8 ms·

What have you developed in your spare time?

63 points by matan_a 15y ago

mrcharles 15y ago
I take issue with this article because it would come across to me as a red flag about work-life balance. That an employer would expect you to be doing something programming related in your spare time comes across as a bit self-serving. Instead, I would ask "What would you like to develop in your spare time, if you had any?" That way they can answer the same as his question if they are working on stuff, but can still show interest in programming otherwise. Frankly, yeah, it can be hard to stay on top of things, and companies that don't foster learning and expect you to do it all on your own time don't help.
- synnik 15y ago
  It is always dangerous to assume what answers are desired by an interviewer. Interviews are not just to get the job - it is to determine whether or not you would even want the job in the first place. So in this particular case, I would answer something about how I have taught my kids multiple languages, taught them kung fu, helped them to develop their own hobbies and become their own people, while at the same time working with local non-profits on renewable energy technologies. If they do not like that answer and would have preferred a list of open source/weekend projects, it is probably not a place I would have fit in anyway.
  - garindra 15y ago
    A question : are you in the Computer Science field? While I think that the way you would answer may work beautifully in other fields, we also have to think about the employer's best interest and the field we're talking about here. Employer's best interest, across most if not all fields, is primarily to hire people that have skills that will be useful in creating advantage of the company as a whole. In the case of Computer Science field, then, having an employee that answers that particular interview question with how he/she has contributed to open source and/or created side projects will have higher probability to create more value for the company than an employee that answers with how he/she is a great parent or how he/she's working in a non-profit of unrelated field.
    - infinite8s 15y ago
      And as the grandparent post mentioned, he would probably not be interested in working at companies that focused so much on what their employees did in their free time.
    - synnik 15y ago
      I am a software developer in the energy industry. So whether or not that is Computer Science is up for debate. I do need to have my skills up on the technology in use, and I most definitely need to have a solid understanding of technology. But I do not need to know the latest and greatest flavors of it.
    - MrScruff 15y ago
      Most people writing here are not generally practicing computer science, but rather focusing on software development. For me, good communication skills, an ability to understand project requirements and a focused and responsible attitude are often worth more in an employee than an exhaustive knowledge of design patterns.
- Shenglong 15y ago
  From an employer perspective, they're trying to gauge drive and interest. While these questions may not be completely fair, and will exclude a lot of competent people, it is a decently good way to measure what they're looking for. I suppose, it's just a sad situation.
  - tjogin 15y ago
    Yeah, kind of, but the false negatives are really severe. You want to select people who really care about development, and while that question might be a pretty good filter for people in their early twenties, it's also a good way to filter out those who have a decade+ more experience but have other life priorities, like a family. Certainly, their extra decade or more of work and life experience outweighs the inconvenience of them not programming very much in their spare time.
    - trustfundbaby 15y ago
      Certainly, their extra decade or more of work and life experience outweighs the inconvenience of them not programming very much in their spare time. ------------------------------- A good developer with a decade of work/life experience would have built something in his spare time in the past ... when life wasn't always that hectic. That would work for me too, I'm sure a "I don't do a lot of programming after work now, but when I had more spare time, I did x" should suffice. Plus, its not a disqualifier ... you don't discard an interviewee just because they don't have side projects that they've done.
- andywood 15y ago
  I don't think side projects are mutually exclusive with work-life balance. Granted, I don't have children; but aside from that, I think I've been living a very full and action-packed life. Time-consuming outdoor hobbies, girlfriends, friends, going out, travelling - check. I also waste sickening amounts of time on sites like this one, and playing video games. Yet I've found plenty of time over the years to work on two large side projects (both ultimate passions), and several smaller ones (like iPhone apps). Nothing says you have to spend ALL of your spare time doing ONE thing. You can rotate. I can certainly accept that some people's circumstances are such that they really don't have the time, but I think casting side projects as necessarily creating time conflicts is wrong.
  - mrcharles 15y ago
