I'm a bit skeptical of the idea that a person who devotes their entire life to their occupation is a more desirable employee than the one with a balanced life. Maybe if you were doing something completely rote, but who devotes their life to that anyways? To be a productive developer, you should also know how to:

Schedule and prioritize your work to align with business goals Interact with non-technical users and domain experts and understand their problems and techniques Work productively with and integrate your work with the work from related fields, like DBAs, designers, artists, etc Work with a team of developers productively, including making your ideas heard without being intolerant or offensive

That's stuff you don't tend to get from doing side projects. Maybe if you turned a side project into a real business, or were a senior contributor on a large, long-lived open-source project, or something like that.

Come to think of it, I was more sympathetic to the article's idea at first, but writing this makes me reconsider whether just having passion for something that you have built is enough to base hiring decisions on.

>Maybe if you turned a side project into a real business, or were a senior contributor on a large, long-lived open-source project, or something like that.

Well that is exactly the point.

The idea of some amazing "code monkey" detached from real life requirements, constraints and development timelines is a fiction and does not represent reality. The best developers have a deep understanding of the tools and the applications and it is that devotion that I am referencing.

There are in fact people that think in terms of building new things through code ALL THE TIME - and then implement them. Those people are going to have an advantage in the hiring process.

Also luckily there are not that many people out there who sustainably only do coding every hour of the day. Eventually real life catches up to you and you can't do that any longer.

Also, there are only so many gold medalists every four years. In the IT industry, there's no theoretical upper bound, so it's not nearly as dire, you don't really "run out of slots" as fast.

> you don't really "run out of slots" as fast.

If their company only hires once a year or so, that's still running out of slots quickly. The author works for an individual company, not "the IT industry".

> the one who is devoting their entire lives to their occupations is going to be a more desirable hire

Not true. The more productive and effective candidate is the more desirable hire.

Theoretically, those are the same thing.

They are not. Enthusiasm != Competence.