That's a false dichotomy. There are plenty of smart, capable, hardworking programmers who enjoy their jobs and aren't just taking the easy-street, but have enough else going on in their lives that they don't want to spend their free time writing code. I say this as someone who does write lots of code outside of work: it is not fair to gate people based on the number of side-projects they have. It's not even a reasonable indicator of job performance.

Isn't it reasonable to assume the person spending a lot of extra time programming will generally become a better programmer than someone who doesn't? I'm aware that there are many factors that have nothing to do with raw programming skills which are factors of job performance. But considering the day to day duties of most junior/ic roles often consists mostly of programming, shouldn't this extra time spent programming make them, at least eventually, better, more efficient developers on-the-clock?

I agree with this - an exploratory mindset is super important, and high quality side-projects do make you stand out - that's a fact.

Likely unintentional, but your language around hiring is quite gendered. Guys / dudes ?

Not relevant to his point.

What kind of companies and roles are you hiring for? How do your offers compare to the top bands on levels.fyi for equivalent roles/experience? How many engineers with big names on their resumes do you get in your pipeline, and how many convert to full-time offers?

In my career so far, every time I've encountered an employer (or more specifically, a representative of an employer, e.g. a recruiter or hiring manager) who cared about side-projects and off-the-clock programming to the point where it was a dealbreaker / red flag for applicants, and not just a nice-to-have, the following things were true:

- they paid significantly below market rate (when accounting for bonuses and RSUs)

- they did not respect engineering work/life balance

- they had high turnover