    I do agree with you, but my reaction is that what I do on my own time is my business and has absolutely no bearing on anything else, and that asking about it is borderline invasion of privacy. Maybe I work on stuff I don't want to talk about all night long, or maybe I don't work on anything at all when I get home because what I'm doing at work fulfills me. Either way, it should have no bearing on an interview.
    - trustfundbaby 15y ago
      my reaction is that what I do on my own time is my business and has absolutely no bearing on anything else, and that asking about it is borderline invasion of privacy ------------------------- I'm not seeing the invasion of privacy ... its a relevant question that is strictly limited to your development/engineering experience ... what you learn on side projects has bearing on your knowledge as a developer, if you don't want to reveal that, great, but most people that do have side projects have no reservations talking about it when prompted (unless its top secret or illegal)> I'm sure a good interviewer can find a way establish your proficiency based on your work experience etc Maybe I work on stuff I don't want to talk about all night long, or maybe I don't work on anything at all when I get home because what I'm doing at work fulfills me ---------------------------------------- Great. Doesn't change the fact that its enough of a trend among good developers to be used in an interview, to help you zero in on the really good guys.
- trustfundbaby 15y ago
  I take issue with this article because it would come across to me as a red flag about work-life balance. That an employer would expect you to be doing something programming related in your spare time comes across as a bit self-serving. --------------- I think you're reading too much into it ... I've been doing this for 7 years (not that long) and without fail all the really good developers I've ever known or met have built something in their spare time ... just for kicks, a webserver, a firefox addon, some game, a ruby gem, PHP script, a macro for their favorite editor, some electronic gizmo ... something. Not all developers do it, but the very best do ... so its not a disqualifying question, but it sure does allow you zero in on the very best developers rather easily. As an aside ... you should always be looking at code, when you're hiring developers. If they can't give you any examples, then make them write something ... I'm continually shocked by how many companies make $70+k investments in people they've never seen in action.
  - irahul 15y ago
    I know some very good developers who didn't do anything in their spare time. One of them was co-inventor of gif format, another was a core contributor to cygwin gdb and so on. But that was all before their day job. When they started their day jobs, that's all they did. Would you discard them as "not so good" because they don't do anything in their spare time and they concentrate on task on hand? Some people have more demanding jobs and/or prefer to work on their day job in their spare time - not because someone is putting a gun on their head, but because they like doing what they do. Why would they bother with side projects when they already have real life projects? Impressing the interviewer isn't on their agenda and all other aspects viz. gratification, joy of creation are the same.
    - trustfundbaby 15y ago
      One of them was co-inventor of gif format, another was a cygwin to contributor to cygwin gdb and so on. But that was all before their day job. Would you discard them as "not so good" because they don't do anything in their spare time? ----------------------------------- No, because their prior accomplishments speak for themselves. You need to stop looking at it as some yardstick to get over and understand that it is simply an informal measure of a developer's passion and drive, just because you don't do it doesn't mean "you suck. NO HIRE!"
michaelcampbell 15y ago
My brain. My family.
HockeyBiasDotCo 15y ago
I have developed hockeybias.com. It is a curated hockey news site laid out in a "90% Drudge Report/10% Scripting News" style. Please check it out!
deleted 15y ago
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agentultra 15y ago
My passion for programming ebbs and flows. For months at a time I may work all day on one thing and come home and hack on an idea I had for serializing continuations. At other times I will instead focus on art, music, or just having fun. However, everyone is different. I think having written and shared at least a small utility or library is a good indicator to me, I wouldn't discount someone because they had not written programs or libraries in their spare time. Especially if they come recommended and have a good work history. I find all too often that interviews are just about impressing the interviewer. Everyone has their own idea of what makes a good programmer. When they sit across the table from a candidate I think many interviewers are looking for people that fit that mould. edit: glaring spelling error
vain 15y ago
Some of them are here http://twitterex.com http://twitterex.com http://reduce.li http://reduce.li http://twitexplode.com http://twitexplode.com And am building a facebook application: http://namesucker.com http://namesucker.com One pattern in all these, I lose interest and they fizzle out. So, if i could pose a question here, how do you keep yourself motivated?
- wisty 15y ago
