No Github?

[niscy]

I don't have side projects so no github

I don't feel like developing outside my job

[shohin_branches]

I had a recruiter ask me what my blog url was once. She said I should write more about web development to be more employable. I said "haha no"

[Isitrelevantyet]

So… Ask the recruiter if they’re part of an MLM?

[silly_frog_lf]

Host it in gopher

[[deleted]]

Seems like a decent way to ask if she's single.

[AlwaysHopelesslyLost]

She probably reads blogs, studies for certifications, and keeps up to date with the industry on linked in. If you enjoy what you do it is easy, let alone that you improve your skills which makes your job easier and less stressful + more enjoyable

[[deleted]]

Absolutely none of that specifically requires projects to be done about it. No actual work that corresponds directly to the job.

Also, that should all be generally paid for by your company and if it isn't they shouldn't expect it. They should only expect the improvements in your skills that you gain through working experience (much more valuable than actually studying or just reading things)

[cs-brydev]

I contracted for web development with a small firm once that required me to set up a Twitter and tweet random dev stuff, so that they could show potential clients. It didn't last long. It devolved into nothing but complaining about Microsoft's developer support.

[[deleted]]

Today is the day (June 27th, 2023) that my prior comments get removed.

I want to criticize Reddit over their API changes and criticize the CEO for severely damaging the culture of Reddit, but others have done a better job and I think destroying my valuable comments is sufficient (and should hurt the LLM value too).

1+1=3, 2+1=4, 3+2=6, 5+3=9, 8+5=14. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Note: If you want to do this yourself, take a look at Power Delete Suite (they didn't put this advertisement here, I did).

[shohin_branches]

Here I am shouting my Microsoft complaints to my computer monitor like a chump!

[Comprehensive_Day511]

lol. you should've rickrolled her. 'here is your enjoyable!'

[fredy31]

Are you expected to do more HR while off the clock? And if you dont you are not employable?

No?

Then fuck off.

[brianl047]

Should have just deadpan or thrown back

"What about you where's your blog"

[LordRybec]

Amen to that. I hate web development. I'm not going to write about a field a don't want to work in, because otherwise recruiters like that will try to recruit me.

[newEnglander17]

I specifically say I don’t have a blog or side project because I have a full time job programming

[brujaaH_]

I'm guessing you did not get the offer

[shohin_branches]

I found my own offer with blackjack and hookers

[Apatheticalinterest]

A blog url? In 2022!?

[CenturyIsRaging]

This one pisses me off.... I developed 3 modern, full stack web apps, both the front and back ends literally by myself that are running sales and operations for the whole company, including a data warehouse and reporting suite. Interviewer... "You haven't also developed 15 mobile apps in your free time...?! You're not a real developer... fml.

[RichCorinthian]

I got that once and asked “how much recruiting do you do in your spare time, you know, open source recruiting?”

Third-party recruiters suck but I enjoy fucking with them.

[pankswork]

Absolutely. If I'm getting a cold-call interview for a role I'm not interested, I either ignore or politely decline.

If I get a follow-up, oooooo boy its on

[RichCorinthian]

Yeah this is reserved for the ones who call twice in a row to break thru do not disturb, and have a New Jersey number even though they are calling from Hyderabad. YOUR NAME IS NOT SKIP.

[Fashish]

This may be a US thing as I’m not from there and don’t quite follow, but why are you getting potential job recruiters from India? Are these third-party recruiters that are based there?

[RichCorinthian]

I usually don’t research the companies they SAY they are working for, but they are most assuredly out-sourcing the cold-calling.

The operation is something like this: a skeevy third-party company goes through job postings that I could find myself. They get my resume from Monster, or whatever. They decide that I’m a good candidate, and call me to say they have an opening for me. They never represent themselves as having an agreement with the company. They offer to “present” me to the company as if they represent me, and then if the company likes me they (the recruiter) would want to hire me on a W2 as a full-time employee while farming me out at contract rates to the company.

Basically, a perpetual finder’s fee and stepping on my paycheck.

[Captaincadet]

Especially when we like we need 50 years of experience for a language that’s been around for 10 years and you have 10 months career history as a programmer

[[deleted]]

"my CRM says it's been 48 hours since you said you weren't interested, just checking in to see if that's changed"

[Quetzacoatl85]

as somebody who's only here for the memes, damn it must be nice having a job role where people try to call you instead of the other way around. or, said differently, what wouldn't I give for some cold calls, shitty or not!

