9 ms·

If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you

76 points by wccrawford 15y ago

bootload 15y ago
"... we are looking for a .NET developer ..." can't think of a better reason for having pet projects.
dannieb 15y ago
the author is just trying to build a company culture reflective of himself. simple as that...
wccrawford 15y ago
I always suspect these people are actually looking for developers who will work long hours with little pay, because they are so driven. They aren't looking for the best and brightest, just the most driven. I think it's actually quite easy to 'care' without having a driving passion that forces you to give your life over to programming. In fact, I did it for a number of years. I did all my programming at work, and all my relaxing at home. And I was happy, and loved both. Testing for 1 thing because you want something related is a big mistake. You can easily have both false positives and false negatives. And since you're testing for the wrong thing, you won't know until it's too late. If you ever do.
- sunkencity 15y ago
  "Put simply, we are looking for a .NET developer and one of the most important things that we look for is passion" How much passion is there in the .NET scene anyway? It's very business oriented, I'd expect developers to be more sort of corporate and better at time reporting. It's not like you have to be a hipster to churn out spreadsheet automation scripts.
  - _pius 15y ago
    It's not like you have to be a hipster to churn out spreadsheet automation scripts. You also don't have to be a hipster to contribute to open source or be passionate about your craft. What makes you think he's looking for a hipster?
    - sunkencity 15y ago
      I was just making a point. The quote sounds like something from Office Space.
  - hvs 15y ago
    It's sad that you associate "passion" with "hipster". I can't think of a more inaccurate characterization of a highly motivated developer. I also didn't get the impression that he was looking for a "hipster".
    - sunkencity 15y ago
      I am myself a passionate developer, that doesn't mean I have the time to make massive open-source projects just to get a better resume, because I'm neck deep in writing code for the company I have been running for the last 7 years. Not all people have the luxury to figure out something worthwhile do do and put on github. I hate hiring people and putting a price tag on them, it's a cruel world but not every job interview has to be like American Idol if you know what I mean. Of course he should try to find people that care but that doesn't mean that the people that care has to write excellent code, or that they have to write tons of open source code. They just need to deliver at work.
      - kkowalczyk 15y ago
        You're absolutely right: they just need to deliver at work. At the same time let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that having side coding project is the best predictor whether someone can "deliver at work". If that's the case then it's perfectly rational for an employer to look for people who do that. Is it the case? I certainly think that when I look at someone's non trivial code, I can better tell whether he's a competent programmer than from reading a one page resume or even an hour long interview. Important note: it's not the existence of the code that is important but an existence of good code.
      - ctdonath 15y ago
        At risk of inspiring ire... I'd have certain doubts of someone who does produce lots of open-source code, insofar as that could be construed as they don't think highly enough of their own code to sell it. (As I write I'm waiting for GCC to rebuild due to the need to fix a bug therein. That such a bug exists at this late date in a product so widely used as a foundational tool does not inspire confidence in OSS. I find such flaws tend not to occur in "closed" software, where someone is paid to polish the corners that nobody wants to.)
  - vailripper 15y ago
    Stackoverflow is written in .NET. It certainly has a more "corporate" focus than node or something - but that's not to say there aren't people building cool applications with it.
    - sunkencity 15y ago
      Yep, .NET has lots of things going for it. I'd expect that the average .NET developer is a lot less likely to be sharing code on github than the average rails developer though.
sehugg 15y ago
I used to think this too, but now my position is more nuanced. Certainly you need to have shown you have a passion for technology that goes beyond the norm, but there are other reasons you might not have lots of recent code outside of work. Maybe you have a family. Or maybe you have such a fulfilling current job that you don't feel the need to supplement it with extracurricular activities. Maybe you are interested in developing non-technical skills that would make you more useful in the future. Etc. But some positions do require that Olympic athlete mindset. For other positions it's a detriment.
- wyclif 15y ago
  Maybe your employment contract states that anything you create is owned by your company so there is no code "outside of work." The question then becomes whether that is a contingency that has affected your passion or not.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    As would be the case if you worked for some of the Bay Areas biggest names in tech.
    - spacemanaki 15y ago
      I thought those contracts were not enforceable in CA? I'm most definitely not a lawyer tho, so I have little to back that up, but it's what I read in Joel Spolsky's answer here: http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-at-a-company-do-they-have-intellectual-property-rights-to-the-stu http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-...
      - ChuckMcM 15y ago
        Generally they are not enforcable, but it doesn't stop folks like Google and Cisco from having them. And they are written with big letters in the front "THIS IS AN AT WILL ARRANGEMENT ..." which basically says they can fire you at any time for any reason and later "We own everything you do while you work for us." Basically the message is "Sure work on your own projects and we will decide it's no longer in our best interest in employing you." and "If you do a side project and publish it or let it out in any way, we may decide its no longer in our best interest to employ you." I have heard stories of course but only have first hand knowledge of one person with whom Google decided to fire because they did some open source work they didn't like. When I asked an employment attorney about these sorts of things his advice was that I could probably sue them and win but it was simpler and less expensive to just quit if I really wanted to work on other stuff.
quinedstatement 15y ago
I consider myself very passionate about programming. I do a lot of research and learn about programming in my spare time, but have hardly any personal programming projects to show. After work, instead of grinding away coding like I do every day, I'm learning how to draw, and paint, and play music. Does this mean I'm not qualified for this .NET position?
- noidi 15y ago
  > I do a lot of research and learn about programming in my spare time, but have hardly any personal programming projects to show. I think this point is not stressed enough whenever this subject comes up. A person who spends all his free time reading CS research papers and experimenting with different solutions to problems he encounters in his field is not passionate by this standard if he doesn't have a pet _project_ to show at the interview.
