Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

Re:Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income? by BadassFractal on Monday June 08, 2015 @02:07PM (#9680916)

This! I've had the opportunity to hire for our company for the past year or so. We use a somewhat uncommon paradigm in our tech stack that is very attractive to a lot of developers. Many of our applicants have exactly what you said: plenty of side projects in that paradigm / stack and participation to meetups / communities etc.

Occasionally however I run into people who have absolutely no side projects and have been doing the same stuff for 10+ years. I'm a Java expert (or .NET or C etc.), they claim. When I ask them if they've tried anything else besides that one thing they've been doing over and over for a decade, perhaps a side project, a toy product, some contribution to OSS in the new paradigm they apparently really want to work in, I get responses along the lines of "I'd never work on something I'm not being paid for, I'm a serious professional that's irresponsible".

Er.. ok. So I'm supposed to hire you, take a huge risk not knowing if you can pull this off or not, train you for a year to do something you have 0 familiarity with, and then you might peace out right about the time when I'm starting to recoup the onboarding costs? I'll pass. Candidates who already demonstrate a lot of interest, side projects, and desire to learn outside of their 9-5 will win any day of the week with me.

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Re:Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income? by vijayr on Monday June 08, 2015 @04:42PM (#9682240)

I agree that someone who doesn't have side projects isn't as attractive as someone who does, in general. But there are lots of people who don't do any programming once they leave the office (8-9 hours of computer time is more than enough for them). That doesn't mean that they aren't dedicated or that they are a risk.

I think it should be a case by case basis.

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Re:Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income? by phaus on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:31AM (#9684083)

As someone who struggles to find enough time for side projects, I agree that it isn't necessarily a sign that someone isn't passionate about the job. However, if someone says stuff like "I'd never work on something I'm not being paid for, I'm a serious professional that's irresponsible", its pretty obvious that they don't actually like what they are doing.

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Re:Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income? by dagw on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @09:08AM (#9685647)

its pretty obvious that they don't actually like what they are doing.

My dad has been a mechanical engineer for almost 40 years and I struggle to think of anyone who enjoys their job as much as he does. Yet I have never once seen him do any personal "side projects" that are in any way related to his day job.

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Re:Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income? by vijayr on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @09:51AM (#9685849)

Many people truly believe in not doing anything related to their career/job outside of their workplace. They do something totally different instead. One might train for a marathon in her spare time, instead of learning the newest JS framework for example.

The side project concept is fairly unique to digital workers, especially software engineers simple because we can. Noone asks an accountant or a secretary for side projects.

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Re:Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income? by vijayr on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @09:02AM (#9685621)

pretty obvious that they don't actually like what they are doing

Not to get into a debate, but there are tons of people who don't like what they are doing. But they are still good at it. Sure they may not be truly happy, but they are good at what they do even if they don't like it.

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Re:Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income? by BadassFractal on Monday June 08, 2015 @05:54PM (#9682724)

Fundamentally, risk isn't binary. There's more risk and there's less risk. For my kind of team, the absence of side projects, demonstrated lack of interest in furthering one's craft outside of paid hours increases the risk of this person not being able to pull his weight, if somehow he slips through the regular filtering mechanisms. As you pointed out, every candidate presents a unique risk profile, and every company weighs different factors differently.

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Re:Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income? by mreiland on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:44AM (#9684129)

I work for myself specifically to avoid people like you.

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Re:Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income? by BadassFractal on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @02:10AM (#9684312)

I work for myself specifically to be able to isolate the kind of developers that will make my organization successful. It's wonderful that we all have the opportunity to choose what kind of environment we want to work in.

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Re:Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income? by mistermann on Monday June 08, 2015 @07:58PM (#9683269)

> "I'd never work on something I'm not being paid for, I'm a serious professional that's irresponsible".

I can understand a false "expert" delusion, but have you literally heard someone say they'd never work on something unpaid because it's unprofessional?

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Re:Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income? by BadassFractal on Monday June 08, 2015 @08:07PM (#9683316)

That's a fair concern. Not "literally", that's why I specifically said "along the lines of".

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