> On average, who's going to be better at writing code, the one who has done a side coding project in the past 10 years whilst developing, or the one who hasn't but only worked a job?

You’re clearly leading toward the former, but I could just as easily make an argument for the latter.

In my experience, people with edifying jobs (usually because the problems are harder), are less likely to need to scratch the same itch outside of work.

I think requiring side projects not only shrinks the candidate pool, but also leads to adverse selection.

I've hired about 25 developers so far. So far, the 8 developers out of those 25 who had actual side projects (even not production ready and with caveats they told me ahead of time) have ended up being head and shoulders above the others.

Of course, there's not enough data to make a foolproof conclusion but I'd say that so far for me, having side projects that a dev can show is a clear indicator that they are an interesting candidate.

And when counting side projects, I count tools developers make to make their life easier and in my experience even great developers with edifying jobs will have situations where they create some small tools to help make their life easier.

But time is the important part here - a single parent raising two kids is not going to have time to code at home versus a twenty-something year old with no responsibilities and dependants who has an abundance of free time. Selecting in that manner can also end up being a discrimination (those from poorer backgrounds are more likely to need to care for relatives, same goes for women, who on average do ten hours more of unpaid care than men a week)

I just can't understand the worldview differences of some interviewers.

Everyone has a finite amount of time, they have other shit to do. The vast majority people irl just code for work. Are they bad programmers? Of course not.

I would say for the average employer paying an average salary, demanding you to showcase a portfolio of hobby project is plain obnoxious. The interviewer can hope the interviewee does some hobby projects and lives and breathes coding but demanding it as a baseline assessment for an interview is absurd.

For the average programmer when they have absolutely have nothing else to do maybe they will work on their sideprojects which even takes a backseat because they have to keep learning new crap every other week to make sure they are up to date.

> The one who has more time for side projects might also have more time for work, too

So you’re expecting people to work more than 40 hours a week?

You can't really make that comparison between individual developers though as there is just too much variability between jobs and companies. Some people are able to fully invest their creative capacity at their job and there are others that don't because either their job doesn't allow it or they have interests that are distinct from what the job requires.