  - shabble 15y ago
    In that case, you could probably knock together a quick page or two summary of what you've been reading and playing about with. It might take a little time, but it's easily transferable to any other job applications, and you might even find something interesting to add to your cover letter. I'd treat that at least as well as a pet project, and possibly more so.
josephturnip 15y ago
Additionally, the author of the article is potentially weeding out the exact people his company is looking for. Some (myself, as an example) are passionate about what they do for their job, to the point where they do development on work projects in their spare time. Presumably that person is better than the aspiring OSS developer who grinds their job for 8 hours only to go home and work on their pet project.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
I find its a scale, from people who would rather do nothing when not at work to people where their work suffers from all the other stuff they are doing. My ideal candidates are somewhere in the middle of that scale. There are two interesting things you can learn about people this way, one is where their passions lay and the other is what their time management skills are like. Someone who works feverishly on 20 things and gets nothing done, or folks who consistently pop out one or two things a month, month after month, in their 'spare' time. Interestingly a bias that perhaps the OP recognizes shows up in this blarticle (what do you call one entry in a blog anyway). What if the candidate sent a picture of a 6 piece mahogany dining room set (because they spent all their spare time wood working) or an MP3 of their latest composition ? Its not OSS, its not 'tech' per se, but its an outlet for their creative drive.
datruth 15y ago
haha, I'm the opposite. I will only hire someone who has NO time to implement their awesome personal projects. I ask them about their personal projects, and this stuff is awesome. Too bad that they're spending all their passion on their current employer.... that's okay, I don't mind, if you would just scootch over here into our office instead :)
javadyan 15y ago
That is preposterous. I can see no reason why a candidate should be denied an interview based on the fact that he does not have "pet projects". you know, some people have lives outside their jobs, things like families and kids that need to be taken care of. It may just so happen that they do not have enough time outside of their working hours to spend on side projects. I've worked with a bunch of brilliant engineers, who actually knew what they were doing, they shipped products of high quality on time and their technical skills were excellent. None of them had had any side projects except maybe a couple of things they did back at high school or university. Yet they were one of the most valued employees at the company. P.S.: actually, when an employer asks for "passion" it somehow makes me think that they are actually asking you to work 105 hours a week.
coolswan 15y ago
Meh, he probably needs to de-generalize this thought and take it case-by-case. I didn't work on side projects for two years because I was obsessed with the project at the startup I worked at. He would've heard an earful from me if he said I wasn't "passionate"
ido 15y ago
I used to have pet projects, until one of them became my full time job.
gte910h 15y ago
I think you need to be sued for anti-family discrimination. If you have young children, your chance of being able to do this sort of after hours programming can be near zero if you're doing all the parenting you should if you and your spouse both work. Especially if you get in trouble for it at work (I know I've been places where you had to do 4-10 hours of paperwork to do it even).
cmorrisrsg 15y ago
I actually reject people without pet projects for an entirely different reason. I can find out much more about how you behave as a developer and whether or not you'd fit in with our company by reading your code than I can from any kind of interview or whiteboard challenge. Ideally you'd actually hire the prospective developer for a short contract project before hiring, but that has significant challenges and costs as well. Think of a carpenter that claimed to be amazing at producing furniture, but had none to show you. Would you trust them on how well he could BS you in an interview? It's not about passion or dedication. If you, producer of code, can show me code you've produce, I'm taking a much lower risk on hiring you. And fortunately, there are enough people around with code to show that rejecting others is a pretty easy filtering decision to make.
- factotvm 15y ago
  Then give them a coding problem that takes a short amount of time but allows you to evaluate their skills. I relish these opportunities and respect the companies that ask me to do them. To keep with your metaphor, ask the carpenter to make you a cabinet door. Again, I agree with others here... if you're passionate about the startup you're working at (and you should be), that is your side project. I distrust people who work at startups that have side projects.
  - eropple 15y ago
    A coding problem is less illustrative than a decent--LOC is always suspect, but let's say 10,000 LOC--corpus of work. Something to show much more than a toy problem. Better still, however, is collaboration with open source projects--you can see individual communication between people as well as the developer's ability to enter a foreign codebase and be productive, (hopefully) without introducing bugs due to ill-advised changes without understanding what's being changed. (We don't look at side projects or open source at my current employer. I wish we did.)
  - cmorrisrsg 15y ago
    Any coding problem that could feasibly be completed in an acceptable amount of time would be too small to actually tell me what I want to know. I mostly don't want to know what algorithms you're aware of or how quickly you can type. I want to know how you structure and modularize code. I want to know how you debug things. I want to know if you can refactor well. In short, I want to know about how you handle building and maintaining real software. If I hired people to do coding problems all day, that would be another thing, but I don't.
chc 15y ago
The assumption that pet projects cannot be related to our work is weird to me. My full-time job title right now is "Newspaper Editor" — so you know the programming I do is not "work assignments" — but I have a whole host of tools I've written to automate the less-interesting parts of the job (from simple things like "calculate how many inches this will take" to more complicated things like "generate the files needed for this week's paper with these parameters and the ads placed in a configuration that will be both cost-effective and pleasing to our advertisers"). These are unquestionably work-related, but they're also unquestionably things I wrote just because I had an itch to scratch. I wanted them, so I made them. Why would my pet projects not be related to what I do?
- jisaacstone 15y ago
  This is the first thing I thought as well. Good programmers can have a wide selection of choice when it comes to their work, so I think they will often choose work they enjoy and can even get paid to work on 'pet projects' At the moment the stuff I enjoyed writing the most I also got paid for. Does that indicate a lack of 'passion'?
