
Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects? - triketora
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/08/20/are-you-a-bad-developer-if-you-dont-take-on-side-projects/
======
jobu
My kids are my side projects. I used to be worried about how they affected my
career, but three years ago a bicycle accident put me in the hospital for a
week and I completely reevaluated my life. It's a little sad (and a bit of a
cliché) that it took nearly dying to realize their importance, but now I just
smile and think about my kids when someone talks about their amazing project.

~~~
3pt14159
When I was a kid (6 to 10 years old) my mom helped me program computers
(QBASIC games and attempts at C++, haha). :) Some people get to have it all.

~~~
austinz
As a kid, my mom helped me do simple chemistry experiments and build
electromagnets. I still ended up as a software developer, though.

------
3pt14159
You will make more money if you have an active github account. For most people
this means side projects/work.

You will be a better developer if you code more. You will be exposed to more
languages, tools, people, and ideas.

If you don't code in your spare time, but you are happy where you are, don't
feel like you are a bad developer, you just will not be as good at development
as you could be. It is your life, why does it matter if you prefer to paint
paintings at night instead of code? If you don't need to maximize your future
revenue, don't feel bad.

If you want to be a better developer more than anything, then you should code.
If something is stopping you from doing that, remove the blocker.

Personally, I don't hire anyone if I can't see code samples. 95% of the people
I hire have their code samples on Github (not in a .zip file). So make sure
you have some code samples available, but it doesn't have to be a side project
or open source work.

~~~
zecho
I hear this quite often about Github and it's a bit disturbing to me. If I
heard an editor judge an author's work based on what that author posts to
twitter, I'd be horrified.

I can't be the only person on Github that uses it primarily as a junk drawer
full of bad implementations and abandoned "projects" that were more quick and
dirty personal itches. Sometimes I'll contribute to random OSS, but the vast
majority of GH for me is just a place to store random ideas, many of which
were just toying around with some new tool or whatever and would never see the
light of day in production without given much more thought.

Honestly, if you want to see code samples, you're probably better off watching
the person work through a problem. Give prospective hires a project. Whether
its as simple as fizzbuzz or as difficult as a trial week is up to you, I
suppose.

~~~
nukerhazz
This is why I use Bitbucket, with its unlimited private repos, for that junk
drawer. I can keep my throwaways and false starts private.

~~~
hardwaresofton
Very true - I use Assembla!

------
jt2190
From the Quora answer [1]:

    
    
      > I do attend (and give) technical talks; and perhaps most
      > importantly, I pick my day job based on learning and 
      > growth opportunities: which company I’m working at, which 
      > team I’m on, and which projects I take on. I stumbled 
      > onto this a little bit by accident, but I discovered that 
      > responsibilities in your day job that require you to 
      > learn are a great forcing function for learning.
    

I think that this is the nuance of the article that the headline simplifies
away. I think we often look for side-projects because they are an indicator of
ongoing learning and they demonstrate expertise. They are by no means the
_only_ way to show these things to a prospective employer. Giving
presentations, writing articles, being able to discuss industry trends
intelligently... All of these things count too.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Software-Engineering/Are-you-a-bad-
dev...](https://www.quora.com/Software-Engineering/Are-you-a-bad-developer-if-
you-dont-take-on-side-projects)

~~~
codezero
If you add ?share=1 to the end of the Quora URL, folks daring enough to follow
the link won't get any sign-up call to action.

~~~
davidcuddeback
That sounds like the sort of thing that could get someone in hot water under
the CFAA these days.

~~~
codezero
It could if it weren't added explicitly for people to use in the way
described: [https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-
Better?share=1](https://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better?share=1)

~~~
davidcuddeback
Ah. I didn't know that. Thanks.

------
a-priori
I'm a developer who does take on side projects. I have two on the go right
now, plus I'm the technical reviewer for an upcoming book. Yet, I agree with
this entirely. I think it's silly to expect a "good" developer to code in
their spare time, just like it would be silly to expect any other occupation
to do so.

Instead, it should be like a carpenter that does their own home renovations,
or an accountant who uses double-entry book-keeping for their personal
finances: they're using their work skills in their personal lives. That's like
a developer who makes up a tool to keep track of errands in their house, for
example.

Or, it should be like a technical writer or copy writer who writes short
stories in their spare time. That's like an application developer who writes
games in their spare time.

In none of these cases would you think that an carpenter who hires
professionals or an accountant who just does normal budgeting and so on or a
writer who writes only at work must be _bad at their jobs_. Why should it be
any different with programming?

------
Matt_Mickiewicz
Clearly, the answer is no.

BUT, and this is a big BUT, having multiple personal projects does make you
much more marketable to potential employers.

If you don't have a well known University or a well known company on your
resume, having a stack of personal projects that show you're constantly
learning, that you're passionate about the programming and that you love what
you do can mean the difference between getting a request to interview at a
start-up vs. getting put in the "pass" pile of resumes/profiles that internal
recruiters have to look at.

This especially holds true if you work at a large, enterpris-ey company (IBM,
VMWare, Goldman, Delloite, etc.) and want to attract the attention of, and get
a job at, a venture funded start-up based on our experience at
DeveloperAuction.

