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Comment by __float | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat meta comment: there seems to recently be a huge uptick in the number of articles on this exact topic. What sparked this? Is it a reaction to something specific? Reacting to impostor syndrome, "if I don't code at home like everyone else, I must be useless!"?

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I think it's a reaction against the past decade of "you should only hire devs who breathe, sweat, and bleed code" that we've seen for the past decade.

Also lots of devs are getting older, find their priorities in life shifting, and writing blogs about it.

Yup. I have a two year old. Guess how much time I get every weekend to work on hobby code?

If you guessed a negative number, congratulations on your growing family, because you understand.

Congrats on the two year old. Mine turns two next month. Some nights, after he goes to bed and I'm done with chores, I'll open up my laptop, fire up VS Code, and wake up on the couch four hours later.

Try applying for a job that doesn't ask for people who are passionate about code frameworks or have github repositories "for fun".

I've been working as a professional software developer for 20 years. I spent 9 years at one company until 2008 (6 years too long) and I've had 4 jobs since then. I have never once been asked to show code and my salary has gone up by $60K+ during that time - and I'm not in Silcon Valley.

I've never shown and outside passion about coding. I moved from C++ to C# back in 2008 and have basically stuck with C# since then.

The job I currently have as the dev lead didn't involve any coding questions just architecture.

Your experience is valid, but keep in mind most people don't have that 9 years of experience in a single company to base their hirability on. Employers can give you the benefit of doubt, due to your resume, that you're a good hire. Not so for most younger developers. So what else is there for employers to look at other than proven rockstars and hobby coders?

Keep in mind I agree with you, but I certainly understand the mindset that the parent comment was criticizing.

Well. That's true too. I got my first side project in 1994 because a college saw a HyperCard stack I posted on AOL.

I used that experience to get an internship in '95 and that led to a job with the same company after I graduated the next year.

But after trying to catch up because my "9 years of experience at one company" was really 3 years of experience and the other 6 years was just stuck doing the same thing I did the first 3 years, I vowed never to put myself in that situation again. If I see myself not keeping up technically at a company, it's time to either leave or study and do a side project.

I may never publish the side project and it may just end up being a proof of concept.

It's a background worldview that left wingers want to popularize, so a bunch of them are doing it.

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