
It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too - majikarp
https://zeroequalsfalse.press/posts/it-is-ok-to-only-code-at-work/?
======
Tor3
Well.. this assumes that coding (all coding?) is a burden.. I agree with the
article in that coding _for_ work, outside of normal work hours, isn't
something to strive for. I did that a lot when I was young, but that was not
only when it was necessary due to the strained time schedules we had then, it
was also because I literally hungered for it. I needed to. So I would go back
to work after dinner and hack away to figure out how the OS worked, deep
inside, for example. Writing or modifying device drivers, writing tools that
extended the OS functionality, that kind of things. Back when things were new.

These days I don't, as a rule, code for work outside of work hours. But I need
to code in my spare time. That's when I can do things that really interest me,
side projects where I can enter the 'flow', something I nearly never can do at
work anymore. I have to go into flow mode now and then to keep up my ability
for concentrating on problems (and yes that's necessary to keep up my work
performance too). A few years back the constant interrupts at work degraded my
performance so much that I spent my three week holiday in various cafeterias,
with a laptop and documentation, and worked all day on my hobby project,
finally re-learning to enter the flow again. As in "I looked up, and five
hours had passed". Myself, laptop computer, documentation, coffee, food
available. Happiness.

~~~
badfrog
If that's what you want to do with your time, cool. This article is aimed at
people who don't want to do that but feel like they have to.

~~~
zachsnow
The article states that by not coding at home you can “have a life, too”,
implying you won’t have one if you code at home. This idea is repeated in the
article, suggesting to me that it is more than just clickbait.

That’s dumb. Of course you can “have a life”, regardless of whether your
hobbies include something you also get paid for. Denigrating folks as not
having a “life” for this reason, even as a rhetorical device, is dumb.

~~~
foobarchu
I think you might be reading into it too much. It's not an angry article, and
it never dismisses people who do like to code outside of work. The title is
meant to support people who don't want to code in their free time. Maybe they
chose those particular words poorly, but it doesn't take away from the overall
premise.

The author even says, after listing activities one might do outside work, "But
is it really necessary? That is for you to decide." It's about not needing to
feel obligated to be into all that, not disallowing it.

------
fuball63
Semi related to this, if you do code after work (because you enjoy it), it's
OK to code without it being a "startup".

I often get bogged down with "how do I monetize, market, and maintain this",
which just kills my motivation. Just because something isn't marketed and
monetized doesn't make it invalid; outside of work coding has brought me
numerous benefits:

\- Learning new things. Not because I feel like if I don't I'll fall behind,
but because I like learning things I don't get to experience at work.

\- Expressing yourself. I like being able to execute on my vision without
worrying about what my employer wants. Or, if its a game I'm making, using
that coding to express an artistic vision.

\- Meeting people. You can still talk about your project at meetups or online
without trying to "sell" it.

~~~
pradn
I think it's only the HN crowd that tries to look at side-projects from the
monetization angle. (How else do you explain the frequent 'what's your side-
business' posts? Also, this is a VC's site after all.) There are many
computing cultures - people making games for gamejams, working on quines,
writing code for GameBoys, contributing to Firefox, Arduino hackers. Maybe
finding one of those groups will change your mindset?

~~~
sandov
I'm curious about the proportion of people who started visiting HN because of
ycombinator vs those who came just because someone told them it had good
discussions.

I'm of the latter group.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I came through pg's essays on Lisp (and not startups!), stayed for the
discussions.

------
ljf
Totally this! My father is/was a stage and costume designer in the theatre.

He worked so hard during the week (and weekends - theatre people keep some
heavy hours!) that he rarely did many passion projects (though he did manage
to fit a few in). But when he did they were on things that we really important
to him, and that he gave himself the time to enjoy the process, and results
and the iterations to follow.

I think he's always set me to have a good work life balance, and when I look
back at the life he built for himself (and for us) it makes me really proud.

Now he's 'retired' he is in over-drive. He and my mother are slowly hand-
painting their entire house, nothing is safe from redecoration. He's also
painting loads of portraits and writing far more. Great to see a 78 year old
man have so much drive and energy for creativity. I hope I do too at his age.

------
wenham
I think this goes deeper than coding, we live in a world of “Give it you’re
all”, but really the only thing we should be giving it all for is what makes
us happy. Over the last 25 years of coding, I’ve always stuck to the 9-5
(ish), 5 days a weeks. I’m not rich, but do alright and I’m fairly happy. I
actually have time to do things that are not coding outside of work. The world
needs driven people that give it their ‘all’, but we shouldn’t give those a
hard time that just give their ‘bit’

