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Comment by sushid | Hacker News Reader

Maybe they're trying to hire people with some intersection between work and passion. If I had two similarly qualified candidates but one has a huge interest in coding on the side, I'd be inclined to pick her over the other one if I were a hiring manager.

And to be fair, I've had many ask me for side projects and whatnot (with me providing nothing) and have still received offers from them after an interview. Sometimes, these things are just nice to haves. From a recruiter's perspective, why not ask?

No one said anything about a brogramming culture but you seem very incensed. Step down from the soap box and take a breath or two.

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One can be passionate at work without enjoying coding on their free time.

Exactly! I used to be a climate scientist, and wrote open source libraries on my free time. I now work as a software engineer, and I love my job. But on my free time I now make music.

That's fair, but a hiring manager might be more easily able to see this overlap if you have some recent side projects.

And again, I'm not even the type to code for fun at home (at least not since my first two years out of college). My significant other never codes for fun but is probably one of the most talented programmers I know. I'm just stating some reasons why one might ask this as an interviewer.

The absence of side projects doesn't indicate a lack of passion but the opposite of this is mostly true.

If I were hiring, I would ask, "What things outside of development do you like to do?"

I don't have evidence to back this up, but I strongly believe a team of well-rounded people will out perform a group of extreme nerds over time.

He should be mad. The idea that what you are professionally capable of needs to be proven or accentuated with spare-time projects is nonsense and needs to die. What someone does with their personal time should have no bearing on their professional life - if all of that spare-time coding sharpens their skills, that should be self-evident during the interviewing process and give them an advantage anyway.

To me, brogramming culture includes the beer & pizza, maker, video game-playing, hobby programmer type. There's more to it, but imagine a software company that includes no people with interests in any of those activities. Do you know any like that?

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