dangers of trying to rush through the learning process.
- sobani 9y ago
  Besides the fact that many consider the 10,000 hours a myth, please keep in mind that the theory is about 10,000 hours of practice. I bet that even people who have spend 20 years on side projects haven't reached those 10K hours of practice yet.
  - hinkley 9y ago
    We aren’t talking about people moonlighting as developers. We’re talking about people in the industry working on software every waking hour. Roughly 220 work days a year, 5 hours a day at work if you are full time, 6 if you dabble a bit outside of office hours, that’s around 5 years out of school, which isn’t too far off from my experiences prior to Malcolm Gladwell.
    - sobani 9y ago
      Working != practice. When I'm building some CRUD interface for my job, there's nothing I'm practicing with that. When I spend my entire day doing that, I've gained 0 relevant hours for Malcom's 10K.
AznHisoka 9y ago
I would expect my doctor to read papers, news, etc to keep abreast of the latest medical advances though.
- foo101 9y ago
  This! And similarly, software developers should keep abreast of latest technical advances. What makes software engineering different from surgery is that when a surgeon learns something new, he does not have a live patient at his home to practice the new thing he has learnt, but as software engineers, most of the times we can immediately fire up an editor and write a PoC or a toy project to practice the new thing we have learnt. Its strange that such natural and obvious curiosity and desire to try something out outside of work deserves the kind of criticism that it is receiving in the original article and some of the comments here.
  - sgift 9y ago
    > Its strange that such natural and obvious curiosity and desire to try something out outside of work deserves the kind of criticism that it is receiving in the original article and some of the comments here. The critic points out that it is no longer curiosity which drives you when people expect you to do it.
  - pferde 9y ago
    Yes, it is normal to tinker with new stuff to get acquainted with it. It is, however, not the same thing as publishing results of that tinkering on e.g. github, or blogging about it as if you want to break some posts-per-month record. I do not get this obsession with putting everything out there. I have a huge local directory with my old test programs, PoCs, started but abandoned ideas, etc. I regularly try new stuff, new libraries, programming languages, what have you. But my github account is empty. The internet needs less stuff on it, not more.
    - foo101 9y ago
      > I do not get this obsession with putting everything out there. It's not obsession. It's just a matter of convenience. git add; git commit; git push; and all my experimental code is safe on someone else's server that is managed much better than I can manage my set of USB drives and hard disks. > The internet needs less stuff on it, not more. I disagree!
jimbokun 9y ago
If you were a surgeon looking to hire another surgeon for your surgery team, I bet you would want to observe her performing a surgery. If you were looking for a drummer for a band, you would want to hear him play.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  The former one, maybe not. I'm sure lots of practices hire surgeons by looking at their record and not observing them actually doing a surgery. After all, it's the results that matter in the end. The latter one, sure. Makes me wonder if we should call interviews as auditions.
foo101 9y ago
> I'd much rather have a well rounded individual who isn't moonlighting on other things but rather can bring his clear focused mind to the office. What I do after the office hours is really none of your business. I should be able to do whatever I please (write code, play guitar, etc.) after office hours without you raising concerns about it. If you believe I do not bring my clear focused mind to the office, then that is a separate issue to be discussed separately without bringing in what I do after office hours into the discussion. It is my prerogative, not yours, to decide if I need to give up what I am doing after office hours in order to focus better at office.
asmdev 9y ago
> I'd much rather have a well rounded individual who isn't moonlighting on other things but rather can bring his clear focused mind to the office. I don't understand how you equate doing side code projects to not bringing clear focused mind to the office. Would you also much rather bring a well rounded individual who does not take art classes after work? Do you think taking arts classes after work would affect one's ability to focus in the office? Then why do you make similar assumptions about doing side code projects? For many of us, doing side code project is like taking art classes. It is art for us and it helps us learn new things about the art of software development that is not always easy to learn in the constraints of real world software business. Most importantly, it is a relaxing and enjoyable experience. It refreshes our soul and combined with a good night's sleep, it helps us to better focus next day at work, not the other way around. Are you saying that you would much rather not hire people like us who care about the art of software development because from your high horse, we don't look like "well rounded" individuals? If you hold this kind of irrational conservative beliefs, I'd much rather not work for you.
- maxhallinan 9y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out. Working on my humble side projects is the hiking/cooking/traveling of my life. I spend my free time programming for the same reason the author doesn't spend his free time programming: because life is too short not to do what you love when you can. Making progress on these projects helps me to be more present in other aspects of my life, like my job and my marriage.
- kemitche 9y ago
  If the person enjoys their side projects, go for it. I'm not saying they can't. But on the hiring side I'm not going to require that all employees have side projects that match their day job.
Too 9y ago
One difference is that many "programmers" actually don't do any programming at work. Their hands on experience is a 5 week java course in uni 10 years ago and after thay they have been stuck in meetings or writing brain numbing CRUD in a proprietary domain specific scripting language at $bigco ever since. The only way for many to get actual hands on is to do side projects. Hair dressers don't have this problem, they are actually cutting hair 8 hours a day. Carpenters have a more hands on education compared to compsci which is more maths than version control. Doctors require 2 years of practice supervised by other doctors before they are certified.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  There are a lot of more senior doctors in admin or specialty positions who aren't making rounds or doing surgery anymore, however.
  - nunez 9y ago
    yeah but they did a lot of medical work before getting there though
chrisco255 9y ago
I expect a surgeon to stay up to date on the latest in medical technology. And I don't know too many surgeons who clock in at 9am and clock out at 5pm. Many surgeons pull 60-80 hour weeks regularly.
nanodano 9y ago
What about an artist or a musician? Would you expect a musician to practice and get better in their free time or only play their instrument during paid gigs?
- aminorex 9y ago
  Fine artists usually produce works on speculation. Craft persons usually produce on a cottage-industrial basis, essentially commodity piecework. There are a lot of ways to get paid, beyond the two you highlight, so the parallels are not as clear as you appear to be assuming.
crdb 9y ago
> I don't expect my surgeon to do surgery in his spare time. I really like it when my specialist has a prominent public profile. A recent case: tenure at a major university, had written or was quoted in many good journals and papers, and had a number of impressive accreditations (for example he was also head of his specialty's medical association for the country). This showed dedication and interest as well as some measure of intelligence. I was accordingly confident he was on top of the latest developments in his field and would be able to deal with complications better than your run of the mill specialist. The care was great throughout. Similarly, our lawyer has been quoted twice by the Supreme Court in Singapore, has written many articles in the Straits Times, and does great (and visible) pro bono work, all of which I could find off a quick Google for his name. Whilst I hired him based on a recommendation, it was comforting to see this public confirmation of his ability and interest in the field.
- pell 9y ago
  While these points may well be examples of this person's ability, certain credentials don't have to mean as much. As an example, the head of an association is not necessarily chosen for their merit.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    I knew of at least one department Dean at a college that was chosen for that position so he would not teach anymore students.
- purplezooey 9y ago
  Not so sure about this. It would be OK for my surgeon to just be a badass surgeon and not a politician. Public confirmation doesn't add much because the skill of navigating that is (mostly) unrelated to the skill of achieving a great surgery outcome.
  - jventura 9y ago
    I think the key to your answer is in the parent's text: "This showed dedication and interest as well as some measure of intelligence." My reasoning is that if someone is very good in his line of work, some of that work starts to spill out to the public, either by research, teaching, articles, blog posts, etc.. If a person is not a pure introvert, working all by himself, and is quite good, invariably someone will notice it..
samfisher83 9y ago
A surgeon is licensed. Many times they will publish papers etc. especially if they are trying to get ahead.
mark-r 9y ago
No, side projects are not necessary. They're just a signal that you're really into this stuff. Like all signals, it can't be evaluated in isolation. It's no different than preferring candidates who come from a top University. Some jobs are easier to do on the side than others. I'll bet the gardener has some side projects too.

