Re:Hire people who aren’t proven
by wafflesraccoon on Thursday September 27, 2018 @11:23AM
(#18085350)
After programming professionally for several years now I'm always shocked to hear that people program for fun in their free time. Once I get home from work, the last thing I want to think about is writing software.
For many, it completely depends on time spent at work and effort spent at work. I've been on both sides. If you spend a lot of time and effort at work (not a bad thing), your desire is diminished outside of work. However if you don't have to spend a bunch of time/effort at work, there is time/effort available. Granted, even that relies on whether you enjoy it over other things, but you shouldn't be shocked.
I find the programming that I do for work to be fun. I consider this one of the blessings of the career for me. Solving/reproducing bugs and deciphering other people’s code is intellectually stimulating similar to sudoku or crossword puzzles.
If I weren’t working such long hours currently, I could see myself creating a webpage or writing an app, or playing with arduino for fun. But as it is, I’m pretty much tapped at the end of the day. I don’t really have the mental energy (or solid blocks of time) to accomplish much of anything.
I could definitely see myself doing it if I were in a situation where I didn’t have to work. (If I won the lottery or I had a rich wife/parents or whatever).
I’ve been doing this for about 10 years.
Re:Hire people who aren’t proven
by mixmastamyk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @11:39AM
(#18085510)
True, but am able to get excited about something that "scratches an itch," or will improve longterm productivity. Your commute might also be killing some enthusiasm, I know it did when I went in to the office.
If I have an interesting problem, I honestly don't mind.
That has happened once in the last 15 years that I can actually remember.
> Cares about what though?
I guess that's the question which most commenters actually missed :-)
If I had to define things I'd say that the former is actually "care" and the latter is a bit closer to "passion".
Building simple,solid, maintainable software that does what it is supposed to?
Or cares about chasing every new fad, has ten frameworks listed on their resume and is currently midway through the machine learning / blockchain hype?
I care about the former, but plenty of people would see that as having little "passion". For example, I don't have any experience using NoSQL databases on my CV, because I haven't had a use case for them and I could tell that they weren't all that they were hyped up to be 5 years ago when those were peak hype cycle. (I can design a relational database properly and know how to index it and optimize queries).
Ten years is plenty of time for this industry to kill any passion you started with. I still care about producing good work.