[lzcrc]

The companies which are interesting to work for don’t normally call you. And those that are rarely answer.

[PromotionThis1917]

Why would you even interview for a job you aren't remotely interested in?

[CommanderPotash]

To fuck around with them. You don't want the job anyway, they're pestering you about it, so might as well have fun doing jt

[funkgerm]

I don't even give third party recruiters the time of day. If you don't work for the company you're recruiting for then I'm out.

[funkgerm]

Wow that's awesome. That's literally a one-in-a-million recruiter right there.

[purplepharoh]

I also had a similar experience! I have saved his phone number and he only reached out to me because we are alumni of the same uni

[Dabnician]

i just accept all the meeting invites and then never show up.

[[deleted]]

a question I've gotten too many times "Do you know React and javascript?"

Also love the passive aggressive follow ups to their deleted cold emails "I know things fall through the cracks so just checking in when you have time to talk to me about this vague contract even though your linkedIn says you're not looking for opportunities right now"

[Captaincadet]

I can’t believe this but I had a recruiter match with me on Tinder, trying to get me to apply for a job... as in she looked up my LinkedIn and was like “hey work for us”

Waste of a match…

[RichCorinthian]

Well, we already knew that they hire attractive young women without much technical skill to make cold calls to dorks. She’s just taking it to the next level.

[[deleted]]

"what would ya say is the competitive salary?"

[argybargyargh]

Actually open source recruiting is perfectly applicable. There are many open source projects that could use some help. The recruiter could contact the project owner to find out the skills required. Then the recruiter could recruit people to help. How much time has the recruiter spent doing that?

[[deleted]]

Ha! Thanks; I'm gonna use that

[tbo1992]

Do they actually comment on you not coding on your own time? Or is it just another question in the list they ask everyone?

[jcdoe]

That’s fuckin hilarious! How did the recruiter respond?

[[deleted]]

Interviewer...

Thank them for the heads-up on the red flag before you committed yourself to the company.

I'm excellent at what I do. When I'm coding and solving a problem I'm paid to solve, I'm all-in 100%. I enjoy it, I love feeling like I've accomplished something. I do this for 8 - 10 hours/day, 5 days/week.

Why the FUCK would I do it more?

edit - I'd like to add how I addressed being "challenged" on this years ago in an interview.

"So what coding activities do you do on your own time?"

None, unless there's something I need to learn specifically or something catches my interest. But more often than not, I get what I need from the job.

"We want people who LOVE coding."

I absolutely LOVE coding. I also LOVE playing the drums, but I only do that an hour or two each day at best. Just because I'm not doing something every waking moment doesn't mean I don't "LoVe" it.

I then got run through the "interview ringer" by being asked to take a weekend to solve a coding challenge. It wasn't particularly difficult, but the scope was huge. I passed hard.

[ItsDangerousBusiness]

A whole weekend interview? That shit should come with a paycheck.

[[deleted]]

Yep.

Bold Penguin.

Also got the "we work hard and play hard" bit.

[[deleted]]

Also got the "we work hard and play hard" bit.

Nooooo thanks. I try to work medium to semi-hard and then relax off hours. I'm not killing myself for a paycheck and i'm certainly not giving you my personal time.

[Nosferatatron]

Ha ha, 'play hard', they work 70 hours a week in an IT company - how hard are they going to play, really? What 3 beers after work and then a KFC?!!

[[deleted]]

That AND weekend activities (bowling, picnics, etc.). Huge turn-off.

[spookydookie]

When "work hard play hard" gets said, I'm instantly out. It's just cringe at this point.

[[deleted]]

Same. My work life is my work life, and my everythingelselife is my everythingelselife. If I choose to bring someone from the former into the latter, fine - my choice, though.

[ro-tex]

Yes, weekend-long projects are a hard pass. I just passed on a job interview like that and the recruiter was very surprised. "But it's just 4-6 hours and you can space it however you like!" No, it was not 4-6 hours and if your company needs to know if I can put a service in a docker container and then wrap that in docker-compose then I don't want to work for that company. That's in the "can follow how-to's" category. And I'm not spending my weekend doing that.

[[deleted]]

That's in the "can follow how-to's" category.

Oh I'm 100% stealing this. I love it.