~~~
johnward
I work at a large enteprisey corp (one that you listed actually) and I'm
trying to break out. I find what you say to be true. You don't necessarily
have to do side work but employers basically require it to hire you. Maybe
it's not required but if it's you against someone with an awesome github
profile you aren't getting the job.

In my case I'm trying to get out of a consultant role and more into a
development role. Said company forbids me to share things I have done
internally. My only option is to start doing side projects. I understand that
an employer needs a way to make sure you can do what you say you can do. The
only choice I have right now is to sacrifice my personal life to develop some
projects I can share, look for another consulting role (which I don't want),
or suck it up. The problem is the longer I stay the more out of touch I become
with the development world. It's like a big trap.

------
trustfundbaby
I think it does the profession a great disservice to present these things as
mutually exclusive ie "If I don't do side projects, I am a bad developer". For
me I like to think of things in a different light.

What I find with side project developers is a certain self-directedness that
bodes well for the kind of employees that can thrive in a pure startup
environment. The kind of thinking it takes to go ...

"I have this problem, Heck, I'm going to hack something together that does
what I need"

or

"this open source tool I use is missing this one feature, I'll just code it
and send in a pull request"

Then actually take time out of your life to code it up and put it out for use
and, even better still, maintain it over a period of time.

That tells me that such a person will have no trouble figuring out what they
need to do if they go to work for a startup that they're passionate about. It
tells me that they'll usually be the kind of people to drive initiatives at
bigger firms if they don't lose patience with the politicking, red tape and
glacial pace of things.

Now, this DOES NOT mean that developers who don't do side projects won't
possess these traits as well. Its just that the signal is clearer with the
side project types. In the end you still have to go ahead and find out if
they're actually good engineers before you hire them

------
Jgrubb
Is Forbes really scraping content from Quora and presenting it as an article?

~~~
eterm
This struck me also. I initially thought "blimey, does HN provide them so much
traffic that they're linkbaiting them now", but taking Quora content and
repackaging it is just even lower.

It particularly struck me that HN very recently had an article that kicked off
this exact debate.

What a sad state of affairs, although the full advert splash and the junky
"similar" articles give that impression too.

~~~
epoxyhockey
Forbes has been linkbaiting HN for at least 73 days (the time when I first
cared to comment about it).

Our clicks are providing positive reinforcement for Forbes' blogspam and I'm
surprised that HN hasn't banned forbes.com yet.

------
iyulaev
Are you a bad artist if you don't paint on your own time?

Are you a bad writer if you don't write on your own time?

Are you a bad carpenter if you don't craft on your own time?

No. You can be an excellent, professional .+\\. But it's very rare to see
someone at the top of their field who isn't _passionate_ about their vocation.
I haven't heard of many rockstars who started playing music for the money.

~~~
lmartel
Well the thing about art, music, and writing is that, at least until you make
it big (which most people never do) you're doing it _only_ on your own time,
since no one's paying you.

Software's in this weird spot where it has some qualities of art (creative,
inspires "passion", we expect people to do it without getting paid) and some
qualities of a craft (it pays)

~~~
iyulaev
School doesn't pay for itself (quite the opposite, really). Learning on your
own time certainly doesn't pay for itself. You're right in that a larger
proportion of programmers "make it big" but I don't believe there's a
fundamental difference.

------
willismichael
Are you a good developer if you do take on side projects? I think the answer
to both questions is "not necessarily".

The big problem that I see with questions like these is that it presents a
false dichotomy of "bad" vs. "good" developers. Not only is this a false
dichotomy, but skills aren't even one dimensional, so even considering them as
falling on a spectrum is wrong.