  Do you have customers? Co-developers? Or are you just working on your own? Are you struggling to get traction? If so, use analytics (AB testing?) to figure out how to get more customers. If you are just setting stuff up to satisfy your own curiosity (be honest), then it's quite rational to lose interest once the problem is solved.
  - vain 15y ago
    i start off with enthusiasm and lose it at some point. For atleast one of the projects, I do think something worthwhile can come of it, that's twitterex.com. i am not sure how to go about doing AB testing on a simple site like that
rokhayakebe 15y ago
My friend just got a job at Intel. During his interview, he tells me, they were more interested in his side projects then what he did at his previous job.
- ivanbernat 15y ago
  Same here (though not Intel), recently most people I've worked for hired me because of my side projects.
  - count 15y ago
    Nobody works on a side project for a paycheck (in general). They do it because they love it and are interested by it. If you can get someone who's loves/interests align with what you want them to work on, you stand a decent chance of making them happier while giving you a better output - it makes plenty of sense.
scott_s 15y ago
There is an implicit assumption here: that your day-to-day work does not consume all of your programming cycles. As a graduate student this was true, and now as a researcher in industry it is still true. The most interesting thing I'm working on now, the thing that is most likely to make the biggest impact is my work.
- MrScruff 15y ago
  I think this 'spare time' thing seems to come up a lot with people who for whatever reason, aren't getting enough out of their regular job to satisfy them intellectually. When I think about programming outside of work it tends to be about the work project I'm consumed by at the time. The only time this doesn't happen is when I'm working on something that doesn't motivate me.
dstein 15y ago
In my spare time I let my subconsciousness work through the problems that my conscious-self couldn't figure out. I find music, entertainment, social activities, and natural surroundings the best way to enable this process.
bxr 15y ago
Everyone I know who was able to turn their passion into a profession have found themselves with diminished drive to work on their pet projects in that field. If someone is satisfied with their work, it gives them time for other hobbies. It is an unbelievable good thing if people can find time for multiple passions in their life. Aside from the fact I think this line of reasoning is useless there is another -- more important -- issue. I don't care what people do in their off time. That's theirs, not mine. It is the same reason that I don't drug test.
sydlawrence 15y ago
Personally I believe often it is the only time you can truly learn. Often you are being paid to do a job, and in my experience (agency work) that job has been the same thing day in, day out, rarely properly learning new cool stuff to play with. I wrote an article on this recently. What’s the most important thing to know as a developer? http://sydl.me/1thingtoknow http://sydl.me/1thingtoknow I want to keep learning new stuff... the only way to learn is by playing with it. So I create stupid little sites quite often http://instac.at http://instac.at http://isitherapture.com http://isitherapture.com http://obamasmessagetoamerica.com http://obamasmessagetoamerica.com The list goes on...
raganwald 15y ago
It's easy to point out that this question will exclude some false negatives, good people that don't have side projects. I rarely hear anyone worried that it will produce false positives, crappy people that have a github profile bursting with interesting work. But here's the thing: If you think that this is a bad question to ask in an interview, I have a challenge for you: Describe a repeatable, objective process for interviewing developers. No hand-waving "I talk to them and decide if they're smart." Be specific: What questions do you ask? What constitutes a HIRE, what constitutes a NO HIRE? If you actually try to make a repeatable, objective process, you realize that there is no fair interview question. It's impossible to come up with a set of criteria that can't either be (a) gamed by false positives, or (b) overlooks good people as false negatives. For example, "Successful experience in a similar position" is an excellent criterium. But we all know it overlooks false negatives, people who have done good work in dissimilar positions but will adapt and thrive in this one. In the end, we must either 'fess up and admit that we make subjective decisions, or set our jaw and accept that some false negatives are a necessary and acceptable cost of trying to standardize our hiring process. (That doesn't mean we can't minimize the number of false negatives. One way to do that is to ask many questions and to incorporate all of the answers into your decision. If you're very conservative, you take any negative result as a NO HIRE, which leads to having more false negatives but a vanishingly small probability of a false positive. But you can go the other way and allow for some of the answers to be negative, which will create a vanishingly small possibility of a false negative overall but allow some acceptably small probability of a false positive.)
- kenjackson 15y ago
