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.
The worst side-effect of this is actually "If you were really passionate about your last job, I don't want you."
I have old pet projects from times when my work at previous jobs was interesting but not all-consuming. The work I do for my current employer is so interesting and fun to me in so many ways that when I have spare coding time on non-work-hours, I'm still working on these work projects. My work projects are my pet projects.
Granted, someone like me is less likely to be in the market in the first place because I love my job, but if I suddenly were in the market (there are many very hypothetical reasons this could happen -- company runs out of runway, company is acquired by company that shifts focus in ways I don't care for, etc, etc) a filter like this would cut me out for all the wrong reasons.
Having said all of that, I think people hiring employees do need to employ some arbitrary filters that could potentially filter out stellar employees as a side effect, and I don't think that's a horrible thing.. it probably helps more often than not and is thus worth the rare corner case situations where it ends in a tragic mistake.
If I'm in the market looking for another job I have more than enough contacts with people I've worked with in the past that such arbitrary filters are a non-factor for me, so the take away is that if you're a great developer, develop contacts and then you don't have to worry about things like this.
pet projects answer a thousand questions that a cv and an interview cannot.
What type of work does this person enjoy, are they building libraries for developers or products for end users, A lot of time people will open source their side projects, you get insight into their working practices, how clean their code is, do they test, do they get caught up in details and not the end product.
Sometimes people pets projects are working on a large open source project, for employers I believe that is the jackpot, you have their communication with users and peers, the output of their work and the thought processes that go along with it.
Employing people is not about giving every developer in the world an equal opportunity for a job, its about finding the best people for your team in a minimum amount of effort
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.
Like the person who wrote the article and as someone who has hired for more than a decade for my own businesses, I've noticed my best developers had pet projects. They tend also to be the most passionate about developing. It's not an absolute rule, but I found a good indicator.
As for having a life, let me tell you I have a 6 months old who spent 1.5 months of his life in the hospital, a wife, I'm CTO and co-founder of startup for which I code about 60 hours a week. On top of that, I have time to help my my wife with her business (my previous company), I have fulfilled time with my family, take the weekends off and have time for personal hobbies and pet projects. I sleep enough and sleep well and I'm happy and balanced.
A lot of the most involved and active people in the tech community in Montreal that I know personally have startups, children and time for their family. I'll tell you they're the most awesome, bright, funny and balanced people I ever met.
One thing that makes it possible for me is a 10 minutes walk commute. The other biggest factor is having priorities straight on how I want to balance my life. Is it easy? No. Do I always have the energy and passion to go forward? Yes. Seeing my son smile when I wake him up each morning helps a lot.
You don't have to be young, without a family and responsibilities to have the passion and energy to be able to do things you care about for yourself outside your work. Even if you work more than 40 hours a week...
Another thing: some pet projects or hobbies can take only a few hours a week or a month. So not having enough time is not a valid argument in my opinion.
I agree that not having side projects shouldn't be a disqualification, but I disagree that it shouldn't be a factor at all. Depending on the project it can show enthusiasm, a desire to learn technologies other than what your job uses, and the ability to carry through from an initial idea to a shipping product.
Seriously, there is a lot of judgement in that sentence.
"Having a life", having a family is a matter of choice. I can choose not to have a family and work on my pet projects. I choose how I spend my time. If I sacrifice relationships in favor of pet projects, does that make me a lesser person? could it possibly make me a better software developer?
Is it really unreasonable to imagine that there are many talented software developers in the "lifeless" set of people with pet projects? Perhaps the author is of the opinion that the set of people with pet projects have higher ratio of talent compared to the full set. That is not to say that there are not passionate talented people without pet projects.
Is that really so unreasonable? I have a 1 year old daughter, and I'll be the first to admit that she'll take priority over any work project at any time. Looking around the office, the people without kids tend to work longer hours, to more unpaid overtime and take less days off. Is it really so unreasonable for an employer to want to those sorts of people.
This is bullshit. I have a full time job, a family and I've written a book in the past two years, and I still have time for side projects. Normally while commuting on the train or in the evenings, but still...
Pet projects are a good proxy for determining whether a developer can actually, you know, develop. Much better than asking trivial algorithm questions or getting someone to figure out a puzzle. They're also good fodder for interviews:
* "Why did you go with this architecture/data structure/library instead of Y?"
* "What's the next step in your roadmap?"
* "Why would I use this?" / "Why did you start it?" / "What's different about this and project Y?".
My fallback is to get them to provide a code sample "that they're proud of", which is not quite as good, but still indicative that they're still thinking about their craft. Hiring based purely on an in-person interview and a CV is incredibly risky - I've seen people who can talk a pretty good line, but write really obnoxious, poorly structured code.
Perhaps think of it this way: A critical part of any developer's job is figuring out what tech is coming in the next couple of years, or which is available now and not being used, pushing the envelope of what's possible. Hence why the OP says "When you tell me that your only projects outside of work are 5+ years old, that is a bad indication..."
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I agree completely - also, in some jobs (yes, even in software) it's as important that you're well-spoken, out-going and social as you are a passionate developer.
In my hiring I'd have more alarm bells ringing for someone who spends the majority of their awake time coding vs someone who loves it but also loves doing other things.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
I do think that people can have a real passion for programming, have a life, and be able to work in a professional environment. They probably already have a job, or will get one very soon. All the points you listed are totally valid though, and I totally agree with your last point.
