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Side projects are icing. People live under different circumstances. One person may wish to spend their free time socializing when they’re done work. Another per

Side projects are icing. People live under different circumstances. One person may wish to spend their free time socializing when they’re done work. Another person may wish to spend that time doing these side projects. If this made the difference between being hired by a company or not, this wouldn’t be the company I would choose to work for. I could only imagine the 24/7, always-on culture they’d have.

mahaganapati 6y ago
The kind of company that says they hire 'rockstars' and 'ninjas'
sokoloff 6y ago
One athlete might choose to spend their free time socializing while another works out. One med or engineering student might socialize while another hits the books or lab. Do we believe that the outcomes will be equal over 100s of such trials? If we believe the outcomes will be different, why should we not consider that among other signals we get in interviewing?
- milesvp 6y ago
  You should look at the work of Richard Hamming. Socializing is very important in staying relavant in a field. Similarly there’s a belief that the social dinners of the academics in cape cod post WWII had an overwhemling effect on that regions academic contributions. Personally I’d bet on the socializer over the person putting in tons of extra hours in isolation anyday.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    True, though I would count significant socializing within your field or with a distinctly academic bent quite differently from "crushing Bud Light cans around a campfire". Not to say that the latter isn't also a perfectly valid way to spend time, but it's quite different from a social dinner of academics, IMO.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  I don't know why you point out athletes so much, when top-level athletes actually practice very few hours a day. The Chinese weightlifting team (probably the most insanely competitive and selective team in the sport, and not a culture known for liking laziness), trains a total of 4-5 hours daily, at most. And the vast majority of that training is in sub-maximal loads and technical training that does not require tremendous efforts, just persistence. They spend most of their time resting (weightlifters sleep between 10-12 hours daily) and eating, and not doing much related to weightlifting in between, saving their energy for the effective training under the supervision of experts, when it really matters. This is a common theme among athletes and a lot of the highest performers in the world.
  - iateanapple 6y ago
    > I don't know why you point out athletes so much, when top-level athletes actually practice very few hours a day. > trains a total of 4-5 hours daily, at most You are making the parents point for them. The average software developer would get closer to 2-3 hours a week of their work time dedicated to improving their skills. Practice:Performance is highly skewed towards performance for work.
    - Daishiman 6y ago
      No, the equivalent for a software engineer is actually coding, whether on the job or not. Athletes spend 99% of their time training. Software engineers in very competitive roles might spend 6 hours a day coding if all things go well. I have never seen a coding role where you don't spend substantial time reading docs, doing code reviews, or performing various tasks that comprise of similar practice.
      - iateanapple 6y ago
        > No, the equivalent for a software engineer is actually coding, whether on the job or not. Practice and performance are not the same thing. The mindset is entirely different. Imagine a world where devs are told by their managers to stop working on a task when it’s clear that the task is not improving their skills. It doesn’t happen because as a software dev every day is game day. Instead they will get asked to solve the same kind of problem umpteenth times. I’ve had to leave top tech companies just to get an opportunity to improve.

mahaganapati 6y ago

The kind of company that says they hire 'rockstars' and 'ninjas'

sokoloff 6y ago

One athlete might choose to spend their free time socializing while another works out. One med or engineering student might socialize while another hits the books or lab. Do we believe that the outcomes will be equal over 100s of such trials? If we believe the outcomes will be different, why should we not consider that among other signals we get in interviewing?

milesvp 6y ago
You should look at the work of Richard Hamming. Socializing is very important in staying relavant in a field. Similarly there’s a belief that the social dinners of the academics in cape cod post WWII had an overwhemling effect on that regions academic contributions. Personally I’d bet on the socializer over the person putting in tons of extra hours in isolation anyday.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  True, though I would count significant socializing within your field or with a distinctly academic bent quite differently from "crushing Bud Light cans around a campfire". Not to say that the latter isn't also a perfectly valid way to spend time, but it's quite different from a social dinner of academics, IMO.
Daishiman 6y ago
I don't know why you point out athletes so much, when top-level athletes actually practice very few hours a day. The Chinese weightlifting team (probably the most insanely competitive and selective team in the sport, and not a culture known for liking laziness), trains a total of 4-5 hours daily, at most. And the vast majority of that training is in sub-maximal loads and technical training that does not require tremendous efforts, just persistence. They spend most of their time resting (weightlifters sleep between 10-12 hours daily) and eating, and not doing much related to weightlifting in between, saving their energy for the effective training under the supervision of experts, when it really matters. This is a common theme among athletes and a lot of the highest performers in the world.
- iateanapple 6y ago
  > I don't know why you point out athletes so much, when top-level athletes actually practice very few hours a day. > trains a total of 4-5 hours daily, at most You are making the parents point for them. The average software developer would get closer to 2-3 hours a week of their work time dedicated to improving their skills. Practice:Performance is highly skewed towards performance for work.
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    No, the equivalent for a software engineer is actually coding, whether on the job or not. Athletes spend 99% of their time training. Software engineers in very competitive roles might spend 6 hours a day coding if all things go well. I have never seen a coding role where you don't spend substantial time reading docs, doing code reviews, or performing various tasks that comprise of similar practice.
    - iateanapple 6y ago
      > No, the equivalent for a software engineer is actually coding, whether on the job or not. Practice and performance are not the same thing. The mindset is entirely different. Imagine a world where devs are told by their managers to stop working on a task when it’s clear that the task is not improving their skills. It doesn’t happen because as a software dev every day is game day. Instead they will get asked to solve the same kind of problem umpteenth times. I’ve had to leave top tech companies just to get an opportunity to improve.