  I rarely hear anyone worried that it will produce false positives, crappy people that have a github profile bursting with interesting work. Actually I do worry about that, and have seen it -- and maybe not surprisingly could have predicted it. The symptoms are often a very active set of open source projects, often a maintainer, lack of enthusiasm about virtually anything they did in their day job. My theory is their day job at some point wasn't fulfilling and they moved to the side projects to compensate. But by the time they joined us, their side project consumed them. There's nothing worse than someone being consistently late or delivering poor quality, and looking and seeing they did 200 commits, some very non-trivial, to their side projects last week. As I said to one during the exit interview -- you should consider making the "side project" your day job, because that's your passion. Unfortunately it wasn't working here. Given a choice between someone who was enthusiastic about their day job, and has some good end results from it, and having no side projects, and one who has a lot of side proejects, but no enthusiasm or anything of interest to say about his last job -- I'll take the person with no side projects.
dvfer 15y ago
I don't what else to do in my spare time beside developing stuff... outdoor is hot...
jp007 15y ago
I enjoy my side projects, but to be honest, I work with people who are better engineers than me who never do engineering projects in their free time. I think it's an interesting question, but not as valuable as the author suggests.
raarky 15y ago
I love building stuff at home. It lets you test out all these new technologies i keep hearing about on HN :P I built http://www.snowboardfinder.com http://www.snowboardfinder.com a little while ago using ASP.Net MVC. Now i'm using it to learn more about mongodb and even creating a duplicate version in django just because I love python coding should be fun and putting your mind to a personal project lets you explore
nick_urban 15y ago
I see this sort of advice a lot, and frankly, it bothers me. There's nothing wrong with doing programming projects in your spare time, but it's hardly the most impressive thing you can do. For a variety of reasons, there are many one-dimensional programmers out there -- people who seem to be only interested in computers and oblivious to everything else. Come on people, the world is wide. Programming is not the best way to become an enterprising, dynamic individual. Unless your company is anti-risk and boring, don't you want to hire people who are different from you? People who have taken crazy trips around the world and learned skills that provide lateral insights rather than just what you get out of sitting at a computer writing code and reading Hacker News? If someone could provide evidence of doing something daring, that would show more initiative to me than a GitHub project.
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kgen 15y ago
People were asking me about regular expressions, so I built this interactive tutorial to teach them: http://regexone.com http://regexone.com Was a pretty good way to learn Kohana (PHP MVC framework) and dip my toes back into web dev!
leon_ 15y ago
Oh gosh, I have a problem with too many spare time projects. My GitHub account has over 60 public repos full with spare time projects. And I have to force myself to get away from the computer for at least a few hours. I guess this extreme isn't too good either but there's always something to be done :)
dsmith_hacker 15y ago
I think there is a difference between hiring students and hiring professionals. From my experience (currently in school), my peers that have side projects (including myself) enjoy programming for the challenges and would be, IMHO, better employees. The students that don't have side projects tend to be in school to JUST GET A JOB. They don't experiment with code and generally don't have a passion for it. In the end, I think the author is correct when it comes to students (however, the author doesn't address the difference between students and pros)... Maybe not such a good idea for the in-the-field professional.
- dsmith_hacker 15y ago
  Not a valid opinion? Isn't there a difference between hiring a newly-graduated student vs an experienced programmer?
  - brlewis 15y ago
    Perfectly valid opinion and interesting to read. HN downvoting has become very random.
BadassFractal 15y ago
I truly dislike this question. If you enjoy reading, traveling, playing musical instruments, learning new hobbies, spending time with loved ones and so on, you will likely not have time to program another 2-3 hours a day after an already long day at work as a software engineer (including the long hours that come with the job). Basically the question can be translated to: "Is programming the only thing you care about in life, if so we're more likely to hire you because we need a machine rather than a human being". As an employer, I can probably see that being a better bang for your buck. In fact if you could have a codemonkey work 12 hours a day without burning out for years for the same pay as a guy who works 8 hour days, would you really turn that guy down?
capdiz 15y ago
Its more liking asking a football player what he does in his spare time. I wouldnt expect him to say i play football. Its his passion and its only right he gets paid for it. Since i already have fun doing it, i would consider going out for a bottle of beer something i do in my spare time. The contribution to open soure answer shows more less of a passion for what one does. More of need to see continuity in ones field.