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..
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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"
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.
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.
[+] [-] 0x12|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] georgemcbay|14 years ago|reply
I have old pet projects from times when my work at previous jobs was interesting but not all-consuming. The work I do for my current employer is so interesting and fun to me in so many ways that when I have spare coding time on non-work-hours, I'm still working on these work projects. My work projects are my pet projects.
Granted, someone like me is less likely to be in the market in the first place because I love my job, but if I suddenly were in the market (there are many very hypothetical reasons this could happen -- company runs out of runway, company is acquired by company that shifts focus in ways I don't care for, etc, etc) a filter like this would cut me out for all the wrong reasons.
Having said all of that, I think people hiring employees do need to employ some arbitrary filters that could potentially filter out stellar employees as a side effect, and I don't think that's a horrible thing.. it probably helps more often than not and is thus worth the rare corner case situations where it ends in a tragic mistake.
If I'm in the market looking for another job I have more than enough contacts with people I've worked with in the past that such arbitrary filters are a non-factor for me, so the take away is that if you're a great developer, develop contacts and then you don't have to worry about things like this.
[+] [-] daleharvey|14 years ago|reply
What type of work does this person enjoy, are they building libraries for developers or products for end users, A lot of time people will open source their side projects, you get insight into their working practices, how clean their code is, do they test, do they get caught up in details and not the end product.
Sometimes people pets projects are working on a large open source project, for employers I believe that is the jackpot, you have their communication with users and peers, the output of their work and the thought processes that go along with it.
Employing people is not about giving every developer in the world an equal opportunity for a job, its about finding the best people for your team in a minimum amount of effort
[+] [-] Aloisius|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jeromeparadis|14 years ago|reply
As for having a life, let me tell you I have a 6 months old who spent 1.5 months of his life in the hospital, a wife, I'm CTO and co-founder of startup for which I code about 60 hours a week. On top of that, I have time to help my my wife with her business (my previous company), I have fulfilled time with my family, take the weekends off and have time for personal hobbies and pet projects. I sleep enough and sleep well and I'm happy and balanced.
A lot of the most involved and active people in the tech community in Montreal that I know personally have startups, children and time for their family. I'll tell you they're the most awesome, bright, funny and balanced people I ever met.
One thing that makes it possible for me is a 10 minutes walk commute. The other biggest factor is having priorities straight on how I want to balance my life. Is it easy? No. Do I always have the energy and passion to go forward? Yes. Seeing my son smile when I wake him up each morning helps a lot.
You don't have to be young, without a family and responsibilities to have the passion and energy to be able to do things you care about for yourself outside your work. Even if you work more than 40 hours a week...
Another thing: some pet projects or hobbies can take only a few hours a week or a month. So not having enough time is not a valid argument in my opinion.
[+] [-] orangecat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cks|14 years ago|reply
Seriously, there is a lot of judgement in that sentence.
"Having a life", having a family is a matter of choice. I can choose not to have a family and work on my pet projects. I choose how I spend my time. If I sacrifice relationships in favor of pet projects, does that make me a lesser person? could it possibly make me a better software developer?
Is it really unreasonable to imagine that there are many talented software developers in the "lifeless" set of people with pet projects? Perhaps the author is of the opinion that the set of people with pet projects have higher ratio of talent compared to the full set. That is not to say that there are not passionate talented people without pet projects.
[+] [-] dagw|14 years ago|reply
Is that really so unreasonable? I have a 1 year old daughter, and I'll be the first to admit that she'll take priority over any work project at any time. Looking around the office, the people without kids tend to work longer hours, to more unpaid overtime and take less days off. Is it really so unreasonable for an employer to want to those sorts of people.
[+] [-] anthonyb|14 years ago|reply
Pet projects are a good proxy for determining whether a developer can actually, you know, develop. Much better than asking trivial algorithm questions or getting someone to figure out a puzzle. They're also good fodder for interviews:
* "Why did you go with this architecture/data structure/library instead of Y?"
* "What's the next step in your roadmap?"
* "Why would I use this?" / "Why did you start it?" / "What's different about this and project Y?".
My fallback is to get them to provide a code sample "that they're proud of", which is not quite as good, but still indicative that they're still thinking about their craft. Hiring based purely on an in-person interview and a CV is incredibly risky - I've seen people who can talk a pretty good line, but write really obnoxious, poorly structured code.
Perhaps think of it this way: A critical part of any developer's job is figuring out what tech is coming in the next couple of years, or which is available now and not being used, pushing the envelope of what's possible. Hence why the OP says "When you tell me that your only projects outside of work are 5+ years old, that is a bad indication..."
[+] [-] wccrawford|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] loup-vaillant|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dlevine|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sehugg|14 years ago|reply
But some positions do require that Olympic athlete mindset. For other positions it's a detriment.
[+] [-] wyclif|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vosper|14 years ago|reply
In my hiring I'd have more alarm bells ringing for someone who spends the majority of their awake time coding vs someone who loves it but also loves doing other things.
[+] [-] petercooper|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gte910h|14 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] brosephius|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rickmb|14 years ago|reply
* 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|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Fliko|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jim_h|14 years ago|reply
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..
[+] [-] tzs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] josephturnip|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quinedstatement|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmorrisrsg|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] lcargill99|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] chc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coolswan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scott_s|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3pt14159|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
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.