There are two sides to every coin. Possibly toxic advice for some, but why should anyone give up platforms or avenues that make them standout from the crowd? OP's suggestion is a perfectly valid piece of advice for anyone who has the energy, time, resources, ability, will, and integrity to keep chopping at a meaningful side project. It is not easy, sure. But I don't think we can say it is toxic, either.
> The open source contribution/project would have to have a sufficiently high bar for it to be even considered.
We'd do well to not write this advice off by subjecting it to the most extreme possible treatment?
And there are six sides to every cube. In a world of tortured dichotomies, nobody ever mentions those.
With three kids, my current side project is my day job, at least if measuring by workload. Talking on more work, voluntarily or not, will be at a significant personal cost for me.
I don’t get the constant peddling of hussle porn in SWE circles.
You think working on a passion project and trying out a startup is toxic and then you come out with this pessimistic bucket crab viewpoint? You’d be doing people a favour not hiring them, I’d feel bad for anyone working for you.
I don't know if I agree, but let's not twist the words of the comment.
Do you really want people to devote their life to their jobs, even while unemployed?
I don't see a thing wrong with spending your down time doing whatever makes you happy.
I don't think the grandparent was suggesting they literally sit around for a year and do nothing buy play video games. But, hell, taking time off between jobs is a great idea, and if video games are your thing, spending a chunk of that time off playing sounds like it could be great for your mental health. But, just like anything else, moderation!
Hah, and you called gp's advice toxic! Taking stock if your financial well-being after being laid off is too late. I fear your advice (take time off) may be toxic - depending on circumstances. My advice is this: as a general rule, avoid interviewing while desperate. Getting an offer generally takes longer than one might think, so interview early and often, before you get near the end of your mental/financial runway.
This is just as, if not more toxic than the advice that you're opposed to. I've had similar experiences with interviewers for non-technical questions, and it comes off as aggressive, antagonistic and traumatizing; especially in your example where they left it off their resume as a gap. The interviewee's perspective might have been to say that they've been spending some of their spare time keeping their skills sharp and now you're hammering them to see if a project left off their resume qualifies for some "high bar," while all they see is a negative and dismissive attitude.
Personally, I would much rather be programming my own projects or doing leetcode than play video games, but I wouldn't judge someone negatively if they told me they played games on their own time.
Looking back on the times I've had to deal with this, and looking forward to the times I almost certainly will again, I'd do nothing different than what you've recommended or that I've done, with the exception of haplessly paying rent hoping for that next absurdly long and thoughtlessly designed interview process to work out.
As a counterpoint, I probably wouldn't dig into this too much. But even if I did, would I find it strange that someone got laid off and then used their time to build up a company that didn't work out? Probably not. And if I realized that it was a half-assed effort... so what? Why is that worse than time spent playing video games? Sure, if you told me you were working on building a company and you didn't have any progress, I might feel that you were dishonest. But if you've got at least something to show for it (a basic product, even with zero sales), I think it's fair game.
There is another class of developers who like to code so much, that 'work' is merely a project that they don't have directional control over, but the act of coding is a relaxing activity. I know because I'm one of them. I am pretty relaxed at work when I can just sit down and code, then I go home and if I get some free time to work on my own code, I find it relaxing too. It's not that I don't enjoy work and have to supplement with a personal project, I just like the feeling of having absolute control over the project and trying to write the best code possible, because making money or providing some shareholder value is not the goal.
For people like me, I think this is a great advice. I am always thinking of side-projects that can become startups anyway, and I'm tinkering every day to the extent that time allows. I've been doing that for 20+ years. If I ever got laid off, my only hope is that at that point I will have a side-project that can magically be launched to make enough money to keep paying the bills.
I'm in the middle. Imagine you like playing football. You do it for fun. But, if you do it too much, you'll be exhausted and maybe strain a muscle or something. I code for fun, but it still wears me out; it's still a kind of "work" psychologically distinct from, and more taxing than, watching a show.
The only way I would describe it as "relaxing" is if I put little-to-no thought into it, but that's how you end up with very buggy code.
I always see this set of people highly vocal and against people who actually like to code. It is like they have a tough time accepting that a lot of technical people love to build things.
(I've never had a resume gap but that's going to be my explanation if/when I do.)
[Continuing working] is the single biggest thing someone can do to avoid depression after a layoff. The best idea is a paying job because it fills both requirements.
It also keeps you ready to interview and ready to start immediately. When you're on the couch it's always easy to wait till tomorrow.
> I'd rather someone tell me they spent a year working on themselves, playing video games, hiking, etc.
If they were independently wealthy that might be okay but for most people this is self-destructive behavior.
I was primarily replying to this particular line from OP : > If you get laid off, immediately start doing a startup, open-source project, or volunteering full time.
The ‘immediately’ didn’t really jive with me. A job loss can be very traumatic to an individual, and I still believe in taking time to recuperate from it rather than diving head long into yet another thing.
I’ve interviewed quite a lot for my employers, big and small, including two of FAANMG companies for about 7 years now. From my perspective, I’m interviewing a candidate to see if they’re a competent engineer and a pleasant team member. I have absolutely no issues with passion projects / open-source and startups, just not if it’s aim is to be a resume filler.
>Focusing full-time on contributing to pytorch?
Yes! That is amazing and I already know that they’re a far more adept engineer than I am. But, if we were to dive in and I find out it was mostly fixing typos and nits in the codebase to show GitHub greens, then someone else who did something else entirely during their time off would come off better.
The only advice I'd consider paramount is to take stock of themselves financially and mentally, to assure themselves that they can take on the chaos and uncertainty that follows.
Honestly, if someone showed up with a gap in their resume and claimed that they were doing start-up, open source, etc. for an interview, I'd dig deep into that hard. The open source contribution/project would have to have a sufficiently high bar for it to be even considered. Else, I'd just assume they were being less than honest. I'd rather someone tell me they spent a year working on themselves, playing video games, hiking, etc.