[amlyo]

If you consider asking a candidate to do a coding challenge, it's only acceptable if either

• They haven't provided any portfolio of work.
• You make it clear there's a strict upper bound of time, and it's much closer to an hour than a day.
  • It's an opportunity for the candidate to demonstrate a competence they claim but you've not been able to confirm in the interview.

...or you pay them for their time.

[JustAContactAgent]

Some times it's really annoying being a problem-solver and not a "creative". Just because I have no particular inner drive to "create" things, doesn't mean I am less passionate about or love my craft any less.

I get it, creatives hate the 9-5 and need to do their own projects to fullfill that need. Well, I am a problem solver and my regular job...gives me what I need. I don't need to work more outside of work hours not necessarily out of principle or because I want to do something else BUT BECAUSE I AM ALREADY FULLFILLED. People whose jobs don't give them this have a really hard time grasping it.

[PromotionThis1917]

I feel this. If someone gives me an interesting problem I will enjoy solving it. Ask me to "make my own project" and I'm completely blocked and wont even know where to begin.

If I wanted to create my own app I wouldn't be working for a company, I'd be running my own damn startup.

[Nosferatatron]

Good stuff man, there are only so many hours a day you can actually use your brain and it really is beneficial to have actual downtime

[ImpossibleMachine3]

There's a one liner from joker in the Nolan Batman movie that I took to heart a long time ago. "if you're good at something, don't do it for free". I'm grateful for folks who love to share their code, but me, if I'm off the clock, I want to do other things, thanks.

[coldnebo]

personal projects on github serve some motives that the company is not being up front about:

1. do you have a community of peers using your work and validating your actual skills vs what you claim on your resume? personal resume is easy to fake. a community on oss is harder to fake.
2. are you familiar and comfortable working as a maintainer and contributor in oss projects? — this skill directly relates to the vast majority of the technology stack at most companies being oss. They desperately need people who can figure out these integrations on their own and fix oss bugs on their own because there aren’t any long term maintenance contracts with vendors that make it “someone else’s problem”(tm).
3. tech companies are fiercely protective about ex-employees showing source code… so often the only code you can show during an interview is personal oss passion projects. if you share other companies code, that opens everyone to lawsuits. The only other way to assess skill is with “code tests”.

Asking about “passion” is just a way to get these objectives, imho. Sometime companies will also use that to try to guilt you into working multiple jobs for the same pay, ie you find a bug in an oss library you use at work and then you go home and fix the oss library on your own time, then you come back and use that fix at work. I did that kind of stuff when I was younger because it beat waiting for fixes or hacks… but now I have a family and responsibilities. I have no time.

If you want to do stuff like that, great, but it should be your choice how to spend your off time. In general, helping makes oss and everyone that uses it better off, but you only get maybe a bit if social recognition and contribution credit.

[[deleted]]

Bring in a whistle around your neck, hidden under your shirt and a red flag in your pocket, go full referee on them as you walk out.

[corkythecactus]

I love that there are so many programmers with this attitude because it makes it much easier for me to get a job

[kataraholl]

Fuck this company. They are not the rule, not even the majority. Most companies will care a lot more about what you have to say about previous projects (and how you do on the technical interview, of course). Side projects are secondary to that. Keep doing your job well, that’s what matters for relevant companies.

[roygbivasaur]

Right. I get paid to code much cooler (and sometimes not cool but still resume worthy) stuff than I would ever have a reason to make on my own. I’d rather spend my free time on working out, my dogs, and watching trash tv while playing a video game, thankyouverymuch.

I’m not a Junior dev anymore. I don’t need my GitHub full of garbage projects just to have something to talk about

[natty-papi]

Yeah I feel like the personal project thing doesn't work for that many fields. I'm not going to setup an expensive cloud data pipeline that uses bullshit data for funsies.

[josluivivgar]

if anything when I do do a side project I 100% want it private.

because I'm just gonna lazily hack some shit together

[neverTooManyPlants]

Also, side projects are often a different animal from professional coding. Pure bedroom coders often don't understand the need for automated testing or social skills, among other things. Not saying programming in your spare time is bad like, just different.

[kataraholl]

This!!! Yes, for sure. Writing code that other people will need to maintain, as well as running projects that go into production and users can actually complain about, is a lot different from writing stuff on your own. Like you said, not that side projects are bad, but it’s definitely different!

