6 ms·

None of these things are perfect - I agree with you about quizzes and the like. > Let them show off recent personal projects. They'll probably have no problem

• knd775 7y ago
  As long as it's not a requirement or expected, I think it's fine. If someone has side projects they're proud of, I think it would be helpful to both parties for them to be brought up.
  • davidw 7y ago
    Oh, sure; side projects that people have worked on for fun over the years are a good thing to have and should be a potential avenue to show off one's abilities.
• enraged_camel 7y ago
  >> Nope. Not spending my weekend fooling around to impress some potential employer. I'm going to spend it with my kids, riding my bike, and enjoying life. Okay, it is time for some harsh love. You won't like it, and I'll get downvotes, but whatever. It needs to be said. My parents are both doctors, and they are in their 60s now. And you know what? They still work their asses off, on many evenings and weekends, trying to stay up-to-date with new developments in their respective fields. My dad just got back from an ophthalmology conference in Europe. My mom is a guest speaker at a pathology conference and she has been preparing furiously. And it has been like this _all my life_. So yeah, I detest this sense of entitlement that programmers have, where they want to a) get paid a lot and b) have lots of free time on the side. How about this instead: if you want to have a high salary, then it is reasonable for people to expect you to make certain sacrifices, such as work on your own projects on the side experimenting with new technologies and ideas. Don't like it? Well, it may be time to pick another profession...
  • chrismatheson 7y ago
    Technology’s main usage/promise is to make us all more efficient and rid us of the dependency on pure time & effort for outcomes. It’s like the definition of work smart not hard. Personally I think this is why you see a ton of people who live and breath tech think in terms of low time, high impact. High impact should equal high compensation.
  • themarkn 7y ago
    I’m not sure that the lesson to be learned from the medical profession’s overburdening of its professionals is that other well paid industries should follow suit and overburden their own professionals.
    • CompanionCuuube 7y ago
      Is the medical profession unique in that way? Do lawyers not need to keep up with existing legislation and case law? I know research scientists that use alerting tools for getting notified about publications covering their subject.
      • themarkn 7y ago
        Sure, I just used medical as the example because that’s what the parent comment talked about. There are many other industries with problems maintaining a good work/life balance for people who work there. Often those gigs are lower paid than tech work. I worked many more hours and had a more stressful, less predictable life when I worked at a nonprofit, before I became a developer. Now I mostly work 9-5, sometimes an extra hour or two here and there but no expectation that I’m doing stuff outside of work. I have some side projects, meetups etc that I spend time on, but can also spend time at work learning new things or trying stuff out.
    • shawnz 7y ago
      Then salaries in our industry need to decrease if we don't want to be held to a standard of overburdening ourselves. The salaries in our industry have a precedent which was set by individuals that overburdened themselves. That might have been irrational, but if we want to change that, then we need to accept less pay. We can't have the same rewards as they did while doing less work, even if the amount of work they did was unreasonable.