[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.

[P_I_Staker]

Yup. I agree about work life balance and not letting your profession consume you. On the other hand "real professions" do have continuing education outside of work, and it does seem to suck. Takes similar, or even more hours than personal coding, and it's probably less enjoyable. There's an argument that programmers should be treated more like licensed professionals, be more liable for mistakes due to negligence, and have more demands placed on them.

[C1sc0cat]

CPE is meant to be in work time though

[dragonwriter]

> CPE is meant to be in work time though

For independent practitioners, it's outside of billable client time, but, yes, for people working wage labor on the profession this is true.

Software dev as wage labor has pretty crappy (for a profession) work conditions, and part of that is employers not alotting time and funding for CPE.

That doesn't mean people in the field shouldn't do CPE, but it does mean they should seek better terms of employment.

[hatchnyc]

Many of my friends ended up becoming doctors, PAs, or nurses and medicine is basically all they talk about, especially the doctors. Their phones are overflowing with medical photos and articles. Get two or more of them together and you're not going to discuss anything besides their field. One volunteers for some Doctors Without Boarders type organization, another teaches classes at a university, I think they almost all do some ad hoc volunteer work from time to time.

I think in most fields the top performers are going to be investing significant effort outside work to practice, learn, and improve themselves throughout their career. Coding is a little bit unique compared to certain professions because it can be done alone and without incurring much additional cost.

[JohnFen]

> Many of my friends ended up becoming doctors, PAs, or nurses and medicine is basically all they talk about, especially the doctors.

Yes. It's the same with all of the engineers I know (and I suspect it's the same with all professions).

With my engineering friends, we had to set a rule that if we're at a social function that includes people not in our field, "talking shop" is expressly forbidden. This is to prevent a problem that had gotten out of control -- having a handful of people talking about arcane things that nobody else can understand, let alone are interested in.

[huffmsa]

> I think in most fields the top performers are going to be investing significant effort outside work to practice, learn, and improve themselves throughout their career.

Agreed. I spend a lot of free time reading about and discussing technology. Occasionally teach, occasionally do some advising.

But I rarely have a side project which consumes my time. I guess the equivalent would be a nurse going and taking a shift at another hospital.

[TeMPOraL]

> I guess the equivalent would be a nurse going and taking a shift at another hospital.

You're looking at the wrong profession. A nurse can't "just" go and start nursing stuff. Programmers are like carpenters - they can just go and start building stuff for themselves, using the same tools and skills they use at work. Except they also have an industry-imposed, medicine-style continued learning requirement due to how fast the field keeps changing.

[arkades]

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

Constantly. Besides being on formal call, there are informal consults texted or called in constantly, plus emergencies, plus friends-and-family consults. Plus paperwork for the patients you’ve seen very often takes longer than your “official” hours. And keeping up to date on the relevant literature is not something that happens during work hours.

Very very few docs stop working when their “hours” are up. And I’m not talking about exceptionally driven, ivy-festooned docs - I’m talking about the average schmoe you’d probably look down on.

[huffmsa]

All of that sounds like overtime. Still the same job.

How many docs are working on side projects in their free time?

[saiya-jin]

No. What you describe are still work hours. They can, and often do lead to overtime (paid or not), but its far fetch from wrapping your work at workplace, coming home, and continuing doing the same stuff. At least that's how common doctors's work looks in Switzerland.

[dazzawazza]

All of those professions do plenty of hours of "work" outside of "billable hours".

They all read professional publications in order to keep up with the progress their professions are making. In many cases this is a few hours a day of reading.

For most this is a chore but it's part of being a professional in those professions.

[huffmsa]

Reading papers isn't the same as doing the job though.

I read mostly technical content related to software dev / general tech, but I rarely create software outside of work.

[JohnFen]

I don't see the same sharp divide as you.

Studying, practicing, and improving your skills are just as much "doing the job" as actually writing code. It's all an essential part of production in the end.

[boboguitar]

> 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.

My wife(a vet) won't even let me tell people, that aren't very close to me, that she is a vet. It's ridiculous the amount of free advice she gets asked. The worst part about it is that she has had several classmates from vet school that have been sued(and lost) from the free advice they gave to other people outside of work hours. It's a huge liability issue and trust me, the people who want free medical advice are the people who will sue you because you didn't correctly diagnose the problem for free.

[huffmsa]

I included the vet example because they're almost violent about not wanting to work outside of hours.

For the reason you stated. And some have told me that providing that kind of free advice devalues the profession and enables bad (read cheap) pet owners.

[TeMPOraL]

People brought up continuing education requirement, but since you keep asking about doing the stuff they do for work, outside work: lawyers and doctors generally don't, unless they're volunteering or giving out free advice (risky). But that's not necessarily because they don't want to, it's because those are service skills of limited utility outside regular work context.

Consider instead a car mechanic, or a carpenter. It wouldn't be surprising to find a mechanic doing some old car restoration work after hours, or a carpenter making their own trinkets or furniture. Unlike the skills of doctors and lawyers, those skills can be easily applied in personal life.

Software development is a funny trade, with continuing education requirements of medicine and law (though self-imposed, not regulated), but with work type more similar to carpentry or car repair. That is, unless you're working with some very unique hardware or very unique datasets, you can do the same type of work at home that you do at work (and quite likely of better quality, as you're likely to have better working conditions at home).

[gnode]

Most personal coding is done (at least initially) for personal use. Those specialisms you list are not ones most people regularly consume. Software is something virtually everyone in developed countries consumes daily. I think for that reason, a better comparison is whether farmers grow food for themselves, or whether chefs cook their own meals.