63 points by matan_a 15y ago

I take issue with this article because it would come across to me as a red flag about work-life balance. That an employer would expect you to be doing something programming related in your spare time comes across as a bit self-serving. Instead, I would ask "What would you like to develop in your spare time, if you had any?" That way they can answer the same as his question if they are working on stuff, but can still show interest in programming otherwise. Frankly, yeah, it can be hard to stay on top of things, and companies that don't foster learning and expect you to do it all on your own time don't help.

synnik 15y ago
It is always dangerous to assume what answers are desired by an interviewer. Interviews are not just to get the job - it is to determine whether or not you would even want the job in the first place. So in this particular case, I would answer something about how I have taught my kids multiple languages, taught them kung fu, helped them to develop their own hobbies and become their own people, while at the same time working with local non-profits on renewable energy technologies. If they do not like that answer and would have preferred a list of open source/weekend projects, it is probably not a place I would have fit in anyway.
- garindra 15y ago
  A question : are you in the Computer Science field? While I think that the way you would answer may work beautifully in other fields, we also have to think about the employer's best interest and the field we're talking about here. Employer's best interest, across most if not all fields, is primarily to hire people that have skills that will be useful in creating advantage of the company as a whole. In the case of Computer Science field, then, having an employee that answers that particular interview question with how he/she has contributed to open source and/or created side projects will have higher probability to create more value for the company than an employee that answers with how he/she is a great parent or how he/she's working in a non-profit of unrelated field.
  - infinite8s 15y ago
    And as the grandparent post mentioned, he would probably not be interested in working at companies that focused so much on what their employees did in their free time.
  - synnik 15y ago
    I am a software developer in the energy industry. So whether or not that is Computer Science is up for debate. I do need to have my skills up on the technology in use, and I most definitely need to have a solid understanding of technology. But I do not need to know the latest and greatest flavors of it.
  - MrScruff 15y ago
    Most people writing here are not generally practicing computer science, but rather focusing on software development. For me, good communication skills, an ability to understand project requirements and a focused and responsible attitude are often worth more in an employee than an exhaustive knowledge of design patterns.
Shenglong 15y ago
From an employer perspective, they're trying to gauge drive and interest. While these questions may not be completely fair, and will exclude a lot of competent people, it is a decently good way to measure what they're looking for. I suppose, it's just a sad situation.
- tjogin 15y ago
  Yeah, kind of, but the false negatives are really severe. You want to select people who really care about development, and while that question might be a pretty good filter for people in their early twenties, it's also a good way to filter out those who have a decade+ more experience but have other life priorities, like a family. Certainly, their extra decade or more of work and life experience outweighs the inconvenience of them not programming very much in their spare time.
  - trustfundbaby 15y ago
    Certainly, their extra decade or more of work and life experience outweighs the inconvenience of them not programming very much in their spare time. ------------------------------- A good developer with a decade of work/life experience would have built something in his spare time in the past ... when life wasn't always that hectic. That would work for me too, I'm sure a "I don't do a lot of programming after work now, but when I had more spare time, I did x" should suffice. Plus, its not a disqualifier ... you don't discard an interviewee just because they don't have side projects that they've done.
andywood 15y ago
