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Ask HN: Will not programming in my spare time hurt my career?

7 points by agracey ↗ HN
I am increasingly finding job postings requiring a github account or sample projects. I have an account but all of my projects are startups I'm helping and are private. (The one project that is public is easily some of the worst code I've ever written; it was thrown together for school in a couple hours)

How am I supposed to respond to these when the all the code I've written is proprietary. I code and design for a living but when I go home I prefer to do things other than code.

--edited due to HN losing part of the post

6 comments

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yolesaber
I think in your case it might help to spend a few weekends or so coding up projects that you can put on your github / talk about during interviews. You don't necessarily have to spend all your waking free-time attached to a computer, but a little extra time here and there can add up to a bigger chance of getting that interview and offer.
speeder
I am in the same situation as the poster.

Worse: I don't have open source projects, because I don't have time, I arrive at home, cook my food, and hit the bed.

Wake up, bath, go to work.

And at weekends I go see family, SO, do things I cannot do on weekdays (buy supplies, go to medic, go to bank, etc...)

nycs
take a couple days out to write something interesting for the sake of sharing it, definitely. but in the long run, not programming in your spare time is fine. no one wishes they had spent more time programming on their death bed. go out, travel, fall in love, do stuff, etc etc
pikewood
If you prefer to go home and do other things than code, you may want to reconsider joining a company where everyone probably feels the opposite way. By making a github account a required field, they are pre-weeding out individuals they feel do not fit into their culture. Make sure you are willing to be that outsider if you try and work around that.

But, if you feel these companies are still a fit for you, I would try and get references from the startups you've helped; have them vouch for you in lieu of sample work.

sn1de
When we get into this type of discusion in our interviews, what we are looking for is not literally are you coding between the hours of 6:00 -11:00 pm. We're trying to find out if are you passionate about software development. If you already have a job where you have the freedom to occasionally explore, or even better utilize, diverse and emerging technologies, then you don't really need to do so 'after hours'. On the other hand, if you've been doing Visual Basic for the last 12 years as your day job, we're going to want to see some tangible indication that you've at least been kicking the tires on some other technologies. If the hiring company literally requires hard evidence of contributions to public repositories, then it probably isn't the place for you (or me) and they are inevitably missing out on some great developers by casting to narrow a net.
southbaybob
agree with pikewood. if you are not already doing that on your own, you are probably not someone who enjoys sitting in front of their computers 24 hours a day. If a startup requires you to have an active github account, chances are everyone their sits in front of their computers 48 hours a day.