deathanatos 9y ago

> I'd much rather have a well rounded individual who isn't moonlighting on other things but rather can bring his clear focused mind to the office. I don't think it's wrong to work on side project. Some people like or want to. Who am I to judge what they do on their free time? It might happen to overlap with their job, or it might not. But I agree, I don't require my surgeon to do surgery in his spare time. I've worked with plenty of great engineers who wanted to leave work at work, and after 40 hours of engineering, enough was enough and spent their free time doing something that wasn't engineering. I've also worked with people who did side projects, and were equally amazing.

anta40 9y ago
A lot of coders consider coding not only as a job, but also as hobby. Usually they experiment with new stuffs this way, and thus their open source projects at Sourceforge/Github, etc etc. I don't expect a brain surgeon to mess with somebody's head because he's bored at weekend, though :p
- freedomben 9y ago
  For the first many years, I was this way (considering coding as a job and a hobby). I guess it still is in many ways, but as I've gotten older I've started to feel the burnout more. If I spend my weekend doing anything on my computer, I feel it on Monday and just want to do something different.
  - derefr 9y ago
    Personally, I've lately been considering the opposite: getting out of coding as a job, so that I can continue to love it as a hobby.
    - lostfocus 9y ago
      Yeah, I tried that. Turns out I missed coding at work a lot and will now go back to it.
kemitche 9y ago
You're right, I was probably swinging too hard on the other direction with my comments. The core of my argument stands: I refuse to require side projects as a condition for hiring someone.

