I wrote about this a fair bit: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajectory-of-a-software-engineer-and-where-it-all-goes-wrong/ http://michaelo

I wrote about this a fair bit: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajectory-of-a-software-engineer-and-where-it-all-goes-wrong/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajector... It's hard to get to (or even near) the 2.0 level without continually getting high quality work. That kind of work is rare in the corporate world and most people never get it. It's also hard to push yourself to a 2.0 level if you can't work on it full time. Now, a neat thing about side projects is that they don't have to be 2.0+ to be useful and successful. There are other things that matter just as much. That said, if your goal is to become a 2.0+ programmer, you'll pretty much need access to a quality of work that most developers never get to do at their paid jobs.