0x12 15y ago
If you have a life, I don't want you. If you have a family, I don't want you. If you have enough energy to do your work but not enough energy that after work you can work some more, I don't want you. What is it that makes employers so enamored of people with 'pet projects'? Are they easier to take advantage of? Do they work long hours without expecting compensation? Does not having dependents mean that it's easier to pressure then in to working harder? Really, having or not having pet projects (and I have plenty, don't worry) shouldn't matter even a little bit a the hiring time. You judge people on their ability as good as you can and what they do in their free time is simply none of your business. So, if you ask me about my 'pet projects' I don't want you.
- Aloisius 15y ago
  If you're hiring a software engineer and that person programs in their spare time, it is a pretty clear indication that they not only want to be a software engineer but also enjoys programming. I used to ask this question, but now I've generalized it to asking if someone has any hobbies. I find passion in any area to a good indicator of the type of people I want to hire.
  - hackinthebochs 15y ago
    The problem is that programming in your spare time is not a necessary condition for enjoying or having passion for programming. Further, its also discriminatory against people with families, or other hobbies, or against people who don't want to do the same thing that they did 40-50 hours during the week on the weekends too.
    - adbge 15y ago
      Let's be clear: it's only discriminatory against people that don't have pet projects. Having a family or other hobbies and having pet projects are not mutually exclusive.
      - petercooper 15y ago
jim_h 15y ago
I think when you're young with free time AND passionate about something, you should dive into it and learn as much as possible. When you're older and if you have children, PLEASE PLEASE spend the appropriate time being a GOOD parent. It seems like the world is more work focused than ever and parents are not spending as much time with their kids as they should. We want good programmers, but we NEED good parents even more. Our future will eventually rely on the next generation of adults and not just good software..
dlevine 15y ago
I have found that I usually start working on pet projects when I am dissatisfied with my job. At my last job, I found myself working on several different extracurricular projects at once. I kind of realized that this meant it was time to leave (and do my own startup). If I found someone who was supremely happy with his job, I would expect that any extra time would be spent at work, either making the product better or developing something else related to that company's business. With that said, there is nothing wrong with working on a pet project, just that it can indicate something bad rather than something good.
- notahacker 15y ago
  I'd expect someone supremely happy with their standard salaried job wouldn't be first out of the office every night, but I'd be alarmed if they were expected to dedicate their evenings and weekends to making their employers richer.
lcargill99 15y ago
Free time is not equivalent to passion. Basing relationships on the internal emotional state of other people is pretty risky The passionately wrong are usually harder to deal with. It's hit or miss, but a Great Deal of Robin Hanson's blog is about social signalling and the biases inherent thereof. Worthwhile effort, that.
scott_s 15y ago
I've said this before on related submissions: I enjoy my work, and it consumes all of my cycles allocated towards programming.
tzs 15y ago
The obvious question: if I take a job with you, will you guarantee that work will not take up too much of my time, nor demand too much of my creative energy, so that I can continue to have my pet projects?
- kkowalczyk 15y ago
  He can't. But I can guarantee this: an employer can't force you to work more than you're willing to work. They can try but you're not their slave. Employment is a two-way street. If the employer isn't happy with your work, for whatever reason, they can fire you. If you're not happy with your employer, for whatever reason, you can quit. If an employer is making unreasonable demands on your time, you quit. And to be clear: there is no universal of what's reasonable, so I'm talking about your personal standard. Employment is a risk for both parties. You risk that the job will be boring, or demanding more time than you're willing to give but you're not the only one taking the risk. Employer risks that you'll be unable to do the work or slack off etc.
  - notJim 15y ago
    What you say is true, but it's important to realize that the nature of the risk is disproportionate. The programmer quitting his job has a lot more at stake than the company firing the programmer. For the programmer, it means a stressful job search, likely financial stress (even if s/he saved up a lot of money, it's not fun to be living on a finite supply), and all the feelings that go along with losing a job (wounded pride, fear of judgement from others, etc.) For the employer, it means what? They now have payroll that's significantly lighter, and true, they're down a person, but realistically that just means they have to pressure their other employees to pick up the slack while they find someone new, and those programmers, not wanting to lose their jobs, probably do it. Now, of course the important thing as a programmer is to have an attitude like yours, which mitigates the downsides of leaving a job. But not everyone has that attitude.
brosephius 15y ago
sorry, but I think this is an arrogant and insulting attitude. I get the value of side projects, but assuming that someone who doesn't have any is an inferior candidate is bullshit. I know the blog post says "Not having pet projects doesn’t mean that you are a bad developer" but dismissing such people out of hand says otherwise. you don't care about experience? so someone who writes ultra-high-performance code for a trading firm is worth less to you than someone who writes a 50-line rails app that lets you use the fabled "pomodoro technique"? good luck finding great developers with that attitude. but hey, at least they'll have "passion", right? because all salaried coding is generic and mindless, and anybody doing it is a drone with no skills or ambition.
mirkules 15y ago
First off, some of us have lives and families. Some of us work more than just 9-5 and commute for more than one hour each way. Secondly, none of my pet projects are OSS. I have a lot of pet projects, some in their infant stages, some pretty far along. And they are not for public viewing, but for my pleasure, which is why they are not OSS. [edit: and some are a collaboration with other people who would prefer that code stays closed] Thirdly, is there such a thing as a passionate .NET programmer!? (half-joking)
- chokolad 15y ago
  > Thirdly, is there such a thing as a passionate .NET programmer!? (half-joking) Blog author is definitely the one. He is one of the core NHibernate committers, prolific blogger with a lot of very interesting posts, developed Rhino Mocks mocking library, created RavenDB http://www.ravendb.net/ http://www.ravendb.net/ and did a lot of other neat things. So yes, there is such a thing.
