[peter422]

I'm not saying you have to write open source code on your own time.

I'm saying that you can't complain that an interview doesn't show you are good coder if there is no other way for somebody to look at a project you've done.

Saying you did X/Y/Z at your last company but can't share the code since it belongs to them isn't a valid excuse for why you have no code out in the world to show off.

[busterarm]

Maybe in California, where contract terms around owning your products outside work aren't honored, but in most of the rest of the US and the world, this is still a valid excuse.

Can't exactly contribute to open source if my contract says my employer owns everything that I do, and even if you think that can get tossed out, you'd better have a good legal fund.

[loup-vaillant]

In other words, you have to have written code on your own time.

[unoti]

Yeah, you do. You can't rely on your employer to continuously retrain you through your whole career. Show me an engineer with 10+ years of experience who refuses to ever learn anything away from work, and I'll show you somebody working on old tech.

[vonmoltke]

There is a difference between learning things away from work and having open-source projects.

Also, some people have enough flexibility to learn new languages, technologies, frameworks, and such within the context of their day jobs.