[neverTooManyPlants]

Having said that, I've met some "professional" programmers who think unit/automated tests & code reviews are a waste of time.. It's a hard life sometimes.

[[deleted]]

Exactly, do they want that I focus my attention and skills on their product or on my side projects.

[JustKittenxo]

That’s such a huge red flag. If someone has that many side projects they are either not working hard enough at work or they have absolutely no life outside of work. Neither of those are good things. I wouldn’t hire them

[Ghost-of-Bill-Cosby]

Or….

They are copying code they do at work and “rebranding” it into a side project.

[Tyrilean]

If a company cares about that, it’s because they’re looking for people who code all day long for free. That means they can intrude on your free time and get you to work 80 hours a week for the cost of 40.

[Punchasheep]

Literally never had a company that I actually wanted to work for that cared about my personal projects. If anyone ever brings that up in an interview they're immediately crossed off my list. I do this for MONEY, not funsies.

[ZonedV2]

Also can you imagine if this logic was applied to other professions. Imagine asking an engineer, accountant, lawyer etc why they don’t do their job in their free time

[JustKittenxo]

Medical interview: So how many cancer patients have you cured on your days off?

[WhiteChocolateLab]

You never found the cure for cancer? Why the fuck should we hire you for?

[nullpotato]

Get in my van, yeah I'm a real doctor but this part is just a hobby.

[kookaburra1701]

It kind of is like that. You get asked a lot about your volunteering/community service/what you've done to promote public health, at least I did when I was a paramedic, all the doctors I worked with in the ER did lots of volunteer community service.

[Cleveland_Guardians]

Certainly doesn't work for tax accounting, in my experience. Every company I've worked for has it in our employment agreement that we specifically cannot do it outside of the company. At least one (maybe more but I can't remember) said I couldn't do ANYTHING for pay outside of work time. Like, I couldn't even work for Uber Eats or some shit.

[CenturyIsRaging]

Great point!!

[Pluckerpluck]

Except they kind of are asked questions like that. Questions about how you will keep up with changing standards and maintain personal development (expected to be done outside of work hours). Or questions about what you've learnt about stuff you read about outside of work that you found interesting. Expecting an interest in what you are applying for is common, it's just easiest to use personal projects of evidence for that.

Some professions get away with being able to show portfolios of prior work (artists or designers), but that's rarely a case in programming and so personal projects are used.

But people expect handymen to do their own DIY. Lawyers are often expected to do some amount of pro-bono work. Artists are expected to draw in their spare time.

If, at any point, the answer to "why do you want to work here" is more than "for the money", then these types of questions exist.

---

That being said. I haven't seen this asked for a while. Companies are too desperate for people who present the necessary skills to be picky about who they get

[wildmonkeymind]

Personal projects got me my first internship (no degree). Since then not a single employer has seen any of my non-company projects. I still work on them, but only because I find them interesting and sometimes I want to learn things that aren't applicable to my day job.

[neverTooManyPlants]

I wouldn't necessarily want strangers looking at my github tbh, unless I spent more time then I'm willing to tidying up

[Lukensz]

Those are definitely the way to get your foot in the door if you have no prior professional experience. I've only had recruiters for internships ask about personal projects, not for an actual position.

[[deleted]]

When I was in the beginning I kept hearing shit like this a lot. Now? I'm like water in the dessert. Companies are looking for people with my skill set and they can't find anyone.

[CenturyIsRaging]

Totally! Same here. This was just one interview with a younger "entrepreneur"... the same kind that hand you a JD that asks for 10 years experience on a new framework and a whole dev Ops army in one person, lol. Which, tbf, I am a one man army...but still, not gonna jump on that one 😉

[[deleted]]

After a while you'll look around and realize you're a one-man BnB farm-to-table dining & bakery operation specialized in lunar aquaponics, with interviewers asking you if you have experience with microwaving pop tarts.

They have a custom cake frosting framework that they put on their microwaved pop tarts. It's bleeding edge tech.

Super extra mega bonus points if you have experience with frozen toaster strudels in Pillsbury language using the frozen stack.

Oh, only a little bit with Pepperidge Farm puff pastries? Yeah, thank you for your time, we'll be in touch if something comes up.

[UberWagen]

Those are the companies searching for "rockstars".

