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Comment by napoleond | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

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.

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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