fma 9y ago

Me either. It's become cool to work 60 hours a week because you like your job, and then go home and do more programming because you like programming. Why it's cool... I don't know. I agree it helped me in the early days of my career, but at this point, as a senior developer I can pick up new technology much faster than my early days. I can come up with a working solutions much faster. I like my job, and I like programming... But there are other things I like too. So, why do I need to work long hours and program outside of my job? I have good enough communication skills to convey my experience. If I'm not hired for not having an active github account, or a side project, there are five other companies that would.

foo101 9y ago
I like my job, and I like programming... But there are other things I like too. Such as playing the guitar and saxophone, writing side coding projects, mountain climbing and traveling. Do you realize that writing side coding projects is just one of the many things we like to do? Just because we do side projects does not mean that we do not have a life outside of coding.
- fma 9y ago
  I agree with you. Everyone has their own hobbies. But certain people believe that in order to be a good coder, one of your hobbies MUST be coding.

qq66 9y ago

Surgeons, plumbers, dentists, and gardeners are licensed, bonded, and insured, entrusting the certification process to a third party. Surgeons and dentists also have professional development baked into their work schedules, which software engineers should have -- say, hire someone for 35 hours per week so they can spend 5 hours per week on professional development.

0x445442 9y ago
The other difference is Surgeons, Plummers, Dentists and even Gardeners get payed for services rendered not time. This is a huge problem in the industry and is the source of massive waste.
- aminorex 9y ago
  You have a rather rosy view of medicine and gardening. Your view of plumbing and dentistry aligns with my own, however.

hinkley 9y ago

People who have only recently completed their 10,000 hours don’t understand that there are diminishing returns, and that learning something else entirely may help you more than doubling down on your narrow skill set. Some of the things you can learn outside of this field are what overtraining is (actually not that different from the AI concept), perspective on the learning and teaching process, the importance of preparation and good tools, patience with new ideas, and the dangers of trying to rush through the learning process.

sobani 9y ago
Besides the fact that many consider the 10,000 hours a myth, please keep in mind that the theory is about 10,000 hours of practice. I bet that even people who have spend 20 years on side projects haven't reached those 10K hours of practice yet.
- hinkley 9y ago
  We aren’t talking about people moonlighting as developers. We’re talking about people in the industry working on software every waking hour. Roughly 220 work days a year, 5 hours a day at work if you are full time, 6 if you dabble a bit outside of office hours, that’s around 5 years out of school, which isn’t too far off from my experiences prior to Malcolm Gladwell.
  - sobani 9y ago
    Working != practice. When I'm building some CRUD interface for my job, there's nothing I'm practicing with that. When I spend my entire day doing that, I've gained 0 relevant hours for Malcom's 10K.

AznHisoka 9y ago

I would expect my doctor to read papers, news, etc to keep abreast of the latest medical advances though.

foo101 9y ago
This! And similarly, software developers should keep abreast of latest technical advances. What makes software engineering different from surgery is that when a surgeon learns something new, he does not have a live patient at his home to practice the new thing he has learnt, but as software engineers, most of the times we can immediately fire up an editor and write a PoC or a toy project to practice the new thing we have learnt. Its strange that such natural and obvious curiosity and desire to try something out outside of work deserves the kind of criticism that it is receiving in the original article and some of the comments here.
- sgift 9y ago
  > Its strange that such natural and obvious curiosity and desire to try something out outside of work deserves the kind of criticism that it is receiving in the original article and some of the comments here. The critic points out that it is no longer curiosity which drives you when people expect you to do it.
- pferde 9y ago
  Yes, it is normal to tinker with new stuff to get acquainted with it. It is, however, not the same thing as publishing results of that tinkering on e.g. github, or blogging about it as if you want to break some posts-per-month record. I do not get this obsession with putting everything out there. I have a huge local directory with my old test programs, PoCs, started but abandoned ideas, etc. I regularly try new stuff, new libraries, programming languages, what have you. But my github account is empty. The internet needs less stuff on it, not more.
  - foo101 9y ago
    > I do not get this obsession with putting everything out there. It's not obsession. It's just a matter of convenience. git add; git commit; git push; and all my experimental code is safe on someone else's server that is managed much better than I can manage my set of USB drives and hard disks. > The internet needs less stuff on it, not more. I disagree!

jimbokun 9y ago

If you were a surgeon looking to hire another surgeon for your surgery team, I bet you would want to observe her performing a surgery. If you were looking for a drummer for a band, you would want to hear him play.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
The former one, maybe not. I'm sure lots of practices hire surgeons by looking at their record and not observing them actually doing a surgery. After all, it's the results that matter in the end. The latter one, sure. Makes me wonder if we should call interviews as auditions.

foo101 9y ago

> I'd much rather have a well rounded individual who isn't moonlighting on other things but rather can bring his clear focused mind to the office. What I do after the office hours is really none of your business. I should be able to do whatever I please (write code, play guitar, etc.) after office hours without you raising concerns about it. If you believe I do not bring my clear focused mind to the office, then that is a separate issue to be discussed separately without bringing in what I do after office hours into the discussion. It is my prerogative, not yours, to decide if I need to give up what I am doing after office hours in order to focus better at office.

