7 ms·

Some good questions in here, with one exception: > Programmers are unique. They're one of the few professions where outside the boundaries of their working hour

by mcfunk 6y ago

Some good questions in here, with one exception: > Programmers are unique. They're one of the few professions where outside the boundaries of their working hours they choose to do the same exact thing they do at work: programming. Hiring managers should definitely not be assuming that all programmers do apps in their spare time. It's one thing to expect them to have a code sample (anyone should), but many strong programmers have interests and responsibilities that take them away from computers in their spare time. This doesn't make them less effective or dedicated programmers, so while it's always interesting to hear about the projects of those who have them, it shouldn't be assumed (and you shouldn't consider it 'points off' in an interview if a dev doesn't do side projects)

reificator 6y ago
For me it varies with how much stress I'm facing at work. When I log out feeling fine, I'm going to develop things in my free time for sure. But when I'm just constantly stressed out, I don't have the fortitude to keep the pace up at work while making things on the side. One of them has to go.
FalconSensei 6y ago
> Hiring managers should definitely not be assuming that all programmers do apps in their spare time. It baffles me how much this is an assumption. Like all the developers should not have any hobby that doesn't involve coding.
- dominotw 6y ago
  but don't you think its a fair guess that someone who hobby is X might be better at X than someone whose hobby is Y.
  - MisterBastahrd 6y ago
    No, because that doesn't say anything about the quality of his code. He could be sitting around writing complete chicken scratch if he doesn't have a team with good leadership and code review guidelines.
  - reallydontask 6y ago
    Not necessarily. My hobby could be, say embedded programming and I could be a front end engineer.
  - FalconSensei 6y ago
    I see your point, and I partly disagree. First because, they are doing it for fun, to solve things they want to make it work. That doesn't say they are learning something, or following clean code guidelines. But let's assume they DO. They are better at coding. But are you sure coding is the only skill you want? I've seen my fair share of developers that lack "real world" experience, to the point they cannot see that what they are doing is not what a user wants, or how they want to do it. In some cases, open source projects are made for developers, and managed/prioritized by developers, not someone with experience in project management, or with a roadmap with the users in mind. So, they might be lacking a lot of other important skills, and I would dare say that some also lack empathy towards non-programmers - the paying customers. I'M NOT GENERALIZING GUYS! I'm just point out things that I saw in some instances, with some people.
    - dominotw 6y ago
      yea ofcourse, if someone is better at skills you are looking for then by all means coding hobby is irrelvant. But what if all else being equal, why would you not choose coding hobby candidate.
      - slg 6y ago
        If we are going the "all else being equal" route, one could argue the hobbyist is a worse candidate because they have spent more time working and thinking about programming but still haven't been able to demonstrate their skills are superior to someone who has spent much less time refining them. Give me the person who is able to get the same thing accomplished with less effort and time.
        FalconSensei 6y ago
        Also I would imagine that the person who also code as a hobby is more likely to have a burnout later on. Just a guess though
        lonelappde 6y ago
        There's no way to compare that "time" of course.
  - lostphilosopher 6y ago
    Could go either way, right? I've seen folks who have side projects spend most of their work day working on their side projects. They might be "better programmers" (also debatable), but if they don't get their work done - does it matter? I've seen folks who do really solid work for 8 hours and then go home and do other things, some of those folks have said that the separation is helpful so they can really be at their "programming best" at work. (I say this as someone who generally have multiple programming side projects going on at any given time and also freelances...)
  - nsxwolf 6y ago
    I write hobby code sometimes but I don't write unit tests for it and I almost never go back to refactor it. Once I achieve my initial goal, I tend to be bored with it and set it aside.
  - sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
    This seems to be a pretty sensitive claim, but it also seems completely reasonable to me that people who practice something more are better at it than people who practice something less. Even if it's a completely different domain than your work, it's still developing your intuition and exposing you to new abstract concepts.
  - strken 6y ago
