Here's a thread from the community a little while back:
What's your opinion on programmers who are not passionate about programming, have no side projects and only program at their jobs. Not senior devs either, just programmmers, who are not juniors anymore. Can they ever improve, write better code? Or do they stagnate.
I wanted to share this wonderful top comment:
This is a really interesting question. I guess it helps to reframe it by applying the question to other jobs.
What's your opinion on carpenters who don't build houses in their free time?
I've met a broad variety of developers in my time, and a large portion of them have been the type who have a skill that they use for work, and don't care to indulge in outside of business hours. Instead they use their free time to build boats, go surfing, paint, write, cook, raise families etc.
Some are tech leads, some are CTO's, some are juniors, the remainder are everywhere in between. Some of the best technical minds I've worked with have been superb at completely separating their work and home lives.
I noticed quite early in my career that there's an (in my opinion) undue amount of pressure on developers to be coding/reading/meetup-ing 24/7 lest they fall behind. The truth, as I've grown to understand it, is that 40 hours a week of writing software is plenty to facilitate growth and improvement, given an environment that supports that growth.
I've been lucky enough to work for organisations who take their employees growth very seriously, and as such provide ample opportunity (at work) to dabble in new technologies, learn and grow.
The idea that the only way you can avoid stagnation as a developer is to let your job consume your life* is pervasive, but very poisonous none-the-less.
Having said that, no-one's trying to stifle anyones passion here. If you love to code, do it at every opportunity you get. But be careful when passing judgement on the skill, growth and development of folks who don't share that same level of passion.
*maybe not your whole life, but a significant portion of it
Us humans put a lot of pressure on one-another and there are a lot of competitive, unhealthy environments that cause us a lot of pain. We also each have different personal contexts which ultimately guide our lives a lot more than 1's and 0's.
I would be careful about assuming they're not passionate because they don't code in their free time. At one point I was a single mom and couldn't find time to code unless I was at work. That didn't mean I wasn't learning new things while I was at work, or that I wasn't interested in technology. :)
Passion to learn and strive to be better is what sets people apart from becoming stagnate.
If you want to code in your spare time, go for it, but this career is an absolute marathon and being able to take yourself away from your computer more often is a strength as far as I'm concerned.
@_patrickgod has a lot of good posts on maintaining healthy habits and they all touch on balance.
I'm getting ready to escape into a bit of nature for the weekend and wanted to take a minute to share some great tips from the community on the subject of escaping. I hope it helps someone out there.
Happy coding!
Latest comments (57)
great
I got fired from my last job because I "worked too much" on my own game engine. And "too much" was 1-2 hours daily.
That's a great perspective! Many people feel pressured to code or contribute outside of work hours, but it's totally valid to set boundaries. Focusing on your job during work hours can help maintain a healthy work-life balance and prevent burnout. Everyone has different passions and ways to spend their free time, and as long as you're meeting your click here to get more information professional responsibilities, it's perfectly fine to keep your coding strictly to work hours. How do you feel about this approach?
I spend a fair bit of time working on open source projects outside of work (though less than I used to) and I agree that there is NO problem with not doing so.
40 hours per week is a lot of time to spend on any hobby. Not wanting to play piano more than 40 hours per week doesn't mean you aren't passionate about music. And not wanting to code for more than 40 hours per week (or insert other arbitrary number) doesn't mean you're not passionate about coding!
We all have other things to do, too.
Coding outside of work is something that you do because you like it, it is a preference, not because you have to. If you don't code outside of work, absolutely nothing will happen to you. You will not instantly drop dead. (hopefully :)
Often it's not easy to determine boundaries between "at work" and "out of work", especially when you have flexible work schedule, or when you are able to work more hours to earn more, and especially when you're working from home.
A person who spends 8 hrs at work, and then spends another 6 hrs to work on his own skills, improve himself as an engineer, will always "hate" any "junior", who claims that he's coding only at work, thereby is not passionate to work hard to make himself to be a better programmer.
Since 2015 I spend more than 12 hours coding daily, can be around 14 hrs. I don't care is it "at work" or "after work", because... I don't think it's a waste of time, if there is a purpose.
We always have weekends to make our wives and children to be happy. ☀️
Wish I had read something like this when I started
The amount of anxiety that you end up developing by just thinking that you are "falling behind" when in reality if you are just coding all the time, you may not even be taking the time to realize what you should be doing better, always leaving to let things mature will make you consider your decisions and become better every day.
In reply to the top comment:
In what context are we using "Passion" I guess? I first saw a computer in 1989. Knew nothing about it, but somehow felt connected to its future potential. Something about it. 2019, 30 years has gone by and I my passion for what is possible through programming is infinite. I don't work as a programmer but am continuously creating solutions that can help humanity solve many of the problems we face. Even though I was enthusiastically learning new technologies and then using what I learnt to create social innovation platforms, I never made them available to the general public until recently with hightechmindfulness.com. Now I can see with absolute clarity why I felt the passion I felt when I first saw the computer even though I didn't know what it was for.
PASSION
For me at least, passion for programming comes from purpose, even when I didn't know what that purpose was. When you know that you can create solutions to make the world a better place, passion comes naturally.
This article has definitely reduced some stress for me from feeling I should constantly be coding outside of my job. As much as I like creating apps that work and show what I can do, it is definitely a time-consuming process. I also want to devote my time to developing other skills without the guilt that I am not contributing enough free time to being a better developer.
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.