asmdev 9y ago

> I'd much rather have a well rounded individual who isn't moonlighting on other things but rather can bring his clear focused mind to the office. I don't understand how you equate doing side code projects to not bringing clear focused mind to the office. Would you also much rather bring a well rounded individual who does not take art classes after work? Do you think taking arts classes after work would affect one's ability to focus in the office? Then why do you make similar assumptions about doing side code projects? For many of us, doing side code project is like taking art classes. It is art for us and it helps us learn new things about the art of software development that is not always easy to learn in the constraints of real world software business. Most importantly, it is a relaxing and enjoyable experience. It refreshes our soul and combined with a good night's sleep, it helps us to better focus next day at work, not the other way around. Are you saying that you would much rather not hire people like us who care about the art of software development because from your high horse, we don't look like "well rounded" individuals? If you hold this kind of irrational conservative beliefs, I'd much rather not work for you.

maxhallinan 9y ago
Thanks for pointing this out. Working on my humble side projects is the hiking/cooking/traveling of my life. I spend my free time programming for the same reason the author doesn't spend his free time programming: because life is too short not to do what you love when you can. Making progress on these projects helps me to be more present in other aspects of my life, like my job and my marriage.
kemitche 9y ago
If the person enjoys their side projects, go for it. I'm not saying they can't. But on the hiring side I'm not going to require that all employees have side projects that match their day job.

Too 9y ago

One difference is that many "programmers" actually don't do any programming at work. Their hands on experience is a 5 week java course in uni 10 years ago and after thay they have been stuck in meetings or writing brain numbing CRUD in a proprietary domain specific scripting language at $bigco ever since. The only way for many to get actual hands on is to do side projects. Hair dressers don't have this problem, they are actually cutting hair 8 hours a day. Carpenters have a more hands on education compared to compsci which is more maths than version control. Doctors require 2 years of practice supervised by other doctors before they are certified.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
There are a lot of more senior doctors in admin or specialty positions who aren't making rounds or doing surgery anymore, however.
- nunez 9y ago
  yeah but they did a lot of medical work before getting there though

chrisco255 9y ago

I expect a surgeon to stay up to date on the latest in medical technology. And I don't know too many surgeons who clock in at 9am and clock out at 5pm. Many surgeons pull 60-80 hour weeks regularly.

nanodano 9y ago

What about an artist or a musician? Would you expect a musician to practice and get better in their free time or only play their instrument during paid gigs?

aminorex 9y ago
Fine artists usually produce works on speculation. Craft persons usually produce on a cottage-industrial basis, essentially commodity piecework. There are a lot of ways to get paid, beyond the two you highlight, so the parallels are not as clear as you appear to be assuming.

crdb 9y ago

> I don't expect my surgeon to do surgery in his spare time. I really like it when my specialist has a prominent public profile. A recent case: tenure at a major university, had written or was quoted in many good journals and papers, and had a number of impressive accreditations (for example he was also head of his specialty's medical association for the country). This showed dedication and interest as well as some measure of intelligence. I was accordingly confident he was on top of the latest developments in his field and would be able to deal with complications better than your run of the mill specialist. The care was great throughout. Similarly, our lawyer has been quoted twice by the Supreme Court in Singapore, has written many articles in the Straits Times, and does great (and visible) pro bono work, all of which I could find off a quick Google for his name. Whilst I hired him based on a recommendation, it was comforting to see this public confirmation of his ability and interest in the field.

pell 9y ago
While these points may well be examples of this person's ability, certain credentials don't have to mean as much. As an example, the head of an association is not necessarily chosen for their merit.
- protomyth 9y ago
  I knew of at least one department Dean at a college that was chosen for that position so he would not teach anymore students.
purplezooey 9y ago
Not so sure about this. It would be OK for my surgeon to just be a badass surgeon and not a politician. Public confirmation doesn't add much because the skill of navigating that is (mostly) unrelated to the skill of achieving a great surgery outcome.
- jventura 9y ago
  I think the key to your answer is in the parent's text: "This showed dedication and interest as well as some measure of intelligence." My reasoning is that if someone is very good in his line of work, some of that work starts to spill out to the public, either by research, teaching, articles, blog posts, etc.. If a person is not a pure introvert, working all by himself, and is quite good, invariably someone will notice it..

samfisher83 9y ago

A surgeon is licensed. Many times they will publish papers etc. especially if they are trying to get ahead.

mark-r 9y ago

No, side projects are not necessary. They're just a signal that you're really into this stuff. Like all signals, it can't be evaluated in isolation. It's no different than preferring candidates who come from a top University. Some jobs are easier to do on the side than others. I'll bet the gardener has some side projects too.