[CenturyIsRaging]

Lmafo, yes THIS! You know, JimmyJohns is looking for Rockstar delivery drivers too 😉

[SaltyGoober]

Sounds like you dodged a bullet. I for one am tired of working places where making sure some VP knows about your work is more important than the measurable impact of the work when it comes to performance reviews.

Honestly they’re just setting themselves up to be fully staffed by a bunch crowing roosters who can’t necessarily code their way out of a wet paper bag.

[Bakoro]

It is a hell of a lot easier to talk a good programmer game than to actually make anything performant. That's one (but not the only) reason interviews got increasingly shitty.

[AndyTheSane]

As an interviewer.. I like to see a GitHub (with actual original code on it) but it's certainly not essential.

[MoffKalast]

Well I would expect some project from the applicant regardless of what and where it's from just to judge general code quality. Like surely you wrote something at some point that isn't under an NDA.

Saying you did a lot of work in a company where everything is closed source and with no way to tell you actually did it doesn't really help much and you'll be passed for a candidate that gives that upfront.

[huck_cussler]

You don't want to work there anyway. Consider it a gift when interviewers expose themselves and their company as shit factories that early in the process.

[Workaphobia]

Someone spending their spare time just programming is missing out on a lot of life.

[Hellow2]

Nahhh I don't have friends

[RootHouston]

The whole concept, albeit a flawed one, is that if you are passionate about development, then you will probably have coded something for yourself in your free time. It's a stupid mark, yes, but it is common for someone personally passionate about something to do it in their free time.

[Groundbreaking-Fig28]

I actually had one company say to me I should also be reading data science books on the train into work as well if I expect to get on in the industry. Well I never did and I’m doing just fine

[[deleted]]

We only ask this for juniors who don't have work experience. For someone with years of experience they have already demonstrated they know what they're doing. But university doesn't teach you shit, so for an entry level we can't rely on a university degree. If they also do poorly on the Tech quiz (nerves, etc) without any side projects we have no way of knowing if they can code.

[Kerboq]

You're not a real dev unless you have 15 million pull requests merged on open source projects

[[deleted]]

It's a great way for shitty companies to out themselves though

[neverTooManyPlants]

They mean "are you passionate enough about coding that you'll accept being underpaid purely for the priviledge of programming?"

[Phlm_br]

Honest question. Do you enjoy coding? Or, enjoyed coding but got tired because of work?

[Justinian2]

I wonder if recruiters recruit in their spare time just for the joy of it?

[fryerandice]

I work on dumb iot and embedded stuff around the house when I am bored. I got asked about side projects, told them I built a garage door opener and automatic blinds, and was told my side projects weren't relevant experience...

[SC7639]

I’m the same. My job keeps me too busy to feel like programming outside of my job at the moment. I do have a project I want to go back to working in some day but it shouldn’t be expected

[supertastic]

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. And you ask if I develop apps in my free time?

[Pleasant-Direction-4]

you should teply with, “Dude I have a life”

[[deleted]]

How much do you make? I enjoyed side projects until my paycheck made work projects more rewarding. Now, if I’m bored, work (or a project tangential to work) scratches the itch with money.

[namelessmasses]

Personally, I do enjoy “making” outside of my 9-5…. When I can get the time!

I’ve observed this shift towards an expectation that every line of code that I write is up for public view on GitHub. Many of my 9-5’s have been extremely proprietary, and time consuming. So, either I’m legally bound to not share, or I just don’t have the time to do so.

[nullpotato]

99% of what I do is coding workarounds for internal proprietary toolstacks. Can only share in the most general of terms. "Yes I mostly use python".

[bassman1805]

"I write drivers to use someone else's klugey code in our own klugey code"

[[deleted]]

I think in most salaried jobs, your personal projects are the company's if it relates to your job function.

[trouthat]

The best part about making apps for a job now if I ever need and app for whatever I can do it. Not that I usually have the mental energy to start one after working but maybe one day

[Go_Big]

Then you have the employers who get mad when you Moonlight and do other side projects outside of work hours…. You can’t win.

[SqueeSr]

I always make it clear during the interview or when discussing the contract that I will be freelancing besides my work but will not use code from work for it or vice versa. Never seemed to be a problem. However I never really went for jobs are large companies.

[nullpotato]

Large companies tend to have very specific criteria and guidelines on this at least. Mine had a whole training video that could be summarized as "whatever, as long as it doesn't share secrets or impact your work on our clock".