~~~
dsego
I don't think the world needs driven people. Maybe a few, but not many for
sure. So maybe things get produced or invented at a slower pace, but people
have time to enjoy a meaningful life, well sign me up.

~~~
wenham
Yes, I aggree, a few driven people is probably enough. There is a really
interesting book called 'in praise of slow' which has the idea as its main
point

------
huffmsa
Does a lawyer do law outside of billable hours? Some do pro-bono. But not the
majority.

Does a doctor practice medicine outside of his hours? Again, some work at free
clinics, but generally no.

Do veterinarians like it when you ask them to take a look at your cat when
they're not in clinic? No. Almost always no.

Work is work, leisure is leisure. If coding is leisure for you, that's great.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Does a lawyer do law outside of billable hours?

Yes, all of them study law outside of work clients pay them to do; in fact,
they are _required to do so as a condition of licensing_ , it's called
continuing education requirement.

The same is true of virtually all licensed professionals.

Programmers aren't licensed professionals, so they don't have a licensing
requirement for continuing education. But the programmers that _are_
professionals, even if not licensed are doing continuing education anyway, and
hands-on projects that aren't for paying clients is frequently a big part of
that.

(Now, professionals with good employers will often be paid to do continuing
education on work time, and that's true of programmers, too. If you have 20%
time, your continuing education projects may not be “side projects”.)

~~~
huffmsa
Studying law isn't practicing law.

Yes, all professionals should be reading and continuing their education. I
read tons of technical publications. But I rarely commit code.

But working full-stress cases outside of your actual work? Sounds like a good
way to burn out.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Studying law isn't practicing law.

And doing side projects isn't practicing the trade that would be regulated if
programming was a regulated profession.

> But working full-stress cases outside of your actual work?

Whoever said programming side projects should be “full-stress cases”?

~~~
huffmsa
> _Whoever said programming side projects should be “full-stress cases”?_

That's what the context is here. There's a notion in the software development
profession that you should have a side project which you put near full-time
hours and / or effort into. Because you love coding so much you can't stop.

Be it your future start-up, or contributing to an open source project (or 3).

Studying law is equivalent to reading the tech news / seing what other people
are doing / keeping up with best practices. Actually writing a project using
it is another level of complexity.

It's the difference between reading and analyzing the arguments of a legal
case and reconstructing and presenting the arguments yourself.

~~~
dragonwriter
> That's what the context is here.

I disagree.

> There's a notion in the software development profession that you should have
> a side project which you put near full-time hours and / or effort into.

There's a common notion that you should be doing practical learning, including
side projects, outside of “normal” paid work. It is far less common, however,
to encounter the idea that it should be near full-time hours (and it's not
clear to me what “full-time effort” distinct from hours even could mean.)

> Studying law is equivalent to reading the tech news / seing what other
> people are doing / keeping up with best practices.

No, it's not: in fact, this kind of professional reading is often expressly
excluded from the definition of activities that apply to continuing legal
education requirements. Lawyers do, as a practical matter, need to do the
equivalent of what you are talking about, but in addition to not as their CLE
requirement.

~~~
pojzon
My wife is an excellent lawyer. She spends "NOWHERE" the same amount of time
as I do to stay in touch with whats happening in the field.

She has to read new laws once in a while (sometimes even once per year). To be
relevant I as a Software Developer have to read about new stuff DAILY, while
writing to my own blog, do side projects from time to time and learn other
stuff i need for my current work.

I would not be lyin when i say being a good software developer (in the eyes of
industry) costs you around 20h of work extra per week.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _To be relevant I as a Software Developer have to read about new stuff
> DAILY, while writing to my own blog, do side projects from time to time and
> learn other stuff i need for my current work._

No, you don't. To be relevant, you just have to know a little JavaScript. You
can find a good-paying job with that.

What you described is something that's correlated with personal love in the
craft, and which can help you get better at it (then again, it also makes you
more frustrated about professional life). You can fake it, of course, if for
some reason you feel you need to,.

------
threwawasy1228
I hate that this has become so entrenched, and I hate that my previous jobs
don't allow me to use samples from their codebase in my portfolio. I hate
feeling like my github or bitbucket are sparse and this is somehow a sin. Just
give me a takehome project and I will show you how I program, it is really
that simple! Don't force me to waste my precious time making little toys in my
spare time to potentially amuse someone. Yes I could make a minesweeper clone
in a day, no I don't want to.

Most of the fun of programming for me is the mathematics and theory portion, I
like to implement or toy around with algorithms and write little half finished
scripts. That is fun for me, but is that presentable? Nope.