I don't think side projects are mutually exclusive with work-life balance. Granted, I don't have children; but aside from that, I think I've been living a very full and action-packed life. Time-consuming outdoor hobbies, girlfriends, friends, going out, travelling - check. I also waste sickening amounts of time on sites like this one, and playing video games. Yet I've found plenty of time over the years to work on two large side projects (both ultimate passions), and several smaller ones (like iPhone apps). Nothing says you have to spend ALL of your spare time doing ONE thing. You can rotate. I can certainly accept that some people's circumstances are such that they really don't have the time, but I think casting side projects as necessarily creating time conflicts is wrong.
- mrcharles 15y ago
  I do agree with you, but my reaction is that what I do on my own time is my business and has absolutely no bearing on anything else, and that asking about it is borderline invasion of privacy. Maybe I work on stuff I don't want to talk about all night long, or maybe I don't work on anything at all when I get home because what I'm doing at work fulfills me. Either way, it should have no bearing on an interview.
  - trustfundbaby 15y ago
    my reaction is that what I do on my own time is my business and has absolutely no bearing on anything else, and that asking about it is borderline invasion of privacy ------------------------- I'm not seeing the invasion of privacy ... its a relevant question that is strictly limited to your development/engineering experience ... what you learn on side projects has bearing on your knowledge as a developer, if you don't want to reveal that, great, but most people that do have side projects have no reservations talking about it when prompted (unless its top secret or illegal)> I'm sure a good interviewer can find a way establish your proficiency based on your work experience etc Maybe I work on stuff I don't want to talk about all night long, or maybe I don't work on anything at all when I get home because what I'm doing at work fulfills me ---------------------------------------- Great. Doesn't change the fact that its enough of a trend among good developers to be used in an interview, to help you zero in on the really good guys.
trustfundbaby 15y ago
I take issue with this article because it would come across to me as a red flag about work-life balance. That an employer would expect you to be doing something programming related in your spare time comes across as a bit self-serving. --------------- I think you're reading too much into it ... I've been doing this for 7 years (not that long) and without fail all the really good developers I've ever known or met have built something in their spare time ... just for kicks, a webserver, a firefox addon, some game, a ruby gem, PHP script, a macro for their favorite editor, some electronic gizmo ... something. Not all developers do it, but the very best do ... so its not a disqualifying question, but it sure does allow you zero in on the very best developers rather easily. As an aside ... you should always be looking at code, when you're hiring developers. If they can't give you any examples, then make them write something ... I'm continually shocked by how many companies make $70+k investments in people they've never seen in action.
- irahul 15y ago
  I know some very good developers who didn't do anything in their spare time. One of them was co-inventor of gif format, another was a core contributor to cygwin gdb and so on. But that was all before their day job. When they started their day jobs, that's all they did. Would you discard them as "not so good" because they don't do anything in their spare time and they concentrate on task on hand? Some people have more demanding jobs and/or prefer to work on their day job in their spare time - not because someone is putting a gun on their head, but because they like doing what they do. Why would they bother with side projects when they already have real life projects? Impressing the interviewer isn't on their agenda and all other aspects viz. gratification, joy of creation are the same.
  - trustfundbaby 15y ago
    One of them was co-inventor of gif format, another was a cygwin to contributor to cygwin gdb and so on. But that was all before their day job. Would you discard them as "not so good" because they don't do anything in their spare time? ----------------------------------- No, because their prior accomplishments speak for themselves. You need to stop looking at it as some yardstick to get over and understand that it is simply an informal measure of a developer's passion and drive, just because you don't do it doesn't mean "you suck. NO HIRE!"