    As someone who runs interviews occasionally, when you're sitting in an interview room, you're not making an immediate decision whether the candidate is better or worse - that comes after the interview. During the interview itself, your job is to learn as much as you can about the candidate. The biggest problem for both you and the candidate is that you might get to the end of the interview and still not be sure whether they're a good candidate, and therefore have to reject them. You've got two probabilities to work out, "how likely is this person to succeed in the role we're hiring them to do?" and "how confident am I in the previous number?" Side projects usually don't change whether you think the candidate is a good fit (at least for me), but they usually do increase your confidence in your prediction, and turn some no-hires into hires.
  - alexbanks 6y ago
    If "Time technically participating in an activity" directed overall skill that clearly, yes. Unfortunately there are plenty of 10 years exp devs with thousands of hours in their chair that also just aren't very good.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  I don't think I've ever run into that assumption. Then again, maybe those shops just don't hire me, so I don't get exposure to it...
runawaybottle 6y ago
We also should not propagate the caricature of the developer. You know, the all I need is gallons of coffee and I’m off grokking code all day in a hoodie. I’m off to my Kubernetes meetup! Whoops, just dropped my giant math is fun textbook.
- yoz-y 6y ago
  /me looks at a pile of empty coffee capsules, /me looks at the hoodie, /me looks at the (unread) giant math is fun book, I hide in shame. I do agree though, especially in hiring I find it weird to expect people to have their hobby being the same as their job. I'm quite curions if there is another profession where this is the case. Photographers maybe?
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    Well if you’re the real deal, you’re the real deal :p I guess only celebrities/insta influencers have to keep up the image. Casually hides Cracking the Coding Interview book
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      > Casually hides Cracking the Coding Interview book Ironically, I'm pretty sure that owning that book is part of the image :)
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        No, the image is that you own CLRS. Cracking the Coding Interview is to the programmer image as Cliffs Notes are to the Shakespeare nerd image.
        eindiran 6y ago
        I feel like owning a print copy of CLRS just implies that you studied Computer Science at a university, not necessarily that you're some super gifted hacker. But then again, most people who own print copies of Shakespeare are probably not uber-Shakespeare nerds, but took some English Lit courses.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Please read the article further down. The author explicitly says: > It's OK too if an engineer doesn't have any side projects. I always ask about side projects to give candidates an opportunity to highlight their side projects, not because we require candidates to have side projects. I'm sure some hiring managers out there have side projects listed under their "must have" criteria, but in my experience the good hiring managers are just collecting as many data points as possible. In fact, I've known many hiring managers who take side projects as a potential risk factor, because they can pose a distraction to the candidate if they become too demanding. All other things equal, a candidate with extensive side projects is going to have more experience than a candidate who has never worked on any side projects. In the real world, you never find two candidates who are identical in every way except for their side projects. The goal of an interview is to collect as much information as possible about the candidates in the limited interview time. Asking about side projects is just one more place to search for those data points. It would be equally unfair to disqualify side project experience from the consideration process. In my experience, have side projects is largely a boost for junior candidates who haven't had enough opportunity to build a long professional resume yet. I can't remember the last time we interviewed a senior developer where side projects were the tipping point in our decision making process.
- mcfunk 6y ago
  fair point, I did miss that further down in the section. It's still unfortunate to lead with a generalization that plays into a common trope/assumption about developers that does play out in the hiring process, but it's good to see it called out explicitly below that it shouldn't be required. I certainly don't disagree that side projects are a good data point especially for junior developers who don't have the direct professional experience.
  - greghausheer 6y ago
    Fair criticism, point taken. Thanks for the feedback here. Def did not mean to breed a culture of always being "on" and "crushing it" which might also be part of the trope.
- 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
esmi 6y ago
Not only that I’m sure programmers are not unique in that regard. Surely musicians do music in their off time. Artist do art. Carpenters build. Mechanics have beaters, etc. etc.