petercooper 15y ago
I make good money from job ads so this does me a disservice but.. stop discriminating against people by getting them to send in their CVs. Headhunt! I'm selfishly in support of preferring to hire people who show a strong out-of-hours dedication and passion for their work but it's not a realistic expectation for a regular job ad. Instead, hit GitHub, hit mailing lists, find the top blogs on the topics you're hiring for, and approach the people who pop up and seem to know what they're talking about. You might have to let people work remotely, pay them more, or come up with other ways to pique their interest, but if you really want 24/7 passionate programmers, you can get them, with enough resources. It's amazing how few employers do this, even those who do have the resources. Grab the top talent in your areas and find them by their byproducts. Why Google/MSFT/etc aren't trying to scrape up every seriously prolific developer on GitHub at $250k+ a year or whatever is beyond me.
deleted 15y ago
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rickmb 15y ago
In my experience, candidates with major pet projects, especially ones that aren't related to their current job, fall into one or more of the following categories: * They don't have life, and are usually not the most pleasant people to work with, let alone communicate with non-programmers. * For some reason cannot find a job that involves the passion/knowledge/skill they put into their pet project. The job market for programmers being what it is, that's a major red flag. * They have a passion for programming, but aren't good enough to hack it in a professional environment. Often not so much a skills but discipline or team player issue, but yes, you can have a passion for something you are not particularly good at! Millions of amateur-[enter activity here] do it every day! Having or not having a pet project is an good angle for an interview, but not a meaningful qualification in itself.
- flyosity 15y ago
  Hmm, seems I don't fall into any of these categories. I design and build web software during the day, then at night and on the weekends I work on my own iOS and Mac apps. I've been offered full-time iOS & Mac design/development jobs but I don't take them for a few reasons, most importantly that I really like my current "real" job and the hardcore web work keeps my skills sharp. So I'm not the first category because I'm married and do have a life outside work, I'm not the second one because I can easily find a different full-time job but choose to stay in the position I have, and the third just isn't applicable. I don't really have a position on the pet-projects-as-interview-question topic, but just thought I'd put in my two cents.
- postfuturist 15y ago
  I have pet projects. I also have a life. I have a job that involves putting my knowledge/skill/passion to work to a degree. Even if my employer would allow me to write each project in whatever programming language I was obsessed with that week, I wouldn't, because I don't want to maintain all my whims. Personal projects can be thrown away easily or restarted. All that work can be done without _any_ business concerns. That's just not reasonable for a paying job. I have a lot of passion for programming and I hack it quite well in a professional environment, thank you very much. My passion requires that I fiddle about with personal projects so I can test out new languages, frameworks, styles, libraries, paradigms, etc. without any business concerns in the least. If there is a place where I could get paid well to just hack on whatever the hell seems fun at the moment, I'd definitely make a concerted effort to work there--I don't think it exists.
loup-vaillant 15y ago
Again, we see here the tension between the needs of the employers and those of the applicants. An applicant needs to be judged "fairly". More precisely, a false negative is unacceptable. This is especially critical when he's just above the "hiring bar". An employer crumbles over CVs, and needs to judge fast. False positives are unacceptable. False negatives are no big deal. This is especially not critical when the applicant is just above the "hiring bar". There are others. Hiring processes aren't designed to be fair to the applicants. They are designed to work for the employers. It's like a spam filter, except with tolerance reversed: no spam in, some ham out is cool. My gut tell me that it definitely sucks, but my brain fails to come up with a solution.
georgieporgie 15y ago
More voodoo, selection bias, hiring B.S. Why hire on the basis of ability, when you can make up arbitrary criteria? Everyone is exactly like me, right?
3pt14159 15y ago
The HN response here is crazy. Obviously 40 year olds are going to have less side projects, and obviously there are devs out there that treat development as a job, not a passion. I know a very good python dev that fits that description. But seriously, no free time for side projects? Really? Absolutely no time? It takes 30 mins to whip up something sorta kinda neat. That's an episode of Entourage. Give me a break with all this kids talk, eight year olds go to bed early, and teenagers don't need all that much attention every single day. Sure, help 'em with homework, etc. But lets face some facts, there are plenty of unpaid OSS developers that happen to be parents and they don't whine about not having enough time.
- r00fus 15y ago
  Travel 50-100% for current job. Having a kid with special needs. Having multiple children. Owning a home. Aging parents with disabilities. Outdoors/Travel nut (you or spouse). Civic/political/community involvement. Any of these personal situations can eat into your "personal" time considerably. Add up 2 or more, and your remaining personal time is what you carve out of your sleep hours. I'm lucky that I don't have to work two jobs like of the less fortunate, and I don't fall into all (or even most) of the categories above, but I don't watch TV and I don't have a github page.
biot 15y ago
See also "I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2664243 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2664243 My thoughts on spare-time projects in relation to other professions: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2664358 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2664358
NY_Entrepreneur 15y ago
And if that causes you not to want someone, then I don't want you!
pnathan 15y ago
I keep a portfolio of minor source code for these questions. Other than that, I'm finishing my Master's in my 'free time'.
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nasmorn 15y ago
Also consider that you are looking for a .NET developer. While I guess it is a technically completely respectable language and stack it is not the OSS hotbed.
mx2323 15y ago
this is completely silly. what about all the developers that devote all of their time on the product at hand...? i guess... your heuristic says that you dont want them? and you'd rather take the guy that goes home at 5 and gets distracted with pet projects that sap engineering time and focus? simply put, you are thinking it wrong.
strathmeyer 15y ago
All I got from this was that the interviewer had no idea how to judge the interviewee and needed someone to blame it on. I wish there was a part of career development that dealt with dealing with the idiots we want to hire us.
computerslol 15y ago
If you don't eat breakfast, I don't want you.

