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 (54)
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.
While I do encourage people to explore as much as they can, especially on technologies not used within the workplace (or even reading dev.to).
On other occasions, I stress the importance of taking care of oneself and family members. As that should be more important than work, or even the company. And in finding joy in life in general.
It is, however, a very tricky thing - especially when I am on the "employer" side of the table. The line between encouragement and pressure is very thin. And I do personally worry at times if I was not clear enough on it.
Personally, I make a conscious effort never to penalize any developer for "not being there" or doing work on weekend/time off. Even if it was unplanned servers burning on fire. And chasing them to see the doctors and rest when sick.
And to find other things, to do that ain't work, help the community or exercise (though this last one is kinda hypocritical as exercise is something I need to improve on as well)
I tend to be very up and down with what I do in my off-work time. I have a family, so of course spending time with my husband and kids is very important. That tends to take up most of my weekends. I also enjoy creating art, primarily portraits, and do occasional commissioned work there. And I spend time playing my instruments - piano, guitar, ukulele, and voice - and getting out into the beautiful wilderness that surrounds me here in Denver. That said, I am also constantly studying for one certification or another, or learning a new technology, or whatever, while not at work. I do this partly because it is fun, and partly because it helps my career. I just finished studying for a CompTIA certification (and passed the exam last week), and am now studying for what will be my 9th active AWS certification. I am also learning CloudFoundry and a few other technologies as time allows and have a DeepLens at home that I am very much looking forward to playing with. Do I spend much time contributing to open source? Nope. Pretty much none.
All that to say, do what makes you happy, what helps you to be your best self. And don't worry about what other people think based on the lines of code you've contributed to open source, websites you've created, certifications you've achieved, or whatever. Yes, you need to be good at your job, but skills show themselves in many ways beyond just how much time you spend coding and how many lines you write.
I've been working professionally with code for about 8 months now and it has been the most frantic 8 months of the my life principally because of my urge to get better, the feeling that I'm behind and the amount of languages, frameworks and technologies I see everyday and find interesting. After just 8 months I concluded that it is not sustainable, I need more time for hoobies and life otherwise I'm going to burn out. Just last week I decided to start to take it easy on Fridays and not code. I failed in my intent, but I will get better.
It's fine but don't think that is all you will need to do to become great. I have been developing for over 20 years and the easiest way to tell if someone is a mediocre developer if they don't code outside of work.
Mediocrity will get you a good job and stable career. But it you want to be great at what you do you need to expose yourself to as much code as possible written by different people at different levels.
This is almost like saying it's perfectly fine not going to school for Computer Science or better Software Engineering. Without the proper education you will only be able to reach mediocrity.
What if Lebron James said I only play basketball during games? Having a passion for something is what separates the good from the great.
And that's perfectly fine!
This so cool
but a view i have is work life balance is key if you want to leave to create all good impact
I have to admit that when hiring, I do look for things like public repos or contributions, but I never fault a developer if they don't have any, or prefer to only code while working.
For me, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." So if I DO find a public repo or other projects that they contribute to in their spare time, it helps me see their passion in the same way a graphic designer may paint or sculpt out of the office. If a developer doesn't contribute in their spare time or code outside of the office, I wholeheartedly agree that is NOT an indication in any way that they are dispassionate about development.
I LOVE this, because I've been trying to convince myself that I'm not weird, but to see that other people is passing through same things has helped me to understand that the only thing that matters is feel good about my capabilities and growth. To find this community and be part of it has helped me a lot!
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