[FirmwareBurner]

Who are these "most people"? School was over 10 years ago for me when schoolwork was not posted on GitHub nor is it relevant to my current job anymore, and I don't do hobby coding since I have other hobbies and responsibilities.

WTF is this hobby coding bullshit expectations? What other professions expect you do more work after work as a hobby and show it? Do bus drivers film themselves driving busses after work as a hobby? Do surgeons cut up people in their spare time as a hobby?

[realharo]

The amount of time people spend grinding leetcode instead (if you believe what they say about it online) is just as much or more.

[FirmwareBurner]

Those are bubbles. I am aware such people exist but nobody I know grinds leetcode or does hobby programing.

[alabastervlog]

It's that trimodal-comp thing. The 6-hour leetcode gauntlet is only the overwhelming norm in the top hump of that graph. It's not normal in the other two (not that it's never seen, but the companies dumb enough to do it without offering FAANG-tier comp are shooting themselves in the foot). I've had, IDK, ten plus tech jobs and have been solidly in the middle comp tier for most of those, and have exactly once encountered anything resembling a leetcode question in the wild.

I've also done hiring, and have no idea what good leetcode would do me. I'm convinced these people thinking they "dodged a bullet" on "fakers" either spotted a real faker who they would have caught with a normal conversation anyway, or else are assuming someone with a good resume who failed their test did so because they were lying and not because they choked under the unique sort of pressure interviews present when you turn them into a dancing-monkey routine (it's approximately the same kind of stress as doing an open mic night or karaoke in front of a crowd of strangers—most people have trouble with that and lots of them fall apart at least some of the times they try it). Meanwhile, anyone who can talk about the job and their career in any depth, convincingly, without giving away that they're actually either very-green or have no idea what they're doing, while in fact not knowing how to do the job, possesses a skill at least as valuable as programming, and I find it hard to believe most such folks haven't figured out they can apply that skill directly in exchange for money instead of trying to fake their way through conversational tech interviews.

I do see how leetcode is valuable if you want to ensure that most of the candidates in your pipeline would do fine before you even evaluate them, because you offer high comp and need a way to discourage candidates who definitely can't make it before they even apply, and/or if you want to make job-hopping painful as a wink-and-nudge collusion way to keep comp suppressed. It makes sense for FAANG, in a certain way, but not because it's a good way to evaluate candidates per se.

[scarface_74]

Are the companies that want you to do hobby projects and take home test paying close to FAANg level or closer to enterprise Dev level comp?

[delta_p_delta_x]

> WTF is this hobby coding bullshit expectations? What other professions expect you do more work after work as a hobby and show it? Do bus drivers film themselves driving busses after work as a hobby? Do surgeons cut up people in their spare time as a hobby?

I think programming has more commonality with other creative, 'soft' jobs like graphic design (which itself can involve programming), architecture, media, marketing, etc than meets the eye.

Many of these roles require that applicants have some sort of portfolio that can be perused by the interviewer freely. I feel co-opting that word—'portfolio'—would do us software developers a big favour instead of trivialising outside-of-work programming as 'side projects' or 'hobbies'.

[FirmwareBurner]

>architecture, media, marketing, etc than meets the eye.

I disagree. Programing is more engineering than art. Art doesn't have source code. You can show the final painting and I can show the final product I worked on but not the source code I wrote as that belongs to my employer. Also, most art like paintings are not done by large teams, so you can show what you did in that painting but in a large SW projects, I can't show what exactly form the final product I did and what else was done by my team.

Most of my valuable work in programing is engineering, especially fixing bugs, not creating portfolios to show off. I have nothing publicly to show off, mostly because firstly, it's private to my former employers, and secondly because code gets outdated and replaced fast, most of what I worte in the past probably doesn't run today anymore, but have made my employers happy and wealthy.

[acureau]

Sounds like you just treat programming more like engineering than art. Some art does have source code, there is plenty of room for creative exploration with code.

[FirmwareBurner]

>there is plenty of room for creative exploration with code.

That also pays the bills? That's not my experience. That's what hobbies are for. Jobs are for paying bills. Paying bills with hobbies an art are a luxury for privileged.

[delta_p_delta_x]

I said neither 'art' nor 'paintings' which you have fixated on for some reason. I mentioned creative endeavours that are generally team-based but all generate some sort of portfolio. Whether that portfolio is from work or done in one's personal time, it is still a portfolio of past work.

Plus, software engineering is absolutely a creative endeavour. And I daresay normal 'engineering' (civil, mechanical, aero, etc) is a creative endeavour too; it's just a matter of egos and that seem to separate STEM versus non-STEM. There are portfolios for everything. I don't understand the desire for software engineers to just waltz into an interview, claim to have done X, Y, Z, with no proof, and secure a job.

[ttyprintk]

The proof part is interesting. Civil is easy to prove because of its artifacts. Someone from Netflix or Meta layoffs, what proof do any of them have? Do some people defensively maintain background proof other than paycheck stubs?

[Izkata]

> Art doesn't have source code.

Drawn art absolutely does have something like it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/learntodraw/comments/nibjjn/any_adv...

It could be considered similar to scaffolding or boilerplate in code, except usually none of this is visible in the end product, while the code boilerplate is always there. These lines are drawn light and completely covered up by the end result - sometimes even manually erased depending on the medium.

[pjmlp]

I got to see where architects build bridges over weekends as an hobby.

[gedy]

> WTF is this hobby coding bullshit expectations?

I can empathize with your position if you are also against expecting candidates "prepare for the interview" by leet code grinding or "brush up on CS concepts".

Hobby coding is million times better than that crap.

[FirmwareBurner]

At least leetcode is something somewhat standardized (algorithms don't change). Hobby coding is not, it's something subjective and varying between the interests of each candidates and often have nothing to do with a job.

[alabastervlog]

I don't like writing code for the sake of it, and have gotten a lot better, over 25 years of writing code, at evaluating whether I need to write code or whether I'd be better off using something that already exists and putting up with its limitations, or even just doing nothing (see that XKCD comic with the time-savings payoff chart).

The result is that I don't think I've written anything longer than about a ten-line shell or python or JS script for my personal use in... a decade or more.

Frankly I probably think you shouldn't be paying anyone to do the thing you're wanting to pay me to do, because computers are likely just an expensive distraction that management's pursuing because the promise of legibility, even if in-fact pointless in this case, is incredibly enticing to them, but also I like money and will build the thing you shouldn't be building for you if you pay me. I'll even do it well, if you let me. But I don't make the same mistake (much) in my own life, any more.

Would I write a bunch of code on my own if I thought it'd be worth it? Yes, but that'd almost certainly mean I had a product idea. If I were any good at thinking of product ideas, I'd long since have had my own business. I'm terrible at it. That's literally the only reason I'm applying for a job. If I had a pile of decent code to show you, it'd be because I didn't need your job.