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I love this question and use it as part of my interview deck. It is only part of the deck, however. This question is a great positive indicator, but a terribl

by 16bytes 12y ago

I love this question and use it as part of my interview deck. It is only part of the deck, however. This question is a great positive indicator, but a terrible negative indicator. That is to say, a person who works on a lot of stuff in their spare time is very likely to be someone I'd like to hire. The reverse isn't true, which is why there are other questions in the deck. I realize that there are great developers who don't have a well populated github profile and dozens of side projects. If I had a candidate that had trouble with the question, I'd expect them to say so. I'm a pretty reasonable person. I would not expect them to try and exit the interview early with little to no indication why.

greenleafjacob 12y ago
What if you have side projects that make money, i.e. are "work"? Is that discounted by "non-work, non-school" or by non-work do you mean "not your day job"?
- gknoy 12y ago
  I imagine many would be hesitant to mention such experience, but I think it would be a great thing to hear about in an interview. If you're interviewing an parallel universe's patio11-equivalent, and they say, "I have been running FlashCardCreator.com since 2001...", and goes on to explain neat things about what she's learned from it, it sounds like that should be a big green flag. Not only is such a person likely to have lots of cross-domain insight, but they clearly have the mojo to deliver working code. If you're worried that they might decide that their work-outside-yours is going to cannibalize their time, they probably have an answer for why you don't need to worry much about that. (After all, they __did__ apply.) I would be surprised if you had to worry about them leaving any more than you would any other developer.
- 16bytes 12y ago
  It's a completely open-ended question and I word it differently depending on how the interview is going. You can demonstrate passion for technology even if what you talked about was a one-off utility that you wrote for your job. I want to see if your eyes light up when you talk about it.
- protomyth 12y ago
  I phrase it so it is the "not your day job" version. In the more general sense a better phrasing is "something that wasn't required of you by others". Since I wrapped it in other questions, I got the idea across. If it made money, cool. Just so there was no one saying "you need to do this".

by 16bytes 12y ago

greenleafjacob 12y ago

What if you have side projects that make money, i.e. are "work"? Is that discounted by "non-work, non-school" or by non-work do you mean "not your day job"?

gknoy 12y ago
I imagine many would be hesitant to mention such experience, but I think it would be a great thing to hear about in an interview. If you're interviewing an parallel universe's patio11-equivalent, and they say, "I have been running FlashCardCreator.com since 2001...", and goes on to explain neat things about what she's learned from it, it sounds like that should be a big green flag. Not only is such a person likely to have lots of cross-domain insight, but they clearly have the mojo to deliver working code. If you're worried that they might decide that their work-outside-yours is going to cannibalize their time, they probably have an answer for why you don't need to worry much about that. (After all, they __did__ apply.) I would be surprised if you had to worry about them leaving any more than you would any other developer.
16bytes 12y ago
It's a completely open-ended question and I word it differently depending on how the interview is going. You can demonstrate passion for technology even if what you talked about was a one-off utility that you wrote for your job. I want to see if your eyes light up when you talk about it.
protomyth 12y ago
I phrase it so it is the "not your day job" version. In the more general sense a better phrasing is "something that wasn't required of you by others". Since I wrapped it in other questions, I got the idea across. If it made money, cool. Just so there was no one saying "you need to do this".