76 points by wccrawford 15y ago

bootload 15y ago

"... we are looking for a .NET developer ..." can't think of a better reason for having pet projects.

dannieb 15y ago

the author is just trying to build a company culture reflective of himself. simple as that...

wccrawford 15y ago

I always suspect these people are actually looking for developers who will work long hours with little pay, because they are so driven. They aren't looking for the best and brightest, just the most driven. I think it's actually quite easy to 'care' without having a driving passion that forces you to give your life over to programming. In fact, I did it for a number of years. I did all my programming at work, and all my relaxing at home. And I was happy, and loved both. Testing for 1 thing because you want something related is a big mistake. You can easily have both false positives and false negatives. And since you're testing for the wrong thing, you won't know until it's too late. If you ever do.

sunkencity 15y ago
"Put simply, we are looking for a .NET developer and one of the most important things that we look for is passion" How much passion is there in the .NET scene anyway? It's very business oriented, I'd expect developers to be more sort of corporate and better at time reporting. It's not like you have to be a hipster to churn out spreadsheet automation scripts.
- _pius 15y ago
  It's not like you have to be a hipster to churn out spreadsheet automation scripts. You also don't have to be a hipster to contribute to open source or be passionate about your craft. What makes you think he's looking for a hipster?
  - sunkencity 15y ago
    I was just making a point. The quote sounds like something from Office Space.
- hvs 15y ago
  It's sad that you associate "passion" with "hipster". I can't think of a more inaccurate characterization of a highly motivated developer. I also didn't get the impression that he was looking for a "hipster".
  - sunkencity 15y ago
    I am myself a passionate developer, that doesn't mean I have the time to make massive open-source projects just to get a better resume, because I'm neck deep in writing code for the company I have been running for the last 7 years. Not all people have the luxury to figure out something worthwhile do do and put on github. I hate hiring people and putting a price tag on them, it's a cruel world but not every job interview has to be like American Idol if you know what I mean. Of course he should try to find people that care but that doesn't mean that the people that care has to write excellent code, or that they have to write tons of open source code. They just need to deliver at work.
    - kkowalczyk 15y ago
      You're absolutely right: they just need to deliver at work. At the same time let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that having side coding project is the best predictor whether someone can "deliver at work". If that's the case then it's perfectly rational for an employer to look for people who do that. Is it the case? I certainly think that when I look at someone's non trivial code, I can better tell whether he's a competent programmer than from reading a one page resume or even an hour long interview. Important note: it's not the existence of the code that is important but an existence of good code.
    - ctdonath 15y ago
      At risk of inspiring ire... I'd have certain doubts of someone who does produce lots of open-source code, insofar as that could be construed as they don't think highly enough of their own code to sell it. (As I write I'm waiting for GCC to rebuild due to the need to fix a bug therein. That such a bug exists at this late date in a product so widely used as a foundational tool does not inspire confidence in OSS. I find such flaws tend not to occur in "closed" software, where someone is paid to polish the corners that nobody wants to.)
- vailripper 15y ago
  Stackoverflow is written in .NET. It certainly has a more "corporate" focus than node or something - but that's not to say there aren't people building cool applications with it.
  - sunkencity 15y ago
    Yep, .NET has lots of things going for it. I'd expect that the average .NET developer is a lot less likely to be sharing code on github than the average rails developer though.

sehugg 15y ago

I used to think this too, but now my position is more nuanced. Certainly you need to have shown you have a passion for technology that goes beyond the norm, but there are other reasons you might not have lots of recent code outside of work. Maybe you have a family. Or maybe you have such a fulfilling current job that you don't feel the need to supplement it with extracurricular activities. Maybe you are interested in developing non-technical skills that would make you more useful in the future. Etc. But some positions do require that Olympic athlete mindset. For other positions it's a detriment.

wyclif 15y ago
Maybe your employment contract states that anything you create is owned by your company so there is no code "outside of work." The question then becomes whether that is a contingency that has affected your passion or not.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  As would be the case if you worked for some of the Bay Areas biggest names in tech.
  - spacemanaki 15y ago
    I thought those contracts were not enforceable in CA? I'm most definitely not a lawyer tho, so I have little to back that up, but it's what I read in Joel Spolsky's answer here: http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-at-a-company-do-they-have-intellectual-property-rights-to-the-stu http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-...
    - ChuckMcM 15y ago
      Generally they are not enforcable, but it doesn't stop folks like Google and Cisco from having them. And they are written with big letters in the front "THIS IS AN AT WILL ARRANGEMENT ..." which basically says they can fire you at any time for any reason and later "We own everything you do while you work for us." Basically the message is "Sure work on your own projects and we will decide it's no longer in our best interest in employing you." and "If you do a side project and publish it or let it out in any way, we may decide its no longer in our best interest to employ you." I have heard stories of course but only have first hand knowledge of one person with whom Google decided to fire because they did some open source work they didn't like. When I asked an employment attorney about these sorts of things his advice was that I could probably sue them and win but it was simpler and less expensive to just quit if I really wanted to work on other stuff.

quinedstatement 15y ago

I consider myself very passionate about programming. I do a lot of research and learn about programming in my spare time, but have hardly any personal programming projects to show. After work, instead of grinding away coding like I do every day, I'm learning how to draw, and paint, and play music. Does this mean I'm not qualified for this .NET position?