I'm certain that there exists some task that would take me 10 hours that would
take my co-worker 1 hour, but there also exists some task that would take him
10 hours and only take my 1 hour.

------
shubb
People should spend their time doing things they like. I don't think people
should feel bad, or like they lack balance because they enjoy programming side
projects. People should do them because they enjoy them. (Like exercise,
people who don't, usually only mean to do them. And that's fine).

They are important in a careers way though. Not so much because 'you need code
samples' \- there is a skills shortage you know. It's more that at large
companies, you learn to be a Facebook Programmer, rather than a programmer.
Goldman Sacs apparently have their own private programming language.

Side projects let you do things that are not your job. That is why they are
fun (rather than more of the same). Some places, programmers never get to
decide what they build (they get a list of features). Some programmers are
'test engineers', or maintenance engineers, and never write greenfield code. A
lone inhouse programmer in a non IT company might enjoy working on opensource
stuff and actually talking to someone about what they write.

And you do need that. I've work with plenty of C++ people who have never
touched a dynamically typed language. One day they will need to - the world
always moves on faster than your team.

------
at-fates-hands
When I first got into development, I was urged to do side projects because I
could make more money and because people thought I would learn a lot. After a
two years, I really didn't learn a lot and ended up dealing with customers who
were overzealous and pushed me around to get more out of me then what they
were paying me for (virtually peanuts).

After a while, I figured I would take a year off and not do any side projects
and focus on building my skills. I built more stuff in that year then I ever
could being shackled to something which I would never learn much from.

I never looked back after that first year. I continue to learn faster and pick
frameworks, techniques and languages far faster than I ever imagined.

What's the downside?

\- Maybe not putting a few thousand tax free American dollars back in my
pocket.

What's the upside?

\- Spending more time with my family since I can learn on my own time and at
my own pace without any deadlines looming.

\- Learning things that are interesting to me.

\- Building things I think are cool - not what somebody else thinks they want.
Like having Comic Sans in their company logo.

\- Staying on the cutting edge of my industry without falling behind.

------
janeglendale
One side effect of this is people feeling like the _have_ to work on a side
project. People who otherwise would be happy working for their company find
themselves spending hours and hours on something on the side.