michaelcampbell 15y ago

My brain. My family.

HockeyBiasDotCo 15y ago

I have developed hockeybias.com. It is a curated hockey news site laid out in a "90% Drudge Report/10% Scripting News" style. Please check it out!

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agentultra 15y ago

My passion for programming ebbs and flows. For months at a time I may work all day on one thing and come home and hack on an idea I had for serializing continuations. At other times I will instead focus on art, music, or just having fun. However, everyone is different. I think having written and shared at least a small utility or library is a good indicator to me, I wouldn't discount someone because they had not written programs or libraries in their spare time. Especially if they come recommended and have a good work history. I find all too often that interviews are just about impressing the interviewer. Everyone has their own idea of what makes a good programmer. When they sit across the table from a candidate I think many interviewers are looking for people that fit that mould. edit: glaring spelling error

vain 15y ago

Some of them are here http://twitterex.com http://twitterex.com http://reduce.li http://reduce.li http://twitexplode.com http://twitexplode.com And am building a facebook application: http://namesucker.com http://namesucker.com One pattern in all these, I lose interest and they fizzle out. So, if i could pose a question here, how do you keep yourself motivated?

wisty 15y ago
Do you have customers? Co-developers? Or are you just working on your own? Are you struggling to get traction? If so, use analytics (AB testing?) to figure out how to get more customers. If you are just setting stuff up to satisfy your own curiosity (be honest), then it's quite rational to lose interest once the problem is solved.
- vain 15y ago
  i start off with enthusiasm and lose it at some point. For atleast one of the projects, I do think something worthwhile can come of it, that's twitterex.com. i am not sure how to go about doing AB testing on a simple site like that

rokhayakebe 15y ago

My friend just got a job at Intel. During his interview, he tells me, they were more interested in his side projects then what he did at his previous job.

ivanbernat 15y ago
Same here (though not Intel), recently most people I've worked for hired me because of my side projects.
- count 15y ago
  Nobody works on a side project for a paycheck (in general). They do it because they love it and are interested by it. If you can get someone who's loves/interests align with what you want them to work on, you stand a decent chance of making them happier while giving you a better output - it makes plenty of sense.

scott_s 15y ago

There is an implicit assumption here: that your day-to-day work does not consume all of your programming cycles. As a graduate student this was true, and now as a researcher in industry it is still true. The most interesting thing I'm working on now, the thing that is most likely to make the biggest impact is my work.

MrScruff 15y ago
I think this 'spare time' thing seems to come up a lot with people who for whatever reason, aren't getting enough out of their regular job to satisfy them intellectually. When I think about programming outside of work it tends to be about the work project I'm consumed by at the time. The only time this doesn't happen is when I'm working on something that doesn't motivate me.

dstein 15y ago

In my spare time I let my subconsciousness work through the problems that my conscious-self couldn't figure out. I find music, entertainment, social activities, and natural surroundings the best way to enable this process.

bxr 15y ago

Everyone I know who was able to turn their passion into a profession have found themselves with diminished drive to work on their pet projects in that field. If someone is satisfied with their work, it gives them time for other hobbies. It is an unbelievable good thing if people can find time for multiple passions in their life. Aside from the fact I think this line of reasoning is useless there is another -- more important -- issue. I don't care what people do in their off time. That's theirs, not mine. It is the same reason that I don't drug test.

sydlawrence 15y ago

Personally I believe often it is the only time you can truly learn. Often you are being paid to do a job, and in my experience (agency work) that job has been the same thing day in, day out, rarely properly learning new cool stuff to play with. I wrote an article on this recently. What’s the most important thing to know as a developer? http://sydl.me/1thingtoknow http://sydl.me/1thingtoknow I want to keep learning new stuff... the only way to learn is by playing with it. So I create stupid little sites quite often http://instac.at http://instac.at http://isitherapture.com http://isitherapture.com http://obamasmessagetoamerica.com http://obamasmessagetoamerica.com The list goes on...

raganwald 15y ago

It's easy to point out that this question will exclude some false negatives, good people that don't have side projects. I rarely hear anyone worried that it will produce false positives, crappy people that have a github profile bursting with interesting work. But here's the thing: If you think that this is a bad question to ask in an interview, I have a challenge for you: Describe a repeatable, objective process for interviewing developers. No hand-waving "I talk to them and decide if they're smart." Be specific: What questions do you ask? What constitutes a HIRE, what constitutes a NO HIRE? If you actually try to make a repeatable, objective process, you realize that there is no fair interview question. It's impossible to come up with a set of criteria that can't either be (a) gamed by false positives, or (b) overlooks good people as false negatives. For example, "Successful experience in a similar position" is an excellent criterium. But we all know it overlooks false negatives, people who have done good work in dissimilar positions but will adapt and thrive in this one. In the end, we must either 'fess up and admit that we make subjective decisions, or set our jaw and accept that some false negatives are a necessary and acceptable cost of trying to standardize our hiring process. (That doesn't mean we can't minimize the number of false negatives. One way to do that is to ask many questions and to incorporate all of the answers into your decision. If you're very conservative, you take any negative result as a NO HIRE, which leads to having more false negatives but a vanishingly small probability of a false positive. But you can go the other way and allow for some of the answers to be negative, which will create a vanishingly small possibility of a false negative overall but allow some acceptably small probability of a false positive.)