~~~
JohnFen
> Just give me a takehome project and I will show you how I program, it is
> really that simple!

I once applied for a job where that was the entry exam: they gave you the
specs for a program about a month in advance of your interviews and you were
expected to bring in the solution you wrote. The task was intentionally
extremely difficult (they specifically warned you about that).

Although I didn't get the job, I really did appreciate that approach to skills
testing. I thought it was brilliant.

------
newsgremlin
People are allowed to do whatever they want. Any claims of lack of passion or
work ethic are opinions and anecdotes of individual experiences.

There is limited time in a day and in life, you can't spend hours on multiple
hobbies and interests without compromise and without eventual burnout within
ones capabilities.

Feel like this kind of do's and don'ts of when to spend time and how much time
to spend coding is a recurring topic that should be put to bed in the
developer world. Those who want to shine above the rest will always and should
pursue that goal, those falling below that bar is perfectly fine, it's all
about personal wants and needs at the end of the day.

------
suff
So what happens when your company's roadmap consists of technical slop and
they won't pay you to learn things like differentiable programming? Do you
think they're going to pay you to write Vue.js until you retire?

This strategy might work for a few years, but is a long-term career hazard.
You are in charge of raising your own bar.

~~~
ska
Honestly, this is a good reason to consider a job change. You can learn
new/other tech on your own, sure... but not nearly as efficiently as you can
in-situ.

Besides, the tech itself is rarely the limiting factor.

------
angarg12
If I have a piece of advice to juniors about this is: burnout is real.

I used to have personal projects that didn't pay off in any way beyond
personal learning, and they sure were taxing on my life.

Now I have a job that I enjoy and is challenging enough. For the last year I
have been making a conscious effort to change how I deal with personal
projects. I try to take on tasks that are low effort, and not feel guilty
about dropping something if I feel that it doesn't work, or it's starting to
require too much from me.

------
badfrog
Anecdotally, I've been a professional software engineer for around 10 years at
top tech companies. I'm currently have similar pay and seniority as a Google
L6. I've very rarely worked more than 9 hours in a day, and in those 10 years,
I've spent less than 100 evenings coding on personal projects. So yeah, it's
possible for sure.

~~~
barry-cotter
That’s around $200,000 in cash and up to about double that in stock and bonus
according to

[https://www.levels.fyi/](https://www.levels.fyi/)

Most recently from Zürich, $448,000 210k Cash| 190k Stock 48k Bonus

~~~
ilikehurdles
Thanks for the explanation and link. I have no clue what levels at google are
or correspond to.

------
K0nserv
It is perfectly OK to only code at work, but you need to ensure you are
learning and developing at work. Almost all programming related fields are
still growing and changing rapidly. To stay relevant you need to invest in
learning and self improvement. This can definitely be done as part of your
job, but it's also something you can achieve by coding outside of work.

Regardless of how you do it, ensuring that you are continuously learning and
staying relevant is important.