noidi 15y ago
> I do a lot of research and learn about programming in my spare time, but have hardly any personal programming projects to show. I think this point is not stressed enough whenever this subject comes up. A person who spends all his free time reading CS research papers and experimenting with different solutions to problems he encounters in his field is not passionate by this standard if he doesn't have a pet _project_ to show at the interview.
- shabble 15y ago
  In that case, you could probably knock together a quick page or two summary of what you've been reading and playing about with. It might take a little time, but it's easily transferable to any other job applications, and you might even find something interesting to add to your cover letter. I'd treat that at least as well as a pet project, and possibly more so.

josephturnip 15y ago

Additionally, the author of the article is potentially weeding out the exact people his company is looking for. Some (myself, as an example) are passionate about what they do for their job, to the point where they do development on work projects in their spare time. Presumably that person is better than the aspiring OSS developer who grinds their job for 8 hours only to go home and work on their pet project.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

I find its a scale, from people who would rather do nothing when not at work to people where their work suffers from all the other stuff they are doing. My ideal candidates are somewhere in the middle of that scale. There are two interesting things you can learn about people this way, one is where their passions lay and the other is what their time management skills are like. Someone who works feverishly on 20 things and gets nothing done, or folks who consistently pop out one or two things a month, month after month, in their 'spare' time. Interestingly a bias that perhaps the OP recognizes shows up in this blarticle (what do you call one entry in a blog anyway). What if the candidate sent a picture of a 6 piece mahogany dining room set (because they spent all their spare time wood working) or an MP3 of their latest composition ? Its not OSS, its not 'tech' per se, but its an outlet for their creative drive.

datruth 15y ago

haha, I'm the opposite. I will only hire someone who has NO time to implement their awesome personal projects. I ask them about their personal projects, and this stuff is awesome. Too bad that they're spending all their passion on their current employer.... that's okay, I don't mind, if you would just scootch over here into our office instead :)

javadyan 15y ago

That is preposterous. I can see no reason why a candidate should be denied an interview based on the fact that he does not have "pet projects". you know, some people have lives outside their jobs, things like families and kids that need to be taken care of. It may just so happen that they do not have enough time outside of their working hours to spend on side projects. I've worked with a bunch of brilliant engineers, who actually knew what they were doing, they shipped products of high quality on time and their technical skills were excellent. None of them had had any side projects except maybe a couple of things they did back at high school or university. Yet they were one of the most valued employees at the company. P.S.: actually, when an employer asks for "passion" it somehow makes me think that they are actually asking you to work 105 hours a week.

coolswan 15y ago

Meh, he probably needs to de-generalize this thought and take it case-by-case. I didn't work on side projects for two years because I was obsessed with the project at the startup I worked at. He would've heard an earful from me if he said I wasn't "passionate"

ido 15y ago

I used to have pet projects, until one of them became my full time job.

gte910h 15y ago

I think you need to be sued for anti-family discrimination. If you have young children, your chance of being able to do this sort of after hours programming can be near zero if you're doing all the parenting you should if you and your spouse both work. Especially if you get in trouble for it at work (I know I've been places where you had to do 4-10 hours of paperwork to do it even).

cmorrisrsg 15y ago

I actually reject people without pet projects for an entirely different reason. I can find out much more about how you behave as a developer and whether or not you'd fit in with our company by reading your code than I can from any kind of interview or whiteboard challenge. Ideally you'd actually hire the prospective developer for a short contract project before hiring, but that has significant challenges and costs as well. Think of a carpenter that claimed to be amazing at producing furniture, but had none to show you. Would you trust them on how well he could BS you in an interview? It's not about passion or dedication. If you, producer of code, can show me code you've produce, I'm taking a much lower risk on hiring you. And fortunately, there are enough people around with code to show that rejecting others is a pretty easy filtering decision to make.

factotvm 15y ago
Then give them a coding problem that takes a short amount of time but allows you to evaluate their skills. I relish these opportunities and respect the companies that ask me to do them. To keep with your metaphor, ask the carpenter to make you a cabinet door. Again, I agree with others here... if you're passionate about the startup you're working at (and you should be), that is your side project. I distrust people who work at startups that have side projects.
- eropple 15y ago
  A coding problem is less illustrative than a decent--LOC is always suspect, but let's say 10,000 LOC--corpus of work. Something to show much more than a toy problem. Better still, however, is collaboration with open source projects--you can see individual communication between people as well as the developer's ability to enter a foreign codebase and be productive, (hopefully) without introducing bugs due to ill-advised changes without understanding what's being changed. (We don't look at side projects or open source at my current employer. I wish we did.)
- cmorrisrsg 15y ago
  Any coding problem that could feasibly be completed in an acceptable amount of time would be too small to actually tell me what I want to know. I mostly don't want to know what algorithms you're aware of or how quickly you can type. I want to know how you structure and modularize code. I want to know how you debug things. I want to know if you can refactor well. In short, I want to know about how you handle building and maintaining real software. If I hired people to do coding problems all day, that would be another thing, but I don't.

chc 15y ago

The assumption that pet projects cannot be related to our work is weird to me. My full-time job title right now is "Newspaper Editor" — so you know the programming I do is not "work assignments" — but I have a whole host of tools I've written to automate the less-interesting parts of the job (from simple things like "calculate how many inches this will take" to more complicated things like "generate the files needed for this week's paper with these parameters and the ads placed in a configuration that will be both cost-effective and pleasing to our advertisers"). These are unquestionably work-related, but they're also unquestionably things I wrote just because I had an itch to scratch. I wanted them, so I made them. Why would my pet projects not be related to what I do?

jisaacstone 15y ago
This is the first thing I thought as well. Good programmers can have a wide selection of choice when it comes to their work, so I think they will often choose work they enjoy and can even get paid to work on 'pet projects' At the moment the stuff I enjoyed writing the most I also got paid for. Does that indicate a lack of 'passion'?