This cuts into hours that could be used for work or family or fun, and
probably won't succeed because their heart isn't actually in it.

~~~
CmonDev
An addition to other recent unfortunate trends: older devs not getting jobs,
apps costing 99 cents.

------
twotwotwo
No. At a different level from the other "no"s.

You are a good developer if you make stuff that helps people. Not if you have
an impressive résumé, not if you make a lot of money. Not even if your stuff
is really technically impressive or shows off IQ or promise.

Really, that's important. There's a lot on this site about being the
cleverest, the fastest, knowing more comp sci than the next person or handling
trickier interviews or proving there's something wrong with some other
ecosystem, program, language, etc. Sometimes I'm not sure everyone feels they
have a job to do that can improve people's lives.

Whether sideprojects can sometimes help you reach career goals is a more
appropriate question. For applicants I think there's an initial threshold of
whether they can ship nontrivial stuff. They can demonstrate it with their
past jobs or by actually building stuff. A sideproject could certainly help
you get hired if you have no experience and the credentials aren't getting you
there; it might be smart to do if you're having trouble finding right work out
of college, say. Likewise, it might help you show you have potential in a
radically different specialty that your past experience has no bearing on
(e.g., you used to write Ruby on Rails but want start to writing code for
microcontrollers).

And if someone has unrealistic expectations about how much of a rockstar you
need to be, maybe you don't want to work for them. If a potential employer
wants you to have a github account that shows you spend all weekend every
weekend hacking, maybe you dodged a bullet when they didn't hire you.

I say this having just taken a bunch of time to build a side project. It was
fun and stuff (building from scratch instead of tweaking a giant codebase!
learning golang! making things go fast!) but there's no possibility in my mind
it makes me "better" or I'd be "bad" had I not done it.

------
MartinCron
I have found that I don't have the energy to take on paid side projects and
still be my best-and-brightest for my primary employer. I still do small
things on my own, but I just don't have what it takes to moonlight for money
without being a zombie the next day.

I envy others their limitless energy.

------
7Figures2Commas
> Side projects are not necessarily a great way to get better at engineering,
> and by no means the only way to get better. If you take on a side project,
> you do go through the process of defining a product and coding it up, most
> likely full-stack and hopefully with some interesting technologies, but
> you’re probably not going to be working with a lot of teammates on a large,
> complicated codebase with evolving and expanding product requirements and
> scaling it up and maintaining it over time, which ends up being a lot of
> what software engineering actually is.

Notwithstanding the fact that working "with a lot of teammates on a large,
complicated codebase with evolving and expanding product requirements and
scaling it up and maintaining it over time" is not necessarily what "software
engineering" entails (or should entail) at _every_ company, I actually think
this is why a lot of developers take on side projects: being able to design
and build something of one's own using the technologies of one's own choosing
can be a lot more satisfying than refactoring code and putting out fires for
8+ hours every day.

Obviously, developers who are adequately stimulated and satisfied by their day
jobs probably have less incentive to indulge in side projects, and there's
nothing wrong with that, but most people in the industry know that engineering
jobs, even at the hottest or most prestigious companies, often leave something
to be desired.

------
brianmcc
Can't believe we're still discussing this.

Are there great developers who just code 9 - 5? Yes. Are there great
developers who code in their own time? Yes. Are there terrible developers who
just code 9 - 5? Yes. Are there terrible developers who code in their own
time? Yes.

Doing stuff in one's own time - or not - isn't any substantive determinant and
we shouldn't try to make it so.

------
brandon_wirtz
If this is the case then every developer working at a 12 hour a day Start up,
Google, Microsoft, and Facebook (who all are anti-moonlighting) are bad
developers.

I don't have side projects. My one main project is all consuming enough that
side projects would be distractions. The only distractions I can afford are
enough to keep my live/work balance so I don't burn out.

------
nonchalance
I encounter a massive ad every time I read a forbes article. At this point,
I'm convinced forbes.com is blogspam

------
lrobb
The fact that this is even a question at all, let alone one that could make it
on to forbes, is symptomatic of the tech industry being a giant echo chamber.
Are you a bad [lawyer | accountant | civil engineer | doctor | musician] if
you don't take on side projects?

------
chunky1994
I would say that the reason people tend to look for developers who work on
side projects etc. tend to generally be good developers, while those who don't
can go either way.

It's hard to know whether a developer is good or bad with only a
resume/interview. If you're looking for smart motivated people, the ones who
tend to work on side projects etc. can actually show you stuff they've built,
and generally you can get a good idea as to how/if they'd fit in with your
company/start-up.

While this doesn't mean developers who don't take on side projects are bad,
it's just hard to identify whether they are in fact good or bad.

------
jmspring
You should do something you enjoy in your spare time, if that is a side
project, so be it. Some people do maker type things, others spend time with
their families, for myself it is biking and gardening.

When I have had to interview people, there is the technical abilities that are
pretty easy to get through. What I prefer, when trying to find out something
about the person, is to have them talk about a passion or something they
enjoy. For some, that is coding, for others something else.

------
sinkasapa
Most of what I do is a side project to my central tasks of eating, shitting
and attempting to reproduce (or at least tricking my body into believing I'm
making the attempt). I really feel like these side projects of reading,
thinking and exploring are very important to my reason for existing. I could
have finished with the real imperatives when I was 13.

------
anonymoushn
Forbes is republishing experts-exchange now?

------
GoNB
I don't have side projects, instead I spend that free time training for and
running triathlons. I can't show as impressive a GitHub as my peers, but I'm
sure as hell a lot more healthier and _physically_ active. Whether that means
anything to recruiters, who knows.

------
jamieomatthews
ABH. Always. Be. Hacking.

I think there are plenty of jobs that wont weigh side projects too heavily, as
long as what you are working on for your job is awesome. I also think there
are companies who like the modo I suggested at the top, and are looking for
someone who loves to hack away at projects

------
jack-r-abbit
"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word _no_."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

~~~
tzs
That is frequently wrong.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
But not this time. ;)

------
cgag
I want to say yes, but it could just be because I can't imagine having my
coding needs satisfied by coding for someone else. I suppose there might be
people who are truly satisfied with their jobs out there.

------
umsm
Many developers have a bad LIFE / WORK balance. For the long run, I decided
not to work beyond working hours.

I try to enjoy the little time I do have with friends and family.

------
tbrownaw
Maybe this is a sign that we need continuing education / professional
development rules, like real professions have?