~~~
xfitm3
You absolutely should be learning and growing on company time.

~~~
exelius
Yup, this is the real reason behind concepts like “10% time”. Play with new
stuff on your side projects, not on production systems.

------
soulofmischief
I became a coder because I find it useful, valuable, and creatively
stimulating.

The only time I _really_ enjoy coding, in the sense that 12 hours can pass by
in the blink of an eye, is when I'm working on my own things. So by the time
I'm done working for ~8 hours a day I'm bursting with excitement for when I
get to fire up my development VM and code for another 6 hours.

I get excited learning new things about my field. I get excited encountering
and solving new problems. I get excited when I am able to form connections
between isolated domains of knowledge and create work that is more valuable
than the time I spent on it.

Programming is engineering, but it is also art. I am an engineer, but I am
also an artist. I live to create; writing useful applications, making video
games and writing music are all ways I do this. My career path has and will
continue to be a reflection of these values.

I understand if some people chose to become programmers just for the money. I
hope you are at least treating my field with respect and not just getting by
with minimal effort while eroding employer/employee trust and dragging down
the median salary.

But consider that you could be making money in a field you are truly
passionate about, blurring the lines between what is "work" and what is a
"personal project". This is what it means to become successful in life, not
wads of cash.

------
willemojnr
Ah man, I wish my work was "only coding", wouldn't that be nice.

------
petercooper
Yes, and similarly it's also possible to be into coding both at work and at
home and to still have "a life" where you're doing what you're enjoying.

------
leecarraher
I recall this as a standard 'canned' interview question. The goal was to
assess if the applicant had a general passion for software development as well
as a drive to learn new things. While I had no particular issue with the goal
of the question at the time, I always felt it a bit one dimensional. At a
different job in a more corporate setting, I find the push to be just the
opposite. Time-off is time to unwind, use it as such. I believe companies have
found success in this cultural imperative as a means of preventing turnover
and burnout.

------
gnode
Personally, I feel like if I didn't develop software outside of work, I would
start to see software development as work, rather than a skill, just like
being able to write or play a musical instrument.

I think, for your own sake, if you're skilled at something, you should try to
use that skill on your own terms. Many arduous professions are the practise of
enjoyable skills on someone else's terms (be it an employer or a market):
driving, cooking, gardening, etc.

------
citeguised
I work in Front-End and have always had side-projects with coding involved
(Games, Websites, CLI-Tools).

Some of my career's and company's circumstances (no senior front-end-devs for
reviewing and mentoring around, mostly work on classic websites/web-shops)
make it necessary. It's the only way to keep my skills somewhat up-to-date and
to improve beyond what I do at work.

Coding and building is fun to me, so I was ok with this. After getting kids
though, my available home-coding-time shrunk to almost zero.

My employer does allow and pay for conferences/workshops, but there's nothing
as good for learning as a real project with more senior team-members, I guess.

I really don't want to leave after 8 years of building reputation and
seniority, and start from scratch elsewhere, in a big unknown.

How do others cope with that?

~~~
souprock
Well, same here on the kids. I wrote /bin/ps for Linux and maintained the
procps package for about a decade. I also did significant work on Tux Paint
and a little Linux kernel work. I managed just fine with 3 tiny kids and a
job, and later with 5 small kids and no job. Adding back a job, I hit my
limit. This is one way that Open Source projects die.

Since then, the situation has only gotten more extreme. My family size goes to
11, and yes that is one louder than 10. Soon I'll have a dozen, all
homeschooled.

I got one kid interested in following in my footsteps, so sometimes I get to
have fun teaching him. Mostly, there just isn't time for anything extra. One
factor that helps is that I'm in a different part of the industry. You're in
"Front-End", which might mean you need to learn a new javascript framework
every year. I mostly write in C, for which the last update was 8 years ago and
the last significant update was 20 years ago. When I'm not doing C, I'm doing
a wide variety of different kinds of assembly language. That changes, but one
is expected to constantly refer to the manual. So really I've gone a quarter
century with no significant change. I am pondering the value of learning rust,
but I certainly don't have to scramble each year to learn the hot new thing.

------
triplee
Yes. It is ok. I hate that we've made it a norm to expect everyone to have the
same hobby -- exactly the thing you do at work, and it better damn well be a
hobby that you can monetize.

Some people code and live on the MeetUp circuit when they're not coding. I do
those things on rare occasion, but I've got a wife, a small child, and other
hobbies.

I like that this article reminds all of us to not normalize overwork.