by mcfunk 6y ago

reificator 6y ago

For me it varies with how much stress I'm facing at work. When I log out feeling fine, I'm going to develop things in my free time for sure. But when I'm just constantly stressed out, I don't have the fortitude to keep the pace up at work while making things on the side. One of them has to go.

FalconSensei 6y ago

> Hiring managers should definitely not be assuming that all programmers do apps in their spare time. It baffles me how much this is an assumption. Like all the developers should not have any hobby that doesn't involve coding.

dominotw 6y ago
but don't you think its a fair guess that someone who hobby is X might be better at X than someone whose hobby is Y.
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  No, because that doesn't say anything about the quality of his code. He could be sitting around writing complete chicken scratch if he doesn't have a team with good leadership and code review guidelines.
- reallydontask 6y ago
  Not necessarily. My hobby could be, say embedded programming and I could be a front end engineer.
- FalconSensei 6y ago
  I see your point, and I partly disagree. First because, they are doing it for fun, to solve things they want to make it work. That doesn't say they are learning something, or following clean code guidelines. But let's assume they DO. They are better at coding. But are you sure coding is the only skill you want? I've seen my fair share of developers that lack "real world" experience, to the point they cannot see that what they are doing is not what a user wants, or how they want to do it. In some cases, open source projects are made for developers, and managed/prioritized by developers, not someone with experience in project management, or with a roadmap with the users in mind. So, they might be lacking a lot of other important skills, and I would dare say that some also lack empathy towards non-programmers - the paying customers. I'M NOT GENERALIZING GUYS! I'm just point out things that I saw in some instances, with some people.
  - dominotw 6y ago
    yea ofcourse, if someone is better at skills you are looking for then by all means coding hobby is irrelvant. But what if all else being equal, why would you not choose coding hobby candidate.
    - slg 6y ago
      If we are going the "all else being equal" route, one could argue the hobbyist is a worse candidate because they have spent more time working and thinking about programming but still haven't been able to demonstrate their skills are superior to someone who has spent much less time refining them. Give me the person who is able to get the same thing accomplished with less effort and time.
      - FalconSensei 6y ago
        Also I would imagine that the person who also code as a hobby is more likely to have a burnout later on. Just a guess though
      - lonelappde 6y ago
        There's no way to compare that "time" of course.
- lostphilosopher 6y ago
  Could go either way, right? I've seen folks who have side projects spend most of their work day working on their side projects. They might be "better programmers" (also debatable), but if they don't get their work done - does it matter? I've seen folks who do really solid work for 8 hours and then go home and do other things, some of those folks have said that the separation is helpful so they can really be at their "programming best" at work. (I say this as someone who generally have multiple programming side projects going on at any given time and also freelances...)
- nsxwolf 6y ago
  I write hobby code sometimes but I don't write unit tests for it and I almost never go back to refactor it. Once I achieve my initial goal, I tend to be bored with it and set it aside.
- sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
  This seems to be a pretty sensitive claim, but it also seems completely reasonable to me that people who practice something more are better at it than people who practice something less. Even if it's a completely different domain than your work, it's still developing your intuition and exposing you to new abstract concepts.
- strken 6y ago
  As someone who runs interviews occasionally, when you're sitting in an interview room, you're not making an immediate decision whether the candidate is better or worse - that comes after the interview. During the interview itself, your job is to learn as much as you can about the candidate. The biggest problem for both you and the candidate is that you might get to the end of the interview and still not be sure whether they're a good candidate, and therefore have to reject them. You've got two probabilities to work out, "how likely is this person to succeed in the role we're hiring them to do?" and "how confident am I in the previous number?" Side projects usually don't change whether you think the candidate is a good fit (at least for me), but they usually do increase your confidence in your prediction, and turn some no-hires into hires.
- alexbanks 6y ago
  If "Time technically participating in an activity" directed overall skill that clearly, yes. Unfortunately there are plenty of 10 years exp devs with thousands of hours in their chair that also just aren't very good.
BurningFrog 6y ago
I don't think I've ever run into that assumption. Then again, maybe those shops just don't hire me, so I don't get exposure to it...

runawaybottle 6y ago

We also should not propagate the caricature of the developer. You know, the all I need is gallons of coffee and I’m off grokking code all day in a hoodie. I’m off to my Kubernetes meetup! Whoops, just dropped my giant math is fun textbook.

yoz-y 6y ago
/me looks at a pile of empty coffee capsules, /me looks at the hoodie, /me looks at the (unread) giant math is fun book, I hide in shame. I do agree though, especially in hiring I find it weird to expect people to have their hobby being the same as their job. I'm quite curions if there is another profession where this is the case. Photographers maybe?
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Well if you’re the real deal, you’re the real deal :p I guess only celebrities/insta influencers have to keep up the image. Casually hides Cracking the Coding Interview book
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    > Casually hides Cracking the Coding Interview book Ironically, I'm pretty sure that owning that book is part of the image :)
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      No, the image is that you own CLRS. Cracking the Coding Interview is to the programmer image as Cliffs Notes are to the Shakespeare nerd image.
      - eindiran 6y ago
        I feel like owning a print copy of CLRS just implies that you studied Computer Science at a university, not necessarily that you're some super gifted hacker. But then again, most people who own print copies of Shakespeare are probably not uber-Shakespeare nerds, but took some English Lit courses.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

Please read the article further down. The author explicitly says: > It's OK too if an engineer doesn't have any side projects. I always ask about side projects to give candidates an opportunity to highlight their side projects, not because we require candidates to have side projects. I'm sure some hiring managers out there have side projects listed under their "must have" criteria, but in my experience the good hiring managers are just collecting as many data points as possible. In fact, I've known many hiring managers who take side projects as a potential risk factor, because they can pose a distraction to the candidate if they become too demanding. All other things equal, a candidate with extensive side projects is going to have more experience than a candidate who has never worked on any side projects. In the real world, you never find two candidates who are identical in every way except for their side projects. The goal of an interview is to collect as much information as possible about the candidates in the limited interview time. Asking about side projects is just one more place to search for those data points. It would be equally unfair to disqualify side project experience from the consideration process. In my experience, have side projects is largely a boost for junior candidates who haven't had enough opportunity to build a long professional resume yet. I can't remember the last time we interviewed a senior developer where side projects were the tipping point in our decision making process.

mcfunk 6y ago
fair point, I did miss that further down in the section. It's still unfortunate to lead with a generalization that plays into a common trope/assumption about developers that does play out in the hiring process, but it's good to see it called out explicitly below that it shouldn't be required. I certainly don't disagree that side projects are a good data point especially for junior developers who don't have the direct professional experience.
- greghausheer 6y ago
  Fair criticism, point taken. Thanks for the feedback here. Def did not mean to breed a culture of always being "on" and "crushing it" which might also be part of the trope.
6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

esmi 6y ago

Not only that I’m sure programmers are not unique in that regard. Surely musicians do music in their off time. Artist do art. Carpenters build. Mechanics have beaters, etc. etc.