0x12 15y ago

If you have a life, I don't want you. If you have a family, I don't want you. If you have enough energy to do your work but not enough energy that after work you can work some more, I don't want you. What is it that makes employers so enamored of people with 'pet projects'? Are they easier to take advantage of? Do they work long hours without expecting compensation? Does not having dependents mean that it's easier to pressure then in to working harder? Really, having or not having pet projects (and I have plenty, don't worry) shouldn't matter even a little bit a the hiring time. You judge people on their ability as good as you can and what they do in their free time is simply none of your business. So, if you ask me about my 'pet projects' I don't want you.

Aloisius 15y ago
If you're hiring a software engineer and that person programs in their spare time, it is a pretty clear indication that they not only want to be a software engineer but also enjoys programming. I used to ask this question, but now I've generalized it to asking if someone has any hobbies. I find passion in any area to a good indicator of the type of people I want to hire.
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  The problem is that programming in your spare time is not a necessary condition for enjoying or having passion for programming. Further, its also discriminatory against people with families, or other hobbies, or against people who don't want to do the same thing that they did 40-50 hours during the week on the weekends too.
  - adbge 15y ago
    Let's be clear: it's only discriminatory against people that don't have pet projects. Having a family or other hobbies and having pet projects are not mutually exclusive.
    - petercooper 15y ago

jim_h 15y ago

I think when you're young with free time AND passionate about something, you should dive into it and learn as much as possible. When you're older and if you have children, PLEASE PLEASE spend the appropriate time being a GOOD parent. It seems like the world is more work focused than ever and parents are not spending as much time with their kids as they should. We want good programmers, but we NEED good parents even more. Our future will eventually rely on the next generation of adults and not just good software..

dlevine 15y ago

I have found that I usually start working on pet projects when I am dissatisfied with my job. At my last job, I found myself working on several different extracurricular projects at once. I kind of realized that this meant it was time to leave (and do my own startup). If I found someone who was supremely happy with his job, I would expect that any extra time would be spent at work, either making the product better or developing something else related to that company's business. With that said, there is nothing wrong with working on a pet project, just that it can indicate something bad rather than something good.

notahacker 15y ago
I'd expect someone supremely happy with their standard salaried job wouldn't be first out of the office every night, but I'd be alarmed if they were expected to dedicate their evenings and weekends to making their employers richer.

lcargill99 15y ago

Free time is not equivalent to passion. Basing relationships on the internal emotional state of other people is pretty risky The passionately wrong are usually harder to deal with. It's hit or miss, but a Great Deal of Robin Hanson's blog is about social signalling and the biases inherent thereof. Worthwhile effort, that.

scott_s 15y ago

I've said this before on related submissions: I enjoy my work, and it consumes all of my cycles allocated towards programming.

tzs 15y ago

The obvious question: if I take a job with you, will you guarantee that work will not take up too much of my time, nor demand too much of my creative energy, so that I can continue to have my pet projects?

kkowalczyk 15y ago
He can't. But I can guarantee this: an employer can't force you to work more than you're willing to work. They can try but you're not their slave. Employment is a two-way street. If the employer isn't happy with your work, for whatever reason, they can fire you. If you're not happy with your employer, for whatever reason, you can quit. If an employer is making unreasonable demands on your time, you quit. And to be clear: there is no universal of what's reasonable, so I'm talking about your personal standard. Employment is a risk for both parties. You risk that the job will be boring, or demanding more time than you're willing to give but you're not the only one taking the risk. Employer risks that you'll be unable to do the work or slack off etc.
- notJim 15y ago
  What you say is true, but it's important to realize that the nature of the risk is disproportionate. The programmer quitting his job has a lot more at stake than the company firing the programmer. For the programmer, it means a stressful job search, likely financial stress (even if s/he saved up a lot of money, it's not fun to be living on a finite supply), and all the feelings that go along with losing a job (wounded pride, fear of judgement from others, etc.) For the employer, it means what? They now have payroll that's significantly lighter, and true, they're down a person, but realistically that just means they have to pressure their other employees to pick up the slack while they find someone new, and those programmers, not wanting to lose their jobs, probably do it. Now, of course the important thing as a programmer is to have an attitude like yours, which mitigates the downsides of leaving a job. But not everyone has that attitude.

brosephius 15y ago

sorry, but I think this is an arrogant and insulting attitude. I get the value of side projects, but assuming that someone who doesn't have any is an inferior candidate is bullshit. I know the blog post says "Not having pet projects doesn’t mean that you are a bad developer" but dismissing such people out of hand says otherwise. you don't care about experience? so someone who writes ultra-high-performance code for a trading firm is worth less to you than someone who writes a 50-line rails app that lets you use the fabled "pomodoro technique"? good luck finding great developers with that attitude. but hey, at least they'll have "passion", right? because all salaried coding is generic and mindless, and anybody doing it is a drone with no skills or ambition.

mirkules 15y ago

First off, some of us have lives and families. Some of us work more than just 9-5 and commute for more than one hour each way. Secondly, none of my pet projects are OSS. I have a lot of pet projects, some in their infant stages, some pretty far along. And they are not for public viewing, but for my pleasure, which is why they are not OSS. [edit: and some are a collaboration with other people who would prefer that code stays closed] Thirdly, is there such a thing as a passionate .NET programmer!? (half-joking)

chokolad 15y ago
> Thirdly, is there such a thing as a passionate .NET programmer!? (half-joking) Blog author is definitely the one. He is one of the core NHibernate committers, prolific blogger with a lot of very interesting posts, developed Rhino Mocks mocking library, created RavenDB http://www.ravendb.net/ http://www.ravendb.net/ and did a lot of other neat things. So yes, there is such a thing.

petercooper 15y ago

I make good money from job ads so this does me a disservice but.. stop discriminating against people by getting them to send in their CVs. Headhunt! I'm selfishly in support of preferring to hire people who show a strong out-of-hours dedication and passion for their work but it's not a realistic expectation for a regular job ad. Instead, hit GitHub, hit mailing lists, find the top blogs on the topics you're hiring for, and approach the people who pop up and seem to know what they're talking about. You might have to let people work remotely, pay them more, or come up with other ways to pique their interest, but if you really want 24/7 passionate programmers, you can get them, with enough resources. It's amazing how few employers do this, even those who do have the resources. Grab the top talent in your areas and find them by their byproducts. Why Google/MSFT/etc aren't trying to scrape up every seriously prolific developer on GitHub at $250k+ a year or whatever is beyond me.

