Same here. My side projects have literally taught me things that have enabled me to save a company. I was out of the corporate world for ten years churning thro

Same here. My side projects have literally taught me things that have enabled me to save a company. I was out of the corporate world for ten years churning through side projects and doing research on advanced topics. Hired back into the working world and immediately noticed a deficiency across the board in all the people who had been deploying code for real customers all those years. Passed them all and literally saved the company from a major system crash caused by their ineptitude (a crash that made it onto the Associated Press). It was all due to not reading documentation, false assumptions, and a fundamental misunderstanding of several libraries, platforms, and technologies. They didn't know how they worked and didn't bother to check on their assumptions. A whole development team of architects and senior devs ruined (still in business but sold/acquired on low eval) a company through pure ignorance.