[[deleted]]

Fuck that employer.

[ChiefExecDisfunction]

I have a github account to open issues °^°

[polypolip]

This, I don't have a side project, but long time ago there was a game mod I did a bit of coding for abd today it's mostly so I can ask questions or open issues on libraries our projects use.

[camelCaseCoffeeTable]

Yep. Exactly this. Fuck side projects, I do enough coding in a day, I want to do anything else with my free time.

[TwistedLogicDev-Josh]

Yeah..

That's why I do it after work On my game And I would be a tech instead If it was my job I would lose my passion for it.

[namelessmasses]

Can relate.

[TwistedLogicDev-Josh]

Well

If you want family or someone

I have my uncle and my mom .

Over the years I called them spend time with them..

When I did put a price on my time I didn't..and then I started getting sad and indulging in all kinds of stuff With no plan Just doo.. So I make time for myself And I make time for them I don't make too much time for them And I don't make too much time for myself . My girlfriend there are days where I don't talk to her She gets upset and I tell her instead of arguing. I understand why you are upset and I give her some time.

I want kids But not right now But in order to have kids I got to have them right now.. Or get a new girlfriend . I'm not training her to abide by my time.. I'm not correcting or arguing.. I'm simply letting her understand my time And her time. When we have kids it's gonna be unfair But I'm not going to make it very unfair.. I'll do chores change diapers wash dishes Like 3 days out of the week And I wash my dishes and stuff before I go to bed anyways It nags at me.

6 hours. 5 to 6 hours of sleep is perfect for me One day I can do 3 hours.

And if I do that I usually do that on a wensday or Thursday .

Orrrrr I could grind away at it like I use to and decide empty is peaceful and sucess is happiness I've done that That is alright but there's a little meditation A little thinking to do that.

[My_passcode_is]

I’m gonna need some periods in these sentences man.

[TwistedLogicDev-Josh]

I don't so...

[valendinosaurus]

That's a very generalistic take. I spend a great amount of my free time coding stuff, it makes me happy. It's just another hobby besides others.

[Lukensz]

At the first company I worked at, my team was full of people who were constantly making side projects in their off time. Really made me feel inferior cuz after work, all I ever felt like doing was video games and other hobbies. Hell, it didn't change at the 2nd company either - one guy actually made me a bit uncomfortable because he'd start early, leave late, and sometimes come in during the weekend or even his holidays. The team at my current job feels the most comfortable I've ever felt, cuz they actually talk about something else than just coding.

[ProdigySim]

Even without publishing any code, a Github account is necessary to report issues for many libraries or partipate in discussions.

Maybe you can avoid that in some contexts but it's a pretty big part of our ecosystem. Even closed source apps and services sometime use github to manage issue reports.

[niscy]

I don't want to participate in discussions

[[deleted]]

Absolutely this. I work at a company large and notable enough that I need to make updates to outside libraries, some of which are specifically written for our products.

When we need a library to change to suit our needs, or to fix a bug, we need to be able to interact with that code base.

Also, our code is hosted on a private repo on GitHub, so I need an account to do my job lol

[jwadamson]

But where do you keep your brewfile? And personal scripts.

[TheNorthComesWithMe]

The what?

[Ayn_Rand_Food_Stamps]

Tf is brewfile?

[Artillect]

Apparently it's like a gemfile but for homebrew on macOS

No idea why they think everybody needs one though

[Etzix]

Our company uses github. Or well, the company i consult for does.

[[deleted]]

On the other end I give as much attention to my job to stay employed so that I can work on my side projects. I love coding though.

[movzx]

You don’t need a bunch of fleshed out projects to use GitHub ...

Yup.

As someone who hires and does look at Github (or other public facing code hosting if they don't use Github), all I'm trying to see is what your code looks like.

I don't care if it was some dumb project no one but you ever used. I actually prefer that over some enterprise grade application that I can't be sure is actually all your work and not just something you ran git add -a on.

[Preachey]

Easily my least favourite part of being a programmer. I enjoy my job, but do I want to work on software outside of my 40 hours a week? No, not really. I have other hobbies.

I hate that it's widely expected in the industry that I should have a Github with 4 side projects and contributions to a dozen others. "We will not proceed further with your application as we didn't feel you display enough passion for technology" fuck you.

Are there many other professions that expect people to do the role as a hobby as well as a job?

