[shagie]

Its not about the criticality of the task - its that if a company is paying you for time spent working on things that the company wants you to work on, work on those things.

Likewise, using company resources for your own projects is often frowned upon to varying degrees.

Unless stated otherwise, during regular business working hours, if you are working on something, work on what the company says you should be working on.

[capitalsigma]

I mean, yes, of course OP should be aware that they are on the clock during the day. I just feel like you are really misrepresenting the scale of the worry here.

A senior candidate has a serious, revenue-generating side business, maybe in a competing product area? Yeah, that seems like cause for concern: this candidate's potentially-dropped cycles working on their business could mean a significant loss in team productivity, we might worry that they're on the verge of quitting to focus on their own product, whatever.

An intern candidate has a side hustle? Awesome, sounds like they're not totally clueless, likely they'll be able to ramp up quicker than someone with less experience. Ideally they put it on the back burner for the internship duration but nothing is going to collapse if they're not functioning at 100%. I feel like it's a much bigger risk that you hire someone with a weaker resume and get nothing from them even when they try their best.

[shagie]

An intern with a side hustle? Not a problem fundamentally.

An employee with responsibilities split with some other business concern during the hours they're expected to be working? That is an issue at any level.

Again, this isn't about the criticality of the task - or its importance. It is about who is paying them for the work that they are doing now.