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Comment by rogy | Hacker News Reader

i HATE this question but its becoming more and more commonplace. I work hard, programming 40-70 hours a week, I solve all sorts of in work problems with ideas that I've come up with to make my daily work life easier. I barely touch a computer outside of the office. Does that make me a bad candidate for all programming jobs now?

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You're not the only one. Once upon a time I enjoyed working on personal projects outside of work, but a combination of factors have killed this.

First, I have a family now, and spending time with them is more important to me than any job. (And any company that has a problem with this is not a good fit.)

Second, I've been lucky enough to find jobs that are interesting and intellectually stimulating. My first programming jobs were kinda boring, so I had extra creative energy and learning and building things was an outlet.

Third, owning a home always involves upkeep and fixit projects. These can be fun and are generally easier get my kids to involved in than teaching them to program (going back to #1).

I think the first problem is that you're working more than 40 hours a week already... I'd ask how much of that is coding vs. meetings vs. other time.

I'm in the office 40-45 hours a week typically, I spend 20-30% of my time just thinking about the problems I am solving, or stuff like this, or following github projects, or other technology reading. I probably do about 4-5 hours of actual programming a day at work. My output during that time tends to match or exceed most of my peers in both quality and quantity.

The problem is getting people to understand more hours isn't the same as more productive output. Spending a couple hours thinking through a problem (or even prototyping) will usually save you more time down the road. This is true from simple data modeling to working through how to fit a system together.

As to the original question.. it is far from the only indicator of a person's own skill and drive, but it is an indicator. Especially in more junior level candidates. There's also the fact that the technology in use changes rapidly... and do you take the time to learn it... either out of your in-office day, or outside.

The question is a litmus test for whether or not you're passionate about programming. That may sound unfair ("Why do I need to be passionate about this? It's just a job...") but the field we work in is constantly changing and the only way anyone has a hope in hell of staying abreast is if they really love it. So if you manage to keep tabs on the industry through your colleagues and you're excited about what you're working on at work, then the personal projects are much less important, but you need to demonstrate that.

It's not. If you have kids there's just no time to start a personal project next to a full time job. Having a side project just tells your employer you have a lot of spare time.

On the other hand, you can code dozens of personal projects every week and be terrible at programming. When I had the time for many personal projects, I was a much less capable developer than I am now. I run circles around that guy now.

So I'm not sure why the person without personal projects needs to demonstrate that they're keeping tabs on the industry any more than someone who does.

Seems like you want to ensure X by testing for Y and mistaking correlation with causation.

> So if you manage to keep tabs on the industry through your colleagues and you're excited about what you're working on at work, then the personal projects are much less important, but you need to demonstrate that.

I disagree. If passion is an important quality to you, then, as the interviewer, you need to ask questions that reveal whether or not the candidate has that quality. It's absurd to ask about personal projects as a proxy for asking "are you passionate about programming" and then to expect the candidate to guess your true intentions and answer accordingly.

I think you hit on a much better question! Just ask "are you passionate about programming?" and then ask them to defend their answer. If they code arduino robots in their spare time or simply love solving people's problems at work they have to convince you either way. That's so much better than trying to gauge their passion with a presumptive question.

The problem with phrasing the question that way is that it's way too open-ended (and likely to make the candidate regurgitate the same BS from their cover letter, which is not the point). An interviewer's job is to make it as easy as possible for the candidate to prove themselves. If they don't have side projects, that's fine--there are other questions that will hopefully provide similar information (ie. "What project have you worked on that was the most satisfying for you personally?"). But the side project question has a high signal/noise ratio.

Uh huh. "We want passionate people!" is usually code for "we're going to pay you less".

No. I mean, if that's the case then obviously just walk away but when I say I want passionate people I mean I want people who view programming as a super-power and are still excited by that idea.

that is just funny. Programming is same as other things, some people excel some people suck at it. Nothing super power there. Sure it helps a lot if you do what you like but passion is too strong word for that. And as other comment, in my experience when they ask for passion it equates free work , meaning more hours and same pay.

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