I used to believe this but after my most recent position I no longer do.
A lot of the developers there didn't code outside of work hours, or if they did it was just using the same technologies as the day to day.
When asked what tools we could use to filter for higher quality candidates in open roles I responded:
> Ask them to show you a personal project they're proud of, that will tell if they have any passion for the job.
Maybe it was just the company not being very attractive to talented coders, but after some time of candidates having nothing to show the company gave up and outsourced.
There are simply a lot of uninspired developers who are just in it for the money now.
Maybe some kind of confirmation bias / no true scotsman argument, but if I got that question during an interview my response would be something like
> There are simply a lot of uninspired developers who are just in it for the money now.
Personally I am happy that the industry is maturing to the point where people can just enter it as a career and not a ~~passion~~
This mentality that software devs should have loaded up github repos with side projects and live & breath code all the time is super toxic for the industry.
By the way there are plenty of talented coders who only code at work.
And there are likely plenty of hacks who code all the time, but never learned how to code well, or work with a team or understand how to scale a project or any host of other skills that are necessary for building commercial products.
> but after some time of candidates having nothing to show the company gave up and outsourced. There are simply a lot of uninspired developers who are just in it for the money now.
Or it could be that they really do like making software but they have other hobbies they enjoy much more.
I used to believe this but after my most recent position I no longer do. A lot of the developers there didn't code outside of work hours, or if they did it was just using the same technologies as the day to day.
When asked what tools we could use to filter for higher quality candidates in open roles I responded:
> Ask them to show you a personal project they're proud of, that will tell if they have any passion for the job.
Maybe it was just the company not being very attractive to talented coders, but after some time of candidates having nothing to show the company gave up and outsourced. There are simply a lot of uninspired developers who are just in it for the money now.
Maybe some kind of confirmation bias / no true scotsman argument, but if I got that question during an interview my response would be something like
> Which one would you like to hear about first?