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rickmb 15y ago

In my experience, candidates with major pet projects, especially ones that aren't related to their current job, fall into one or more of the following categories: * They don't have life, and are usually not the most pleasant people to work with, let alone communicate with non-programmers. * For some reason cannot find a job that involves the passion/knowledge/skill they put into their pet project. The job market for programmers being what it is, that's a major red flag. * They have a passion for programming, but aren't good enough to hack it in a professional environment. Often not so much a skills but discipline or team player issue, but yes, you can have a passion for something you are not particularly good at! Millions of amateur-[enter activity here] do it every day! Having or not having a pet project is an good angle for an interview, but not a meaningful qualification in itself.

flyosity 15y ago
Hmm, seems I don't fall into any of these categories. I design and build web software during the day, then at night and on the weekends I work on my own iOS and Mac apps. I've been offered full-time iOS & Mac design/development jobs but I don't take them for a few reasons, most importantly that I really like my current "real" job and the hardcore web work keeps my skills sharp. So I'm not the first category because I'm married and do have a life outside work, I'm not the second one because I can easily find a different full-time job but choose to stay in the position I have, and the third just isn't applicable. I don't really have a position on the pet-projects-as-interview-question topic, but just thought I'd put in my two cents.
postfuturist 15y ago
I have pet projects. I also have a life. I have a job that involves putting my knowledge/skill/passion to work to a degree. Even if my employer would allow me to write each project in whatever programming language I was obsessed with that week, I wouldn't, because I don't want to maintain all my whims. Personal projects can be thrown away easily or restarted. All that work can be done without _any_ business concerns. That's just not reasonable for a paying job. I have a lot of passion for programming and I hack it quite well in a professional environment, thank you very much. My passion requires that I fiddle about with personal projects so I can test out new languages, frameworks, styles, libraries, paradigms, etc. without any business concerns in the least. If there is a place where I could get paid well to just hack on whatever the hell seems fun at the moment, I'd definitely make a concerted effort to work there--I don't think it exists.

loup-vaillant 15y ago

Again, we see here the tension between the needs of the employers and those of the applicants. An applicant needs to be judged "fairly". More precisely, a false negative is unacceptable. This is especially critical when he's just above the "hiring bar". An employer crumbles over CVs, and needs to judge fast. False positives are unacceptable. False negatives are no big deal. This is especially not critical when the applicant is just above the "hiring bar". There are others. Hiring processes aren't designed to be fair to the applicants. They are designed to work for the employers. It's like a spam filter, except with tolerance reversed: no spam in, some ham out is cool. My gut tell me that it definitely sucks, but my brain fails to come up with a solution.

georgieporgie 15y ago

More voodoo, selection bias, hiring B.S. Why hire on the basis of ability, when you can make up arbitrary criteria? Everyone is exactly like me, right?

3pt14159 15y ago

The HN response here is crazy. Obviously 40 year olds are going to have less side projects, and obviously there are devs out there that treat development as a job, not a passion. I know a very good python dev that fits that description. But seriously, no free time for side projects? Really? Absolutely no time? It takes 30 mins to whip up something sorta kinda neat. That's an episode of Entourage. Give me a break with all this kids talk, eight year olds go to bed early, and teenagers don't need all that much attention every single day. Sure, help 'em with homework, etc. But lets face some facts, there are plenty of unpaid OSS developers that happen to be parents and they don't whine about not having enough time.

r00fus 15y ago
Travel 50-100% for current job. Having a kid with special needs. Having multiple children. Owning a home. Aging parents with disabilities. Outdoors/Travel nut (you or spouse). Civic/political/community involvement. Any of these personal situations can eat into your "personal" time considerably. Add up 2 or more, and your remaining personal time is what you carve out of your sleep hours. I'm lucky that I don't have to work two jobs like of the less fortunate, and I don't fall into all (or even most) of the categories above, but I don't watch TV and I don't have a github page.

biot 15y ago

See also "I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2664243 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2664243 My thoughts on spare-time projects in relation to other professions: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2664358 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2664358

NY_Entrepreneur 15y ago

And if that causes you not to want someone, then I don't want you!

pnathan 15y ago

I keep a portfolio of minor source code for these questions. Other than that, I'm finishing my Master's in my 'free time'.

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nasmorn 15y ago

Also consider that you are looking for a .NET developer. While I guess it is a technically completely respectable language and stack it is not the OSS hotbed.

mx2323 15y ago

this is completely silly. what about all the developers that devote all of their time on the product at hand...? i guess... your heuristic says that you dont want them? and you'd rather take the guy that goes home at 5 and gets distracted with pet projects that sap engineering time and focus? simply put, you are thinking it wrong.

strathmeyer 15y ago

All I got from this was that the interviewer had no idea how to judge the interviewee and needed someone to blame it on. I wish there was a part of career development that dealt with dealing with the idiots we want to hire us.

computerslol 15y ago

If you don't eat breakfast, I don't want you.