Agreed entirely. It's the same as hiring somebody out of college who had a job all throughout vs somebody who didn't and was involved in a lot of various organi

Agreed entirely. It's the same as hiring somebody out of college who had a job all throughout vs somebody who didn't and was involved in a lot of various organizations. The involvement is great at all, but if you've graduated while working it shows great time management too. The side projects are most valuable for conveying desire to learn / solve problems, which is perhaps the most critical trait for successful developer. At the same time, if your job already gives you a chance to showcase that, the side project isn't that big of a deal. The key is just looking for that desire to learn to show through in the candidate. I've seen it from side projects where the side project showed experience (Ruby) that the primary job (.NET) did not, I've seen it from crazy detail and excitement in explaining how you solved a boring low level problem, etc. There are many roads to surfacing that in an interview. When it shows, I'm currently batting 1.000 on the quality of hires though.