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I hate the side projects trope. I’ve worked with tons of great engineers who have lives outside of code.

shados 9y ago
You can absolutely be good without side projects. And there are a lot of ways to be useful as a software engineer. But all other things being equal, when looking at code, it literally comes down to practice. The more code you've written, the more things you've had to research and the more mistakes you've already made, the faster you'll be able to produce good code in the future. Side projects help that aspect. Because there's only so much you can do and learn during your day job. You can always make up for it with other skills, experience, or just the difficulty level of the projects you've been on and nail the job anyway. Side projects help people who DON'T have all of that nail jobs. They can go "Look, I may not have worked for Google, or I may be only a few years out of school (if I ever went to school), but I made up for it with these projects". And of course, you can always have both :)
mlevental 9y ago
you know what i hate? recklessly divisive rhetoric. a life out of code and side-projects: the two things are not mutually exclusive. op isn't suggested he expects candidates to have written an os kernel. all op says is he/she looks for side-projects. if you were really interested in discussing the matter you would've asked some exploratory questions (e.g. what is the threshold for substantial side-project). then you would've really had an interesting conversation (because it is possible to have a life outside of programming and still be interested/engaged enough to have a couple of small side projects. and it's completely fair to expect engineers to get extra training. many many many other professions have exactly the same requirements. doctors/dentists have to regularly get re-tested on certain skills/attend conferences/etc.). but no instead you with the one-liner. try just a little harder and maybe you'll actually change someone's mind that's blindly obsessed with side-projects.
- rco8786 9y ago
  I seemed to have hit a nerve with you. Sorry if my comment offended you. I have no interest in actually discussing what constitutes a side project and what doesn’t. Let me more clearly articulate my point: Side projects have no bearing on the quality of an engineer.
  - lsadam0 9y ago
    But quality side projects are quite helpful in identifying a valuable engineer. A lack of them is not a warning sign either.
nip 9y ago
These are not mutually exclusive. I have a life and work on side projects at the same time. I started the latest one during a 1 week transition between jobs. I was able to work full time on it while my SO was working. Since then, I have been working between 0 and 10h each weekends. I usually only read (both code related and general litterature) during week days. It’s entirely possible, just requires a bit of organisation.

You can absolutely be good without side projects. And there are a lot of ways to be useful as a software engineer. But all other things being equal, when looking at code, it literally comes down to practice. The more code you've written, the more things you've had to research and the more mistakes you've already made, the faster you'll be able to produce good code in the future. Side projects help that aspect. Because there's only so much you can do and learn during your day job. You can always make up for it with other skills, experience, or just the difficulty level of the projects you've been on and nail the job anyway. Side projects help people who DON'T have all of that nail jobs. They can go "Look, I may not have worked for Google, or I may be only a few years out of school (if I ever went to school), but I made up for it with these projects". And of course, you can always have both :)

mlevental 9y ago

you know what i hate? recklessly divisive rhetoric. a life out of code and side-projects: the two things are not mutually exclusive. op isn't suggested he expects candidates to have written an os kernel. all op says is he/she looks for side-projects. if you were really interested in discussing the matter you would've asked some exploratory questions (e.g. what is the threshold for substantial side-project). then you would've really had an interesting conversation (because it is possible to have a life outside of programming and still be interested/engaged enough to have a couple of small side projects. and it's completely fair to expect engineers to get extra training. many many many other professions have exactly the same requirements. doctors/dentists have to regularly get re-tested on certain skills/attend conferences/etc.). but no instead you with the one-liner. try just a little harder and maybe you'll actually change someone's mind that's blindly obsessed with side-projects.

rco8786 9y ago
I seemed to have hit a nerve with you. Sorry if my comment offended you. I have no interest in actually discussing what constitutes a side project and what doesn’t. Let me more clearly articulate my point: Side projects have no bearing on the quality of an engineer.
- lsadam0 9y ago
  But quality side projects are quite helpful in identifying a valuable engineer. A lack of them is not a warning sign either.

nip 9y ago

These are not mutually exclusive. I have a life and work on side projects at the same time. I started the latest one during a 1 week transition between jobs. I was able to work full time on it while my SO was working. Since then, I have been working between 0 and 10h each weekends. I usually only read (both code related and general litterature) during week days. It’s entirely possible, just requires a bit of organisation.