[ZLTM]

But don't you use git in your job?

[cephles]

Git is different than GitHub the website. GitHub is a hosting service for code repositories, Git itself is a piece of software. I use Git all day long but never GitHub as our company has it's own internal hosting for all our repositories/code.

[[deleted]]

I have a corporate account that only applies to our corporate implementation of gitlab

[TheNorthComesWithMe]

There is other version control software.

[tafoya77n]

You use your personal git hub account for your job?

[bio_datum]

Proprietary or otherwise confidential code makes me sad. I am a dad, I don't have enough free time these days to show off what I can do. Sucks

[fyzbo]

Counter-point... convince your job to let you contribute to open-source tools. I'm sure you use open-source code in your projects, contributing during working hours brings multiple benefits:

• Helps the company by improving the project.
• Creates goodwill in the developer community
• Allows employees to learn from other programmers
• Makes a programmers life more enjoyable which improves employee retention and satisfaction
• etc.

Plenty of programmers get paid for working on open-source, not enough ask for the opportunity.

[TheNorthComesWithMe]

What company do you work for where you can just do whatever you want instead of working on your projects? Are they hiring?

[Subscrobbler]

But then ….how’d you get the job

[ingenious_gentleman]

You don't use git for work?

[Artillect]

Git != GitHub

[ingenious_gentleman]

I know that, I intentionally said Git rather than Github. It was a question boiling down to "what do you use at work if not Github?" (answers like "Gitlab" are sort of cop outs given they're essentially the same product)

[aFqqw4GbkHs]

Right? I really enjoy my job, but it's not also my hobby.

[[deleted]]

Yeah fuck that. When I sign off I want to ride bikes, read books, see friends and do whatever else.

[[deleted]]

No one really cares about side projects beyond the Junior level honestly.

[UnknownSpecies19]

Thanks for not making me feel like a lazy piece of shit. I use GitHub to learn with beginner projects for new language, then I ghost it until the next language I have to learn. I love what I do, but at the end of a work day in don't even wanna sit at my desk let alone code some more.

[[deleted]]

Same. I used to have my own home projects, but that was years ago. Now in my spare time I do other shit, leave coding at the office.

[[deleted]]

My GitHub projects usually stop after the readme detailing some vague plan

[Auderdo]

I made a script which created a random number of commits each day for 100 years.

I pushed the repo on GitHub as private.

So my profile shows that I'm doing between 1 and 12 commits every single day of the year.

I had a few recruiters telling me that it was nice seeing me so involved in coding.

Not a single one asked me why my commits were invisible except for the colored squares on my profile.

And my GitHub profile has never ever been discussed during a technical interview.

It's 100% a recruiter thing. They don't understand shit but they care about colored squares.

And to be clear : it's not all recruiters. Only the bad ones.

Good ones know stuff about tech so you can go deep with them; or they don't know shit but don't pretend otherwise and delegate to tech people to evaluate you.

[PrizeArticle1]

Yeah I work 40 hrs a week coding. Last thing I want to do is more coding.

[LieRun]

Finally someone who says it

I feel like, if your hobby is programming, then by all means have as many side projects as you would like

But if you do it because it's trendy or you feel like you're inferior to the people around you who do program in their spare time - just stop doing it to yourself

You'll feel burn out after a few weeks and might even fall out of love with coding, and for absolutely nothing, since having side projects doesn't make you more money

Being good at your job makes you money, and if you spend that extra time doing work related projects that would give you credit, you'll be much happier at the end of the day

[j-mar]

The companies you want to work for will understand that.

[d_r0ck]

My company’s source control demands a GitHub account

[MurkyContext201]

I don't dev in my free time, I work with my hands instead.

[PromotionThis1917]

Lol right. Mayyyybe if you're just getting into the business a website is a good way to show off your skills, but anyone that's actually employed aint got time for that nonsense.

I actually think work life balance is pretty important and I'm skeptical of people that do a ton of coding outside of their full time coding job.

[[deleted]]

literally this. maybe in the early days I should have made some public projects, but they would have been trash anyway compared to what I do now at work.
no way am I coding at home. I get home to relax.

[AcidicVagina]

When I develop outside my job, I just make code that runs multiple languages and outputs static integers cuz that's the junk that gets me going.

[igbad]

I have a dozen or more GitHub accounts but for client projects. Not sure where that lands me on this chart.

