Comment by williamdclt
2 days ago
> Most people have still written code for school or a hobby project
School was years and years ago, and has nothing to do with my current skills.
From the people i personally know, most do _not_ have a hobby project, even fewer have hobby projects that showcases their technical skills. Nor should they be expected to. Most people have non-programming hobbies.
> I cannot understand how some developers have no code to show.
It's really not that deep, I'm worried if you really cannot understand. I don't code outside of work, I'm not interested in doing it. I'm good at software engineering, not passionate about it. I have a bunch of other hobbies. There's no reason I'd have any code to show now or at any point in the future.
> let them make a small project over the weekend and then do another interview where you ask stuff about what they've made
If I'm paid for it, sure why not I could do that. I won't love it but hey I'm looking for a job, I'll put the legwork in. But if this is the only or the "preferred" interview process for a company, I need to point out that it is deeply discriminatory as it advantages people who have the time to do a weekend project: for example it benefits males disproportionally (women do most of the care work in any country, also the most house work, also have a higher chance to be a single parent, all of which impacts the time they can put in a "weekend project" if they can do it at all).
> It's really not that deep, I'm worried if you really cannot understand. I don't code outside of work, I'm not interested in doing it. I'm good at software engineering, not passionate about it. I have a bunch of other hobbies. There's no reason I'd have any code to show now or at any point in the future.
It's like asking a dentist interview candidate to show you examples of fillings and crowns they did at home as a hobby. I don't understand why there is this automatic assumption that people who program at work also do it outside of work.
I ask for code, and if they have none prepared I ask that they spend at most two hours building something they enjoy.
I expect a decent developer to be able to bootstrap and write most of a fun toy project in a domain they know well or at worst some kata from the Internet within half an hour. Then we spend some time screen sharing and talking about it, similar to pair programming but less problem focused.
If you can't do it you'll likely struggle a lot when working with us because we commonly use throwaway prototypes.
Which is fine, you don't have to take in every candidate, nor do we need to apply to every company.
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The equipment is irrelevant. What other career out there expects that practitioners also perform the work at home during their free time as a hobby?
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I have written software for laboratory devices on similar price levels, that will never run on home computer.
If you're not interested, you're not interested. Not even about "passion" at that point, but the bare minimum interest in your industry. I said it better previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15553482
If you have literally never written a line of code outside of your work in the last decade, you are not a culture fit. This itself is a filter.