kenjackson 15y ago
I rarely hear anyone worried that it will produce false positives, crappy people that have a github profile bursting with interesting work. Actually I do worry about that, and have seen it -- and maybe not surprisingly could have predicted it. The symptoms are often a very active set of open source projects, often a maintainer, lack of enthusiasm about virtually anything they did in their day job. My theory is their day job at some point wasn't fulfilling and they moved to the side projects to compensate. But by the time they joined us, their side project consumed them. There's nothing worse than someone being consistently late or delivering poor quality, and looking and seeing they did 200 commits, some very non-trivial, to their side projects last week. As I said to one during the exit interview -- you should consider making the "side project" your day job, because that's your passion. Unfortunately it wasn't working here. Given a choice between someone who was enthusiastic about their day job, and has some good end results from it, and having no side projects, and one who has a lot of side proejects, but no enthusiasm or anything of interest to say about his last job -- I'll take the person with no side projects.

dvfer 15y ago

I don't what else to do in my spare time beside developing stuff... outdoor is hot...

jp007 15y ago

I enjoy my side projects, but to be honest, I work with people who are better engineers than me who never do engineering projects in their free time. I think it's an interesting question, but not as valuable as the author suggests.

raarky 15y ago

I love building stuff at home. It lets you test out all these new technologies i keep hearing about on HN :P I built http://www.snowboardfinder.com http://www.snowboardfinder.com a little while ago using ASP.Net MVC. Now i'm using it to learn more about mongodb and even creating a duplicate version in django just because I love python coding should be fun and putting your mind to a personal project lets you explore

nick_urban 15y ago

I see this sort of advice a lot, and frankly, it bothers me. There's nothing wrong with doing programming projects in your spare time, but it's hardly the most impressive thing you can do. For a variety of reasons, there are many one-dimensional programmers out there -- people who seem to be only interested in computers and oblivious to everything else. Come on people, the world is wide. Programming is not the best way to become an enterprising, dynamic individual. Unless your company is anti-risk and boring, don't you want to hire people who are different from you? People who have taken crazy trips around the world and learned skills that provide lateral insights rather than just what you get out of sitting at a computer writing code and reading Hacker News? If someone could provide evidence of doing something daring, that would show more initiative to me than a GitHub project.

deleted 15y ago

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kgen 15y ago

People were asking me about regular expressions, so I built this interactive tutorial to teach them: http://regexone.com http://regexone.com Was a pretty good way to learn Kohana (PHP MVC framework) and dip my toes back into web dev!

leon_ 15y ago

Oh gosh, I have a problem with too many spare time projects. My GitHub account has over 60 public repos full with spare time projects. And I have to force myself to get away from the computer for at least a few hours. I guess this extreme isn't too good either but there's always something to be done :)

dsmith_hacker 15y ago

I think there is a difference between hiring students and hiring professionals. From my experience (currently in school), my peers that have side projects (including myself) enjoy programming for the challenges and would be, IMHO, better employees. The students that don't have side projects tend to be in school to JUST GET A JOB. They don't experiment with code and generally don't have a passion for it. In the end, I think the author is correct when it comes to students (however, the author doesn't address the difference between students and pros)... Maybe not such a good idea for the in-the-field professional.

dsmith_hacker 15y ago
Not a valid opinion? Isn't there a difference between hiring a newly-graduated student vs an experienced programmer?
- brlewis 15y ago
  Perfectly valid opinion and interesting to read. HN downvoting has become very random.

BadassFractal 15y ago

I truly dislike this question. If you enjoy reading, traveling, playing musical instruments, learning new hobbies, spending time with loved ones and so on, you will likely not have time to program another 2-3 hours a day after an already long day at work as a software engineer (including the long hours that come with the job). Basically the question can be translated to: "Is programming the only thing you care about in life, if so we're more likely to hire you because we need a machine rather than a human being". As an employer, I can probably see that being a better bang for your buck. In fact if you could have a codemonkey work 12 hours a day without burning out for years for the same pay as a guy who works 8 hour days, would you really turn that guy down?

capdiz 15y ago

Its more liking asking a football player what he does in his spare time. I wouldnt expect him to say i play football. Its his passion and its only right he gets paid for it. Since i already have fun doing it, i would consider going out for a bottle of beer something i do in my spare time. The contribution to open soure answer shows more less of a passion for what one does. More of need to see continuity in ones field.