If you’re a software engineer, you should be hacking at projects, building apps, websites, and tinkering away at things you love to build outside of work. Whil

If you’re a software engineer, you should be hacking at projects, building apps, websites, and tinkering away at things you love to build outside of work. While I generally agree (that you should expand your knowledge and skills with side projects), how many companies think that these extracurricular activities are taboo? As someone who is looking for a new opportunity, I often hesitate to talk about my side projects even though these activities demonstrate my complete knowledge and skills. (During the day, I work primarily with Microsoft technologies, but with side projects I have utilized Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python, etc.) The hesitation comes from not being considered since other candidates may not have side projects and, therefore, more likely to be totally focused on the company's goals (and not their own). (A discussion on when a "work day" stops would probably generate epic rants from various commenters.) Edited for clarification.