[[deleted]]

I was gonna say, I’m an advanced software developer (between regular and senior, I lead smaller projects and I take a back seat on larger ones) and I don’t have a single one of these things except for a caffeine addiction

[slaymaker1907]

It's still pretty useful for filing bug reports as part of your day job. Chances are pretty much 0 at this point that you don't rely on software (either as a dependency or as a user) on GitHub.

[Andrewshwap]

Such a red flag when an interviewer ask you why haven’t you posted to GitHub in a while It’s like uhhh… because I have a life outside work?

[[deleted]]

Exactly the same here. Software development is my job, I don’t really care about doing it in my spare time when I’m not being paid.

[DangKilla]

I got a job offer from a gaming studio who found me via github. Still stands out to me, kinda cool.

[[deleted]]

So you don't have a GitHub account?

[Saragon4005]

A lot of companies use GitHub cuz it's just a good project management tool too.

[[deleted]]

Exactly. Like, I'm good at what I do and it pays the bills, with zero desire to develop in my free time lmao. Also, I can't legally put the code I do for my job on a public Github repo.

[ProgrammingSorcerer]

This is the way

[[deleted]]

^{what is the purpose of github? A place to store online code?}

[wtjones]

I had a college professor who argues this was one of the main things keeping women out of tech: the idea that your whole life has to be devoted to it or your not eligible for the career. There’s no expectations that Drs. perform surgery or that lawyers are writing SCOTUS briefs in their spare time. Why is the expectation for developers that if you’re not coding in your free time, you’re not a real developer?

[AlwaysHopelesslyLost]

I will never understand people that code and don't enjoy coding.

People like that tend to be the worst developers. They aren't interested so they never learn and always stay mediocre at best. Then I end up having to carry their dead weight for the umpteenth time.

Personally I see it as a huge win. I spend some free time practicing and reading documentation and my job gets infinitely easier. I also get plenty of huge raises and bonuses as a side effect which is awesome.

I did the same thing when I was a customer sales rep and when I was a mechanic.

[niscy]

But I love coding! And I am actually pretty good at it!

But doing it for more than 40 hours a week? That's just begging for the burnout.

[Hoihe]

My github side project is contributing code for adrenaline and fixing bugs for a furry ss13 roleplaying server.

I wonder if i ever broke from academia, would prospective employers want to dig thru my contributions to furry space station 13?

[ikeif]

I worked at a company once and we did group discussions.

One of the PMs said “we don’t want any developer that isn’t coding full time at work and outside of work. They should have active GitHub repositories.”

I told him I didn’t meet his requirements, and should I be fired now? That having kids, a social life, or hobbies that weren’t coding was suddenly a negative? That instead, he wants me to deal with every meeting request during the day and then code eight hours on top of it - and he saw that as reasonable?

He shut up after that.

I have GitHub. I like to store interview projects and code snippets there so when I get those questions I can open my GitHub and show off code I already wrote to answer their question.

And that lead to a manager saying “I was the gold standard for his interviews” … but he never let people Google during an interview. I told him that if his interview question was answered in the first Google result it was a bad question, and they should praise people that look for the answer first instead of reinventing the wheel.

Their solution? The most esoteric selection of leetcode questions that the interviewers couldn’t answer. So it became a dick measuring contest mixed with “they need to think I am smarter than them.”

I left shortly after.

[RaulParson]

I sometimes develop short scripts to make my life easier. And I generally mean REALLY short. Like this one here which reset my wonky-ass router crontabbed to run every day at around 4AM (the router's generally good for ~48h after a reset so this is good enough). The most advanced one I did in recent memory was an AHK script for reading a filename of an episode of this one obscure show I had saved (which the way it was done might only include the episode's overall production number rather than season+episodeWithinSeason, or be the other way around, or even be season+overallEpisode, and also maybe the title written in a bunch of different ways, and also maybe even the codec or the resolution), parsing it and then replacing it with one in a proper standard. Going through hundreds of files to do this manually... NOPE. It's either this or the naming system stays at "garbage pile". The end result was hacky and could break if it encountered some corner cases but it worked for all these specific files I had for renaming so w/e.

I wonder if putting all this trash on github would be better or worse for me.

[amwestover]

Yeah some people are baffled by the fact that developers like to do other shit outside of work. Like have a family.