That said, it seems anti-hustle is becoming the new hussle, and yes, it's ok
to code on your own as well if you enjoy it, want to learn, etc. You just
shouldn't HAVE to.

------
SmellyGeekBoy
It's sad that this has to be said. I have lots of side projects that involve
making stuff, music, electronics, restoring old computers and the like. Very
occasionally these projects involve writing some code, but it's the exception
rather than the rule.

If you want to write code for fun and it makes you happy then go for it! But
by no means feel obliged to. It doesn't make you any more or less of a
programmer.

------
oneplane
On one hand: duh. On the other: if you also code at work as a step on a ladder
you'd like to climb, coding more than just at work is a common method of
getting ahead of people who don't. Then again, that doesn't require not having
a life, so the ultimate position I'd take would be: find a balance but make
sure that it doesn't turn in to complacency.

------
JohnFen
I love to code, and do so not only at work but at home as well.

That said, I was unaware that there are people who feel _pressure_ to code in
their off-hours. That's silly. On your own time, you should do whatever helps
you live a good life and be happier. If that includes programming, there's
nothing wrong with that. If it doesn't, there's also nothing wrong with that.

------
sridca
> There is often pressure inside Software development for Software developers
> to code outside of work hours.

Funny. What I actually noticed is the pressure to _not_ code outside of work
hours. :-P

It feels like hobbyist hacking is increasingly falling out of place, even to
the point of gaining antagonistic feelings about it.

------
maceurt
Idk, I have found the best programmers all love to code. Unless you are a
prodigy talent, you are going to have to program a lot on your own to be able
to even be good enough to land and keep a job at a good company.

------
andrewfromx
i like 4 hours a day, everyday, weekends too. Even on vacations I like to get
4 hours of coding in and THEN enjoy non-coding activity. But lots of coders
seem stuck in i must do a full 8 hours a day M-F only.

------
np_tedious
I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the article's content with a banner about
listening to coding podcasts

------
bichiliad
Off-topic: is that a marquee tag at the top of the page?

------
rich-tea
Yeah. It's also perfectly OK to code outside of work. It's still "having a
life" but it's my life and therefore my choice.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Obviously. But no one is being pressured to _not_ code at home by their peers
and employers.

~~~
rich-tea
Except when they imply that it's "not having a life".

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Some guy with a blog accidentally implying a mild insult is hardly the same
thing.

------
segmondy
No it's not, not if you want to want to claim to be a true professional.

I have never met a professional that only engages in their craft at work only.
Professionals practice their craft all time especially outside work.

Work time is game time. Work time is not the time to engage in Research but
strictly development. Unless you work for an R&D lab. It is the engaging in
research instead of development that's the cause of software projects failing
and having all sorts of issue. When it's D time, it's time to simply apply all
the best principles that you know, nothing else.

This means, you must practice (research) off hours.

Can you imagine a math professor that only practices mathematics only when
they teach? Or a musician that only plays music only during performance?

It's okay to only code at work if you are just a code monkey and not a
professional. In that case, don't expect the high rewards of the industry,
don't claim to be a "professional" granted that the definition of a
professional is one that does it only for money.

Look at the very best in the industry, just think of them, name em. They all
code outside of work. Jeff Dean, Norvig, Linus, Stallman, Carmack, Wolfram

~~~
jdlyga
Spending 100% of work time coding reminds me of the startup world. Eventually
it leads to a culture where people get locked in the same patterns and don't
try new things. If you work at a larger company, there's always down time for
watching conference videos, side projects, etc. I've found encouraging people
to spend some of their work time learning makes for better developers.

~~~
segmondy
There's no difference between work and living. it's all the same. This
work/life balance is crap. Working 100% of the time is bad, but the idea that
your only can work in an allocate piece of time for intellectual work is the
most ridiculous thing ever. Doesn't matter if you write music, write code, or
writing a book. You work when your mind is ready to go. To refuse to work when
your brain is ready is a strong signal that you don't have passion for this.
If you're engaged in manual labor then sure, but for all intellectual work
there's no boundary. It's perfectly NOT okay to preach these rubbish about
being mediocre. The interesting thing is the very people who also code
anywhere, tend to be very balanced and also enjoy their life outside of
coding.

