Come on. Isn't this getting old for anyone else? Do you check if your dentist goes to dentist meetups, or extracts teeth in his spare time? All you're doing with this question is asking "are you one of us".
My medical friends spend quite a lot of unpaid time studying, or at conferences.
The accountants I know spend a lot of unpaid overtime meeting clients (networking being the key professional skill for Big 4 accountants).
Pretty much every profession has some kind of out-of-hours way of progressing their career which some people chose to engage in and some people don't.
The problem is that in every field you are competing against people who are willing to work 18+ hours a day, 7 days a week pushing their career forward.
You either need to match that or find some other way to compete that doesn't require as much of a time commitment. Or be happy that the market is hot enough that even without working too hard you can still get a pretty good job!
Well, the thing is, perhaps your dentist is an average dentist, but nobody has the data to know that. Perhaps ALL dentists are pretty average, save for perhaps a few who go to conferences, have a blog, go on dentistry techy-forums in their spare time, or buy random dentistry gadgets to try them etc etc.
For example, my local butcher is a 'geek butcher'. He tries new cuts, goes to butchery meetups at food festivals, try tosource new things, etc; result is that he's really good at what he's doing, and he gets quite a few loyal customers.
Yes I definitely do check if my dentist go to conferences, presents or teaches.
Ever since a dentist fucked up and caused me a lot of pain and to spend a lot of money to fix the damage, I've become very careful about how I chose health care professionals. And while I don't know enough about dentistry to judge seeing a dentist go to conference documents himself on the newest techniques and teach or present at conferences is a good signal to find out if he is good.
There are people who are passionate about what they do and they are people who don't care all that much in almost every case the passionate ones will be better.
> in almost every case the passionate ones will be better
My experience has not borne this out, either in development (which I've been doing professionally for almost 20 years) or in music (which I've been doing amateur-ly all my life). Passion is a very weak indicator of skill, community involvement is even weaker
Interesting take - How does one maintain Passion about something they are not good (or improving) at? I get that, day one a musician does not have the skills, but would they maintain that passion if they were not getting better?
If you LOVE something - you do it in your "spare" time. That was the core of my point. I will take a dentist, butcher, developer who LOVES their work in such a way that the line between work and fun is blurred over someone who is working for the weekend - any day!
You can be a fine developer who just clocks in and out. But if I had a choice (and sometime I don't). I would choose the guy who loves what they do and does it in their "spare" time.
I understand where you are coming from, but the dentist analogy does not fit.
Software development is a creative endeavor in a constantly changing field, and unless I'm asking my dentist to do experimental tooth enhancements, I wouldn't consider her job nearly as creative.
I would never hire (and have never hired) a designer who didn't have a portfolio. I would never hire a developer who didn't have any code to show me. Most code available to show is only open source these days - as companies don't want their employees showing proprietary source to 3rd parties.
Fair enough. But how am I supposed to know if you can actually write code and do the job?
I've hired over 40 people and given hundreds of interviews over the course of my career. I learned early on that unless I can see some examples, then it is a random draw. The truth is that people give false impressions of their abilities on their resume (whether intentional or not).
As a development manager who still writes code, I have deep perspective of both sides of the table. I would never work for an employer who didn't want to see any code - because who knows what kind of talent I'd be working with?
A better analogy is if you were a dentist who owned his own small business. What kind of dentist would you prefer to hire? Keep in mind you will pay this person out of your own pocket. If they completely suck at dentistry, you'll most likely have lost tens of thousands of dollars by the time you figure it out.
The accountants I know spend a lot of unpaid overtime meeting clients (networking being the key professional skill for Big 4 accountants).
Pretty much every profession has some kind of out-of-hours way of progressing their career which some people chose to engage in and some people don't.
The problem is that in every field you are competing against people who are willing to work 18+ hours a day, 7 days a week pushing their career forward.
You either need to match that or find some other way to compete that doesn't require as much of a time commitment. Or be happy that the market is hot enough that even without working too hard you can still get a pretty good job!